Dear Friends,
Please pray for our first CologneProject worship service set for May 3 at 11:00 am. After almost a full year of planning, praying, laughing and dreaming it is hard to believe the time has come. We are very thankful for the 3 other creative couples who have joined us on this journey. As we began planning this first service we had the opportunity to teach our German friends the expression "where the rubber meets the road". The differences in our backgrounds and expectations were uncovered as we went from discussing our liturgy to actually deciding on what elements we want included in our first service. We are very excited about this and
are getting encouraging confirmation from the very people we hope to reach. We have commissioned a communication designer to design a logo and corporate design for our printed material and web site. As he interviewed us to get a feeling for what we are all about he became quite animated and ended up giving us a price well below half of the market value for his work. The owner of our rental location is granting the rooms free-of-charge for this first service. At a recent party celebrating the new offices of our architect couple, we spoke with several different influential business people who were very interested in what we are doing and plan on coming to check it out. Please pray for the many remaining details that need to be covered before Sunday. Pray that God would be glorified this weekend and that people would be inspired to put their faith in Him and join us in giving Him glory.To begin with we are planning 4 monthly services to be held in a restored factory building. The space is normally used for various kinds of receptions, business or artistic events. We have decided that we want to do a soft start without advertising, simply inviting a few friends and neighbors. We need to practice our liturgical style and don't want to put ourselves under too much pressure. During this time, we will be working with our designer to get our web site functional and contacting musicians and artists to make guest appearances in our services. This Sunday we have the joy of having our friend Floria Nica, a concert guitarist, playing for us. If we feel that we are ready, we are thinking of planning a grand opening for September to which we will invite many more people including business leaders and dignitaries.
Please also be praying for our next house concert on May 16 with our colleague Durand Robinson who has a wonderful, folksy voice and musical style of story telling. We already have several neighbors and friends who said they want to come. Pray for good connections as we mix our church friends with our other friends.
Thank you for standing with us as we seek a breakthrough in Cologne.
Loving Greetings,
Jason and Sue
