I'm Exhausted

I am not sure that you can pack more into one week than we managed to do in the past seven days. Here are some of the highlights and some random thoughts on a Sunday night:

• On Wednesday night, we had our first annual Seacoast Chili Cook-Off. (h.t. Jeff Kinney) All of our small group leaders prepared what they thought was their best chili and the battle was on. There were prizes for: hottest, tastiest, best fixin's and so on. My small group managed to land the hottest award. Nice job Maria! It was a HUGE success with a lot of people getting connected to our small groups.
• I am now officially officeless. In order to make room for more children's space on Sundays, Ross and I moved out of our office on Saturday. We will be officeing out of our homes for the next few weeks until we have something else in place. You may see me very soon in a coffeehouse near you!
• We spent most of the day on Saturday setting up for our 3 year anniversary and building a new classroom in the former office.
  
• We partied hard today! I think this has to be the coolest Sunday that we have ever had. We had stuff happening everywhere! The owners of Brick House Coffee are Seacoasters, and they basically set-up a Brick House Coffee in our cafe. They gave away a ton of iced coffees. The line before the second service wrapped half way around the auditorium. Those guys ROCK!!!
  
• We also had huge chocolate cookie cakes from The Chocolate Shoppe. Mmmmm...... :)
  
• We rented a huge jump castle for the kiddies to jump in after the services. It looked fun.
  
• There were a lot of people there today. We had so many college students in the second service that a visitor asked me after the service if that was our youth service! :)
• We had pizza for all of our college students after the 11:00 service. I can't wait to get our college ministry kicked off next week!
• I shared my vision of being a church that leaves a legacy of serving this morning. Jesus gave us the model of picking up the towel, and that is what we are going to do in our church, in our community, and in our world. We gave everyone a small towel to be a reminder of what we are called to do. Our slogan this year is: Simply Serve.
• I had 4 people ask me to mention their school's football team during the welcome this morning. Apparently - there were some big games this weekend? :)
• Next week kicks off our new series "Get Smart" and our new "Get Smart" small groups. All of our groups are doing the same study for the next 6 weeks. We have over 20 groups ready to go!
  
• Our staff is AMAZING. If everyone knew all that happened behind the scenes this week, you would just weep for them. Those guys took it all in stride and kept going.
  
• I can't wait for a slightly slower week...we'll see what happens. :)