The weekend started on Saturday morning with hundreds of leaders cramming into the Yellow Box for a spirited Leadership Community to celebrate the commissioning of Rich & Dori Gorman and our COMMUNITY-Edgewater team. The photo above is our lead team praying for the Gormans and our elders praying and annointing the volunteer team from the Edgewater neighborhood that lead our new COMMUNITY campus there. When Jon Ferguson asked Dori, "What was your greatest fear?" With a laugh Dori said, "My greatest fear was that no one would want to help us start this new site." With more than 20 leaders surrounding the Gormans on the stage during the commissioning, that fear was definitely not realized. This was a great moment as our leaders prayed and celebrated together the beginning of our twelth COMMUNITY location.
Then on Sunday morning at 10:30 am those prayers were answered as a friends and neighbors from Edgewater filled the theater of Swift Elementary School. The photo above shows a diverse crowd standing and worshipping together.
With each new site we start there are new learnings and one of the key insights we've gained from this new site is the priority of being a church both "in" and "for" the community. For the last year the Gorman's and others bulit relationships with Swift Elementary School, Eco-Andersonville, Peterson Garden Project, Organization of the Northeast, Care For Real and Alderman Harry Osterman's office. Each of those partnerships are strategic in helping us reach, restore and reproduce God's dream for this neighborhood. And it was so good to have each of those partnerships present for the first service and join us in this celebration.
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