the dog days of Summer...well, sort of

The title of the post isn't a comment on the weather here in Atlanta this July, especially since it's been relatively mild. I'm referring to church attendance in July. It seems like a lot of my colleagues are making it known that their attendance has been way down. We at The Journey Church are no different. Attendance has been way off.

Part of that has been due to the huge transition of losing a couple of staff guys, neither of which was expected. We handled the transitions well. Even if staff transitions are handled well some people are going to leave because...well, just because.

Since I'm not so much in the popular preacher blog loop (not a bad thing at all), I don't talk about it much here. Another reason is that one of my coaches, Nelson Searcy of The Journey Church in New York City (same church name purely by accident), gave me some good advice. You can't live your life by looking at weekly attendance. You have to look at trends because they're important, but allowing your self worth to be tied to weekly attendance is dangerous. No worries, school starts back in less than a month. Vacations and youth camps are over. "Thank God" in the truest sense of the phrase.

In the midst of this Summer's attendance slump there have been some incredible things taking place. Our worship is better than ever. There's an energy that's been missing in worship, at least for me personally, in my entire ministry. There's momentum in the middle of the "summer slump." Yesterday was one of the most poorly attended days of the year but a first time attender started a relationship with God.

Starting a church is difficult task no matter what. Starting a church with no denominational or financial support is even more difficult. But starting a church and seeing eternal things happen in the middle of the dog days of Summer lets you know that bigger things are on the way.