I’m really excited for you all to meet Allan McCullough. This past Sunday was Allan’s first official day as a member of The Gathering’s staff team. I know many of you have met Allan in the past; he interned with us this summer and has stayed pretty involved in all things Gathering since then. But he became an official part of our team on Sunday through MBC’s Future Leader’s Program.

Allan is going to be serving as the Director of Gathering703. I keep telling him what an amazing team he’s serving with at Mason and NoVa. I really think God is going to use all of you to take The Gathering to a whole new level at Mason. We’ve always said our goal is to be student led, volunteer coached and staff guided. 703 has an amazing student leadership team and a very well developed coaching structure. Hopefully, adding Allan into the mix will over there will better enable us to take on the staff guided role.

It’s always such a blessing to our little team when God creates a way for us to bring another person on staff. When it’s a person of Allan’s character, passion and talent, that’s even more true! This coming year is going to be amazing as we follow God into the fall. I’m really glad Allan is going to be along for the ride!

I’m one of those people who leaves DC for the 4th of July. It always makes me laugh a little bit – here I am, living in the nation’s capital and I leave over the most patriotic weekend of the year. Very interesting – it would seem like a good place to stay and celebrate the holiday. But I’m weird, I guess.

What about you? What are you plans for the 4th? I kind of want to see who has the most original plans for the weekend, so comment away…