The First 100 Days

There has been much in the news for the last couple of days concerning President Obama's first 100 days in office. It seems to me that 100 days is a short amount of time to fix just about any problem, especially some of the issues in our country right now (economy, health care, Iraq, and now swine flu!).

As I kept hearing about the 100 day mark, I thought back to the first 100 days of Freedom Fellowship. On September 1, 2004 I officially began my new duties as pastor of this new church. My last official day on the job as Youth pastor at Fairview Baptist Church was the last day of August.

Here's some of the things I remember our team getting accomplished in the first 100 days:

- Got a new cell phone. That happened in the first week.

- Got a computer.

- Got really nervous and scared. There were several mornings I woke up and thought, "I don't know what to do next."

- Had weekly meetings to pray about the future. This helped a good bit with the fear and nervousness.

- Put together our first budget. I remember sitting with our team around the Wilson's dining room table trying to figure what we would need to spend money in the next 12-18 months. It was like throwing darts at a dart board on the side of a moving truck. We had no clue what was actually needed, so we just did the best we could and hoped we would hit the bulls eye.

- Secured the first place we would meet to begin having "practice" worship services.

- Began planning those first services.

- Borrowed and cleaned up our first sets of preschool and children's ministry equipment.

- Started putting together a band.

- Had lots of breakfast, lunch, dinner meetings with people who were interested in what we were doing.

- Met with lots of local pastors begging them for money.

- Asked lots of questions to people wiser than me. By the way, they weren't hard for me to find.

- Heard the question, "Where are y'all gonna build your church?" more times than I care to remember.

That's just a partial list of some of the more important things, and I know there are tons of things I have forgotten about. The lesson that I'm learning over and over is that at the end of the first 100 days Freedom Fellowship was far from a finished masterpiece, and it is still that way today. In fact, it will always be that way. I always want us to be changing, learning, growing, and becoming the church God wants us to be. 100 days isn't a lot of time, but my prayer is that 100 days from now we will be closer to God's plan for us than we are today!