Moving Forward!

Oasis, I LOVE YOU GUYS! You are amazing. You are head over heels in love with Jesus and so willing to do anything short of sinning to see people meet Jesus and to see His name made famous in Greenwood. Your passion is an inspiration even to me as the pastor! I want to take a minute to share where we are and where we are going.
God has absolutely been blowing up our church!... All for His glory! Our attendance is up 250% from where it was this time last year, and our attendance is up 311% from December. We have outgrown one room and really have outgrown our current room. We will be having a baptism this Sunday after Church. Also, I really do believe that this is going to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest service we have ever had!...
The future of Oasis Church is going to be insane! Even with the fact that our college students are going home for the summer, with all that God is doing, I wouldn't be surprised to see attendance continue to climb as we go into the summer. Here's the deal. We are out of space. We have always said that we as a church will do whatever it takes to see unbelievers become believers and right now, we have very few empty chairs for unbelievers to sit in. That's a major problem... But it is such a great problem! We currently at best can fit 100 chairs in our current room. we always want to make more space when we see 70-80% of our chairs fill up, b/c that is typically when churches see attendance level off. So... we had 77 this past Sunday, we can set up 100 chairs.. um, that's 77% full.... WE NEED MORE EMPTY CHAIRS! In order to have more empty chairs we need to do one of two things, we need to move to the gym or we need to go to 2 services. We currently don't have the finances to make a transition to the Gym. In order to go to the gym and do it right, we need somewhere in the realm of $15,000 to $20,000. We have a commitment to be excellent in what ever we do and right now, if we transition to the gym with what we have, let's just face the fact that the music and seating arrangement would be like crap. We need some major upgrades to go to the gym. So apart from a major Donation or a significant amount of new tithers, we are going to need to go to 2 services very soon. I know that the idea of 2 services isn't very comfortable, but comfortable believers isn't our goal. And do you know what I really hate... Unbelievers going to hell because church people aren't willing to do something uncomfortable to see lost people meet Jesus! I hate that! I really do believe that you as Oasis won't hesitate to make this transition when it comes our way, but I just want to make sure that we keep our focus. The next phrase will be very important to us as a church for the future. "Empty seats at optimal worship times." What this simply means is that Our optimal worship time is 10:45am, meaning that's where we need the empty seats because that's when unbelievers are most likely to attend. When we make the transition, we need our volunteers to roll with it, and we also need our attenders to be willing to come to the 9am service. I don't know yet when we will be making this transition, but just know that God is doing amazing things in our church and impacting tons of lives. Now we just need to do our part by positioning our church so that we can receive all of God's blessings. Oasis, let's do this... Lets Move Forward!