By Darin Avery

I realize it’s a Tuesday, but January 21st seven years ago was a Sunday–and an important one at that!

It was snowing to beat the band as five families prepared to launch weekly worship services for a new church in the Perry community. We’d had a couple of practice runs at setting up our sound equipment in Perry school district’s Manchester West Building in the Fall of 2006, which greatly reduced our stress (at least from a technical standpoint) that snowy morning. However, we weren’t without a little anxiety over other more important concerns, namely the question, “Will anybody besides us show up in this mess?” Sure enough, ninety plus people braved the elements and gathered that morning to worship God through the preaching of the gospel, the singing of Jesus’ praise, and earnest prayer for this brand-new extension of Christ’s body.

A single blog post is a woefully inadequate place for sharing all the ways God has blessed my life since that day. Sure, He has blessed me in ways not directly-linked to Bridge Church: I married Deborah Ricks a month after that snowy Sunday (on an equally bad weather day in Fairfield, OH); our son Landon was born almost two years after than in December 2008 (also amid snowfall), our daughter Emmaline was born three Aprils after that in 2011, and now next month we expect the arrival of our second son (name yet to be determined). But while these most significant blessings in my life may not be directly-linked with Bridge Church, each of them has been celebrated in the company of our Bridge Church family, and for that I am immensely and intensely thankful.

The Lord continues to answer the prayers of that Sunday morning seven years ago. The tree that is Bridge Church continues to root itself in the unchanging gospel of the One who saves even while continuing to root herself in both the hearts of those who are part of this family and in the soil of the larger Perry, Madison, and Painesville Township communities. As with any tree, Bridge Church has weathered some storms. Some branches have been taken away over the years but others have grown and continue to produce fruit for the kingdom of God and the glory of Christ.

As important as it may be to its members, no church is ever more important to its members than it is to its Head, Jesus Christ. He is the one whose blood saves and Spirit sustains every church big, small, new or old. As much as I love Bridge Church, I can never love her as much as Jesus. But, at the same time, my love for Jesus can never be fully expressed apart from a consecrated family of believers with whom to share the joys of life, the most important of which is the joy of knowing Him.

I will always be thankful to the heavenly Father for the Bridge Church family of which me, my wife, and children get to be part, and for all the ways that I get to see Jesus in, taste Jesus through, and love Jesus among my brothers and sisters here.

May God add blessings all the more

To all these that have come before.

May God add faithfulness and grace

And help us still to seek His face.