Gilbert Thurston

Random Thoughts About Life, Ministry and Whatever Else Happens to be on my Mind

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Archives for October 2007

Pace of Life

October 30, 2007 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

The Bible says there is a time and a season for everything. Right now I’m personally going through a very busy time that has me literally working around the clock. That takes a toll on your body, relationships, and many other areas of life. I’ve been hearing God speaking through various people the past week or two about making sure to keep an appropriate pace…remember life is a marathon, not a sprint…so I’m looking forward to getting the building all wrapped up and slowing down for a short period to get my batteries recharged. So how about you…are you going too fast, too hard, or not hard enough? That’s something only you and God know, but whatever He reveals, be sure to listen to His promptings and act accordingly.

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World Class Inviters

October 29, 2007 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

For years I was very passionate about every person getting out into the community and sharing their faith. I still beleive we all need to know how to share the Gospel in a simple and compelling way, but I’ve realized that not everyone is as bold or even as good of a communicator as I am. So one of the things I stress all the time is we must become “World Class Inviters”. That’s one of the core values we have at United. It’s still your responsibility to make sure people hear the good news, so why not you and I team up to make this happen. What that simply means is…you invite them and our team will share the gospel in a relevant and compelling way. My friend Mark Batterson put it this way today in his blog…

Last year, 80% of NCCers invited 5+ friends. I honestly feel like people who aren’t inviting friends aren’t using NCC the way it was designed to be used. We’re always trying to remind NCCers that church is a tag-team sport.When an NCCer walks into church they tag our worship team, creative team, and teaching team and say “go for it.” And we do our level best to create an experience every weekend where people can connect with God and grow in faith. When NCCers walk out, we tag them and say “now you go for it.” They have a unique network of friends they can invite to church! Then they come back and tag us and say “go for it.”

So my challenge to you is “go for it!”  What a wonderful oppotunity we have this week with the opening of a brand new facility and the launch of our “Extreme Makeover:You Edition” series.  Remember to reach our God-sized goal of 50 first time professions of faith during these 5 weeks, we will probably need at least 100-150 guests coming into our midst.  That means anywhere from 400-600 personal invites will need to be made.  Don’t say to yourself…”oh someone else will do it”…no you “go for it” and watch as God uses you to accomplish his purposes here on the earth!

If you need additional invite cards this week, contact the church office or click the “Send an E-vite” link to the left of this blog post and send invites out automatically to your family and friends.  What are you waiting on…GO FOR IT!!!

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Inside this week’s Experience

October 28, 2007 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • The Saturday night Experience was awesome! Our crowd was about normal size, although made up of a lot of people not normally there.
  • The highlight was that 5 people made a first time commitment to Jesus and many more made a commitment to live with their whole hearts and lives for Christ!
  • The band once again knocked it out of the park with the music…Gayle did an awesome job leading Unwritten and we had one of our newer attendees at United (Jason) fill in for a few songs on drums.
  • Once again the opener video got big laughs and the outtakes video which was a part of the message will be something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.
  • Many people commented how much they liked being able to come to church on a Saturday night and wondered if we could do it all the time. The answer is yes and no. Eventually the Saturday night Experience will take place once we have two Sunday morning Experiences packed out. If all goes according to plan, that could be sooner than we think!
  • After the Experience we had a little boy decide to streak through the gym…nothing like a streaker to close out 40+ years in that building!

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Saturday Experience and more…

October 26, 2007 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Wow hard to believe another week has flown by…here’s a quick mind dump.

  • I’m so excited about the special Saturday night Experience coming up.  A lot of people are excited as well and we should have a lot of people from other churches coming that want to check out what we’re doing.
  • The workers will finish up the gym floor today and then it takes a week to cure…so it looks like we’ll definetely be ready for November 4th!!!
  • We got some national recognition this week from one of Christianity’s top bloggers about our giant iPod.  Since Wednesday, we’ve gotten hundreds of hits from all around the world, chekcing out the pics and embarassingly enough for me…my dancing.
  • I’m continuing to pray hard for our Extreme Makeover:You Ediiton series which will start November 4th.  In addition to all of your invites, we are also sending out a 5000 piece mailer to the community and we are going door to door with 1000 batteries (for smoke detectors) and invite cards as well.   Again our goal is 50 first time professions of faith.
  • We’ve been working hard getting ready these past few months, so now we’re going to get to do some fun stuff the next few weeks…tonight we’re going to the Hillsong United Concert up at Hershey…next week, is two more concerts…yeah!!!
  • If you haven’t yet signed up for an account on the site, do so.  There are so many other cool things that you can currently do and many more that will be added.
  • I’m still jacked up about Dave Draper’s talk on Wednesday night…best thing I’ve heard in a long while!

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Methods and Traditions

October 25, 2007 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Just getting home from working over at the new building, but I can’t sleep anyway…I’m pumped up! Tonight during Men’s group, our special guest speaker was Dave Draper from Winebrenner Seminary.

In a nutshell Dave encouraged us to do something I first heard Bill Hybels say many years ago…Be culturally relevant while remaining doctrinally pure. In other words, the Gospel message never changes, but the methods in which we present it must.

Dave shared a great story of how when he was a boy his dad left him plow the fields with a small tractor that plowed about a 2 ft. swath at a time. He then shared that one of his friends out at the seminary owns a bean farm and has allowed Dave to work the tractor. The difference…this tractor is self guided by a GPS system and every 6 inches it recalculates the ground to measure how much fertilizer and seed is needed…and oh yeah…it plows and plants 40 ft. at a time.

Dave reminded us that some things never change, like that seed needs to be put in the ground and then later harvested, but that obviously the methods used today are more effective than when he was a boy.

The same is true in the church…Dave reminded us that many times we want people to come to Christ in the same manner in which we did, but that sometimes that’s just not the best way any more. It doesn’t mean that it was wrong, it’s just that there are more effecitive ways now. And oh yeah as a side note…the things we’re doing today that are making United so effective, won’t be in 5 years, or in some cases, even a year from now.

As Dave spoke I couldn’t help but be reminded of Jesus words in Mark 7:8…”You have forgotten the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” My prayer is that I would never become more in love with a method or tradition than I am with helping people come into a relationship with Christ and it’s my prayer that you’d feel the same.

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