Back-to School Bash = Awesome

It's hard for me to find the right words to describe last night's Back-to School Bash. The number of people who showed up, and the hard work of all the Freedom volunteers was outstanding! Here's a few things I think you'll want to know about:

518 backpacks were given away! Because of the donations from everyone at Freedom we had 550 backpacks full of school supplies and at the end of the evening there were only 32 left. I'm sure we will have folks come by the office this week to pick up some, and any that are left will be donated to one of the local schools. Seeing the expressions on the faces of the kids and watching them immediately open the backpacks to check out what was inside was awesome.

At Freedom we have the hardest working bunch of volunteers anywhere! Last night there were over 100 folks who did everything from set-up, greet, serve food, paint faces, make sno-cones, empty trash cans, and just generally show the Greer community that Jesus loves them. It was obvious to everyone there that each volunteer was there to serve and show compassion. If you helped in anyway with Back-to-School Bash, THANK YOU!! You are a hero to our community!

The impact of last night will go on for a long time. There were more backpacks given out last night than at last year's event. There will be more given out next year than were given away last night. The effect of events like Back-to School Bash are bigger than one night and bigger than a spike in worship attendance that may follow it. The effect of serving our community year after year will be bigger than our church. We want to build God's kingdom and serving our city is one way to do that.

One Olympic item: I stayed up late last night to watch the Men's 4x100 Freestyle Relay at the Olympics. I'm glad I did. That was one of the most exciting things I've seen in sports in long, long, time. If you didn't see it you should take ten minutes to check it out here.