We Are Ready For Lift Off

The fuse is lit...there's NO turning back! Tomorrow morning at 10:30am, Elk Creek Church will officially open our doors to the community! We've run through our diagnostics...and we are clear for liftoff. Our team is prayed up and ready to go. The anticipation is killing me. I've never been a real patient person(God's not done with me yet), and as Tom Petty says, "the waiting is the hardest part".

Are You Living Life in Stereo?

After much thought, I have decided to change our opening series title to "Living life in stereo". Although I will be incorporating all of the "DNA" elements into the series, I wanted to accomplish several things. I wanted to shorten the series up a bit from the seven weeks orginally planned and scale it down to five weeks. I also want to focus on our five purposes as a church and weave our DNA into it. What are our five purposes? To Love, To Laugh, To Learn, To Live, and To Lift.

Why am I calling it "Living life in stereo"? I think it's a good phrase to describe what it's like when we are living our lives in balance with the five purposes. Have you ever listened to music through headphones when one side wasn't working? Something's missing, it's not balanced, it's awkward. It's the same when we aren't living life in balance with these five purposes.

The five purposes further defined:

To Love - To give of ourselves and serve others by discovering our God-given gifts, abilities and passion.
To Laugh - To get connected with other Christ followers and to share our life with them.
To Learn - To grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ through God's Word, prayer, and spiritual disciplines.
To Live - To live our lives in such a way that others see Jesus in us and want to follow Him.
To Lift - To lift up the name of Jesus and magnify Him through a lifestyle of worship.

It's gonna be a great series to "kick off" the launch of Elk Creek Church.

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Be At Elk Creek Church's Launch on 9/23!

10. To see if Pastor Mike looks the same in person as he does in the picture.

9. To see what the inside of the Avon Grove High School looks like in case you've always wondered.

8. To kill some time before the Eagles vs. Lions game at 1pm on 9/23.

7. Where else can you go to get a free cup of Starbucks coffee on a Sunday morning.

6. To see how much stuff we can actually fit in our 24 foot trailer.

5. To see if the people in the Elk Creek Church TV commercials actually go to Elk Creek Church.

4. To receive a free gift that you can sell on eBay or give as a gift to Aunt Martha at Christmas time.

3. To see how many of your neighbors showed up for the launch also.

2. To be a part of something new, exciting, and happening!

1. Because you will have the opportunity to do something that you've never seen done in church before.

Seriously...you don't want to miss it!

23 days until launch!

Wow...it's hard to believe that in 23 days, Elk Creek Church will be officially launched!

I am so excited to see what God is going to do through Elk Creek Church! I sense God at work in our community. Our Tellstart calls were made this week. 40,000 calls were made to people all over our area. We have had a great response from people wanting more information about Elk Creek Church. I had the pleasure of personally talking to lots of people this week, most of which do NOT have a church home! There was a common thread that I heard as I was talking to people. A lot of people said something like, "I feel the need to get back to church" or "I used to go to church, but I got out of the habit".

There is no doubt about it...we are a church for the unchurched! We are creating an environment that attracts people to church that have seldom or never stepped foot in a church! My heart is to see people come to Jesus and find their God-given purpose in life! We will be a church of ACTION! We are NOT a church for people to come and just get fed, and not do anything! We are not a spectator church. WARNING: If you come to Elk Creek Church, you will be challenged to BE the church through serving people! But I promise you, your life will never be the same as you learn what it means to give your life away for something greater than yourself! Are you ready for this? Buckle up and hold on...we're in for a great ride!

40 days til' Launch!

Launch day will be here before we know it!

Here is the marketing schedule...

1. TV Commercials starting this week. We will be airing 60 spots each week on TBS, TNT, FX, & Food Network. We are working
with FaithHighway on our commercials.

2. We are calling 40,000 homes beginning on August 28th. Tellstart is the company we are using for this.

3. We will putting out door hangers like crazy beginning August 26th.

4. 20,000 Direct Mail pieces will be going out on September 10th.

5. Press releases will be sent to the local papers on September 14th.

6. Yard Signs will be placed at all intersections on September 19th using this company.

September 23rd...Lift Off!!!

49 days until launch!

I can't believe that we are finally winding down to our 9/23 launch. When we moved to Southern Chester County in April of 2006, our launch seemed so far away. I am glad that we gave ourselves the time that we did before planning to launch. It gave us time to pray, plan, and prepare. It's so cool to see how God worked all of the little and big details from where we would meet to the worship team to the money to finance all of this. God is so good!

There will be a lot of activity happening from now until launch. Our TV commercials start to air next week. You can check them out at on YouTube . They will be airing 60 times each week through the end of September. We also have 20,000 direct mail pieces going out soon. We are also using Tellstart that will call 40,000 homes in our area letting them know about our launch and giving them an option to receive more information.

I can't wait to see what God is going to do through Elk Creek Church!