His Story, His Glory. Look what God has done!

God WE praise you today for ALL you've done:

  1. June 2007, the Bennett’s finish their staff position at a church in Battle Creek, MI and begin officially planting Overflow Church. Within the first few weeks there is no money for bills and God miraculously provides a check in the mail the same week. God has always provided and Overflow has never missed a bill.

  2. Fall 2007, the Overflow office/lounge opens in Orchards Mall and the first Bible study is held in the mall community center with 6 people . To help us start, the mall donates the use of the community center. Partnership with Berrien Homes begins with a Halloween outreach event that draws more than 700 people to Orchards Mall. God provides unique space for the church to begin and negotiations are underway with Celebration Cinema for future worship services.

  3. Winter 2007, Brian and Cindy are raising support every Sunday morning. In this first year alone they speak in more than 30 churches and God uses this intense season to provide everything from computers, to finances, to a wood floor for the office, and connections to people in the community—including traveling 4 hours to Croswell (east side of the state) to learn about the Suttons who, at that time were looking for a church.

  4. Winter 2008, the Overflow launch team meets for the first time with 40 adults in attendance and an excitement about a vision for the future. The time line for starting worship celebrations moves up six months and preview services begin in January of 2008. God has clearly gone ahead of the team and prepared the way for the start of Overflow!

  5. March 16, 2008 the first public worship celebration is held and Overflow Church kicks off! The month leading into worship, a bus is donated to the church, a driver becomes a part of launch team, and another person donates the paint job!

  6. Summer 2008, Overflow’s first intern arrives from Bethany Bible College in Canada, along with a few mission teams, to serve. Overflow is able to partner in developing new leaders and provide mission teams with a place to serve-- a blessing to our community. As of summer 2010, we will have had 20 teams on site and 8 interns.

  7. Fall/Winter 2008-09, a time of growth as a church and dealing with the harsh realities of the economy at the same time. Leadership slashes 1/3 of the budget around Christmas and miraculously God blesses the decisions by the church finishing the year in the black and with money to put towards the Overflow Coffee Café.

  8. Fall 2009, the Overflow Coffee Café is put into Orchards Mall as an outreach and is fully paid for by donations from supporters. The Café is blessed with a great volunteer team and the outreach begins in full force.

  9. From day one, 6 families have relocated to the Benton Harbor/St. Joseph area to help with Overflow. For almost 2 years now, Carolyn O’Connor, has faithfully traveled from Holland to serve as administrative assistant for Brian and the church.

  10. Winter 2009, the former Sears facility adjacent to Orchards Mall is donated completely free of charge to the church along with 10.5 acres of land. This miraculous donation of 130,000 square feet of space provides the church with the possibility of a future home and a story to celebrate for years to come!

posted by Brian @ 9:50 PM, ,