Box Score for Weekend of December 2/3
Here’s the "box score" for this past weekend at Granger Community Church.
Music: "New Year’s Day" by U2; "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For" by U2
Message: "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For" — Mark Beeson,
Senior Pastor, opened the U2 Christmas season with a unique message about Jonah. Mark explained that sometimes we let our emotions get the best of us and we want God to administer justice or revenge…especially to people who have hurt us. Fortunately, God demonstrates grace, and gives us the opportunity to turn to him.
Service Highlights: The highlight of this weekend was seeing hundreds of kids participating in each of the five services. They sang three different Christmas songs in each of the services. This is a tradition for Granger. It gives the kids a chance to celebrate the Christmas season, and it gives us a chance to share the Granger experience with parents, grandparents and friends who would normally not attend our services.
Stats: 7,508 total attendance (5,623 adults + 1,585 kids); 33.5% increase from same children’s Christmas weekend last year
Percentage of weekend attendance by service:
- Sun 10:15 am = 24%
- Sat 5:30 pm = 23%
- Sun 11:45 am = 22%
- Sat 7:30 pm = 17%
- Sun 8:45 am = 14%
Final Notes: This was the largest non-Easter crowd in Granger history. It even exceeded the PureSex weekends earlier this year.
Absolutly Fantastic…I already watched part of the video off the website…WoW
Next boxscore can you give a stat for how long the typical prayer time is at your church. 1 minute 10 minutes 20 minutes etc And then compare it to past years and the percentage change.
John, you’ll have to explain what you’re talking about. I’m not sure how to answer your question. Are you talking about prayer in the service? Are wanting to know more about our prayer ministry? Do you want info about how we teach about prayer in our class on spiritual growth? Or, do you just want to know that it feels like I’m personally praying more than I ever have because God has our ministry in place we’ve never been? I’m assuming you aren’t trying to attack here and you have an honest desire to learn something, so I’m just trying to figure out how I can best respond to your question.
tony
Tony,
During your typical Sunday service how much time is set aside for congregational prayer? Or prayers in small groups? Give me an idea 1 minute 5 minutes 10 minutes etc.
John
Tony:
Just curious (and pardon me if I have missed it somewhere else on the site) but is there anything that you attribute this last service being the largest non-Easter crowd at Grainger? Was there particular pre-service outreach done for this series? Perhaps the influence of the “20 Days” initiative? Just curious. Thanks.
John, we do very little corporate prayer during our weekend services. You can see for yourself, though, by viewing a sample service online. Here’s what we do regarding prayer surrounding our weekend services:
> there are 40 volunteers on a team that provides for personal prayer following every service;
> we receive about 60 prayer requests that are submitted from comment cards every week; and
> there’s another team of 50 volunteers that prays for all the requests that are submitted from the services and from the web each week
Daniel, usually the weekend that our kids sing is one of the largest crowds of the year; however, the crowd this year was significantly higher. I can think of several things that might be impacting the jump this past weekend:
> the buzz from 20 Days as you’ve suggested;
> momentum from the last several months;
> our focus this year to encourage people to “invest and invite”; and
> the “packaging” of this year’s Christmas series.
If I had to guess, I think it’s the series packaging that is the biggest contributing factor. Let’s face it, U2 music is something folks don’t expect to hear at Christmas time. It has grabbed people’s attention.
tony
Thanks Tony. Great stuff. Hope to stop by a Grainger service in the not so distant future. My wife’s family is from Goshen and I also just started doing some work for a Laser Golf Putter company based in Grainger. If you’re into golf, drop me a note and I’ll see if they can send you a comp laser guided putter.