Jeff's Blog: Celebratiing The Weekend

• The atmosphere this weekend was, in a word, Party! And it should have been. We baptized 17 people. Read that again: 17! I'm so thrilled to be a part of all of your journey in following Jesus and to see you take the next step in your journey through baptism was awesome!!! Alive you are great at celebrating these incredible milestones - way to go. As we gathered for every service there was just such an incredible sense that something BIG was about to happen - that God was up to something - and He was!

• The icing on the cake (we did have cake after the services to celebrate the weekend) was that there were 8 people who made new commitments in their faith to follow Jesus. Both the baptisms and the faith decisions is a picture of us living out the mission we are called to: Leading People Who Are Far From God To Be Followers Of Jesus. We have no idea of all that God wants to do through us as we continue to partner together to live out this mission.
• I just came from the Service of Shadows service that our Elders put together - wow -it was so moving. I could hardly make it through it as we read the scriptures of all that Jesus experienced this week leading up to the cross. The idea of the service was to leave in darkness, with a sense of what it must have been after the cross on Good Friday. The next time we get together will be a different story - we will get together to celebrate the HOPE of the resurrection.
• I am so looking forward to being with you all this next weekend as we celebrate Easter. Many of you are inviting friends, family, neighbors and co-workers. This is the one time of year that people really want to go to church. If you are a person who does not have a church home, I want to personally invite you this coming weekend to join me at Alive for one of our Easter services. Check it out at Easter At Alive I will begin a new weekend talk series called Life Apps beginning with The Hope App.