Archives for October 2008

Random Thoughts on a Thursday

October 30, 2008 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

I continue to be excited about this weekend…don’t forget to be inviting like crazy.

I know I say that every weekend, but this weekend I’ll be sharing the last message in the Live Like You Were Dying series and the topic will about how and why to live with eternity in mind.

Again the absolute worst thing that will happen is someone will tell you no.

Remember that’s not a rejection of you, it’s a rejection of attending church.

This weekend we can team up to make an eternal difference…I know myself and the team will be ready to do our part…now you just need to do your part.

Speaking of excited…the next series which we’re calling Outbreak should be phenominal!

Many of you are concerend with the state of the economy and more specifically, your own finances, so we’re going to take 3 weeks to look at what God has to say about it.

On Tuesday Earl was out of town and asked me to drop by the hospital to see someone since our visitation pastor Vernon Edward was also out of town.

When I first got to the guys room he was still in Physical Therapy, so I figured I should probably register with the hosptial chaplains office since it’s been 2 years that I’ve been in town and had never done that.

It was hysterical…the guy grilled me…he was seriously considering not giving me a name badge.

What should have taken about 5 minutes turned into a 20 minute ordeal…with at least 2 of those minutes consisting of him sighing heavily pondering what he should do with me.

Ultimately I walked out with a badge and a lecture on good hospital visitation practices and a request to make sure Earl knows all these things…mmmm, think someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Our final small group lesson for Live Like You Were Dying was on Tuesday night…thought it was the best of all of them.

Hopefully your group is like ours and will take a week to celebrate all that God did in your group over this 4 week study.

Yesterday was a productive day because I could barely walk.

About 3-4 times per year I get a build-up of Uric Acid in one or both of my knees, which means for about 24 hours it’s in severe pain with swelling enough that it makes it hard to walk.

I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to help out with Trunk or Treat last night for the kids.

Dianna and her team do such a great job and are always offering to help us when we need childcare options, so I like to help out when I can.

Speaking of…she’s always looking for more volunteers. At the most you’ll probably be called on once per month if even that. She needs more help on both Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. Here’s her e-mail you can let her know of your interest. dianna@mycfcog.org

Today is final preparations for the weekend! Can’t wait.

Other Weekend Thoughts

October 27, 2008 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Literally if I don’t start managing my weekends better, I’m really only going to have 30 days left to live.

As I’ve shared before I have an overactive adrenal gland which makes the highs of adrenaline higher than most, but also the crashes afterwards even harder.

Today I’m really feeling it from a weekend worth of ups and downs.

Friday for the second week in a row, Earl and I were scheduled to go skydiving.

We were stopped the previous Friday because of bad weather and this Friday was no different, except that 3 times they called us to come out because the weather had cleared, only to 3 times be sent home disappointed.

Each time my body had started producing the adrenaline only to have it dissipate…which wears me out.

Friday night Lisa went to CAYA by herself so I could recover.

In fact here’s how bad it was…Friday afternoon after the last aborted attempt to jump, we went to Curcuit City to pick up 4 new “toys”…as of right now, all 4 are still sitting in their boxes untouched.

Saturday myself and 14 other leaders from the church headed up to Lancaster County Bible Church for a conference.

I love LCBC…I spoke there when I worked for Purpose Driven and have taken groups of people up for tours on a few other occasions.

Like us, they are in the middle of a corn field, only difference is that instead of 800 people on a weekend, they are drawing over 8000.

On the way up we stopped off at TJ Rockwell’s in Elizabethtown, PA for a great lunch…if you’re ever in that area stop by, the food was excellent!

The conference was good for two reasons:

First, it was nice spending the entire day with so many people from the church.
Second, we were able to attend LCBC’s normal Saturday evening service. It’s always nice to be able to occasionally worship and take everything in without having to be the one speaking or watching to make sure everything is running smoothly.

On the way home, everyone was very excited…it was well worth the time and money!

Yesterday was jammed full of stuff…I of course spoke twice at United, which really gets me on my adrenaline swings.

Then we had our staff luncheon over at the Mill’s house…I went home for a little bit and quickly DVR’d my way through the Redskins win over Detroit (that may not have caused an adrenaline rush, but it certainly didn’t help my stress levels.)…

…then back to the church to set-up for the annual congregational meeting, followed by a brief appearance at Kim Mill’s surprise 50th birthday party in the multi-purpose room…

…and then back into the sanctuary for the meeting.

All in all another busy weekend that I’m feeling the effects of here today.

But of course I wouldn’t change a thing…loving life…living like I am dying!

It’s 3:30am do you know where your pastor’s at…

October 23, 2008 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

…if you’re guessing still at church, you’d be right. We’re working on installing some lighting in the sanctuary and as usual this is turning into an all-night project. Have a few moments free while Andy is doing stuff only Andy can do. Got caught up on all the sports I missed tonight, some e-mails and so thought I’d quickly blog. This reminds me of last year this time when we did this kind of thing almost every night for about 6 months getting ready to move into the building…wow I had forgotten how much these nights really stink…not sure how we did for months on end. Ummm…think I hear him coming…act busy!

