A Look Back

This past year has been one of intense growth for Morning Star. I think I've seen more new things happen in the past 12 months than I've seen in the past 5 years of working there. I've been meaning to write this post for the past month, and am finally doing it, but here's a look back of all that's happened since January 2008.

Saturday Service We started our Saturday service and it's still going strong. We've had some ups and downs for staffing Children's Ministries, but I am now pleased to say that if your child attends on Saturday, they'll have an equally quality experience as they would on Sunday. We've had so many people visit and the commit to attending our church based on the Saturday service. We've been confirmed over and over again that this was a good choice to make.

Neighborhood Prayer Outreach We've spend four Saturday mornings walking through neighborhoods near our church, knocking on doors and asking if we could pray for people. Many were uninterested, but a few families have ended up joining our church family because of it! We've prayed for our neighbors whether they wanted it or not, and been able to reach out to people in their time of need.

Staffing In an effort to be wise with our finances, we had to cut some positions in the spring. While it was sad to part with our friends, we've seen the staff we do have step up and work aggressively to make sure ministry is done well. While we're lean, we've seen our staff become even more passionate about seeing people reached for Jesus.

Early Childhood Our Early Childhood department has seen some changes. We lost our dear Amy to a husband and Paris (I guess that's a good enough reason), and have welcomed Lucy to our team. It's been great to see how God answered Amy's desire to be a wife, and brought Lucy to us with all her experience. But not only has she blessed us, but our pace and way of ministry have been a blessing to her. We also were able to add Mallory to our team and love having one staff person solely focused on our Nursery, Toddler and 2's & 3's classes on Sunday mornings.

Modulars We mentioned an idea and it caught on! In July we brought up the idea of adding a modular unit to our space for a class for our Fourth and Fifth graders, and in December we opened the new space! Not only were we able to get the room for our older elementary students, but also get two additional units for adult class space.

Adventureland In December we also launched the new name of our Children's Ministries... Adventureland!

And let's not forget, Bridge 45 In April at the Conspire Conference we felt called to reach our fourth a fifth graders in a new way, and now we're half way through the first year of Bridge 45. We've been creating our own curriculum, and love seeing the excitement in our kids for discovering God's Word for themselves.

2008 was so great, I can't wait to see what God has yet to do in 2009!