Gilbert Thurston

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

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Archives for November 2011

Writing Your Personal Testimony

November 30, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

On Sunday at ExponentialChurch.tv I shared a message called, “The Two Stories of a Difference Maker“.  One of those is knowing how to tell God’s story in a clear and passionate way.  The other story is your story of how you either came into a relationship with Jesus or how a certain aspect of your life has changed as a result of your relationship with Him.  I challenged everyone to write out their personal testimony and then email it to me so I could review it and make suggestions.

It’s been awesome over the past 2+ days now to have received so many stories of life change.  All but one of them so far though have needed to be tweaked for various reasons.  I fault myself for some of this so I wanted to do this post to help those of you who are still working on the assignment.  So here are a couple of things that either I failed to say or a reminder of what we’re trying to accomplish.

  1. Remember who you’re doing this for-  This is probably my fault for not making it clear enough but remember not to write it as how you would tell it to me.  Think about a neighbor or friend who is far from God…how would you tell it to them.
  2. Write it conversationally-  This is my big regret from Sunday.  I should have made it clear that even though you’re writing it down so it will ultimately be easier to memorize, you need to write it the way you talk.  So my suggestion is  try saying some things out loud and then write down what felt most natural.
  3. Reminder:  Keep it under 3 minutes-  Most have done a pretty good job of keeping it short but some have gotten a bit too detailed.  Usually where this happens is giving extra travelogue that doesn’t really add to the story for the listener.  For example, a few people have mentioned specific people by name and exact locations down to the street address.  All this will do is get your listener thinking about “do I know that person” or “do I know where that is” instead of concentrating on the real story, which is how much Jesus has changed your life.
  4. On the flip side…give some details- Now you’re really confused right?  A couple of the emails I have gotten were only bullet points.  Again keep in mind the purpose of this exercise is to have written out your full story in the way that you would say it.  So for example if I just point the bullet point of “anxious” as one of my before Jesus problems, I still don’t know what I’m going to say in the moment.  For each “problem” you should have a 1-2 sentence example of that.  Let me give you an example from my own life showing you both the wrong way to do it (#3 above) and the right way to do it (#4 here).

In our hypothetical situation lets say your friend mentions how stressed out and anxious they are.  Here’s the wrong way
to do it.  “You know before I became a Christian I used to be the same way.  I remember back to the spring of 1993.  I was
a sophomore in college at Hagerstown Community College.  I was in Mr. Baker’s accounting class getting ready to take my
final and was so nervous about it that I literally threw up I was so nervous and anxious about it.  But then later that
summer Keith Skidmore and Marvin Bower shared with me…”

Notice all the extra travelogue that doesn’t really help advance the story.  I could say the exact same thing this way.  “You
know before I became a Christian I used to be the same way.  In fact, I remember once being so nervous about taking a
test in school that I threw up beforehand.  But then two men shared with me…”

What I’m trying to get you to see is that there is a big difference between the written word, where you want a lot of details,
and the spoken word where you want just enough details to not distract from your main theme.

5. Avoid the Christianese- Think about how you would communicate to someone who has never stepped foot in a church or ever
opened up a bible.  Despite my warnings on Sunday about avoiding these, this has been the biggest thing that I keep seeing over
and over.  Here are some examples of words and phrases that people have included that I’ve told to go back and fix.

  • My repentance prayer
  • Watered the seeds my parents had planted
  • Jesus lives in my heart
  • Asked Jesus into my life
  • Been redeemed
  • Got saved
  • Made Jesus Lord and Savior
  • Received salvation
    As I said Sunday…all of the above things are true…but just not the best way to say them in a way a person far from God will understand.  As a game, try to come up with the better way to say each of the above.If I think of anything else, I’ll put it in another post.  In the meantime…happy writing.  Can’t wait to hear the stories of how God makes opportunities available for you to share your 3 minute story in a humble, interesting, and clear way!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Just Walk Across the Room series, testimony

