"This is great."
"Wow."
"Look at all the space."
"How exciting."
The past four days have been a blur of excitement and a real sense that I am part of a historic time in the life of this church. Things are now out of control. And I like it.
At long last, we have moved into our new space just up the hill, and the campus is gorgeous. I grin every time I climb the stairs from the parking lot and up to the second floor. We have been given more than we deserve.
I landed home from our summer camp (a week during which some amazing and unexpected things happened) on Saturday at 1:00, went into the office to prepare for Saturday night, dashed home to change clothes, and rolled up Poinsettia Lane just as the cross was approaching the new property. It was really emotional to see all of the people on the sidewalk and up on the lot, looking out into the street and waiting with ecstatic anticipation: the day had finally arrived! Saturday was simply electric, and from our perspective in 4th-6th grade, the flow of people from the open house never ended all evening; we simply started at 6:00 with the room as full as it had been all day. We didn't even know what had hit us.
Tonight again, at the "Without Walls" concert, I felt a sense of ownership and accomplishment and pride - good pride, not the evil variety - among the people who call this church their own, and not an ounce of possessiveness. Everyone seems eager to share this place with friends and neighbors, to invite them to a spot that's clean and new and has plenty of parking and breathing room and space to grow.
Saturday night, with the biggest crowd we've ever seen, did underscore the need to stay small even as the total church grows - by which I mean we must redouble our efforts to personally identify and reach out to kids in our ministry. It bothers me, and it always will, when a child spends an hour at a church event, anywhere, without being talked to or acknowledged by an adult leader.
What I saw Saturday, and again tonight, was a coming together of people and families whose paths never otherwise crossed in the shopping center, because the Saturday nights and the 8:00's and the 11:15's distinctly belonged to their respective services. And no doubt, people will again settle into their new attendance patterns. But for now, we're together, and that's great fun.
I want to thank the people at the beginning and the end of this process: at the beginning, those who conceived of the idea for a new property, and at the end, those who built, finished, and physically moved items from the old church to the new. I was blown away to learn that a "new" NCCC had its genesis in 1994, a time when I was still in college and when California and Christian ministry were nowhere near my radar screen. When I moved west in 2005, grading on the new site had not yet begun. Over the past couple of years I've come to realize that "fullness", inside and in parking lots, really does keep people away. So even if our new home seems "too big" at the start, it was needed and the planning proved fortuitous. There are too many volunteers to thank by name for lending a hand in getting our 4th-6th grade room packed and then resettled in the new children & youth building. But thank you all for investing in the future of that space and taking ownership over a piece of the new room.
This post isn't terribly deep or thought provoking, but it represents my mindset this week: I am preoccupied with gratitude - for the visionaries, the planners, the builders, the believers, the givers, and the many, many helpers. And that's a pretty good place to be.
Info, articles, and thoughts for parents of kids at North Coast Calvary Chapel.
