The other day I blogged about excellence and another thought occurred to me after reading someone else’s blog today. I have made a very intentional choice through the leading of the Spirit to make United very much a place where those who are seeking after God can come in and safely investigate the claims of Christ. Yes, the already convinced (re: Christians) are welcome and hopefully are growing, but I think of that first-timer coming in as we prepare all the elements of United each week.

So here’s another big reason we need to strive for excellence each week…if we were like most churches, then if people didn’t like us, they would walk out the door and find another church to attend. But for us, when people don’t like what we’re doing, they may be walking out the door and heading straight to hell. So they deserve nothing less than our very best effort each and every week. If you’re not already volunteering to serve to make their stay with us more enjoyable and hopefully life-changing, now is the time to start serving. Click here for just a few of the many ways you can serve at CFCOG.

I’m continually blown away by what God is doing in our midst. Do you realize that just a year ago Sunday I had only been with the church a few weeks and we only had 65 people in attendance at United? Yesterday we had 264! That’s 199 more…a 408% increase!

Now here’s the frustrating part. We’re growing faster than I can remember and learn people’s names. If I’m being truly honest, I’d bet that I couldn’t have given you the names of half the people that were in attendance yesterday. That’s very frustrating because I want to get to know people, but it’s just not possible to know everyone. However, I was reminded yesterday that not everyone needs to know Gilbert Thurston, but everyone does need to know Jesus Christ.

So I’m doing my part to make His name known…would you do me a favor? When you come in on Sunday’s, don’t spend all of your time with the people you already know. Find someone you don’t and introduce yourself…make them feel welcome…help them get connected in some way with the church. New people may come in for awhile because they like the Experience, but eventually they will stay because of relationships. If you’ll do your part, I promise to do mine…together we can make a difference!

Coming up on about 24 hours until our next Experience and I can’t wait! Please make sure, if you haven’t already, to invite someone to come with you. This message has the chance to radically impact people’s lives if they’ll just follow this One Simple Truth.

Remember our goal of 50 first time professions throughout this series. That will take a lot of guests, so don’t stop now with your inviting…calll someone today. See you tomorrow!

One of our core values at United is that everything should be done with excellence. I was reminded of this again recently as I read Solomon’s words as he was building the temple in 2 Chronicles 2:5.

     “The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater
      than all other gods.”

In our day and time, the other gods are music, movies, money, etc.  So our music shouldn’t be as good as MTV’s, it should be better.  Our videos shouldn’t be as good as Hollywood’s, but better.  The same could be said of our systems…we should be better than any Fortune 500 company out there. 

Now obviously they have a lot more money than we do, so that’s why excellence doesn’t have so much to do with perfection, or how big it is, or how expensive it is, but rather are we doing the very best with what we’ve got.  You see our God is greater than any of those little gods that the world tempts us with, so He deserves nothing less than our very best.  So the reason we do United with excellence is its our statement to Chambersburg and beyond that our God is excellent and what we do isn’t merely as show, but as an act of worship to our awesome God.