Inside Today’s Experience

November 27, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • Good news, bad news kind of day.
  • The bad news is I thought my sermon was one of my worst ever.
  • I just never got into a good flow.
  • Usually when I’m not really feeling a message, God takes over and it all seems to click.
  • Not today though.
  • However, just because I wasn’t feeling it doesn’t mean that God didn’t still use it.
  • Had a few people tell me this was one of their favorite messages they’ve ever heard me do.
  • And now for the good news…
  • 4 more professions of faith today!
  • Like last week i find this slightly amusing since today’s message was on how to verbally share your faith with other people.
  • Ironic huh?  Taught on how to share your faith and 4 people realized that they first need to have faith.
  • You can listen to the message here if you’re interested.
  • As a reminder…practice the Bridge Illustration (can be downloaded at the above link under the documents section) and don’t forget to email me your 3 minute testimony so I can review it and make suggestions.
  • As for the rest of the day, it was kind of weird as well.
  • Normally we have 40-43 people serve on a Sunday to make everything happen.
  • Today so many people were gone because of the holiday that we only had about half of that number.
  • Considering half of those are in the band or tech area, it made for a very short staff.
  • However, everyone stepped up and did what they could where they could and we didn’t seem to skip a beat.
  • Love my team!  What an awesome group of servants.
  • Surprisingly, attendance was actually really good today even with a lot of our regulars away.
  • That’s a good sign that perhaps we’re going to get some good momentum going.
  • The rest of the day was pretty much as normal…
  • Set-up and tear-down both went quickly and smoothly.
  • The band as always did a great job.
  • It was great to have George and Rebecca Spangler with us today.
  • George is the current pastor at the Camp Hill Church of God and will be planting Turning Point Church next fall.
  • We’ll be sharing with you in the coming months ways that we can partner with George to help him as he starts from scratch just like we did in the fall of 2010.
  • One of our core values is that, “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”.  We’re honored to be able to help another church here in the local area reach the 425000 that currently don’t have a relationship with Jesus.
  • Next week we wrap-up the “Just Walk Across the Room” series by looking at having a personal vision for your life that includes being an eternal difference maker.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bridge Illustration, Camp Hill Church of God, Core Values, evangelism, ExponentialChurch.tv, George Spangler, gilbert thurston, Rebecca Spangler, salvation, testimonies, Turning Point Church

Thanksgiving 2011

November 24, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Hard to believe but this is now my 5th year doing these posts ( 2007,  2008,  2009, 2010).  As always here are the things I’m thankful for in this past year.

