“So, how long have you lived here?” a new friend asked. “4 months, no 5…. oh no, wait, going on 7 months!” Time has flown by and Atlanta truly feels like home and what was just an idea 2 years ago is becoming a reality. God has opened countless doors and has introduced us to so many new faces; it doesn’t seem possible that all this progress has been made over this amount of time. We wanted to send an update with our year in review (really our quarter in review).
Where do I start, lets begin with the Sketch of Blueprint—we had our preview service in August and 300 people were in attendance; God sold out the concert that we put on with over 2000 tickets sold. Plenty of contacts came from those two events. We used the month of September to connect with all the people from the Sketch weekend. We started our regional group meetings—we divided the city into 4 different regions (Northeast, Northwest, South, Center city) and 15-30 people met each week in one of those 4 regions. We had two outreach socials, one at a park with over 150 people in attendance and the other was more regionalized, smaller in different leaders neighbors. In October, we started a 6 weeks series on Saturday nights at a local church. We went through our six indicators of health—devotion, study, communication, practice, togetherness, and initiative. In mid-November, at the end of the 6-week series, we told everyone we would resume in 8 weeks—starting the full-blown church January 3rd, 2010. When we made that announcement on that last Saturday night, the crowd cheered with excitement. So, here we are in the 8-week ‘break’ right now. It has been everything but a break—looking for Sunday meeting space, counseling marriages, doing premarital, planning leadership retreats, developing new and deepening old relationships, celebrating kids birthday’s, Thanksgiving; I think that is about half of what we have been doing.
On Monday, God answered a prayer. We have been looking for space since we got here. Let’s just say, Atlanta is proud of any and every space they have. Even in this economy, we were hard pressed to find a spot for less that $1500 a WEEK! We have looked in schools, community centers, downtown, midtown, nice areas, and not so nice areas. With only 3 weeks before we start our Sunday services, God graciously answered our prayers—we will be meeting in a comedy club in midtown Atlanta, called Relapse Comedy Theater. This location is exactly where we wanted to be—next door to GA Tech, close to other colleges, center-city, easily accessible from all of our regions, and so much less expensive than everywhere else! We hope to be a blessing to this comedy club and pray that God would bless them because of their willingness to accept us.
So here we are…3 weeks out, preparing for launch. After 2+ years of prayer, preparing and learning the city of Atlanta, Blueprint Church is finally ready to offer a consistent Sunday service. On January 3rd, Blueprint Church, will begin our 5-week series entitled Unleashed. Here, you will be challenged to live as you were made to be. The thought behind this is that, too many of us are living a shadow of the life that we should be leading, and we’re only going through the motions.
If you are in the Atlanta area, we hope that you join us as we celebrate a new beginning. If you are getting this from afar, please join us in prayer as the day approaches.
Dhati & Angela Lewis
