Part 2

We started at Laurel Nokomis School on Mother's Day 2008.  LNS is a big place.  I got lost several times on that campus.  We met in the cafeteria (in the back of the school quite a ways from the main parking lot).  I remember asking one of the janitors when we first got there about how many people the cafeteria could hold.  He told me that at one time they put 1,000 people in that place.  When he said that, I smiled.  I knew we could stay there a long time without running out of room.

We were a long way from 1,000 people.  We started our services at LNS with about 140 people meeting at 10am.  The cafeteria was so large to us when we first got there that we had to use the room divider to make the space appear smaller.  We fit comfortably in there.  Then we started growing.  Soon the room divider had to go.  It wasn't too long after that we started to average about 200 people on a Sunday morning.  We went to 2 services on Easter of 2010.  We did that for several reasons.  First, we thought we could reach more people with different service times.  Secondly, we thought the children's areas were getting too small for the numbers we had coming.  Third, we wanted our people to never have to pick between two great options--worship and serving.  We were nervous about the outcome.  Would people come to an earlier service?  Would the 2 services be evenly distributed?  Would one be full and the other be empty?

It turned out to be a great move.  The services were distributed pretty evenly, and have continued to be so during our tenure there.  The average attendance also began to climb.  Soon we were at 300...then 350...then 400...then 450!  450 people in average attendance!  Wow!  Some of our special services brought in as many as 750 people at a time.  Praise God for a place that can hold so many of God's people!

I remember thinking to myself, "We could stay here at LNS for a long time.  By adding even more services, this place could hold a congregation of about 2,000."  I never wanted to leave.  My greatest fear was always, "What if something happened and we had to leave LNS?"  Where would we go?  Where could we find a place that could hold that many people at one time?  I was determined to do everything to make the staff and faculty at LNS love us and never want to see us go.  Little did I realize that my greatest fear was about to become my greatest reality.