• Between still being sick, the death of my grandmother on Friday, our big leadership retreat over the weekend and the normal adrenaline of preaching…I feel like someone has taken a baseball bat to my body.
• Despite all that, we had another awesome Experience…4 more people born into the Kingdom!
• I wasn’t even planning on doing a call for commitment at the end but felt the Spirit nudging that way…just goes to show what I know.
• This was one of my favorite worship sets we’ve ever done…the band was hitting it on all cylinders…the new song “Look to You” was amazing!
• We weren’t sure what the attendance would be today since the Blended Service in the sanctuary had a special Easter program going on, but we ended up with our 2nd highest attendance ever!
• Looks like a lot of you took the challenge from last week and invited in your friends.
• Keep up the inviting…Easter is only 2 weeks away.
• Only heard of a couple of people who were confused with us not changing the time…seemed to be a success.
• Even for those that were confused, it still meant they were there, just an hour early.
• Without going into major details, the retreat this weekend looking at the future direction of the church was great….we’ve got some huge things planned for the entire church and United in the coming months and years that are going to be incredible.   Keep praying as God gives us direction now on the timing of each of those things.
• Let me just say this…to accomplish what we feel God is calling us to, it is going to take a lot more people discovering and then using their spiritual gifts.
• If your not currently serving in some way, please let us know so you can play a part in the exciting things God has in store for us.
• Tonight is CAYA and I’m hopeful of afterwards redeeming myself in the competition on the Wii.

Just got home from our leadership retreat and Lisa had a few e-mails from people on the set-up crew saying they are sick and won’t be able to make it in the morning. So if you’re available at 8:45am to come in to help set-up chairs for United that would be great! Thanks in advance.

At a little after 11PM last night I got a call from my mom…as soon as I saw her name on the caller ID I knew something wasn’t right.  She told me my grandmother was being rushed to the emergency room with a heart attack.  I immediately jumped in the car and headed down to the Washington County Hospital in MD.

The weird thing is my grandfather had just had major surgery that same day.  When I got to the hospital, I knew she wasn’t going to make it by the way she was breathing.  They wheeled my grandfather’s bed down from the 5th floor so he could lay there beside her and hold her hand.  She was responsive all the way up to the end, but finally went home to be with Jesus at a little after 1am.  Please pray for our family in the coming days, weeks and months as the transition to life without “Mom” (pronounced “mum”) becomes a reality.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of His saints.
                                                                                           –Psalm 116:15

To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord.
                                                                                     -2 Corinthians 5:8

Don’t forget that this week we WILL NOT be changing our clocks until after the Experience.  Enjoy the extra sleep!

Article in today’s Public Opinion… no love for United though   :(

Our church is now 158 years old…you can see a picture of every Senior Pastor in the hallway outside the Music and Arts Room. Now some of you might say…”Who cares?” No one remembers those people, many have been dead for years and even our oldest members probably could only name a handful of them.

But they are important…what they did, the decisions they made, the mindset they approached church with…all of that mattered (and matters) tremendously. If they had thought differently, or done things differently … the history of our church might have been totally different, in fact, in might not even be in existence today.

I bring all this up because this weekend the churches leadership team will be meeting to pray, discuss, brainstorm, etc., what the future holds in the next few years for CFCOG. 100 years from now Earl’s picture will be outdated and almost know one will remember his name, however, the decisions we’re making will affect generations to come. In other words, how we’re living out our Christianity, how we’re reaching out to our community and the world, the culture we’re cultivating, the dna we’re creating…it all matters tremendously. We are blazing a trail that people will be walking for decades, maybe even for centuries.

So please keep us in prayer this weekend because what we’re doing and what you’re doing right here and right now is WAY bigger than you or us…we all have a part to play in history…let’s play it well.