Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

This was such an encouraging weekend. Great way to go into my preaching sabbatical. I'm taking the next four weeks off as we go into our annual missions series.

For starters, the annual variety show @ the 9:30 club was a blast. I love to laugh! And we wrapped up the Hero series casting vision for our fourth location. I was so encouraged by the response! There was such a spontaneous excitement and visceral affirmation about Georgetown.

I was honestly a little concerned because Northwest is such a big quadrant of the city. And we'll have more than one location eventually. But I was concerned about those who live in other parts of the city not being on board. But I felt like there was a genuine excitement about Gtown.

I'm also encouraged by our attenadance trends this summer. We usually experience a significant drop in the summer because we lose a couple hundred college students and people travel. But we've continued to grow through the summer months which is really encouraging. With some of the visiting groups this weekend, I'm guessing we had at least a hundred guests.

For what it's worth, 86% of NCCers came for the first time because a friend invited them. It's all about friends inviting friends!