Ohhhh, God gave us a wonderful, beautiful, fabulous day today!!! Everything about Point of Change Church of the Nazarene Launch Sunday was fantastic!!
Some of the team was at the church extremely early, checking the building and praying through it, setting out signs, making coffee...
The worship team began rehearsing at 7:30 a.m.
Today we praised God with:
The hospitality table and sight/sound table have new homes this week, as well as the addition of the logo and new skirting, lighting, and greenery.
We had two services today! Baby Jantze was dedicated in first service. We praise God for the miracles of his life!
I helped with children's check-in today, and happened to catch some of the teachers in the hall before the kids started arriving. We have cool new shirts so the parents can easily identify PoC Kidz workers.
Our children's worship is run like a VBS. Having several large classrooms really facilitates this quite well, as the kids rotate rooms for the Bible story/lesson, music/worship, games, crafts, and free play time. It's nice for them to get a change of scenery at each station, and the volunteers can tailor each part to the different age groups better this way.
Babies were having fun in the nursery! And, I saw some snoozing away while others played, too!
So sweet!
I saw toddlers and preschoolers enjoying free play time with blocks and little people and kitchen toys!
During first service the elementary kids were able to play a rowdy game in the game room. During second service there were 20 elementary children, so they had to go outside to play in the grass where there was more room!
The preschoolers were so adorable during their music time, singing about God and marching with their ribbons!
It was so neat to have over 100 people in our sanctuary during the 11:00 service, praising God together!!
The elementary kids learned some great motions to the song Live Like That by Sidewalk Prophets.
I went to take photos of them and was totally overcome with emotion seeing and hearing them worship!!
The lyrics are powerful, and I could see on their faces that they believe what they were singing! It was beautiful!
They all circled up for prayer just before the service ended.
After the second service ended, everyone went outside...
There were six people who wanted to make a public statement that they are walking with God--SIX baptisms!!
Pastor Todd had the great privilege of baptizing his daughter Jillian. He presented her with a ceramic dove, and reminded us that when Jesus was baptized the Father descended from heaven in the form of a dove to tell him that he was "well pleased" with him. What a neat comparison it must have been for Jillian to hear from her daddy that he is proud of her in that same way!
Pastor Brian also had the privilege of baptizing both of his daughters. It was so beautiful to watch the baptisms of these sweet girls and the joy on their faces!
First Sierra...
...then Savanna.
Praise the Lord! It is such a rush of joy to be part of celebrating baptism!
Following the baptisms, we enjoyed a super yummy lunch provided as a gift to us by a local restaurant--Keller's Iron Skillet. There was a ton of food--deep-fried turkey, BBQ pulled pork, potato salad, relish trays, huge cookies--and plenty to go around! What a blessing!
We were really excited that our friends Leanne and Lauren, and Sue and Andrew joined us for the special day! And our precious friends, Shannon, Dawn, Addie, and Reece, who have been so supportive to pray along with us during the launch journey surprised us by coming today too! Many "old" friends from our Bloomington 1st Naz family were with us as well. I think we all felt so grateful our hearts almost burst!
As we finished the tear-down process, we recounted the many blessings of the day, and continued to praise God for His goodness!
(This is what the room looks like before we set up our sanctuary and after we tear it down.
Kinda dramatic, huh?!)
I think I showed this graphic earlier on the blog, but this is a photo of our most recent PoC billboard in Bloomington...
As the baptism pool and lunch tables and chairs were brought back into the building, Zac found this little friend! Doesn't it look just like the one on our billboard?!?! Maybe God wanted to remind us that there will be more change to come?
Well, I'm sure we're okay with that, because we believe that change is good.
"O LORD my God, you have performed many wonders for us.
Your plans for us are too numerous to list.
You have no equal.
If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them."
- Psalm 40:5 NLT
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