The Greatest Words Ever Spoken

October 22, 2008 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Towards the end of 1999, I felt God leading me to read the Bible from cover to cover in only 1 month’s time. Now up to that point I had usually read it at least cover to cover each year and sometimes twice, but this was going to be a huge undertaking. In January of 2000 that’s exactly what I did…one of the highlights for me was being able to so quickly read the words of Jesus and see how they all fit together. In other words I could see how things in John chapter 1 and John chapter 21 fit together because I read the entire Gospel in 1 day.

I bring all this up because up until now that was the only time I’ve ever had an experience like that and obviously it’s not easy to pull off on a consistent basis. But last month I was asked by WaterBrook Publishers (a division of Random House) to review another book for them. The book they sent, The Greatest Words Ever Spoken will allow both you and me to experience something similar to what I did back in 2000.

In essence what author Steven Scott has done is take every word that Jesus speaks in the Bible and categorized them by topic. Want to read in one sitting every word Jesus ever spoke about heaven…turn to page 143 and start reading. How about how to handle anger…there’s every word on page 474. Now yes you could do this same thing with a good concordance and the willingness to look up every scripture, but what I’ve found in using this book for a week now is that not having to stop to look stuff up really benefits you in keeping the flow of what Jesus said going.

In total the book is broken up into 9 sections, with over 200 topics covering over 1900 statements that Jesus made. In addition Steven Scott has written introductory comments to each of the 9 sections that helps you prepare your mind for the topics that are about to be covered.

With Christmas coming, this would make an excellent gift for you to ask for or give. Highly recommended!

Other Weekend Thoughts

October 20, 2008 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

What a busy…but great weekend!

Friday night we had a bunch of the CAYA group over for games and a movie.

Saturday morning at 5am I got up to head over to the church to pick-up stuff for Applefest in downtown C’burg.

By a little after 6 we were packed up and ready to head downtown to set-up.

As you can see from the pic, our booth went from blue tent to just beyond the far blue tent.

We had games, balloons, music, videos, a place for people to drop off prayer requests, sign-up for free giveaways, pick up info about the church and mostly importantly…FREE popcorn.

We had specifically mentioned that we need power for our booth and were told it wouldn’t be a problem.

As were setting up, in the bitter cold I might add, the power kept blowing.

The city utility workers had to come to help us…there response was they were not equipped to handle any more juice than required to handle the Christmas tree lights each year.

I said, “Oh ok, no problem.”

If you believe that, you don’t know me very well.

No, I politely (I was told this by one of our volunteers) told them that our booth depended on power, we told it wouldn’t be a problem and that we needed to come up with a solution.

They mentioned that on the other side of the street was a more powerful transformer that could handle the load, so we ended up running an extension cord all the way across and taping it down with duct-tape.

Everything powered up then and we were on our way!

Throughout the day we handed out over 800 pieces of information about the church…some people even showed up yesterday to church after having met us!

We handed out more bags of popcorn in those 8 1/2 hours than we did in 8 total Experiences for the God at the Box Office series.

A couple of funny things happened….

We had cup stacking as one of the games people could play.
A young kid named David saw it and is really good at it…he stopped by and started showing his stuff.
It was drawing big crowds to our booth so we encouraged him to keep going…and he did…for 3 hours!
I joked to Brian Miller that we might have to pay him for his services.
By the way, I was the cup stacking champion amongst our people.
Not that I’m competitive or anything…just wanted to get that out there in case you were sitting there at your computer wondering, “Hmmm…who was the best cup stacker at our booth on Saturday?”
The other fun part for me was standing just outside our tent as people were walking by and yelling out, “Free Popcorn…who wants a bag of free popcorn.”
Fun because I got to work mostly with the Miller twins and fun because I make it fun.
For example, I’d yell it out but would add an “Except for Cowboys fans” or “Except for Penn State fans” if I saw someone with a ridicilous amount of team gear on.
My favorite moment came when I spotted an older gentleman about 30 feet away with his name on his jacket.
Right away I started yelling, “Free popcorn for anyone named Paul…free popcorn for anyone named Paul.”
He keeps walking on by and finally it dawns on him what I’m saying…he looks at me and says, “My name is Paul”. I told him he was in luck and to come on in and redeem his free popcorn.
Ah the little things I do to amuse myself.

All in all it was a great day…thanks to the 40+ of you who came out to volunteer throughout the day.

By the time we packed up, returned everything to the church and I got home, it was almost 7PM.

From the long hours, to having been on my feet all day to the cold weather, I was completly drained.

It really took a toll on me yesterday for the messages, so I’ll have to keep this in mind for the future.

During the afternoon, the Schwindt’s came over to hang out until we went to Jason and Megan Martin’s house for party for the worship team.

Jason is a farmer, so we took a hayride…which was again freezing cold but a lot of fun.

Another funny story…Jason had taken hay bales and set them up as tunnels that the kids could crawl through.

At one point Aaron’s son, Colin who is 3 years old went through but he got some hay down in the collar of his jacket which was scratching him.

He asked me to get it out…the problem was fingers were still freezing from the hayride.

Everytime my fingers touched his neck he’d start to cry because it was too cold…but as soon as I’d pull away he’d complain that the hay was scratching. It was sort of funny to see this pattern repeat 5 or 6 times as I got all the hay out.

Shortly after that we ate hamburgers and hotdogs and sat around a bonfire warming ourselves and then eating smores!

A good time was had by all!