What A Week!

Last week Dan and I spent an entire week away from NLC working for other churches. Now, I hate being away from here and you normally have to drag me away with wild horses (or something similar) but I very gladly gave up a week in Charlotte to hang in snowy Wisconsin for a church planting assessment center.

NLC is part of a great group called Growing Healthy Churches , a nationwide network focused on church planting. And part of that process is, several times a year, serving as assessors for a group of planters and their spouses (if they are married) who have the dream of planting a church. It is an intense week - long hours for the assessees and even longer for us assessors (lots of s's there...) but worth it. Why?

Because right at the core of NLC is church planting.

We live it, breathe it, would die for it.

We were there all last week, I came back and taught twice on Sunday and then led a Leadership Community Sunday night and then we had an intense all day staff retreat yesterday...I am toast! But at the same time so energized.

Simply put, the most effective way to reach people for Christ in North America is planting new churches. So, why would we not do it?

We've planted two in our first year and a half - element and The Journey Church of Charlotte...reaching Steele Creek and Elizabeth/Grier Heights ...and our hope and prayer is to have three more off the ground in 2008.

There is simply nothing more important than being part of a multiplying movement of new churches! Thanks for the time you give us to invest in this - there has never been a better church in the history of churches than Next Level in terms of its people saying "Go, serve, give yourselves away..as a matter of fact, let's all give ourselves away!"

You guys are the best!