The Vegas Project

This website was designed to get a lot of people praying for us as we prepared to launch Verve, and it’s worked. And we are SO thankful to all of you who have prayed for us. We believe the good things that have happened are because God is responding to your prayers. However, with the church up and running, and hundreds of new people to minister to, not to mention us now having another website, and a Facebook page, and a blog to keep updating, we have not been giving this site enough attention, as you’ve seen through the repeating prayer requests. So we have decided that now that we’ve launched, this website has served it’s purpose, and today will be the last new prayer request. But we want to ask you to please keep praying for us. We need it! And you can use some of our other sites to initiate things to pray for. For instance, you can use Vince’s blog, our Facebook page, our website, our podcast, or subscribe to our Twitter feed. So thank you so much for praying, and please continue to pray for us. Hopefully sometime we’ll see you in Las Vegas, and vivalaverve!

There’s a big announcement coming tomorrow on this site, so make sure to check it out. In the meantime, please pray for the staff of Verve. Starting a new church is always stressful, as is doing a building campaign, and the Verve staff just did both, at the same time. Pray that they have God’s strength, peace, and joy.

We did a burst of advertising for the first few weeks of our launch but because of limited finances, we won’t be able to continue advertising Verve. It’s very easy for a new church to be quickly forgotten, so please pray that doesn’t happen for us. Please pray that personal invitations and word of mouth keep new people coming in continually.

Most of our staff had to raise their own financial support, and for some it’s been a struggle, especially in this difficult economy. Please pray that God provides and that everyone becomes, and stays, fully supported.

So far our services have been going great. God has given us people (to be in the band, run sound/lights, etc.) and we’ve been doing a good job, and new people are definitely engaging and have very positive things to say. Please pray that our services continue to glorify God and speak to people, helping them to take critical next steps in their spiritual journeys.

We ended up with about 50 adults committed to Verve before we launched, and most of those people are now working really hard to get this thing going. Some have three or four or five volunteer roles. Some are serving in Children’s Ministry both services on Sunday mornings. Obviously none of that is ideal, and we’ll work our way out of it as quickly as we can. But for now, please pray that God gives strength and joy in serving to everyone on our Launch Team.

When a new church launches there is lots of excitement, but not a lot of money. New people, especially new non-Christian people like we’re reaching, don’t tithe. In fact, most don’t give at all for quite awhile. And so please pray that our finances stay strong. Pray that all of our individual and church financial supporters from around the country continue to give, and pray that God leads the people attending Verve towards generosity.

God is giving us lots of new people. Now we have to help them see why they need to keep coming back, and why they need Jesus. And we need to get them plugged in so they have relationships and a responsibility, which will help them stay. So please pray that we’re faithful with these new people God is trusting to us.

Thanks to all of you who have been praying. It’s working! God is doing great things here in the heart of Sin City. We had 277 our first week and 257 our second week. (And we’re not counting anyone from out-of-town.) We had about 60 on our Launch Team, so that means about 200 new people have joined us. And you should hear their stories! Tons of people who were far from God and had given up on church, but are coming and loving it, and coming back, and bringing friends. And your prayers have been absolutely critical in all of that happening – so thank you!!