CATT EASTER UPDATE!

Thanks to an amazing team, and a MIGHTY God, this week we're celebrating a GREAT First Easter Experience at CATT. Before the details, I'd like to give a little shout out to my faithful group of friends who have obliged my personal request to commit to praying for Church at the Triangle daily. Yes...EVERY DAY! My goal was to find 5 by the end of March, and it happened! Between the 4 of us on staff, we now have at least 30 people praying for us everyday. And we all feel it! If you're interested in partnering with us in this way, please email me so I can send you personal prayer requests and more frequent updates.

Enough commercials...

As I mentioned in a previous post, we held our first 2 "first look experiences" in a coffee shop called the Royal Bean. This venue was awesome and worked out perfect for those two weekends...however we were still looking for a more permanent spot to meet where we could have more flexibility and a bigger space. It just so happens that in the same small strip mall where the coffee shop is, there is an event center where wedding receptions and banquets are held. Lee met with the landlord of the mall, who gave us a "close to nothing" deal to use the room every Saturday night (for setup) and for The Experience (our service) on Sunday morning. The venue is stinkin' plush and we were able to transform it into the hippest church in town! Here's sort of a layout in pictures of what our venue looks like. We're praying that God would give us the entire mall...because upfit is DONE if we we're able to get our hands on it.


Here is the hallway from the Royal Bean Coffee Shop (the building at furthest end of the hallway) that we're using as our entrance and cafe...we've built a great relationship with the coffee shop and they love having us there!

Behind where I was standing in the picture above is this area called the rotunda. Which has become our foyer area. Keep in mind, there are businesses all along the hallway, but they're all closed on Sundays which is obviously very convenient!


Here's a closer picture of the entrance of where we actually meet for church:


Inside we're using two rooms. One as our main "worship center" and one for Triangle Kids.

Here's the Worship Center:




Here's our Children's Ministry (Triangle Kids) area:





During the Experience we had one of our volunteers (an artist) paint a picture of her representation of Easter:




Lee talked about how each one of us MATTERS to God:




(DANG Lee! Nice threads, bro...especially the shirt! I'm definitely coming back to CATT next week!)

At the end of the Experience, we were given a chance to pin our names to the cross as a way to remind ourselves that Jesus paid our debt because we matter to Him!



After the Experience, we invited everyone to join us in the rotunda area where we let the kids run around looking for over 200 easter eggs...believe me...it was plenty of eggs for 4 kids!! The eggs were filled with candy and great gifts like build-a-bear, Toys R Us, and Cold Stone Ice Cream Gift Certificates. As you can imagine...my boy ESPECIALLY was IN HEAVEN!









A couple decisions were made for Christ and we had some awesome unbelievers check us out this weekend. We've definitely set the bar for weekends to come. We'll continue our "First Look" Experiences every weekend from here on out until we launch in August. We'll start marketing and advertising in a few months but as for now, we are so thankful for the people God has given us already! We have some amazingly talented people on our team...it's been so awesome to watch God just lay the foundation for great things to come!!

Thanks again to all who prayed for us this weekend!