The Big Day

Wow we have been pretty slack in quite possibly the most exciting time of journey here, sorry!  Last week we had our very first public worship service for our new church.  We sent out 32 thousand mail pieces to homes in the area.  We had a mission team come into town from Texas and they spent 2 days going around the community putting door hangers on doors to invite people to our service.  We all put countless hours into our preparation.  We flew most of our band and sound guy in from South Carolina.  We had a local church give us almost 50 volunteers to come and help us serve and it was amazing!  We had 175 people show up!  And 5 people give their lives to Christ for the first time! That is really amazing for Northern California.  I (Archie) was so proud to have been used by God in such an exciting way.  We are meeting at an Elementary school in the area so we have to set up and tear down every time we meet.  That morning we started loading in everything at 7am for our 10:30 service and we still ran out of time for a few things, but nothing major.  It is just one of those things that will get better and faster every time we do it. When I got up on stage to lead worship I and I said "Welcome to South Bay Church!"  a cheer went up from the whole place, it was very exciting.  Worship went well and people connected to the songs but for me it didn't feel like home yet.  I felt like I was just leading worship at someone else's church.  That morning from 7 right up till 10:30 I was busy unloading and directing people to plug things in and move this here and that there, I really didn't have time to process it all because I had been so busy making sure that this whole thing was going to come off :)  I was in charge of buying all the equipment!  So I was looking at this thing from a very different way than everyone else.  Like did I buy enough extension cords (by the way, I didn't) It wasn't until I sat down after worship to listen to Andy speak that it hit me.  A great sense of accomplishment and joy came over me as I looked around the room at all the people that had come that we didn't know, we've only been here 10 weeks, and curtains surrounding the room, and the cool stage, and Andy up there speaking and my guitars on stage, and all the sacrifice that we had made to come here- It hit me- this is our church!  This is what we came here for!  This is our church!  It was amazing to be in that room and to feel God and all the potential that He has for this place.  The thought even hit me on sunday, "we are going to quickly outgrow this place! 

           Because our first church service went so well we have been getting calls and emails from all over the country from other church planters wanting to know how we did it and what steps we took to get there.  We have taken a statement from a popular author and made it our own.  "Work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God."  We followed some strategies,  read books, worked very hard, and asked a lot of questions to a lot of wise men but at the end of the day God is the one who blessed us.  If I can quote another book we're reading called Go Big, it's kind of the christian version of From Good to Great, It says that "God will give you all you need and more if make it about His kingdom and not about you."  I can honestly say that this is the heart of our team.  To make it about His kingdom.  Don't get me wrong, we were really jazzed about having 125 people from the community come, but there are 7 million people in the bay area and 95% of them don't know Christ.  We still have a lot of work to do.  I pray that we never allow it to be about us or about our comfort as a church.  

      One really cool thing that we did as a new church that I was really proud of was that we received about $2000 in our first offering and we as a church decided to give it all away.  We are giving half to serve those that serve our community like, the police, fire fighters etc. and the other half went to some organizations that help the needy in our community.  That felt great to say to the world and to our community and the people who came into our church with a wary eye toward Christianity to say "Christ came to serve and not be served and we are here do to the same."   

      We will have some professional photos of our first service up soon, we haven't gotten them back yet.  But here are a few to give you an idea.  These are right before the service started.  You can see me up on stage, and Bekah on the keys to the left, Marion from Charleston playing Bass,my brother Sam is hidden behind me on drums and Filipe is bending down tucking something under the carpet at the last minute with 33 secs left before the start of service- see I told you it was close!   

    

On a more personal note, I have lost 12 lbs by running and switching to diet drinks and splenda in my coffee instead of sugar,and I have started recording some original music on my new computer (nothing to show yet but hopefully soon) Bekah is also lookin' skinny these days and liking her new job working with families in their homes.  We are missing family and friends a lot.  Thank you to those of you who ask about us and pray for us.  We love you and cannot thank you enough for believing in us and for your prayers. 

