The one week gap between Christmas Day and New Years Day is right where my birthday lands on the calendar – December 27th. Today. I turned 33 this year. As per the nature of this specific week, adding my birthday in the middle of it tends to make me feel nostalgic over the previous 12 months, and also anticipate the coming year.
Looking over the 2014 calendar, my favorite memories easily include:
- Celebrating my 10th anniversary with the love of my life.
- Baptizing my 7 year-old daughter, Kali.
- Launching LifeCity Church in September.
- Hearing people say “my church” and “our church” when talking about LifeCity.
- Seeing 30 decisions for Christ in a church plant that wasn’t even started yet.
- Going on our first cruise (thanks, friends who brought us with you!)
- Hosting our first community Easter egg hunt for over 150 people in the community.
- Putting my next-to-last kid into Kindergarten!
- Seeing several family and friends who came out to visit over the year.
- Making many, many new friends here in the Bay Area.
Looking forward to 2015, the things I look forward to the most would include:
- Easter 2015 at LifeCity! Including the egg hunt! It’s going to be epic.
- Growing our staff. We’ll soon be welcoming our new worship director onto our team. Others will join us soon, too. Good things are already shaping up for our church plant this coming year!
- Taking our first family vacation in CA. Church planting has been busy. We haven’t gotten out much for more than a few activities! We have some fun planned soon.
- Traveling/Reconnecting. This year will include more traveling than the year before our move. Nearly all of it is LifeCity related. I’ll be seeing people I haven’t been around in years.
- One Year anniversary of LifeCity! We’re going to kickoff our fall with a big one-year celebration. That first year is still being written. Can’t wait to see what God does between now and then.
- The Unknown. For all my praying and planning, the truth is, I don’t really know what all is going to happen. And that’s fine with me.
If history repeats itself, 2015 is likely to include many things I’m not planning – or wanting! But that’s how God writes our stories. That’s why He is the writer – the “Author” – of our faith. We are the pages. He is the storyteller. Good, bad, or confusing from my perspective – I look expectantly to see how the plot thickens in the story of my life, and that of this thing called LifeCity Church that I’ve been given the awesome privilege to pastor.
Blessings,
Pastor John
Going forward 🙂 to 2015