Update from Chicago

Sunday, September 30, 2007

It has been a great couple of the days here in the Chicago area. After the conference on Friday, we drove to Chicago (short distance, long time on the road) for a couple of days in the city. In addition to the weather being spectacular, the team had the opportunity to visit several church services in the area.

On Saturday night we visited www.communitychristian.org (CCC). This church has 8 campuses, according to their website, around the Chicago area. They do a great job with their systems of duplicating themselves for multi-site. After service on Saturday night, we met with a couple of guys on staff. Thank you Sean and Bill for joining us for dinner.

This morning we visited www.harvestbible.org. Raul did a little research last night and discovered they were having the grand opening to their Elgin campus. The campus was impressive in size. At the 9am service, all 2,000 seats were occupied. It was a celebratory service with great energy and emotion.

In order to make it to Willow Creek Church www.willowcreek.org, we had to leave before the end of the service at Harvest Bible Church. We were all extremely excited because Pastor Bill Hybels was going to be teaching.

Willow Creek is perhaps America’s most influential church. I say that not because their size, though they have an attendance of over 20,000 people at 4 different locations, but because of all the church leaders they have been able to train and encourage over the course of their existence. Pastor Hybels was able to share some of his vision today, how his Yes to God has guided him over the years. And how we can recover from having made bad choices in our lives.

He ended the service speaking about his daughter and how she, after several years of bad choices, has been able to reestablish her life with God by saying Yes to God and no to herself. God knew I needed to be there today to hear those words.

On a personal basis, I was encouraged today!

I look forward to getting back tomorrow. To my Grecy, I love you and miss you. Can’t wait to see you and spend time with you. Thanks for holding the fort in my absence!

Going back to Miami,

Ia