Friends and Families of The Crossing Church,

We are making a significant change to our worship services and youth ministry times on February 12th, 2012. This kind of major decision has been preceded with much prayer and discussion...And we believe the following changes will allow us to create the margin necessary for long-term, effective ministry and strengthening of spiritual health for the people that God has allowed us to serve!

Here are the 5 core reasons we are moving to all Sunday services:

1) We are called to the well-being of our families.

By providing fewer times throughout a week to obligate families traveling out to the church, we allow for time that is much better spent caring for and nurturing our children, which brings greater glory to God in the long-term. We believe that - second to your relationship with your Father in Heaven - is your ministry to your family!

2) We are committed to nurture strong relationships through LifeGroups.

By creating "space" for LifeGroups that occur throughout the week, we allow for communities where people "do life" together, and find godly friendships that help them become stronger in Christ. Our belief is that while the worship service offers growth in the Word of God - deeper growth and maturity occurs in community, where the Word of God is lived out! Moving to Sundays gives room throughout a given week not only to attend LifeGroup, but to grow and serve together with people who are committed to one another!

3) We care about the pace and health of our committed volunteers.

Our new times will allow for a more manageable volunteer culture. It is very easy to get over-committed serving in a church, and churches are guilty of burning out those who genuinely desire to invest in the God's Kingdom, but at an unhealthy pace. By condensing services down to one day, we allow our amazing volunteers the ability to serve with excellence and not become overworked and overtired, forsaking their health and/or family.

4) We believe in ensuring the well-being of our dedicated staff.

We regularly get feedback on how amazing our staff is, and it's true! So it is our desire to make sure that our staff is also ministering at a healthy pace and allowed to do with excellence what God has called them to do. So, we believe this change will result in a healthier and productive staff.

5) We are accountable to give God our best by doing fewer things with excellence rather than many things with mediocrity.

Don't misunderstand this to mean "work fewer hours". It really means to be intentional about choosing the things that we can do with excellence instead of doing lots of things that are mediocre and draining of the resources God has entrusted us with. We desire excellence, which ultimately means that we can't do everything - we have to be selective about the "key" things God has asked us to do.