Wow

We are very thrilled with what God is doing, with the people He is bringing to CF and allowing us to serve. This last weekend, nearly 6000 people gathered to worship. Was an incredible weekend!

There are some parking challenges at our Palmetto Bay and Downtown campus.

-- At our Palmetto Bay campus, we are out of paved parking. We need all our volunteers to park in your assigned volunteer locations -- off the paved lot surrounding the church.

-- At our Downtown campus, we are evaluating how to increase parking via the street and adjoining businesses as we only had four spots left this weekend. When Pastor Pete provides some direction, I know you will be eager to follow it.

Value #2 -- Prayer

We ask all our small groups to pray together because we see prayer as being deeply embedded into community life with the first believers.

... They devoted themselves to prayer (Acts 2:42)

Kaye and I will forever be grateful for the small group we are plugged into because they prayed with us for months about our desire to have a child. We believe God used their prayers, heard their prayers -- and we benefited from the community of our small group.

Eden's new spot to watch Elmo

I am loving being a father. Eden loves to watch Elmo, Mickey, and Bible. And thankfully she loves watching them with me.

Sweetness

We had the largest attendance ever at CF this weekend, not counting Easter or Christmas. Over 5500 people gathered for worship. Pretty exciting weekend.

Value #1 ... Study

Because we believe that community is formed around truth, we ask all our small groups to study the Scripture together.

They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching (Acts2: 42)

We have resisted calling anything and everything a "small group." Some church leaders/consultants have encouraged us to be more open in what we declare is a group. I understand and appreciate their desire to help people live in relationship with others. Trust me -- I am not being critical as these are godly and effective leaders making the recommendation, leaders who are driven by a passion for believers to live in community.

But for us -- we believe studying the Scripture is essential in our groups. This is a value for our groups because we believe that the depth of our community is only as strong as what we unite ourselves around.

We believe the Scripture is essential to stand on. Otherwise our community may be weak because it would be formed around the inconsequential instead of the pure, timeless, unchanging, convicting, edifying Word of God.