This past weekend we hit couple of cities on our “Target City” list for possible church plant locations. Our first stop was in Valparaiso, Indiana (map). It was a cute little city with a nice downtown but after driving through it for 15 minutes we decided it probably wouldn’t work for what we were looking for. We have a very specific target demographic for a city in establishing this new church. A church planter told me that a city has got to reflect the style and heart of the planter (a conservative southern pastor wouldn’t do well in a city like Portland, Oregon for example). I’ll talk more about our specific goals for a target city in future posts.

Next on our list was a nearby city called Merrillville (map). This was starting to look a little more like what we were looking for although we hadn’t spent a lot of time researching it online. After driving through it we put it up a little higher on our list of cities to research. I’m not going to make any firm decision about whether or not I like a city until I’ve tried a coffee from their coffee house – very important!

Finishing up our trip we visited a church in Granger, Indiana that I have watched closely for a while now called Granger Community Church. These guys have redefined what is possible for what a church can be like in the midwest. They have raised the bar in the area of media and message and are one of the closest examples to the kind of church we will be planting as far as style and geographical location.

Their Children’s Ministry was awesome! Chloe & Emily are still talking about it. After we checked them in (which was extremely easy for a first-time visitor registering two kids) we were personally walked over to their “launch area.”

They call it a launch area because they get into a slide and slide down into their classroom in the level below us! We were able to watch them come out of the slide on a television monitor that was mounted above the slide (a nice touch for a concerned parent).

The service was amazing and exceeded my expectations. It is much cooler live than watching it online. You can see the actual service we experienced while it is live on their site this week by going to www.gccwired.com and clicking on their link “Watch last week’s service.” The message we heard by Pastor Mark Beeson was part of the Heroes series. It’s neat how God works things out because it spoke specifically to several things that we have been thinking and praying about recently. If you’re ever in the South Bend area on a weekend you simply have to allow some time to visit this amazing Church that is touching thousands of lives. They have 5 services each weekend to choose from – 2 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.

So that was our first stop in our TCI (Target City Investigation). We’re looking at our calendar to set a date for our next weekend TCI and will be posting more details about that when we know. As a side note – a special thanks to everyone in 29:11 who pitched in and bought us the GPS unit. You have no idea how easy that made things this weekend and how much we used it! Thank you!