A Year in Review part one

2011 was an interesting year for me. Not great, not horrible but worthy of remembering.
I say this because at 48 you start to stack up some years you would love to forget, but you also begin to work harder at living the ones worthy of memories. So here are a few from my year 2011.

Church Memories:
2011 started out amazing as we saw 15 baptisms and 25 people join the church. After years of transition we started seeing the fruit of God's work in our lives. It continued on with an amazing Easter service where we had 278 in attendance. For us that was huge.

But soon after we suffered the loss of a couple of long time members who decided to go elsewhere. Its always sad to lose loved ones but sadder to think they would stay unhappy with where they were.

The summer was kind of blah in the church but that might have been because I was so focused on a motorcycle trip with my brother.

In the Fall, fresh off of 6500 miles of American Asphalt something changed in the church. People started just coming in. Amazing people who loved God and loved what we were doing. I remember asking Tim Clark who all these people were and he himself didn't know. All we knew was that they were as excited about Jesus as we were and all of them wanted to worship with us.

After years of declining attendance we grew in 2011 by more than half. Christmas closed out our year with 367 in attendance at a wonderful service at the Liberty.

Its been a good year for our church as we have seen so many come to know Christ, take the step of baptism, and desire to be part of what we are doing.

For those of you who have stuck it out. Thank you for your faithfulness and willingness to keep serving. And for those of you who are new I look forward to seeing how God uses you to love Him and others.

Tomorrow: My Year in Review