Archie 

New website!

Check out the new and improved, updated South Bay website - southbaychurch.org

ONE WEEK!

Sorry for the break between updates! We'll post a longer one soon - lots of good things to update on! :) Just wanted to post real quickly and ask for your prayers. We are having our first Preview Service exactly one week from today!!!! We are so excited... lots of preparation, prayer, and energy has gone into this event - and it's been something all three families have been envisioning since the beginning stages of this - even before moving to California! Please pray this week during your prayer times. We are praying for the people we have met to come, the time of worship to portray who we are as a church as well as for people to connect with God, and lastly for those who come to have a welcoming experience and see this as their home. We are sending out 30,000 mailers to the community this week, and they are top notch! Very professional looking. We are very excited to see what God is going to do.
If you are interested in becoming a part of our prayer team, this weekend we will be conducting a 48 hour prayer! I will post the link at the bottom of the google calendar, where you can sign up for a 30 minute block of time to commit to pray for this first preview service. How powerful to know that leading up to our event there have been people praying for 48 hours straight! Please consider being a part of this - if nothing else, the East Coasters can take the 6am - 9am times and save us from getting up at three in the morning!!!! ;) We are also having our launch team here pray! Thanks again.
Google Calender -
Login - southbayprayer@gmail.com
password - prayforsouthbay
P.S. the picture is the sermon picture that will be on the mailer and the topic of Andy's message the first meeting.

Feature

Anybody watch the new show 11th Hour??? It was my first time seeing it, and I only watched it because of the preview, but our new home was featured. San Jose, Cupertino, and Palo Alto were all spotted in the show. The mountains, vineyards, and everything. Thought it was kind of cool! :) The show is sort of like CSI, and it was actually pretty good!

Our Big Backyard

So, yesterday evening, Archie and Andy (our head pastor) went to Las Vegas to observe a church plant there that is completely mobile. I dropped them off at the airport... the San Francisco airport. it was definitely an adventure. there are so many lanes, and people, and signs are constantly telling you which way to go. But luckily I made it! It took me about thirty minutes or so to get back home from dropping them off, and it was still pretty early, so I felt somewhat adventurous. Many of you who read this know I like to run, and someone here told me that they had this great trail a few miles down the road from where we live. I figured since I already had been very adventurous, why not discover something else new about our city. It was like the car took over and immediately took a left off the interstate instead of a right. I drove for a while, not seeing anything except for tons of buildings as part of a water treatment plant, and thought, maybe I was wrong, and almost turned around, but something inside of me made me keep going. Just when I thought, I was going to turn around, I saw it! I knew it had to be it. It was BEAUTIFUL! In fact, it wasn't just a trail, but it's actually part of a wildlife reserve and a bird sanctuary. I pulled into the parking lot just at sunset! It was amazing. Luckily, I had my camera on me, so I hopped out really quickly and shot a few pictures just before the sun went behind the mountains, but a lot of the birds flew off. I happened to snap a few. I just couldn't believe this was so close to me. It's gorgeous. And to think, I was going to just go home!!! I have to pick them up again tonight, I wonder what other kind of adventures I can find! :)

Beautiful lake and sunset

You can see the birds flocking in the distance. I couldn't get them to come closer, I even called for them. ;)
Little baby birdies! they flew away too.

Happy Birthday Stacie!

Today is Stacie's birthday! Just wanted to wish her a very happy birthday and a wonderful year full of blessings! This morning, Mandy and I surprised her while she was at Starbucks and took her a giant card. Then we were able to spend some girl time just chatting. It was really nice. Then all the families went to Macaroni Grill to celebrate! We had a wonderful time and it was so great to celebrate her! I made a giant chocolate cake since she likes chocolate, and it was really yummy!

Me with the giant cake!

Stacie cutting her birthday cake

The whole gang celebrating at Macaroni Grill

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STACIE!!! WE wish you many more to come...............

