Gilbert Thurston

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

2008 sermons and series

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In order to have enough time for our teams to pull off an excellent Experience each week, it means working and planning months at a time in advance of where we currently are. As an example, we’ve known since July that we’d be doing the Extreme Makeover series right now.

After this series concludes, I’ll be doing a Christmas series called CRIBS and then after a few weeks of stand alone messages, we’ll be starting a series on the value of doing life together as we prepare to launch a bunch of small groups. From there I have a few other ideas of series I’d like to do, but I wanted to open it up to you for input.

What topic(s) do you feel the people of CFCOG and the people in Franklin County most need to hear God’s plan for. Not saying we’ll take all of your suggestions…I know one of you would come up with something like, nuclear physics just to see if I could do it. Well let me just say I can’t…so please keep the comments to topics that fit well with living your day in and day out life. Use the comments feature below to let your voice be heard.

Say it ain’t so Joe…

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This Sunday will be the last week on our worship team for Joe Sheedy. Joe has accepted a worship pastor position at a church down in MD, thus fulfilling a dream Joe has had for a long while.

As some of you know, Joe was instrumental (no pun intended) in me coming into a relationship with Jesus 14 years ago and we’ve remained close friends ever since. When 6 months or so ago Joe left another church to begin looking for a full-time position, he came one week to check out United and has been there every week since…pretty amazing considering that he, his wife Michelle, and their 3 kids live over an hour away from Chambersburg. This means that not only do they make the commute on Sunday’s but Joe has been faithfully coming to worship practice each Thursday night as well.

To end his time with us, we’ll do a couple of the songs that have a distinct Joe flair to them and wish them well and God’s blessing as they begin the next season of their life. We’ll also miss Michelle’s creativity..she was a huge help to Lisa in graphic design these past few months…be sure to thank them both when you see them at the Expereince this week!

168 Hours

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There are 168 hours in a week and it’s the number I almost always think about within moments after each Experience. In other words, only 168 (actually 167) hours until we need to do this again. Another way I sometimes say it is, “It’s amazing how often Sunday comes” or “Sunday comes whether I’m ready or not.” Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining…that hour on Sunday is my favorite hour of the week. However, there is an incredible amount of pressure to keep producing fresh content each week that is compelling, relevant and life-changing. It isn’t like the Trans Siberian Orchestra show that I saw Sunday night where they come up with one show and then keep repeating the same show a hundred times while on tour. No…our team has to be creative each week and I have to hear from God fresh ideas on a weekly basis and then figure out how to best communicate it. My point in this post is this…I need your help. The more you are willing to help with things such as set-up and tear-down, ushering, greeting, set designs, tech stuff (computer and lighting programming and operating…by the way, much easier than it sounds), graphic design, video editing, etc, the more time I have to do what God has called me to do. God has given you gifts, talents and abilities and he wants you to use them. Don’t just attend…contribute and watch as God uses you to further His Kingdom.

Trans Siberian Orchestra

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Just getting home from the show and for the second time today all I can say is wow! What an amazing show…if you ever get the chance to check it out don’t hesitate. It was easily one of the top shows I’ve ever seen.

What amazed me as I sat there for 3 1/2 hours watching this mulit-million dollar production is that I was not in any way ashamed of what we had pulled off earlier in the day. Yeah they had a lot more glitz and glamour, but to me excellence is doing the very best with what you’ve got…and we did that and some. Can’t wait to see what God wants to do next week and beyond!

Inside Today’s Experience

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  • WOW!!!!
  • I couldn’t be more blown away by our first Experience in the new building.
  • As of Saturday, we still didn’t have everything up and running and it wasn’t completed until 4AM…but it all came together…thank you God and thank you to all of you who have worked many long and late hours these past few weeks getting things ready.
  • Since my arrival a year ago, I have said that we still hadn’t really had an Expereince…today we did!
  • There were 9 first time professions of faith today…yeah God! 
  • Still 41 more to go to reach our God-sized goal of 50 during this series.
  • Have I mentioned…wow!!!
  • All things considered, everything went off without a glitch…definelty an answer to prayer.
  • Walking out onto stage for the first time, knowing all the hard work that went into getting ready for today got me choked up, but I was able to pull it back together.
  • Hey how about those lights…wow does that add something to the music or what?
  • Oh yeah…we had 254 in the Experience…815 total in the entire church.  Our 254 is our new high and is a 155 more than we had 1 year ago this week.
  • I’m really tired from all the work we’ve been putting in and just from the normal post-Experience coming down off a spiriutal high…but yet we’re getting ready in just a little while to leave for the Trans Siberian Orchestra show up at Hershey.
  • Another oh yeah…the Skillet concert Friday night sucked…not Skillet themselves, but just the whole set-up at the high school.  One of the nice things about our new facility is that we’ll be able to bring in big name bands and offer them a set-up that is 10 times better than what the high school offered.
  • Obviously the highlight of today was seeing 9 more people commit their lives to Jesus, but if I could choose one other thing it would be the reaction of one of our church council members who I heard was crying during the Experience and then again afterwards as he was talking with me.  He is a great guy and I love him to death but during the last year he has told me that he thinks I’m a little weird.  Slowly though over the year he has started to catch the vision for what we’re trying to accomplish in United and today he said he was so proud to see it all come together and everyone using their gifts to serve God.  I thank God for our council that has allowed our team to think outside the box and truly create an Expereince with God each week that is reaching the young people of today!
  • I’d be interested…what were your thoughts from today…use the “add a new comment” link below to give us some feedback.