- The ups and downs of being a church planter continued today…
- Unlike last week, today was an up.
- We had our 3rd highest attended day ever!
- More importantly yet another person came into a relationship with Jesus!
- The day started out not so good though when I realized I had left my bible at home.
- Luckily Lisa had not yet left the house so she was able to bring it.
- Although we only live 3 minutes away so it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
- It was foggy and chilly this morning as Mike and I put signs out. I told him it reminds me of last year the first couple of times we did it.
- Hard to believe we’re coming up on our 1 year anniversary.
- Speaking of…we’ll be celebrating it on October 16th and we’re asking everyone who has ever come (even if it was just once) to be with us that day.
- Also for those of you who have been meaning to come this would be a great day to come as well.
- We have some special things planned and expect it will be a great day.
- Ok back to today…set-up went extremely smooth although it was really warm because the theater wasn’t sure whether or not to turn on the AC.
- Glad they did because I was drenched by the time set-up and practice was done.
- I think because of the big crowd, the band had their best day yet.
- The energy was incredible and the band and the crowd seemed to feed off of each other.
- It was great seeing so many people engaged in worship and hearing them singing loud during some songs that have “crowd” parts.
- I continued with the Unveil series by talking about what you need to do when you need to know God’s will quickly or when your facing a deadline.
- You can listen to it here.
- I didn’t feel like it was one of my better messages, yet many have already told me they really liked it so I guess that’s a good thing.
- Loved meeting so many new people today out in the lobby.
- Especially great to see a number of people that we’ve helped through www.HarrisburgFloodRelief.com.
- So today was a good day…from the bad end however…
- I shared briefly that one of the greatest challenges for a church plant is financially.
- To be honest we’re not doing well right now.
- So two things…
- First please pray.
- Second, if you’re feeling lead, please continue or perhaps for the first time consider supporting us financially.
- In 11 1/2 months we’ve had 108 people come into a relationship with Jesus and we’ve been able to help so many people in all kinds of ways in the community both from a practical and spiritual level.
- What I’m saying is your financial support WILL make an eternal difference…but we can’t do it without you.
- Thanks in advance…and thanks for your continued prayers through both the ups and downs of getting a new church off the ground.
- Next week we’ll continue the Unveil series by looking at how to discover principles in God’s Word that will help us determine what God’s will is for us…hoping we can keep the momentum going!
Archives for September 2011
Inside Today’s Experience (Thursday edition)
- Wanted to wait this week to post this until I was done speaking Sunday – Wednesday nights at the Greenvillage Church of God.
- I’ll start though with our Sunday morning at ExponentialChurch.tv.
- The morning went pretty smoothly however I was probably as discouraged afterwards as I have at any point in our almost 1 year of existence.
- We did a big mailer for our new series on how to discover God’s will for your life, plus I figured everyone would be done with vacations, etc.
- Guess not…we had 12 alone from our serving team gone and by the time the day was done we had even less people than we had the weekend before.
- It’s frustrating putting all the time, energy and resources into something and then not seeing the results you had hoped for.
- Oh well, God knows what He’s doing and our job is to continue to be faithful and plant seeds and He’ll bring the results.
- Speaking of…we had 2 more people pray to ask Jesus for His forgiveness and leadership on Sunday!
- Amazing how that puts everything into perspective.
- That makes 107 salvation’s now in 11 months!
- Even though I don’t understand it all and get frustrated, God continues to do amazing things so my I’m just trying not to hinder His work.
- Speaking of good work, it was great to have Greg Hench and George Jensen with us on Sunday.
- They are both pastors in our denomination doing a great job.
- The band as always did an amazing job on Sunday and it was cool having my niece Taylor help out in the tech area.
- She was so nervous that she was going to mess up but she, Mike and Cris did a great job in Andy’s absence.
- For those of you who might have missed the message, you can listen to it hear.
- As I mentioned earlier Sunday-Wednesday night I spoke at Greenvillage on relationships.
- It was a great 4 nights getting to know people and share God’s Word about marriage, dating, relationships and sex.
- I essentially used a lot of the content from the ONE series I did in February here at Exponential if you’re interested in hearing what I shared.
