HARVEST

My wife and I attend a church plant called Harvest. We "opened" our doors October of 2007, so we are a not yet one-year-old community of believers. We started with about 35 or so folks. Today we had over 100! It was exciting to see the number of faces that I did not recognize. We are slowly growing. We are reaching people in the communities that surround us. It is a very young congregation. Most of those we are reaching are in there 20's and 30's. It is fun for us as those in their 20's are our kids age. It is like attending church with them, which is nice as our kids are many miles away.

We are a very community minded church. We have fully invested ourselves in serving in the community for the community. As a result of this community involvement the leader of our Chamber of Commerce as begun to attend. We have been birthed as a church that wants to be in the community for the community. We will do all we can to keep this as mission-critical. We are reminded that people do not want to hear what we believe, they want to see what we believe.

What was really cool is that today we commissioned a family to go out to another church. This family was not part of the launch team, but joined us shortly into the adventure. They were active in our children's ministry. It turns out one of the churchs that helped get us going was in need of help in with children. They accepted the call to go out! We believe this will only be the beginning of the investment of people we will make.

I attribute this DNA in our church to the excellent leadership of our Lead Pastor and wife. Brad and Heidi have a tremendous vision for Harvest and the area we are called to serve. It is their vision that keeps us motivated. It is their heart for people that keeps us engaged. It is their passion that reminds us we made the correct choice to participate in what God is doing in this corner of His Kingdom at this time of His history.