The past few weeks we have seen incredible and continual evidences of God’s grace at Mars Hill Church. We have made budget the past month, which is amazing considering the economic climate we are in and the fact that many of our people are young in both age and faith. We have seen our attendance roll over eight thousand people a week worshiping Jesus, and they are getting plugged faster than ever into membership and Community Groups to go deeper with Christ. We have received countless kind and supportive emails from friends around the world; some have been in response to Time magazine’s article naming us among those contributing to New Calvinism as the third idea changing the world today, and others to the debate on ABC Nightline we hosted and I had the great joy of participating in with my dear sister Annie Lobert, who was the bravest person on the stage by a long shot.
In addition, this Sunday we are rolling out a comprehensive plan to help Mars Hill get to 50,000 people a Sunday and help our Acts 29 Church Planting Network grow to 250,000 people in the next decade. Included in the plan is a big announcement this Sunday, a forthcoming school, and in the near future we’ll also announce the expansion of Mars Hill campuses out of state, with the intention of eventually going global.
Furthermore, our online presence has picked up significantly, setting record highs nearly every day for a few weeks. The past few sermons on men and suffering from 1 Peter have pushed us to #2 on iTunes for audio and #23 for video under the Religion and Spirituality section of the podcasts, marking the first time we’ve climbed past Oprah on the charts. For the tech-curious among us, here are our stats from Monday:
18,245 Visits
12,885 Absolute Unique Visitors
66,370 Pageviews
Top ten pages
1. /index.html
2. /media/trial/marriage-and-men
3. /media/sermons
4. /media/trial/suffering-to-bless
5. /media/trial
6. /locations_and_services
7. /news_and_events
8. /about/index.html
9. /newhere
10. /media
Top referring sites
1. facebook.com – 1,365
2. blog.marshill.com – 558
3. twitter.com – 420
4. google.com – 253
5. marshill.onthecity.org – 246
So, to those who pray for us, we are grateful. Please continue in prayer for us, as we are specifically praying for ten thousand on Easter and thirteen thousand over Easter weekend, including Good Friday. Jesus is alive and we are running as fast as we can to keep up with him, smiling every step of the race. We honestly take no credit for the grace we are enjoying but we do rejoice in it and thank God for it as we are humbled and overjoyed by it.