- The only exception was last night I did a message on communication instead of doing the Q&A like I did at ECTV.
- For those of you who were there, you can probably figure out why.
- I was surprised they wanted me to do the content for the 1st 3 nights much less what gets discussed in the Q&A.
- Monday night I left the house at 5:10pm for the 45-50 minute drive. This would still put me there with an hour to spare.
- By 6pm I had gone all of 11 miles. I knew right then and there I was in big trouble.
- Turns out they had closed I-81 because of a bad accident.
- I contacted the church and told them I’d get there ASAP.
- It was 7:35pm until I arrived but they were very gracious.
- In now 22 years of doing various types of public speaking, this is the first time I’ve ever been late.
- The only thing I kept thinking though was…”At least now I can use a joke I’ve always wanted to use in a situation like this”.
- I’m not sharing what it was in case you are ever at a place I’m late for, but let’s just say it got a roaring laugh!
- It was great seeing the crowd get younger and younger each night…young people definitely need to hear what I shared.
- Last night I guy shared a funny story with me that you’ll will get if you’ve ever heard me talk about sex (which I did on Tuesday night). He said he went home and started folding laundry. His wife looked at him funny and said, “What are you doing”? His response, “Starting the crock pot”! :)
- All in all it was a great 4 nights and many said how much they enjoyed it so hopefully I’ll be invited back someday.
- I also challenged them to be more evangelistic as a church so pray that those seeds I planted take root as well.
- Pray for their church as they are between pastors right now and seeking who and what God has for them next.
- I’m pretty exhausted but yet excited at the same time for what God has in store for us at ECTV this week as we continue the Unveil series.
- See you then…don’t forget to invite a friend.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Another great day!
- 5 more people became followers of Jesus!
- It was an odd day because we showed the film “The Cross and the Towers” which at 52 minutes took most of our normally allotted 1 hour, 10 minute Experience.
- Back though to the beginning of the day.
- Since it’s been a few weeks since I’ve been at ExponentialChurch.tv, I set my alarm for an hour later than I should have.
- Luckily I got up to go to the bathroom at about the time I should have gotten up and realized my mistake so everything was as it should have been.
- One of my friends laughs at me because I get up in the night to use the bathroom. He says it means I’m old. Well I guess today getting old paid off!
- We set-up quickly and easily today which is always good.
- Had a nice size crowd as we officially began our fall schedule and vacations start to wane.
- Really good energy from the crowd today even though we only did two quick songs.
- After I set-up the film, I headed up to the nursery/toddler area so my niece (who was serving in that area today) could go in and see the film.
- She lasted about 20 minutes before coming back in saying, “I’m crying too much that’s really sad”.
- She missed though the hope that came at the end of the film.
- After wrestling for awhile with what to do today for the anniversary of 9-11, I’m so glad I chose to go with the film instead of trying to preach it myself.
- Nothing I could have said would have said it any better than the testimonies of the 7 families in the film.
- A few people have asked if we’ll be posting it online.
- Unfortunately no. I bought the rights to show it this morning but not to rebroadcast it any other way.
- It was weird then getting called back in after having spent an hour with babies and then all of the sudden have to go up and talk about what people had just seen.
- Usually I can tailor the Gospel around what I just preached on and have a pretty good idea of the mood of the room.
- In this case I didn’t have that advantage.
- To make things worse, I was having mic issues which were creating feedback.
- I definitely felt out of synch, but that 5 people responded to the Gospel just goes to show how much God is in control of the process and not us. Our job is to be faithful to share and His job is to bring the harvest.
- Afterward we had a quick lunch with friends and then I meet 3 other guys from ECTV to do another house clean-up.
- If you haven’t yet visited our new web-site, www.HarrisburgFloodRelief.com please do.
- I thought yesterday’s house was bad but this was 10 times worse.
- It was amazing to look 3/4 up fully grown trees and see them caked with mud.
- This particular 2 story house was completely submerged.
- Our community is experiencing our own 9-11, I pray that you’ll do your part to help.
- Even if you don’t live in this area, please still visit our web-site because there are ways that you, your church or organization can help.
- For those in the area, Monday at 12pm we’ll be sending a team back to this same house to do more work.
