A New Beginning Bay Area 5 Points

Today, July 20th @ 10 a.m. begins a new chapter for our campus. We have been madly working since May 9th with hundreds if not thousands of volunteer man hours to open our Bay Area Fellowship 5 Points campus.

Today was a huge success for our soft opening. Let me give you a run down.

• 121 people...with no advertising and really without us telling anyone. This blew me away. Especially since our grand opening/ribbon cutting is at the end of August.
• Band did an excellent job even though they were not able to practice as much due to us finishing up the campus last night...but that is why we are doing a soft launch. This week they actually get to get in there with our sound techs and we will pull it together tightly. The great task is merging the sound and the music/voices. That takes time together.
• We had a parking plan and our guys out there pulled it off...seeing how we don't have an actual parking lot we had to have a plan and it worked.
• Sound ended up having a speaker decide to unplug itself half of the way through the morning...it was one that was about 10 ft over the stage so we couldn't trouble shoot it until after. Still have to figure this one out.
• Children's area looked fantastic...kids were having fun and learning. Our Bay Area Kidz workers did great.
• Our greeters created a wonderful and friendly atmosphere.
• Did I say I was blown away by the response???? And we haven't really told anyone. Crazy...
• As a fun side story...last night one of our volunteers went to pick up food and a couple in there overheard we were doing the church. They ended up following her and catching her at a light to ask where the church was....they came out and took a tour and then volunteered to help today as greeters. I love it when a plan comes together.
• I love leading in the trenches...I often think it wins the hearts of your volunteers. Over the past three days I think I worked around 36 hours...so did many of our volunteers and it paid off...the campus looked great...I was really unsure if we would get those layers of grime and dirt out...but we did and it was money.
• We are actually redeeming this building...at one time it was an adult game room that got busted. It was all over the news. The original property had a bar at one time which has been torn down many years ago. It is so exciting to know that this property is now going to be used for the Kingdom of God. The best is yet to come.
• Pastor John coming out today was great...he got sick this week and it was all his wife could do to tie him down and keep him from coming to help...it was driving him crazy. He has been out here almost every day of this process working to make this dream a reality.
• Pastor Bil gave us a great shout out in the video...our campus was pumped. And the message was so on point. I got so much out of it. Who says a video campus doesn't work.
  

Here is a little slide show of the day:



Many thanks go out to all of the people who helped all along the way.

{UPDATE} Just got a call this morning that six people checked off that they prayed to begin a relationship with Christ on our first Sunday. YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!