This weekend we’ll be celebrating the 15th anniversary of New Life Christian Ministries, the church Nancy and I planted in April of 2001. While the anniversary was officially a couple of months ago, I suggested to our leadership team that we wait until summer to celebrate, because I have been notoriously bad at taking time to celebrate the wins over the years and I knew we needed to make a big deal about what God has done among us. In the past it’s always been, “Wow! Look at what God has been doing among us. Okay, let’s keep going!” Over the years, we’ve taken a moment to mention that it was the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th anniversary as the moments came and went. We said thanks to God for all He’s done, but we haven’t taken the time for an appropriate celebration of much of anything along the way.
We did have a grand opening when we moved into our “stage one” building at 139 Knoch Road, Saxonburg, PA back in 2013, but even as we were celebrating my mind was thinking about “stage two,” and “stage three.” This time it’s going to be different. We’re having a pig roast on Friday evening, July 1, and more than 500 people have signed up to join in the celebration. We’ll play games together, eat together, and then we’re going to take some time to watch a video collage of many of the moments and events from our first fifteen years. After that I’m going to share a number of memories and a few hopes for the future. Then we’ll close with a time of prayer during which we’ll praise God for who He is, and thank Him for all He has done.
We’re following Friday, with a weekend of “regular” worship gatherings on Saturday at 6:30 pm, and Sunday at 8:30, 10:00 and 11:30 am, but we’re holding them outside as we used to do in the summer months when our normal worship space was the local school and we could only gather at the church property during the warmer months. Then on Sunday night we’ve invited the community to join us for a professional fireworks display, honoring our country and celebrating the many blessings we have as Jesus’ followers.
I share this with you for two reasons: 1) If you live in the Saxonburg area, we’d love to have you join us for any or all of these celebrations! and 2) If you are a leader, I exhort you to take time on a regular basis to celebrate the wins, both small and large, because it’s far too easy to just keep the pedal to the metal and keep barreling forward. Not that we don’t all want to make progress as leaders–we do. It’s just that sometimes we need to stop, take a breath and say, “Thank you!” to God, to those who have joined us on the journey and who have helped make the wins happen. It also helps us remember why we exist and that a major part of our life together is celebrating the journey. The people you lead will thank you for making the commitment to celebrate. Your team’s morale will increase, and life will just be better. I wish I knew this from more consistent experience of celebrating myself, but in those relatively few times when we have paused to celebrate, I’ve always been reminded how important it is to make celebrating a priority. Starting this Friday, I’m going to do it more often.
Let’s lead better by taking time to pause and celebrate–today!