Teri in NC said:
Had a phenomenal day yesterday. Crowd about double normal size so just about perfectly filled the tent. About 25 visitors from out of town (ex-members, previous pastor's family) and about 25 from in town (ex-members, those reached by our door hanger campaign). Beautiful weather. Good music (for some reason a girls tour group showed up instead of the boys one), good preaching (the previous pastor's son preached), interesting church history, beautiful anniversary cake, very happy people. People lingered long after both services. Over and over again I heard how from people how encouraging it was to them to see their old church doing well, and from our people how happy they were to see old friends and to show them how well we're doing.
The evening service I thought would be down from normal, but I think it probably set a record all by itself for evening services. Auditorium was packed and jammed. No visitors. All our own people. I preached on "Ten Reasons Why We've Lasted 125 Years." I ended the service by having the deacons individually pray from the pulpit.
My people worked so hard. We spent way too much money. But it resulted in one of the those red-letter days that people will talk about for years. More importantly, I think it will greatly encourage our people in the kind of long faithfulness I am trying to inculcate here.
Just the sweetest day...
