Ben’s Blog

It’s hard to believe but it’s only 2 months to the Canada Mission Trip!!

4 families from MCC will be traveling to Calgary Canada this July to help with a daycamp at a church that is less than 3 year’s old - Journey Church.  We’ll be posting more about the trip as we get closer.  You can assist these families in their trips or any MCC mission trip by participating in the Kroger Card Program (4% goes back to mission trips), the sub sale on May 31, the golf outing on June 27 or simply by making a donation.  See myself or Rich or Scott for more information!

Mike will be updating you in mid-May on the “state of the church” as we begin celebrating our 55th anniversary as a church.

In the meantime we wanted to communicate how the 13-week 90 day challenge finished.  In those 13 weeks total offerings of $227,397 were given.  That is an average of $17,492 per week, up 29.5% over the 2008 average for those same 13 weeks of $13,510.

Since we automatically contribute 10% of offerings to missions this means a significant impact on available funds for upcoming missions projects.  Also we have been able to finish projects like the window replacement from last year’s wind storm and in the coming weeks updating our children’s check-in to be modern day and more secure.  In addition our cash reserves have recovered and we have been able to speed up our debt paydown on Lawrence Ave.  We’ll continue to share more as we invest in projects that will help us take the next step in multiplying our impact in all areas - Plug In to Worship, Charge Up in Groups and Live Out in Ministry and Missions.

It’s great to see the results of your faithfulness making a broad impact here and around the world!

We recently received our statement for the third month of the Kroger Card program.  To date $39,447 has been charged on the Kroger Cards resulting in $1,577.88 for Mission Trips in the first 3 months of the program.  If you have yet to get a rechargeable Kroger gift card they will be available this Sunday for $5 each at both Info Desks.  The card you purchase for $5 has $5 of value on it.  You can then recharge the same gift card over and over as you do your Kroger shopping.

This past Sunday we had a great day for Easter worship.  The 4 worship venues worked out well.  The parking lot was a bit zooy.  As far as total attendance we landed at 996 for the day.  Awesome deal!  As best I can tell that is a MCC record and up over 13% from last year’s 876.

As for adults in each venue we had 100 in Classic, 166 in the Celebration, 225 in the 10:45 Contemporary and 259 in the 9:15 Contemporary.  A big thanks to all the volunteers that stepped up to help make this day happen.  Another thanks to those that parked offsite or away from the building to make room for our guests.  Likewise a thanks to those that came early to the Classic or went to the 10:00 Celebration service to help make room in the gym.  All in all it balanced out well.

Coming soon I’ll be updating offering information for the year and the launch of online giving.

A real quick update on the First Quarter at MCC.  In Part One we’ll look at decisions and attendance.

For the first 3 months of 2009 we held 2 Get Connected classes and had total 19 decisions (baptisms and transfers).  The next Get Connected class is April 19.

Attendance for the first 3 months averaged 633 up from 575 in the first quarter of 2008.  That’s up 10.1%. For comparison the first quarter last year had one snow day but also included Easter, combined they about average out.

In the coming weeks we’ll be posting first quarter financial information and other facility related updates.