Monday, November 15, 2021

Church Plant Launch

November 7th, 2021 was the official first Sunday church service for Crosslight - Evangelikale Gemeinde Leopoldau, our church plant! After 9 years in Austria and 5 years up north living in our target area, we were thrilled to finally see all of our work and waiting come to fruition. 

Moving into a new house and launching a church plant are not recommended to take place on the same weekend. Needless to say, it was a very stressful week and weekend for us leading up to the church plant launch. Our move went smoothly but all of the work on house-related things took our attention away from the service prep. Nate was especially challenged to find enough time to write and prepare his sermon for Sunday.

Despite all of these challenges, God blessed us so immensely! Our church planting team really showed up and did so much prep work to transform the building we rented into a very welcoming space for people to worship in. The service went really smoothly and was a really blessed time together. We had way more people than we expected (32!) and it was fun to see all of those people show up and to worship together. After the service, we offered coffee and tea and then ordered pizza for everyone. This really encouraged everyone to stick around and enjoy community time together and get to know one another better.

Here are some photos and videos from our time that Sunday. Thank you again for all of your prayers for us. Please continue to pray as we prepare for our next service (we are worshipping bi-weekly for now) on November 21st and especially for God to lead the right people to join us. Thank you!

Our little assistants, helping with the set-up.


Set-up of the tech.

Empty rows ready!

Welcome table with coffee and tea.

Prayer time before the service.

Visitors gathering before the service.

Our banner by the street.

Social time before the service.


Nate preaching his sermon.


Reinhold, one of our elders, explaining our prayer time and why we pray together.

Thanking the building owner for allowing us to worship.

Worship time

Some video from Nate's sermon

A snippet of one of the songs