God's doing something!

Last Wednesday Greenville NewSpring had our first Fuse service and right at 100 students showed up. Here's my problem; I forget where God's brought me from and only see the present. I look at the fact that NewSpring runs close to 10,000 people every Sunday between two campuses now and look at the fact that Anderson Fuse have over 500 students every week. When I look at it that way, 100 doesn't seem to impressive. Then God does what He always does and reminds me.

I started working with youth at NewSpring a little over 2 years ago. We were still broken up into separate ministries; high school and middle school. I worked with Ignite which was the middle school ministry.

I remember my first night pretty well. I remember that John Allgood was the first person I talked to because I only knew one other person there. I remember having my mask of confidence up even though I was extremely uncomfortable with where I was. I remember playing four square with students (which we should bring back because I could beat the students at that a lot better than I can anything on XBox). And above all, I remember being overwhelmed by the fact that there were 100 middle schoolers in what used to be a store at the Anderson mall.

In fact, we averaged 100 students a week for most of my first year occasionally going higher or lower. And I'm pretty sure that with the high school ministry, we had about 200-250 students come through the Fusebox on a weekly basis.

Here's the thing that blows me away, though. When we were running 100 at the Fusebox, that ministry had been around in some form for a few years. NewSpring as a church has been in Greenville for 12 weeks. Only around half of the people who are attending had actually heard of the us before then. And Fuse is only 4 weeks old. We had 100 students on our fourth meeting!

And in case you're not keeping up, that's 100 students on our fourth meeting at a youth group for a church that didn't exist 13 weeks ago. It's not NewSpring's name that's drawing these students in. In fact, many of those 100 had never walked into the building before Wednesday.

Before every meeting each week I've worried about whether anybody will actually show. I'm worried about it now for tomorrow. But there's no need for it. We're not putting on a show every week, no one even knows what NewSpring is, and none of us really have a clue what we're doing. The only reason these students keep coming is because Jesus wants them there! He wants them! I hope that excites you as much as it excites me.

I can't even imagine what this ministry will look like this time next year. I can't imagine what it'll look like next month. But God is doing ridiculous things and I'm so amazed that I get to be a part of it. I don't deserve this in any way, but I am thankful for it.