It surely was a great weekend for Victory of the Lamb. This last weekend we hosted our 2nd annual Easter for Kids. Last year we had nearly 70 and this year we had 93 kids. Many of the kids were unchurched and were from families that we have not met before. The community is getting familiar with our distinctive Victory postcards I believe. That is 93 kids who got the true Easter message in stories, games, and crafts. Each event we do is growing larger and larger.
So is our congregation. We are moving to the Showtime Cinema across the highway on May 3rd. We will now be able to have a small theater and meeting rooms for the kids ministry and a theater that seats 270 for church. We are working on expanding the team that makes church happen each Sunday. Set up is more complex now. We are getting new sound equipment to #1 upgrade our sound for music but also #2 to make our band properly portable as we need to be to use a theater. We are also improving in videotaping services and providing a live feed of the service to the lobby.
The Victory Cafe will be our fellowship time now but will be bagel's/donuts and premium coffee before church. There is a nice little "cafe" like seating area with 10 or so tables with chairs. Ike is the official coffee barista for the church and has been serving Ike's Sunday Morning Blend for two years now almost. I think with the upgrade of our coffee blend he just might want to consider starting a chain of church coffee cafes. He has done wonders making 100 cup pots of Folger's so far. Imagine what he could do with Stone Creek or Alterra.
We will need a decent sized team to setup and take down each week as well as greeters and people to help direct people where to go and how things work. It’s going to be exciting to move to this next phase of Victory's growth. We are only increasing our capacity for a service by 100. Unfortunately I think we will be filling this somewhat quickly. I'm actually a little concerned as to what we will do a year from now. I suspect a 2nd service will be needed and it will need to be at 8:00 am. Then the Cafe will be operating as fellowship time after the 8:00am service and before the 9:30 service. That might be a good time for the two groups to mix. Who knows? That is a little ways off but unfortunately not as far away as we might think.
Pastor gave a small financial report yesterday and I was particularly gratified to see that we are ahead of schedule to becoming self-supporting. We are at 80% self-supporting in just two years. Our goal was to be 100% self supporting in 3 and we are definitely ahead of our goal for that. In addition to that our Land fund has been blessed as well. Not bad for a church that started out 2 years ago with 10 people and only a small amount of money.
St. Marcus
I went to St. Marcus last night for 6:30 church because Kt wanted to go to the contemporary service. She had gone to St. Marcus for the 10:30 traditional service because Ike had to sing for church and she had to drive him. Kt was a lil freaked out that they knelt for their confession and not keen on the traditional service. She also was not thrilled missing Victory in the morning so she figured she'd go hear Pastor Ben preach at St. Marcus. Our pastor has been filling in for the contemporary services at St. Marcus until they fill that pastor vacancy (the pastor who is considering the call was there last night visiting)
At the end of the service, they gave an update on their building project. They have some designs that they are gathering input on. Basically they are doubling the size of the school from 340 students to 700 (currently there is a waiting list to get in). The entire plant/campus plan is 10 million and they will start building when they have 8 million. Currently they have $4 million so they are doing pretty well. The plan is to start building in 2010 and deliver the building in summer 2011. Too bad..Ike will be gone by then. I guess it wouldn't matter as they would be using the addition for the younger grades and keep the middle school where it is and just give them more room to expand.
I continue to be impressed with the ministry here as it flourishes even in the inner city. God be praised for all the success.
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