The Art of Starting Worship: Part 4 of 4

This is the last of a series of posts on our start to weekly worship. If you read the previous three posts you likely know more than you ever thought you would about the inner workings of our church. Hopefully it's been more insightful than boring. In this post I'd like to highlight how and why we choose December 4 as the date for starting weekly worship. Way back when we knew even less about starting a church than we do now, our target date was September 11. That date was chosen because it's the first Sunday after Labor Day, the traditional start to the church year and not for its historical significance. Our coach, aka Daddy, wisely alerted me in our first conversation that it'd be impossible to start weekly worship with only eight months of lead time.

So, we backed up the target date to the first Sunday in January. As the pace of our gathering increased and people started connecting to our vision, we realized in the early fall that we might be ready before then. I was eager to get going as soon as possible, which is not surprising to those of you that know me. But the practical complexity of preparing for weekly worship made any date much sooner impossible. Now that we are actually prepping five days out, that reality is even more true.

December 4 became our new target date after our October Reveal preview worship service. It's the first Sunday in December, a time when people are inclined to consider going to church. It would also insure that our core group had a place to worship for Christmas, something I realized after the fact was important.

Again, this process is more art than science. I'd love to say God revealed this date to me in a dream or that I've got a ream of data to back up the selection. It's a good thing that neither of these possibilities is evident as my dreams are already weird enough and I'm terrible with numbers.