KevinChilds.com

I’ve been a pastor for over 26 years now. I’ve seen some wonderful moves of God at some churches. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like today. God glorified Himself, answered a lot of prayers, moved a lot of hearts, and changed a lot of lives. My little bullet-pointed summary won’t do it justice, but here goes.

• 787 in attendance. On Memorial Day weekend.
• That is – by a country mile … actually several country miles – the biggest attendance on a “holiday weekend” in our history. And I mean the kind of holidays that usually empties out churches.
• And the big attendance number might be the least impressive thing about today.
• 48 people were baptized.
• Some were planning on it. Some just left their seats, put on a baptism t-shirt, and went public in baptism spontaneously. Some, like the Philippian jailor we read about, just decided to get saved AND baptized.
• Don’t know yet how many were saved this morning.
• We spanned a pretty huge age range. In fact, I think we spanned lots of ranges.
• I was overwhelmed at the number of high school and college-aged people who were baptized.
• Some entire families got baptized.
• One mom got baptized and then helped me baptize her daughter.
• One man broke down as soon as he entered the water, and tearfully said, “Thank you Lord for saving my soul.”
• There were others who left tears in the baptism water.
• The whole thing was overwhelming. I think – in the 11am service – I spent more time baptizing than I did preaching.
• I could get used to that.
• BIG THANK YOU’s to Jerimiah, Matt, KLock and others who did the hard work behind the scenes. They got, set up, filled, tarped, drained, disassembled, and returned all the portable baptism stuff. Somebody separated the t-shirts, organized the “process” backstage, and had information cards ready. Others mopped up and gathered soggy towels and shorts and other things. I saw Hannah, Matt, Ashley, Beth, Ruth, Nicki and others counseling, encouraging, clarifying, assisting. There is no such thing as big moments without hard-working servant-hearted people doing things in the shadows to make it all happen. We’re all indebted to them. I’m sure I’ve overlooked others who helped, and I’m sure they didn’t do the work to get mentioned.
• Band was spot-on. Great to see and hear LeeAnn singing today. Really liked KLock’s song right before the message.
• Did you notice how young the band was? Matt pointed out that 4 of the 6 are either IN Katalyst or are K-grads.
• Loved the testimony videos. I want to keep doing those even though we’re done with the “Testify” teaching series.
• Message was a brief one. Cue the correlation: “Hey, Kevin, look what happens when you keep it short!”
• Shut up.
• Do we really have any idea how MANY people God used to make today happen? Those who set everything else up, cared for babies, greeted, drove the electronics and images, musicians who practiced and proclaimed the Word in song, and on and on and on.
• Gotta wonder where some of those brand new, freshly baptized new disciples are going to serve. And who that will help reach. And then where THEY will serve. And then …
• Lots of “came today to see a friend/family member baptized” guests were there today. Many of them probably left shell-shocked.
• Wonder how many expected: a first class mini-rock concert, a Nacho Libre clip, a preacher in jeans lying about getting hit on by super-models, a suggested new life philosophy (”When life sucks, SING!”), and more baptizing than preaching?
• I love this church.