Countdown!

I just met with our launch team last night and there is a general sense of anxious anticipation. We are looking forward to our public launch on March 7th at Meadows Edge Elementary School. Our Worship gathering time will be at 10:30 on Sunday mornings. We are calling this "Stage 2" of our launch. With our Stage 2 launch we have re-invited our previous launch team members to re-up their commitment to be a part of this second stage and I'm excited to tell you that everyone has decided to do so and we have the privilege of having new people joining the team.

We are getting ready to start our Home Groups. Currently we have three homes that we will be launching in the next week and there are more that we are prepared to start after we begin our public gatherings. The home groups will be a significant part our spiritual formation process and helping people get connected to Epic.

It's so amazing to see how God is continuing to go before us and meet our needs. When we initially put our plan together in October, we had a goal of raising $50,000 in order to purchase everything we needed to do our launch. As of January we had raised/saved up $24,000 and this seemed significantly off pace for where we needed to be by March. Once again God reminded us that He is building His church and that He is our provider in both resources and people. We have so many talented and gifted individuals on our launch team that God brought and they have been able to be creative and resourceful to the point that it now appears that we are only going to have to spend $10,000 to launch (and still do our ministry with excellence). From God having another church allow us to use their trailer to being able to build things at cost, we are seeing everything come together for way under the initial estimated start price. God is so amazing! What's most exciting is that this allows us to use the additional money to continue in other forms of outreach to our community. Yea God!

Currently we're really heavy into the public marketing stage of our launch. Please pray that this will be effective and that we will have wisdom in this area. Once again, I feel good about my marketing team since I'm working with two young business majors/graduates who have some expertise and creativity in this.

Please pray that everything will come together for our preview services and then for our public launch on March 7th. Please pray that we wont lose sight of what we're about and why we're doing this...that we will remain focused on the vision and the mission!

Finally, please pray for God's hand to move in several ways:

• To touch people's hearts and lives in our community through Epic.
• To protect the hearts, minds and families of those who are a part of this team/church.
• To continue to provide.
• To continue to lead us (and that we wont let go of his hand).

Thank you for your prayerful support.