October Highlights!

We did it…YOU did it. So many of you have faithfully prayed, served, donated, and supported us through this journey. And God has done what He promised - He built His church!

Leading up to launch…

In the days leading up to launch, we spent a lot of time praying, advertising, preparing, cleaning, and getting all the last-minute details in place. We invited some of our launch team, close friends, and supporters to join us the day before launch for a prayer breakfast. This was such a great morning spent reflecting over all that God has done so far and praying for His will to be done here at Local Church. We even had Justin and Tim, 2 of our pastors from our sending church, join us!

Prayer Breakfast

Launch Day!

To be honest, I don’t even know what to write to describe what launch day was like. It felt exciting, humbling, impossible, and natural all at the same time. In the weeks leading up to launch, we had 4 preview services. Each one helped us prepare for our Grand Opening. The only difference on launch day was heightened energy and so many more people! There were people here who we haven’t seen since high school or college. There were friends and family who we never expected to come. In total, there were 125 people including all of our volunteers and kids! All of our volunteers were welcoming and accommodating, our band sounded great, Michael’s message was clear and inspiring, and afterward, we all enjoyed delicious food from a taco truck! One of the coolest things was that people stayed and socialized with each other for over an hour after the service ended!

My biggest concern on launch day was that we would not have enough volunteers to pull off our kid’s program. Even the night before our launch, I wasn’t sure we were going to have enough volunteers. But like every other part of this journey, God provided exactly what we needed! We had 2 friends, Kylene and Ashton, come to town from Kansas City to help with our Little Locals. And then 2 volunteers from another Long Island church showed up specifically to help with kids! We ended up with even more help than we needed. We can’t take the credit for this at all - God provided a solid team and 18 kids were able to learn about Jesus on launch day!

The first few weeks.

Immediately after launch day, we felt a shift from church planters to pastors. It was strange how quickly everything went from preparing and planning, to implementing our plans and loving on the people who came to Local Church. We spent the week after launch reaching out to people who filled out our volunteer forms, and anyone who was looking for more information about Local Church. In just the first week, we gained 8 more volunteers to our team! This is a big answer to prayer and we are continuing to pray for more volunteers to come along.

Last week, we were able to have dinner with a friend who has been at Local Church every week. I went to Elementary-High School with this guy but we never kept in touch except for being friends on Facebook. He shared that he had not been involved in any church in many years and was feeling like maybe he needed to move away from Long Island. But after these first few weeks at Local Church, he feels God working in his life, and he wants to stick around to see what else God has for him here.

I wish I could share all the amazing stories of people who are coming and growing closer to Jesus! We are totally blown away by what God is doing and completely humbled that we get to play a part in it all.

Local Groups

We are pretty sure that most Long Islanders will make their first step towards God by attending a church on a Sunday. However, we wanted to be intentional to have opportunities outside of Sunday for people to get connected, make friends, and dig deeper into their faith. One group we started is called Starting Point. This group is a place to talk through questions, express doubts, and have a conversation about faith. The group started last week and 12 people joined! Will you join us in praying that through this group, people grow in their faith, find answers to their questions about God, and that some even start following Jesus for the first time?

Trunk or Treat!

The goal of our 1st Trunk-or-Treat was very simple - show love to our community. Our building is in an amazing location in the heart of our community and we have a HUGE parking lot that makes it easy to host events. So we provided everything that families needed to have a fun afternoon - thousands of pieces of candy, 2 bounce houses, snacks, pumpkins, games, 12 themed trunks, and a fun playlist of music. This all made for an incredible Trunk-or-Treat event! We were able to meet over 300 people who had never even heard of Local Church and share a fun afternoon with them.

A Huge Shout-out!

Starting this church was not just our accomplishment. We need to give a huge shout-out to our team of over 30 individuals, families, and churches that have committed to financially supporting Local Church every month through our first 3 years. We could not do any of this without the amazing people who have been behind us throughout this journey. God has worked through you to do so many incredible things already - and this is just the beginning! We appreciate all of the phone calls, texts, and emails that you have sent. Your support, prayers, and encouragement give us so much strength!

If you are interested in making a donation or want to learn more about supporting a new church, click the link below!

Here’s how you can pray 🙏

CLICK HERE to let us know you prayed!

Prayer requests:

- For leaders in each ministry area, especially Local Kids!

- Pray that families in the community who attended Trunk-or-Treat would be interested in joining us on Sundays.

- We are praying that our groups lead people into new friendships and deeper faith.

- As we anticipated, many who attend Local Church are totally new to church! Pray that they would set down roots in the knowledge of who Jesus is and God’s unfathomable love for them.

- Pray that we can reach families and individuals with disabilities and thereby serve one of the most unreached populations in the world!

Answered prayers:

- We want to be a church that plants more churches. We have already been able to give $15,000 to this end!

- We were able to support our global partners at Ray of Hope with a gift of $3300.

- We have people regularly attending Sunday services and small groups who do not follow Jesus.

- Our Music and Production team is growing and developing a great culture and chemistry!

- We know someone is praying for us because throughout the last month we have felt energized, encouraged, and full of peace.

Thank you for following us on our journey 🎉

We are looking forward to all that God has for us, for you, and for Long Island! ⛪️🌱