It is hard to believe how far things have come over the past few years from dreaming to reality. We had a celebration and dedication for The Firehouse Sunday, September 21. This celebration was focused more on making sure we had everything ready for the opening Celebration. We still have some things to improve, but things came together well.
We only invited those who have committed to serve at The Firehouse and those who already committed to attend to the September 21 gathering. 76 people participated including kids and adults. That allowed us to celebrate together, to reflect on how God led us to this point, to say thanks to everyone involved, and to challenge everyone to focus on our mission of caring for our community and leading more people into a growing relationship with Christ. Our theme was "Get Out of the Bubble." The idea was that we now need to get out of our bubbles and get involved in the lives of people in our community. So much work had gone into preparing for the opening celebration, that we wanted to make sure we didn't lose focus on what our mission really was. We even gave out bubbles to everyone at the end. Of course the kids loved it and so did many of the adults. All of this was followed by a special time of dedication in front of The Firehouse and an open house.
Our opening Celebration took place on Sunday, September 28.
The Firehouse will actually be a video venue which means everything will be live except the teaching. As campus pastor, there may be special occasions when I will teach in person, but usually the teaching will be done by video. The sermon will be recorded at our Williams Street location and then shown at The Firehouse one week later. That allows us to make sure the video functions well. We will also be able to edit the video in the case that we would want to intentionally encourage participation during the sermon by taking time to talk about things.
We have a preschool and nursery ministry at The Firehouse, but we are designing each Celebration to involve people of all ages. We had 106 attend our opening Celebration. Our theme was "Now is the Time." There were lots of clocks set up. Our main points included the importance of structuring our time around what we believe is important, being intentional when it comes to who is building into our lives and the lives of those we care about, and restructuring our time so that we can influence our community.
During each Celebration, we are planning to have a "Fire Drill." No we aren't actually having a fire drill. We may change the name, but we stuck with this title since it went with The Firehouse theme. The idea is that we want to take a few moments to very simply make the main idea of what we are teaching clear for everyone.
There have been so many people who have helped to pull things together. I am so thankful for all of their hard work, and I am excited to see how God will continue to work in the weeks ahead.
