Launch. Still Standing.

We came, we saw, we launched (half of) a church!

This weekend we launched Connexus: Barrie, and it was a great success. We saw hundreds of people brave the brutal winter weather to make it to our Grand Opening in Barrie for both the 8:30 and 10:00am services. Not only that, but our friends from Global TV made their way up to begin shooting for their documentary on evangelical churches in Canada (read more about it here. I’ll have more on that in a couple days).

This Sunday we launched our series called “A Very Dysfunctional Christmas.” We’ll be talking about how not every family (read: most families) don’t have what many would call a “normal Christmas.” Hollywood has done a good job at inflating our expectations of what Christmas should be, when in reality things aren’t always as great as we’d hoped. Our first message was called “I’ll be (Gone) For Christmas.” A lot of people feel they don’t belong, especially in this season. Carey talked about how in Jesus, all of us are welcome, no matter who we are or where we’re from. It was a similar theme to one of his messages back at Trinity, where he said the biggest lie church’s tell is on their church signs that say “Everyone Welcome.” While the message of Jesus may be that, often churches do not live that.

Musically, we started the service with “Everlasting God” by Brenton Brown. This was the last song we played at Trinity, and it was a great moment to be able to bridge the gap between the two church communities. Next was “Salvation is Here” from Hillsong Church. Right before the message we played “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day. After the message we introduced a new song by David Crowder called “The Glory Of It All.. Out of all of the songs we have introduced since I started at Trinity, I have never heard such positive feedback as we got for this song. The lyrics really speak to the season, and the story of salvation.

Oh, the glory of it all is you came here
For the rescue of us all is, that we may live
Oh the glory of it all, oh you are here
With redemption from the fall, that we may live
For the glory of it all, oh the glory of it all…

I think it’s going to be one of those songs that people just take and make their own. It was a great moment.

I’m really excited about bringing these songs to Orillia this week as one of our other worship leaders leads the team in Barrie. It should be fantastic.

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