Victory Update

This last Sunday was a real treat. In that service, we had an adult baptism as well as her newborn infant child. In the same service we also had Holy Communion. What a great service to have the Gospel proclaimed in Word and Sacraments. Truly it was a service of Thanksgiving. We now head into the C series of the 3 year lectionary for Christmas with our sermon series on preparing our hearts for Christmas.

Victory has been doing very well since our Grand re-launch in September at the Showtime Cinema. Attendance is creeping to 140-150 each Sunday. This Thanksgiving weekend I think there was over 160. Membership is nearing 100 if it is not over that yet. I believe we have reached self-supporting 3 months ahead of schedule as well. I guess I will have to wait until the end of December to know for sure. If anything Victory is a testament on to how to start a church on a shoestring budget (we were only funded by a mother congregation for $100,000 spread over 3 years...the rest was up to us. Now we have a budget of $125,000 a year that we can cover ourselves and have $70,000 stashed away in a land fund). It is interesting to note that if the congregation keeps growing at this rate we will be running out of room on Sunday mornings by June. We’ll have to come up with some way to expand or have multiple services.

Technology-wise we have improved greatly as well. Benhur Khamrang’s adjustments to the sound of the band have been very good. There has been some experimentation on band placement and mic’s and equipment but we have successfully moved the sound booth up by the video folks. The video feed from the Theater to the Café is now successfully beaming without the 100 foot video cable. In general I think Victory is one of the most technologically advanced churches around considering its size. I recently finished upgrading the website to ASP.NET 3.5 on IIS 7.0. That was a huge jump. I also upgraded the speed of the data connection and ability to stream the podcasts.

Karen has been singing harmony in the band much more now. We could still use a bang! pow! Lead vocalist for sure. We’ve got a ton of musical talent in the band if we could just have a power vocalist to rally around. It’s pretty good though despite that. Katie has been helping with the Bible Quest program almost every Sunday. She helps prepare the lessons or projects and sets up the video equipment and mats in the children’s theater. Ike helps a bunch too in a pinch….that happens most when Kt is not there. The Bible Quest program as well is growing very fast and is requiring a lot of helpers each Sunday. When they are short helpers, Kt jumps in a lot. I’m just happy to see my kids being so involved and actually enjoying it. Cassy is our Children's ministry director and she has developed a stellar kid's ministry program. The WELS should take note of how to design a good Sunday School program from her.

Have a great Christmas!