Ok so I know I’ve been a little slack over the past 3-4 weeks here on the planting Mercy Church series. Consider that my lesson to you about church planting. You get busy and need to budget your time better than you ever have before. But now on to the last installment in this series. The Launch Day.

Yesterday, September 13, 2015, Mercy Church was launched! What an incredible day. I’m going to try and recap the awesomeness, with the help of a few pics, below:

The Mercy Church Family pulled together and gave themselves for others in so many ways. They walked 1/4 mile so our guests could have close parking. Some arrived as early as 2.5 hours before service to ensure everything was set up as best as possible. This group prayed and invited people like crazy. A theme I know you are picking up on in this series is “plant with a team.” Today was the crown jewel of examples on why you plant as a team. They will encourage you so much!

Nothing beats celebrating God’s work in people’s lives. You can’t manufacture the joy and excitement God’s moving brings to a church. We had the joy to baptize 3 people. The pic of Sarah here being baptized was taken from the “crowd side.” So if you could look behind the camera you’d see a crowd of folks celebrating with those behind me. What better way to introduce Mercy Church to Charlotte than by celebrating the work of Jesus in people’s lives! Yes the woman on the left is the lovely and talented Courtney Shelton. She is running point for Mercy Kids right now. Which went from 14 to 29 kiddos yesterday. Just as you see right here, this woman exemplifies hospitality. She and the rest of the Mercy Kids team sacrificed so much yesterday. Instead of worshipping in song with us, they were worshipping through serving all of our families. The biggest obstacles to families coming to a church, especially a new one, is trusting those responsible for their kids. Not only do I trust this team, I’m so excited my kids get to grow up in a church with such Jesus loving men & women. We doubled in our kids area and they were totally prepared for it!

Considering the steady growth summer we had, we weren’t expecting a big one day surge. Plus, we’ve only done word of mouth publicity because it’s important to us we grow through relationships as a church. All that to say I underestimated, again, what God had in store for Mercy Church. I’ve been doing it since day 1. I told our team last night at our launch party that I am committing to them to try not to underestimate what God wants to do through us from here on. To the right is a shot of us worshipping together. God surpassed all our expectations in what was an awesome, awesome launch day. And yes, our projector screen is a black wall right now. Cause we are a church plant. We use what we’ve got!