What a fun week! It has been so busy here. You can tell we have begun a new phase in being here, because we are really beginning to get busy. This week has been filled with meeting new friends and neighbors, continuing to explore our area more, and visiting with good friends! We are continuing to build our launch team and our meetings on Sunday nights have been good. We usually have about 20 adults coming, which is a great start! We are so excited to continue to see that number grow as we continue with launch meetings, meet people who are interested, and begin preview services in FOUR WEEKS! That's so crazy. The launch meetings on Sunday night have consisted of Archie leading the group in a few songs, Andy speaking and ministering to the group, and Filipe praying and sharing from his heart a little as well. We have a time of fellowship before and after, and have children playing together in the other room. We are getting used to the quick set up and tear down since we are renting a clubhouse, and we know it's just preparing us for the day when we will be mobile and have an entire church to prepare.

We have been having neighborhood lunches on Saturdays. On Tuesday and Thursday nights the three families will go around and invite all our neighbors in one of the apartment complex to a grill out on Saturday. It has been such a great way to meet people. Last Saturday, we had 50 people come!!!! It was so exciting. We were just able to talk and meet with them and get to know each of them and their families! And I think the neighbors liked it also as a way to get to know each other. We had a really fun time. We met people from all different countries including Japan, Canada, Mexico, India, South Korea, and I'm sure others. Everyone had different languages and backgrounds, and it's so neat to listen to them all. I love asking all of them where they work as well - Yahoo, Apple, Cisco systems, it's hilarious. I'm still blown away. I don't feel cool enough to talk with a guy who helped create the I-phone and is currently working on the 5th generation I-phone! :) Here are a few pictures from our last event. Some of our current launch team even came to hang out, which was really exciting.

On our day off, all the families went to a town called Half Moon Bay. It's a gorgeous little city about 45 minutes away right on the coast. We went to a pumpkin patch and took the kids. This is really my excuse to go to pumpkin patches. I love fall, corn mazes, hayrides, haunted houses, passing out Halloween candy, pumpkins, fall decorations, leaving the windows open when it's chilly, bonfires - you know, the whole bit. So every year I force Archie to take me to a pumpkin patch so we can go through the corn maze, pick out a pumpkin, and all that fun jazz - but I usually take my nephews so they have fun and I don't look like a giant crazy woman for loving the pumpkin patch as much as I do. Unfortunately, my nephews aren't here :(, but we went with all the families, so their kids were here and I could jump around like a kid. :) we had so much fun. I love watching the kids have so much fun too. They are so cute.




We received a wonderful gift from our friends back in Charleston before we left and it arrived this week! A Nintendo Wii!!!! How cool is that! We are so excited, and we have already scheduled a Wii party with some of our new friends. Thank you so much guys! We created our Wii mii's to look like us, so here they are! I think they are hilarious.



















Over the weekend, Archie and I drove to visit some good friends! Tron and Katie live in Modesto about 1 1/2 hours away. We had so much fun! Those two make me laugh more than anyone I know, and a time with them is guaranteed to produce hours of laughter. It was so good to see good friends who know you and understand you! It reminds you of home for a little bit. They are also from Charleston and so understand missing it. On Sunday, they did the nicest thing ever and made us a BBQ lunch with ribs and yes, STICKY FINGERS SAUCE!!!! Talk about delicious. It was so good. Thanks Tron. We played some Wii with them and had so much fun, and even got Nani, Tron's grandma in on the action. You will definitely enjoy the action here.






AND THE WINNER IS....



Lastly, we got to visit with a friend from Charleston who was in town for the weekend. Jason played with us in the band at Crosstowne. We were able to meet up for a few hours and it was good to see him. It was so surreal seeing someone from Charleston here though. It didn't feel right. I mean, we are always going down the road, seeing a car we recognize and saying, "Oh, there's so and so... oh wait, they wouldn't be here!" :) Then, when we really saw someone from Charleston, it was so weird! It was still good to see him.
Hopefully it won't be so long between our next post! We promise we'll update again soon! :) Love you all!