- If you’re interested helping, please indicate so on the web-site or contact Chad directly through e-mail.
- Thanks for being the church…this 10 year anniversary of 9-11 is one I will never forget.
Inside Today’s Experience (vacation edition)
- First here is Bill’s message from today. 168-Hour Energy.
- Had a great week in Williamsburg, VA on vacation.
- Kind of weird though since the city was without power for much of the week.
- Thankfully our resort had power all week long.
- Guess you see where priorities are. :)
- Saturday we drove to WV to spend the night with our friends Bill and Nicole.
- Andy and Gayle came down as well and we celebrated Andy’s birthday.
- Really it was just an excuse to eat Gayle’s mom’s cupcakes!
- Today we went to church at New Life Christian Ministries.
- I got saved at New Life, discipled there, went on staff there and eventually became a pastor there.
- They were one of the 30+ churches that supported us as we launched 10 1/2 months ago and they have a part in the now 100 salivations that have taken place. Thanks NLCM.
- It’s been 8+ years since I left staff so there are now far more people there that I don’t know than I do.
- It’s always good though to see some familiar faces.
- Especially good to see the founding and Senior Pastor of New Life, Ken Harris.
- PK next to my wife Lisa has probably been the greatest spiritual influence in my life.
- When it comes to my love for Jesus and His Word, you can look no further than him.
- Through the years our ministry styles have greatly differed but even in that, he helped influence one of our core values which is, “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”.
- It was great to be back in their new facility they moved into last year and see the growth they’re experiencing even with it being a holiday weekend.
- Pastor Ken apologized when we walked in that they were doing a retro day music wise.
- However, I liked it because it meant all songs I knew so it was nice to be able to worship without having to look at the screens.
- New Life likes to worship and after 40+ minutes of music and their extended greeting time, PK began his message on persecution.
- As always it was a good message…here are a couple of quotes I wrote down in my notes.
- “People point out the wrong in you so they feel better about the wrong in themselves”.
- “It’s hard to grow a garden but it’s easy to grow weeds”. This was said in the context of it’s easy to do the wrong thing but often hard to do the right thing.
- “One of the best ways you can witness to people is to clean up your dirty mouth”.
- After this quote, PK told a story of how he recently posted a scripture on Facebook (can’t remember which one) about watching your language. He said he put it as a witness to unbelievers but had about a dozen Christians comment saying they were guilty. This doesn’t read funny but it was when he told it. Regardless, hope people take it seriously…and as I’ve said recently myself, abbreviating it Facebook is just as wrong.
- “It’s more important to win someone to Christ than it is to win an argument with them”. That’s good preaching.
- Ok now for the funny part…or at least the part I found funny.
- PK likes to preach…I mean an hour+.
- He himself used to joke that the week after vacation was the worst because he had 2 weeks of talking to get out. :)
- In any case, his outline today was 4 points. Point 3 had 4 subpoints.
- The funny thing was I preached an entire 30+ minute message on just 2 of those sub-points just a 2 weeks ago.
- I kept thinking…”Kenny you’ve got an entire series in just today’s message…save it man, save it”. :)
- Again though our styles are really different and for that I’m grateful. As the old saying goes, “If two people are exactly alike then one of them is not necessary”.
- The really funny part was in my message I actually told a story of his about how he used to get raises at work when nobody else did. Then today he tells the same story. Weird.
- In any case, the message was really practical. New Life’s motto is, “Learning Real Christianity in a Real World”.
- Persecution is definitely a real thing and PK gave some great advice on how to deal with it from a biblical perspective.
- Afterward we stuck around and talked to as many people as we could…until finally getting kicked out.
- So I got kicked out of church today…how about you?
- Wait is that persecution for being friendly? :)
- Double wait…did I just use myself and the word friendly in the same sentence? What is this world coming to?
- Ok seriously, I can’t wait to get back to work this week.
- Next Sunday for 9-11 we’ll be doing a special look at the hope that was found in the tragedy through a film called, “The Cross and the Towers”.
- Invite as many people as you can to take part in this special event unlike anything we’ve ever done.
- I’ve created a Facebook invite for you to share on your wall.