“The House” Campaign and Thoughts from Sunday

• First of all, if you have not heard, the amount pledged for the “The House” Campaign was $537,000. Praise God!  The good news is, we expect more pledges to come in this week.  We will keep you updated.  We did come up short of our goal of $700,000.  I had a lot of people tell me they wanted to pledge, but because of the economy, simply could not.   There is no question, this is a difficult season for many.  But we are confident in God’s direction and thankful for His provision.
• Please be praying for the Elder team as we decide on next steps for the building.  We need to see the final pledge amount and we are going to get actual “hard” bids on the expansion.  The actual bids, we believe, will be lower than our projected cost estimated for the expansion.  Let’s pray they are a lot lower.  We will keep the communication lines wide open.  But we need your prayers!
• I loved the energy, the excitement and worship on Sunday!  There is no question, God is moving in our midst!  Let’s keep praying and believing for great things and for lives to be changed.  I have never been more excited about our church!
• Remember:  Jesus is alive and the back of the book says, “We win!”  Let’s live like it!

Me and Coach Saban

The Luck family attended the University of Alabama’s Spring Football game, A-Day.  There were 91,000 people in attendance to watch this practice game.  Needless to say, Coach Saban and I were very pleased with the outcome.

Thoughts from the weekend

• This morning was one of the most incredible services I can remember at SCC!  I was blown away to see so many couples down front renewing their marriage vows.  Seeing God work in this way never gets old!!
• I really do appreciate everyone’s willingness to change.  I know our current service times are not the preference for some people, but we are doing it to create more room at the 11am service.  And that we did.  So, instead of our 11am service being 80% capacity, we now have more “optimum seats at the optimum time.”
• We were watching the parking lot very closely in between our worship experiences.  It is becoming more clear to us that we will have to pave more parking spaces.  And at $1,000 a space, parking is not cheap.  We will keep you posted on this as we move forward.
• We were really pleased with Married Life Live. It was a huge win for our church and for our community!  Next week, we will move into full evaluation mode, but the early feedback was very positive.  There is always something we can do better, but I am excited about the birth of this ministry in our community.  There is no question, this has been a great month for marriages at SCC!  Please pray for us as we ask God what His next step for this ministry is.  By the way, I really thought Jarret and Morgan were hilarious as emcees.  We will be looking to bring them back very soon for your enjoyment!
• Next week, we will be kicking off a new series called, Simply Miraculous.  Invite your friends, your family, your neighbors…everyone you can think of.  Leading up to Easter, we are going to be focusing on Jesus and His power in our lives.  This Sunday, I will talk about Jesus’ power to calm the storms of life.  Don’t miss it!