House In Norman Sold

Friday we closed on the house in Norman!! Thank you everyone for your prayers. The new owner called me today and told me they are all moved in and they love it.

Sunday

Today was a great day. It was one of the best in our 4 month history. Even though we were missing Dustin (one of our worship leaders who plays guitar), the music was great!! I love the way the theater feels with the pipe and drape at the back. Everyone sits closer to the front and closer together. I felt more relaxed during the sermon. I usually take several pieces of paper with me when I preach. Today I took one. That was a little scary. We also had 3 first-time guests.

In the last month we have had our largest attendance since launch. We have also had our lowest. Loved the high attendance day. The low attendance....not so much. The last few weeks we have seen our attendance build each week. Can't wait to see if we can keep it going next week!!

Pipe and drape

Pipe and drape is equipment we didn't even have on our list to purchase before we launched back in March. While in the 6th Grade Center we rented 40 foot of pipe and drape one Sunday to see what difference it would make to create a wall behind our stage area in the cafeteria. It essentially made a black backdrop and cut the cafeteria in half. Well, it looked awesome so we bought 40 foot of it.

Then we moved to the Movie Theatre. We thought we might not even need it anymore in the new facility. We were wrong. Here are some ways it is helping us transform a theatre into Lifepoint Baptist Church every Sunday:

1. We use it to transform a hallway into a preschool environment.
2. It is used as a backdrop for our Lifepoint Kid's Check In.
3. It is used as a backdrop for our Connection Center.
4. The banners for Lifepoint Kids and Connection Center hang from it.
5. We have ordered 20 more feet of it and will use it to create a wall closing off the back third of the theater. This will happen Sunday.

We bought it all from our friends at Executive Expo Incorporated.

Back To The Rubble

I love the Olympics. I do. I would never under normal circumstances spend my evenings watching swimming, but I love it during the Olympics. Last Friday night was the opening ceremony. It was awesome!! Towards the end as the Chinese athletes made their way into the bird's nest, there was a little boy that was walking beside Yao Ming . The commentators went on to tell his story.

His name is Lin Hao. He is a 9-year-old survivor from the earthquake in Sichuan that killed 70,000 people in May. Lin Hao was in school the day the earthquake happened. He managed to free himself and escape from his classroom. That was amazing enough but there's more. He returned to the rubble to rescue two of his classmates. During the rescue he suffered more injuries to his head and arms. While his classmates (10 survivors of 32 students) were waiting for help he encouraged them to sing songs to help keep their spirits up. When he was asked why he risked his life, he said, "I was the hall monitor, it was my job to look after my classmates."

What if more Christians shared that sense of responsibility and were willing to go back to the rubble?

Outreach

We have made some progress on our outreach goals this week. Here are 3 great avenues we intend to reach and serve our city.

• I received the banner permit from the city yesterday. This will allow us to put up our banner outside the movie theatre. This is huge because according to the traffic report generated by the city 20,000 cars drive by every day.

• If we get our artwork in on time (August 15th) our advertisement slide will start running at the theatre on August 29th. This means before every movie a slide will run advertising Lifepoint 6 times before every movie.
  

• Starting this week we will begin reaching our goal of 400 conversations/contacts per month. 100 will be people who have just moved to Owasso and 300 will come from neighborhood outreach.

Back Yard Bash

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. July was a crazy month. I'm trying to get back in the groove...

July 21-28 the youth group from Calvary Missionary Baptist Church in Magnolia, Arkansas was with us. They passed out 2000 fliers in neighborhoods in Owaso. During the week we also put on 2 Back Yard Bashes. These were one day VBS environments held in neighborhoods instead of a church building. Here is a picture of the bash held in the Rio Vista Neighborhood.