New Beginnings!

Since Easter is a time of new beginnings, I thought I would resurrect my blog writing.  I have been away from it for too long and have had people asking me when I was going to start writing again... now is the time!

This year at Community of Joy, in the midst of some pretty major transitions in the life of our congregation, we decided to change up our Easter Traditions.  Normally, we have a sunrise service, a breakfast immediately following that, then our 9 a.m. worship gathering and our 10:30 worship gathering.  Since we are down in numbers due to the transition we are in and since many of our folks travel away on Easter, we didn't want the deflating experience of two small Easter worships.  Thus the decision to combine the two and to do both styles of music in the one gathering.  And the decision to not have a sunrise worship and have our breakfast at the time of the first gathering instead.

I know of a couple people who we lost because of this, and that makes me sad.  But I think it was a great move for our congregation as we had an awesome turn out for breakfast and worship too.  It was great to feel the energy of a fuller space and the expanded musicians!   We had our largest (for us) number of first time guests on Easter!  There was an energy in the air that should be present in a congregation on Easter!

I find that energy is invigorating still today!   I saw this cartoon making it's rounds yesterday on Facebook ... 

 

This is NOT how I felt yesterday nor today!   And it is encouraging to have it be like this!

 

 

Breakfast