Archives for June 2010

The picture in this post was taken outside Dietsch Brothers homemade ice cream shop.  It’s a Findlay landmark and let me just say the chocolate marshmallow was awesome!  In the picture you see Dave and Linda Draper (I blogged about Dave the other day), Justin Meier (going to be helping us for 6 weeks this fall get ExponentialChurch.tv off the ground) and of course the lovely and infinitely talented Lisa Thurston (my bride of 15+ years).

Ice cream was after a great meal at Max and Erma’s and after Lisa, Justin and I finished up our meetings at the main office.  I’m excited to see all that God is doing and I’m so thankful to get to be a small part of it.  So the question for today is, what are you doing with your life?  When it’s all said and done, will your life have been about making a difference in people’s lives or that you just pursued stuff?  When I put it that way the choice seems pretty obvious, but why is it that many people’s lives don’t reflect it?  Ponder and hopefully make whatever course corrections you need to.

One of the first churches I ever spoke at when I worked for Purpose Driven Ministries was Granger Community Church.  It’s been nearly 7 years since I was last there but through the years I have continued to admire them from afar.  They are one of the most creative churches in the country and their pastors continually inspire me through their teaching, books and blogs.

Today I got to go back and actually be a part of one of their worship services.  A lot has changed through the years including their main auditorium.  It has been reconfigured and as you can see from the picture I took, it includes 5 huge screens, the 3 middle of which are in high definition.  The middle screen is 26 feet high by 50 feet long and is absolutely stunning when everything is going on in worship.  The band was great and they are participating in something I did when I was on staff at Chambersburg called the One Prayer series.  This year the theme is Unstoppable ______.  The video Granger chose to use was of Chris Hodges who pastors Church of the Highlands down in Birmingham, AL.  His message was Unstoppable Focus and it was very good.

We were visiting Granger with Chad and Tammie Chute who are the couple we just hired to be a part of the ExponentialChurch.tv team.  They live in the area (at least for 9 more days) and  have been attending Granger on Saturday nights.  They commented afterward that they had not seen one technical glitch in all the time they’ve been attending…until today.  Now to be fair it was not Granger’s fault at all.  The mother of all thunderstorms came rolling through and I thought the roof was going to come in.  At one point 3 of the projectors cut out, including 1 of the 2 that make the center screen magic happen.  I was very impressed with the Granger team though.  They almost immediately went from what’s called an edge blend to a single shot on the remaining half of the screen that was still lit up.  I know that sounds like mumbo jumbo, but trust me…they did it fast enough that you know there volunteers/staff had trained for such a thing.  The problem with any projector but especially projectors of those sizes is that when they are turned off they need to go through a long cool down period and then they can be restarted again.  Again the crew at Granger did an incredible job of getting them back up and running without it being a distraction.  Great job by all involved and an awesome service…glad we got to go back!

Afterward Tammie’s parents invited us back to their house for lunch.  They are missionaries in South Africa home for a short break.  They are a great couple and it was exciting to hear all that God is doing through them on the mission field.  After lunch we went with the Chute’s over to visit the campus of Notre Dame.  Wow what a beautiful campus!  The architecture is stunning, especially in the basilica.  I obviously hold very different beliefs than the Catholic Church but I’m glad we toured around the campus and were inspired by the sights.

Followed that up with a dinner and meeting with a young lady we are interviewing to potentially be our Children’s Director.   Excited about the possibilities there and excited that our road trip is nearing an end and within a few days we’ll be back home.  Tomorrow we leave bright and early for another 3 hour drive and then I’ll be in meetings all day at the denominational office in Findlay, OH.

Today we stopped by Wheaton College one of the premiere Christian colleges in the nation.  We got there after Saturday visiting hours but we drove around their beautiful campus. We followed that up by watching the new Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz movie Knight and Day.  It was much better than the last time they teamed up together in a movie, but probably worth waiting until it gets released on DVD.

The highlight of the day was attending the 4PM service at the YellowBox campus of Community Christian Church.  I got to know their senior pastor Dave Ferguson (author The Big Idea & Exponential) a bit through the years and was hoping to meet up again but his schedule wouldn’t permit it.  Some of the things they do and have done are similar to parts of the vision that God has given me for ExponentialChurch.tv.  We did get to meet their campus pastor briefly before the service and he seemed like a great guy.  We we’re going to try to catch up with him at the end of their 2nd service of the night but since we had another 2 1/2 hour drive yet tonight we didn’t want to wait any longer.

CCC currently has 11 locations and we were at one of the originals.  Even though they are multi-site, most of the the time their campus pastors preach live a message that the entire team has co-written together.  Tonight they were wrapping up a series on being transformed and so it was a combination of Dave Ferguson via pre-recorded message and then the campus pastor Shawn finishing up live.  The band did a great job covering some really familiar songs and even a couple of hymns.  Lisa and I both commented that both male singers were two of the best we’ve ever heard.

One interesting thing is the people of CCC take communion every week.  I did notice that a lot of people seemed to be taking it  sort of non-nonchalantly.  I think there is a fine line between not taking it so often that it just becomes something we do and then taking it often enough that it is honored in the way Jesus wants it.  Not saying they’re doing anything wrong…just my observations.

The picture  is of people coming on stage at the end of the message showing how they’ve been transformed.  They would hold the poster board one way showing how they used to be and then flip it showing the difference Jesus has made in their lives.  My favorite was the couple who walked on with the sign saying, “28 years in a destructive marriage”.  They then flipped it and it read, “1st anniversary of marriage in Christ”.  I’ve seen this kind of thing done before and it never fails to have an impact on me…not sure why I haven’t stolen the idea yet.

All in all it was a good service and the building was easy to find and easy to navigate.  On the way out I picked up a copy of the Exponential book for obvious reasons.  Hopefully I can read it soon and pass along my thoughts.