The Brier Creek Fellowship Honey-Do Team

The backstory:

That's not Noah with the L-square. It's Nathan.

For the last several months, Nathan and I have been meeting for several hours every Friday afternoon & evening to brainstorm and build stuff for Brier Creek Fellowship.  Since we’re a mobile church, we’ve built AV carts and a pipe & drape cart, and outfitted our trailer to handle it all. 

Jamarcus, Ken, Mark and Amanda have all helped out at different points.  Collectively, we’ve labored for hundreds of hours in order to save valuable Sunday morning setup and breakdown time.

The time we’ve spent together has been awesome.  We work hard but not fast, and we always break for dinner, dessert and good conversation.

Starting this Friday, we are making it official.  Our venerable group is now called the Brier Creek Fellowship Honey-Do Team. 

 

Our mission:

• To build and rebuilt things our church needs
• To do odd jobs for the seniors and single women of the church
• To be a fun place for men to fellowship together

       Some guidelines:

• We are going to be really selective about our projects so we don’t get burned out.  We’re not looking to do a lot of work for friends-of-friends. 
• We are not precision carpenters.  We do “good enough” stuff.  We can paint, move furniture, lay tile and build shelves, and we can do complicated things, but don’t expect perfection.  Our workmanship fits our price:  free.  Remember, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
• The Bible says, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”  But if you come out for Honey-Do night and just stand around jawing, we’ll still let you eat.
• Wives & kids can fellowship with my family while we cavemen do our thing.  If a member of the gentler sex wants to join in, we won't complain, provided they still let us grunt and burp.

Requirements to join:

•  An absence of whatever internal malfunction causes perfectionism.

Location & Time: 

We will meet at 710 Obsidian Way, Durham, NC 27703.  If we are going onsite somewhere, we will let everyone know in the newsletter for that week.  Nathan and I start at 3 p.m. every Friday.  Join us whenever you get out of work.  We break for dinner & dessert around 6, then work ‘til around sundown.  You're free to cut out early, or hang out later.

Caffeine for Church Plants: CHANGE

"Change" is usually considered a 4-letter word in American churches.  "That's not how we've always done it," and, "You need to make sure you don't try to change too much, too quickly," are lines I frequently heard when I was preaching at old SBC churches during seminary. 

This is not so at a church plant like ours.  Change is exciting for us.

Since we launched 9 months ago, we have been meeting at a community center in Brier Creek.  It was very nice, but the words "community center" probably don't conjure up a good image for most folks.  Also, few people had ever heard of the facility, even if they lived a block away.

As we have grown, we've run out of space, particularly in the children's department.  So when Brier Creek Elementary opened up, we wasted no time in jumping on it. 

This Sunday will be our first service in our new facility.  Everything will be new:  cushy chairs, an additional video display, new draping, and a new "in the round" seating arrangement.  We need a new trailer to hold it all on new set up carts.

Last Friday, a work crew built our new pipe & drape cart and modified our other setup carts.  We loved doing the work because we knew it was because God has been growing our church.

Last Saturday, our setup team ran a rehearsal service in the new facility.  Setting up, praying, and breaking down took over 3 hours.  It was hard work.  But it was soooooo exciting!

My attempt at a panoramic of our new facility.  Looks like Dali was a photographer.

I am reminded again why I love new churches:

• There is no sense of entitlement on anyone's part at BCF.  Many church leaders fear change because it means they might lose control over their little fiefdom.  Not at a new church, since no one is controlling anything.  (In fact, we might be a bit out of control.)  
• There is a spirit of camaraderie here not just born of shared struggle, but of mutual excitement about what God is doing here, and about what He's going to do in the future.  
• Everyone's ideas are weighed equally here, whether they've been with us 1 day or since launch. We had a guy building the pipe & drape cart with Nathan who had only been at BCF once. 
• And new churches mean no cliques.  Everybody is friends with everybody. 

Thank you, Lord, for putting this family together and taking us this far.  May there always be fun & exciting changes on the horizon for BCF.