Sunday Reflections

Sunday was a day of new things at WEC. We started a new series called Risk. We laid out a new floor plan for the chairs during our two morning services. We are seating people in a new way...the ushers are leading people to the front and we are filling up entire sections before we open up more rows. Our services were looking packed but from the stage we could see that there were a lot of seats not being filled near the front. People were filling up the back half of the church but the front half had lots of empty seats. In churches they say that there is a 80% rule and when you room is 80% full it looks like it is overcrowded. When a room is too full it causes people to feel like there is no room for them. If you come to WEC right on time or a few minutes late it looks like our room is maxed out because the back half is always full. By seating people in the front first and filling up each section before we open a new one it maximizes our seats. I didn't hear anyone talk about this change, but from my perspective on stage it was a great move. Everyone seemed to really engaged in all the services. I think bringing everyone in closer and having them pack in helped provide energy for the day.

Back to the firsts...We introduced the brand new pre-show that starts 10 minutes before the service. The pre-show is designed to reward the faithful WEC attenders who come early. Before the service we played a semi version of corn hole. The object was to throw a bean bag from wherever you were sitting and hit it in the hole on the corn hole board, which was on the stage. The prize was a $5 gift card to Starbucks. Only one person hit it all day long. It was a guy before the 6:00 PM service and hit it from pretty far away and the crowd went bonkers. The pre-show also lets us give announcements and welcome people as they come in before the service. Here are some more highlights of the day...

• Worship - Noise we make by Chris Tomlin, Forever by Chris Tomlin and How Great is Our God by Chris Tomlin.
• Great intro talk to the series. I'm excited about where Stu is going to go with this series. I think the next 3 weeks are going to be crazy good!
• I'm really excited about what God is doing through our church. 75 people were baptized a week ago, but I don't believe God is done there. I think God has big things in store for WEC and I think He is going to change some lives during the Risk series...I can't wait!