Milestone Day At IC Church of Christ

Suzi and I have been ministering here in Iowa City for 3 years and 8 months. It has been a ministry of ups and downs(as any ministry is), but God has been patient, faithful and very good to us. Yesterday we were able to rededicate the church building which was built in 1991. We rededicated it because we recently completed a $300,000 remodel project which began the day after Easter. In my very humble opinion the building looks marvelous, it is really an extreme makeover!

To make our rededication complete we invited Merv Moberly back to preach the sermon. Honestly, I don't know Merv like I wish I did. But from what I have picked up, he is quite church planter, leader, and preacher. He was instrumental in planting churches in Ames, Fort Madison, and here in Iowa City. There maybe be more, those are just the ones I have picked up on. Merv was with the Iowa City from about 1988 to 2001. During that time the church was able to grow enough to step out on faith to purchase land on the east side of Iowa City and build a church. If you would like to hear the story yourself you can listen to Merv tell it here, it's really quite a story. It's really so humbling to hear the sacrifices that so many people gave just to get the church from infancy to establishment. God works, but he works through the faithfulness of people. For example Merv and his wife moved out of their house and into the church apartment and paid rent just to help the church make their mortgage payments!

Anyway, it was a wonderful service. The worship team was awesome! They opened with my favorite bluegrass medley...loved it! We packed the place out, 188 by far the largest crowd for a worship service since I have been in Iowa City. To think that we were averging in the 80's when I first came back in '05...wow we have come a long ways. Then to wrap up the service we had two people come forward to join our growing church family. God is good!

To top off the day we had a feast outside under a big tent. The only problem was the tent wasn't big enough, but surprisingly we had plenty of food and the weather was perfect. So what have I learned from all this? God is good! If you keep doing the right things, remain faithful, and keep doing whatever it takes to bring people to Jesus, God will empower you and bless you more then you can ever imagine!

Here are a few pictures from the day.