Welcome to The Courageous Church

So, the reason I'm starting this blog is to chronicle my journey toward living a courageous life. My motivation for wanting to live courageously is The Courageous Church and my new pastor, Shaun King.

The Courageous Church just had its Grand Opening [video coming soon!] this past Sunday, January 11th, 2009. I found out about Courageous only a week or so before it opening, through an ad on Facebook. I was so excited after looking through the website for CC that I immediately decided I wanted to be a part of the launch team.

I attended a live web meeting with Shaun and was very excited by his vision for this church. I got plugged into the Welcoming group, and made plans to attend one of two dress rehearsals the weekend before Launch day.

By Sunday morning, I was BEYOND hyped for this. We (my sister, Missy, and I, along with her daughter, Lizzy) arrived at Center Stage, where we're holding services, at about 8:30am to prepare for our duties as greeter and usher.

Very soon after, Pastor Shaun called us all together for prayer before services. We prayed then everyone put their hands in the center and on the count of three, a resounding cry of "Jesus!" erupted as we prepared ourselves to help Shaun launch the greatest. church. ever.

After some truly amazing music by some truly talented folks (including remakes of the Nas song "Hero" and Jazmine Sullivan's song "Lions, Tigers, and Bears"), Shaun showed a video about a revolutionary food product that "may just be the most important advance ever to cure and prevent malnutrition," called Plumpy Nut.

An outstanding performance by Sha' Simpson of "Ordinary Servant" followed the video and then Pastor Shaun introduced our new series, Greater Than God. During the message, Shaun introduced to us his plans to start the largest Plumpy Nut initiative in the world - which won't be hard, he says, since nobody else is doing it!

Pastor Shaun closed out with four objectives for the week ahead, including spending time in prayer to work out what it is that we are "filling our holes" with...is it sex, food, drugs, clothing, shoes, etc. that we seek to fill those empty spaces within? How can we change that so that it is God's love that fills us?

All in all, this has been an amazing experience already, and we're only one service into it! This is what I've been searching for, and not finding. This place...these people...this pastor...the feeling that I am truly a part of Courageous Church, and not just an outsider looking in...I feel like I am home.

Finally.