KevinChilds.com

As our 5th Church Birthday approaches, I can’t keep the ROCK nostalgia out of my mind. It was over six years ago when I picked up the phone, called a friend and said, “Are you willing to pray about ACTUALLY planting a new church in Conway with me?” We had joked about it often.  Apparently God didn’t get the joke.   Or He put something in my heart a long time ago that was easier to joke about than to actually DO.

I remember looking at my wife on a Friday night and saying, “We’re going to sell our house and move from a wonderful church that has everything to a church that doesn’t exist yet.” It is amazing that I’m not single.  The first ROCK Vision Session was a few middle-aged people in a living room (who had never started a new church anywhere) talking through the possibility of creating a church that would attract young, unchurched, and hurting people.  Half of that original group is no longer with us.

I remember meeting on Sunday nights at Vittles Restaurant.  I thought we could just tell people what we were up to, and we’d pack Vittles in no time flat!  Never happened.  Never grew to more than 20-25 people.  And that included little kids.   More than once … in fact more than occasionally … I prayed, “You’re sure, Lord?  This IS your idea, right?  This IS going to work, right?  Right?”

Now five years after our official public “Launch,” we will celebrate God’s goodness with hundreds of people.  This Sunday is going to be flippin ROCKtacular.  We’re moving our whole operation back to CHS for a Sunday.  I’m going to tell our story, explain our “DNA,” and describe where I think God wants to take us.  And there will be cupcakes.  Free ones.  Made by Gina Lowes.  In Jesus name, Amen.

Who have you invited? Big events provide big opportunities to invite people who otherwise might not come.  Repeat after me:  There … will … be … cupcakes.  They will be sugar-coated.  The preaching won’t be.