  1. Jesus-  Well who else did you expect at #1?  As every year passes, I realize more and more how ugly, sinful and broken I am inside.  Yet Jesus loved me enough not to just be my friend, but to die for me so that my relationship to Him could be even greater.  I don’t deserve a love like that and so my only acceptable response is  to offer a life of sacrifice back to Him.
  2. Lisa-  Again who were you expecting?  Before each of my bi-monthly calls with my church planting coach (thankful for Vince’s friendship as well), I have to fill out a form reporting on various areas of my life and ministry.  One of the questions is, “How is your marriage”?  Recently during a time when I was feeling a bit down and depressed, I wrote for this question, “No matter what else is going on, this is the one area that I can count on to be great”.  Trust me, Lisa has far more to do with that than I do.  Every year I can’t imagine our marriage getting any better but yet it does…wow I’m such a lucky man that God gave me such a Godly wife.  Her passion, hunger for growth and servant spirit are truly an inspiration to me.
  3. My immediate family- I’ve seen my mom, dad, sister and niece as much in the past year as I probably did in the 10 years prior to that.  The irony is I had to move further away from them for it to happen.  Regardless, one of the highlights of my week is knowing that I’ll get to see them on Sunday mornings.   I’ll see them again today and tomorrow and I’m sure there will be times that we pick-on each other but underneath it all is a love and a bond with and for one another that can not be broken no matter how many miles the highway may now separate us.
  4. My cousins- This year has also given me a few times to reconnect with my cousins that I grew up with.  Life and circumstances have kept us a part for many years but I’m looking forward to hopefully more opportunities to  hang-out and reconnect.
  5. My long-term friends-   Andy, Gayle, Bill and Nicole.  It’s been an interesting year and not at all how I had envisioned it but yet these 4 at multiple times and in many ways continue to be there for and with me.  Words can’t describe how grateful I am for the 10+ years they’ve put up with me.
  6. My new friends I’m developing-  Some of these are at church but many of them are from the community.  As I mentioned in our current series, one of the problems many pastors have is waking up one day and realizing you don’t have any significant relationships with people who are far from God.  So this year I have been intentionally going out and building new friendships.  Not only have I been having fun meeting new people and hanging out, but a few I can see as becoming close friends.  Most significantly I can already see the difference I’ve been able to make in people’s lives.
  7. My staff- Chad, Bill and Chelsea.  To be quite honest, I’m in way over my head with this whole church planting thing, but these 3 make me look a lot better than I am.  I’m so grateful God has brought us together as a team and can’t wait to see how God will use us to further His Kingdom.  It’s an honor to be able to lead them and I pray I do it well.
  8. That ExponentialChurch.tv survived it’s first year-  I wish this were hyperbole but it’s not.  Most church plants die within their first 3 years.  We’ve got one of those under our belts but we’re not out of the woods quite yet.  However, as I already mentioned we have a great staff that’s sold out to seeing God’s Kingdom advance.  More importantly we have many others who serve week end and week out because they realize that life is not about them but in helping people far from God come back into a relationship with Him and then grow to become more like Him.  Thanks to all for an incredible year where we’ve now seen over 120 people come into a relationship with Jesus…but remember…the best is yet to come!
  9. Lisa’s business/God’s blessing- In order to start ExponentialChurch.tv, we had to sacrifice a lot to move here to Harrisburg.  One such sacrifice was I voluntarily took a 23% reduction in salary.  This meant the possibility that Lisa might have had to get a job (which would have been a huge sacrifice on her part because of health issues).  However, despite it all we continued to tithe and trust that you can’t out give God.  Sure enough He began to bless her business ,which for years had pretty much always made the same amount of money.  All of the sudden…through no real effort of her own, she has been swamped with work which has allowed her to stay at home!
  10. Chuck Frank- Chuck is a long-time friend and more recently became the Director of Church Planting for the Eastern Regional Conference of the Churches of God General Conference (catchy isn’t it).  It was Chuck’s email that spurred on the vision I had for Exponential originally.  Over the past year he and his team have been incredibly helpful and generous in numerous ways in helping us launch.  Chuck is a great cheerleader for planting and evangelism and his support this past year has been invaluable.
  11. Technology-  It can be both a blessing and a curse but for the most part I am very thankful for all that technology allows us to do.  Especially this past year I am grateful for two tools that make my life so much easier.  The first is www.audible.com.  Audio books have been around along time, but now with the ability to download them to my smart phone and then play back through blue-tooth on my car stereo, life is so much easier.  Literally I turn my car into a mobile classroom and can usually get through 3-4 books per month just during my normal driving time.  The second tool I’m thankful for is the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In Tool.  One of the audio books I listened to this past year was Getting Things Done by David Allen.  His system is tremendous and when I found out there was an add-in for Outlook, it was an easy decision to spend the $70+.  My life, tasks and schedule have never been more organized and de-cluttered and for that I am very thankful!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Andy Krull, Audible.com, Barb Thurston, Bill Butler, Bill Mellott, Chad Chute, Chelsea Miller, Chuck Frank, David Allen, Eastern Region Conference, ExponentialChurch.tv, Gayle Krull, Getting Things Done, Gil Thurston, Jesus, Lisa Thurston, Nicole Mellott, Tara Simmons, Taylor Duda, technology, Thanksgiving, tithe, Vince Antonucci, We're E-Business Solutions

