Sound Vows Celebrations

Yesterday we finished our "Sound Vows" series with a flourish on Mother's Day.

I want to go on record to say that I felt like this was our best series since I have been at University! This series had an energy and a "feel" that has not been palpable since I came here in June. I really felt like people came to worship anticipating what would happen, rather than settling in for "what we've always done."

Each week I track our stats in several key areas - not the least of which is worship attendance. I was amazed to compute that our average weekend attendance for this series was 167! That's 38 people more than we averaged during all of 2008! That's 45 people more than we averaged during the same time period last year! AND it's 27 people more than we were averaging so far for 2009! Praise God!

I am not ashamed to tell you that I am a numbers guy. Because I know that each of those numbers represents a person who gets to hear the gospel message and has an opportunity to know that God loves them right where they are.

• I am excited that we have more people in worship right now than we did a year ago.
• I am excited that we had more people in worship during this series than we did prior to this series so far this year.
• I am excited that University is moving up and to the right again!

I pray that the momentum we are building right now continues to bring in new faces and continue to spread buzz around town about what we are doing here at University UMC. I also pray that we can find ways to learn how to assimilate the new folks who have become part of our church over these past five weeks. I want this series to be a "shot in the arm" for this congregation!