The press has been pretty good to Waterfront since we began only 3 months ago. First, we had some very generous articles and radio interviews come out right around the time we launched Waterfront in October. Soon after, the Chicago Tribune did a pretty lengthy article on us. Then the Associated Press came out and wrote an article about Waterfront, which showed up in every news outlet from USA Today and The Chicago Sun-Times to the Amarillo Globe News in Amarillo, TX (my hometown). That helped spread Waterfront's story nationally. And then THIS morning, 'NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams' came out with a camera to do a story on us for their national evening news show (Brian Williams didn't personally come out of course, but one of their correspondants from New York did).
It's been a wild experience with the media attention we've received. Manya Brachear, the Chicago Trib writer who did the story on us has interviewed the Dalai Lama for goodness sakes . . . and she wrote a story on us. The NBC correspondant who talked with us today, Jeff Rossen, was leaving our interview this afternoon to go do an interview with Governor Rod Blogojevich before covering his impeachment trials tomorrow for MSNBC. It's nuts! And I'm very, very grateful. I think it's a testament to Waterfont's (and Jim's) vision that so many people have wanted to hear this story told.
But it's happened so fast, and we're SOOOOO young as a church, that I honestly sometimes feel alittle guilty about the attention. I think: "This is great, but we've only been here a few months. We're still trying to figure all this financial stuff out ourselves, and trying to get to know our people, and we only have 100+ people . . ." But maybe that's OK. I know the media attention we're receiving is short-lived, our 15-minutes of fame (if you want to call it that) will dry up soon enough. But it's been a good reminder that what we're doing really can show Jesus' love in a unique way. At the very least it's free marketing to the people in our community we're trying to reach, and hopefully we're giving some people a new way to think about church and helping break the ice for a few people whose faith has grown cold.
Hey that's awesome David!
Posted by: AnnaLisa | January 25, 2009 at 05:10 PM