Baptism Video!

Please watch the quick recap of the video below to see all the people that were baptized as a part of Northwest's first Baptism Service!

Becoming Family

We are all born into a family. One in which we learn to function in as a working member. We are normally placed in a "family" situation from birth not knowing anything different. However, it is much harder to become a family if you are combined of many random and miscelaneous parts.

Despite the many places the members from our church have come from, we have been coming closer together as one big family. Everyone from the children on up have been able to relate to eachother, become friends and spend time in fellowship. Tonight, like every other Sunday night, we had our Teen Bible Study. It is so AWESOME to see the growth not only in numbers but also in maturity, relationships with eachother and most importantly God. After the Bible study, a majority of the youth group came to our house and we had a great time watching a movie/ World Series, playing ping pong and just talking. If you would have stuck the same bunch together in the same environment even a month ago, it would have been a dull evening.

It is just so awesome to see the way God is bringing us close together. This is a perfect model of what a church "FAMILY" is all about. The Lord has worked in amazing ways to bring those of us from different upbringings and even different places in the WORLD together as one to family--Northwest Community Church.

Thank you for your prayers! As I have said before, please, if you are ever in the area stop by on a Sunday just to see all of the awesome things God is doing down here in Cary, NC!

Average Sunday with Beyond Average People

Compared to last week, this Sunday didn't have nearly as much excitement and activity. However, once again it was a great service. Despite lower numbers in the service, my dad preached an awesome sermon--if I do say so myself. Although there was a low number of people that showed up, I was reminded of a couple of things. First, we are a start up church and haven't had services every week for even a whole year. Having over 100 people is awesome. The second bit I realized, was that numbers don't make up a church. It is the people that make up a church. NWCC has been so blessed by having a wide range of people become members and join in on our adventure. We have people that seem to be experts in every single different area making our church fairly well-rounded. We have a great group of people. It is almost as if we have hand selected these people who are beyond average in what they do. We have very gifted people working childcare and others making set-up flawless. There are still others that decorate and make those new to our church feel welcome. It is amazing that despite an average Sunday morning, there are beyond average people making the service possible. I wish you guys could all come and see the amazing things that God has been doing.

Here is a picture of our children in children's ministry. This ministry has "beyond average people" getting it up and going every Sunday.

Here is a picture of Panther Creek High School. This is the facility that God has blessed us with where we meet every Sunday.


Some things you guys could be praying for include:
1.) Finding a worship pastor.
2.) Continued sense of community.
3.) Our church reaching out into the community. Especialy as our youth group takes on its first service project this Saturday.

Baptism + Sunday Service

Today was amazing! I had the amazing opportunity to be baptized this afternoon--by my dad. It was so amazing! I was one of eight people who was baptized at our church's first baptism service. Since we meet at my high school, there is no baptistry there. So, we went to the house of a family from our church who had a pool. About 75 people attended to see this amazing event! Not only was there a good turnout, but there were also several unsaved people who were able to hear the testimonies of several of us.

As far as our regular service it went well. It was crammed pack. This week was our communion and we also heard from missionary, Cindy McFarland who currently serves in Togo, West Africa. In addition, we had our ministry fair. We were having people sign-up for various ministries. It turned out that many people signed up to get "plugged in" to our church! So that is extremely exciting.

I have seen so many amazing things happen at this church. I think the coolest thing was the baptism. I have really seen our church body come more and more close together. I am leaving in just a couple minutes to attend our youth group's Bible Study. Things at Northwest are getting more and more exciting! Please continue to pray for us as we grow and face new challenges!

Todays attendance: 129 people total.

Pray For Busy Sunday!

Wow! With rapid growth comes--well, a lot of work. This is not necessarily bad, in fact, it is really good. Tomorrow we are having a ministry fair, communion, a missionary, and our first baptism! This is extremely exciting! All of these things show the growth and progress in our church. But, because our church is still at a small size, it takes more work to pull these things off. So please pray for us as we begin at 6:30am tomorrow morning setting up and getting ready. Specifically pray for:

1.) That many will attend tomorrow and hear the Gospel.
2.) That our churches first baptism will go well and that everyone's testimony will be clear.
3.) The ministry fair will be good and many people will be able to get "plugged in" to various ministries.

Thanks for your prayers! I will post details tomorrow after everything has happened and tell you of all the wonderful things God has done!

Record Breaking Attendance and Youth Bible Study

The last two weeks 9/30 and 10/7 our church has had 132 people! God is great! I never believed that I would see this type of growth so quickly at our church. We had 101 adults and 31 kids on 9/30 and 100 adults and 32 kids yesterday! Set-up and take-down still needs some smoothing out, but God has blessed me with a great team that has helped to make the tech ministry a success!

That covers the attendence. As far as the youth group, last night we had our first youth Bible study. That was great to have a regular time where the youth can get together and talk and just be with each other. From what I heard there was around 21 students including some who had never come to our Sunday Morning service. So that again was exteremely exciting!

God is doing awesome things down here. Even though at times it can be somewhat difficult to be in a church plant it is truely an excellent growing experience. I have learned many lessons down here. Some in how to be a good and effective leader, others in working as a team and many other valuable and important life lessons.