It is Wednesday and the tomb is still empty! What an Easter weekend. I see all over Facebook the stories of how the Lord used churches all over this country to extend HIS grace to those in need of salvation and hope.

Easter is always a huge Sunday for the church. It was for Grace Church as well. We saw 249 people come to worship at Grace this year. That number is down a little for 269 last year. But on Palm Sunday we saw more on that Sunday than in years previous at Grace Church. The most important number of the morning is that 2 people placed their trust in Jesus at Grace Church. I pray that there are more, but these are the only 2 who filled out a communication card. The cool thing is that the last several years, nobody indicated that they made this decision on Easter. So we praise the Lord for the salvation of these new followers.

Now that Easter is over and I am still celebrating with those who salvation was given them, my focus turns to this Sunday. The challenge for us is to continue to invite people to Grace Church. This is keeping in line with praying for a Culture of Invitation at Grace. We also have to remember that when the church was being establish in the 1st century – each Sunday was a celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. My prayer is that we re-capture this at Grace.

As we move forward I want to challenge us to do the following (everything that we have been doing leading up to Easter).

1. Praying for those who you will be inviting this Sunday
2. Invite people everywhere you go
3. Invite people in your sphere of influence (family, work, school, neighborhood, etc.)
4. Praying for salvation for those non-followers who will be attending
5. Praying that Jesus continues to transform our lives
6. Utilizing the Grace Church Facebook page to invite people (the week leading up to Easter we had 48 people talking about Grace Church and over 2000 people visiting the Grace Church Facebook page) – keep it up you guys are awesome!
7. Looking for those areas to serve people in the name of Jesus

Jesus is doing amazing things in and through us at Grace! Lets keep our eyes on the prize (Jesus) and continue to be a light by reproducing passionate followers of Jesus throughout the Downriver Community and beyond…