Inside Today’s Experience

November 20, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • Another great day.
  • Had another person start a relationship with Jesus today.
  • The amazing thing about that is we’re currently doing a series on how to share your faith.
  • Amazing how God can speak to people’s hearts even in messages that aren’t necessarily evangelistic in nature.
  • In fact, a big misconception of churches like ours is that we must only preach seeker friendly, evangelistic messages every week in order to have as many professions of faith as we do.
  • The truth is in now a little over 1 year of existence, I’ve only done 1 message that was strictly the Gospel message and geared for a response at the end.
  • Every other week messages are about growing in your faith.
  • In other words, I assume that everyone will want to be a follower of Jesus so here’s what it means to follow Him more closely.
  • Now of course I present this in such a way that it does make sense to non-followers, but for the most part we tackle some pretty serious discipleship stuff.
  • At the end then I usually say something to the effect of, “Ok now the first step to applying today’s message is starting a relationship with Jesus if you don’t already have one”…then I present how to do that.
  • Ok didn’t mean to start this with my philosophy of  preaching but there it is.
  • In any case, nothing out of the ordinary today with set-up.
  • Had fun at our team meeting today giving a quiz on our core values.
  • During it I said, “We say there are 2 things which we say are not optional, what are they”?
  • One of the teens said, “Clothes”?
  • Haha…gotta love those teens!
  • All in all people did pretty good at least knowing the gist of each value.
  • Huge difference though between intellectually knowing these things and living them out.
  • Making great progress though!
  • Very funny yet potentially embarrassing thing happened to Lisa today in the lobby.
  • I went out and her and Meghan were laughing so hard they were in tears.
  • I’ll let Lisa decide whether to fess up to what happened.
  • Band as always did a great job.
  • So interesting watching Jeff use a bow on his electric guitar for the one song.
  • I continued the “Just Walk Across the Room” series by talking about the 3 D’s we all need to do to help people who are far from God.
  • They are…Develop friendships, Discover their story and Discern appropriate next steps.
  • You can listen to the full message here. 
  • As I mentioned in the message, over 300 names were written on the walls last week.
  • I prayed for each one by name before today’s Experience.
  • As I mentioned in the message, 3 things happened as I did it.
  • First, the reality that these are real people that we know that are bound for hell unless we do something about it.
  • Second, that reaching 90% of them is not enough.
  • As I said, “That’s 30 people…anyone want to volunteer any of your people for hell?”
  • Last thought was actually a feeling of righteous anger that so many people waste their lives on things that don’t really count for eternity while real people, like on these boards, die and enter into a Christ-less eternity.
  • Whether you attend Exponential or not, let me ask you a question…What are you investing your life, time and resources in?  Is that going to last for eternity?
  • If not, then stop wasting this one and only life on things that don’t really matter.
  • Ok shifting gears somewhat…one of the best things about Facebook’s new list feature is I can get pretty instant feedback on the Experience.
  • Came across this earlier from a 1st time guest of ours…”Had a great morning with family and friends at a new church. Cried the first 3 songs. Praise God! Got my love for Christ back this morning”.
  • Awesome…that’s why I love what I do!
  • Next week we’ll look at how to verbally share your faith with 2 simple short stories you can tell.
  • In the meantime…have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Core Values, discipleship, evangelism, ExponentialChurch.tv, gilbert thurston, Jeff Case, Just Walk Across the Room series, Lisa Thurston, Meghan Butler, preaching, salvation, testimonies, Wordle

Inside Today’s Experience

November 13, 2011 by Gilbert 1 Comment

  • Wow what an awesome day.
  • We have such a great team that sacrifices each week to make sure people have a meaningful Experience with God.
  • Today was one of those days where everything fell right into place, despite some out of the ordinary things we were doing.
  • Set-up went smooth and I know the band was having fun covering the Proclaimers, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”.
  • Bill was pulling off a pretty good Scottish accent…and having fun figuring out what “havering” means.
  • Turns out it is nonsensical babbling.
  • Guess that explains the one chorus.
  • As a reminder, we do current secular songs and classic pop songs like this one in the hopes that a new association will be made in your mind.
  • Instead of it just being a catchy tune my hope is that from now on you will think of the principles we’re learning in the “Just Walk Across the Room” series.
  • Today’s main point was that the single greatest gift you can give someone else is the gift of Jesus.
  • We talked about getting out of our Circles of Comfort and into the Zone of the Unknown….but only as the Spirit prompts us.
  • I even shared a humorous example of how TV evangelists do their jobs so well sometimes that it intimidates us into thinking we could never do what they do.
  • You can listen to all of today’s message here.
  • I also showed a video of this summer’s baptisms, which pretty much sums up why we do what we do.
  • The biggest highlight though was everyone getting an opportunity to write 5 names on the “Just Walk Across the Room” stage props of the people they are trying to lead to Jesus.
  • The logistics of getting each 6X4 foot prop from the stage to the upper walkways and then getting everyone through the line in a timely manner was a massive undertaking but so worth it.
  • Last week we talked about the 425000 people in our area who don’t currently know Jesus.
  • Now we know about 1000 of their names.
  • I will be personally praying for each one and there’s just something powerful about having those names written down and now visible throughout the rest of the series.
  • If nothing else it will be a great visual reminder that our work is far from done and each of us has a personal stake in all of this.
  • It was great to have Gayle’s parents and other friends from Chambersburg with us today.
  • We had lunch with all of them down at Duke’s and caught up.
  • Best line of the day came from Gayle’s dad who leads the Traditional service at Chambersburg.  “I kept hearing my daughter singing and thinking, ‘A beautiful voice and all that talent wasted on music like this'”.
  • Haha…just a reminder of one of our core values…”It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”.
  • Next week we’ll talk about 3 things to do once you walk across the room.
  • Can’t wait to share with you how easy and non-threatening sharing your faith can be.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bill Butler, Bill Hybels, evangelism, ExponentialChurch.tv, Galen Long, Gayle Krull, gilbert thurston, Jesus, Just Walk Across the Room series, Proclaimers, secular music

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