Gilbert Thurston

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

Inside Today’s Experiences

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  • Another great day but I’m whooped.
  • Typing this on my phone sitting at the airport getting ready to catch a flight to Orlando.
  • Great start to the new series.
  • 9 more people came into a relationship with Christ today!
  • That never gets old.
  • Wasn’t planning on doing a call for salvation today and I didn’t at 9:15, but I really felt a strong prompting from the Spirit to give one at 10:45.
  • Glad I did!
  • Loved the satan video…I’ll get Aaron to shrink it down then we’ll post it online.
  • Maybe you can catch it on Facebook in the meantime.
  • Had our best non-holiday attendance ever.
  • Glad we kept the momentum going.
  • It was great to have some family members in attendance…some of them for the very first time.
  • Also the Executive Director for our entire denomination stuck his head in the door for a couple of minutes…that’s cool.
  • Great crowd participation today…especially during the message…love it when you guys talk back.
  • I’ll try to keep you up-dated from the road this week during the conference…have a great week.

Other Weekend Thoughts…and Beyond

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  • Had a great Easter week.
  • Thursday night’s service was quite full and Aaron’s use of architectural projection on the sanctuary walls was quite impressive.
  • I had prepared the message for that evening earlier in the week and had run through it a few times but was going to have notes on stage with me.  About 1/2 hour beforehand, Aaron convinced me I should have it memorized…talk about a cram session, but I got it done with God’s help.
  • Friday I enjoyed my day off and just vegged while Lisa went to CAYA’s Good Friday service.  Heard it went very well.
  • Saturday I was up early to go in to help with the Easter Family Fun Fest.
  • The rain was a bit discouraging, but kids and their parents just kept flooding into the buidling.
  • I ended up floating around helping where needed…the football toss game will never be the same after Andy and I got a hold of it…but for the most part I hung out in my office answering the phone with “yes we’re still having the event..it’s just been moved indoors”.
  • Around 11:30am I was asked to run to the grocery store to buy 100 more hotdogs and rolls.
  • I had no longer gotten back and they asked me to go buy 200 more of each.
  • By the time it was all said and done, they had prepared for about 600 but ended up with over 1000 people altogether!
  • I got yelled at by the clerk at the grocery store for taking all of thier stock of hotdogs and rolls.
  • He kept telling me that we needed to pre-order such large amounts.  I kept explaining that we had prepared for 600 but now we needed to feed 1000, but for some reason that wasn’t computing for him.
  • As Andy said when I got back, “It’s not like you were stealing them…you still paid for them”.
  • With all those people on Saturday, I’m not sure why I’m still so shocked about the record crowds we had yesterday.
  • If I’m being really honest I thought United would have 450-470 and I was praying for 500.
  • So to have 550 was amazing.
  • The two sanctuary services combined for about 560 and the children had right about 200…amazing.
  • This week I’ll be planning a little further ahead than usual becuase I’ll be in Florida all of next week at a conference.
  • Please be praying that we can get everything done that needs to happen.
  • Also don’t forget that this Saturday at 3PM & 7PM in the multi-purpose room is a free community-wide date night where we’ll be showing the movie Fireproof.

    • Inside Today’s Experiences

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  • Wow!
  • What a great Easter day!
  • 14 more people accepted Christ today…that never gets old!
  • United and the church as a whole didn’t just break our attendance records…they were shattered. 
  • In total 1314 men, women, boys and girls attended today!
  • 17 total 1st time professions in the entire church!
  • I am totally spent.
  • Not sure I’ve ever preached that hard before…my back is killing me.
  • The band did phenominal today…especially liked the opening instrumental piece with the thought provoking video.
  • Was really proud of the FIT and ushers as well. 
  • They all did a great job of accomodating so many extra people.
  • Really great to see the ushers helping people find empty seats…which were few and far between.
  • Also really proud of our tech team…they did a near flawless job pullling of some pretty technical stuff today.
  • I loved the staging that Aaron and the creative team came up with…the trees to match the graphic and the LED strips were aweome.
  • Big thanks to Dan and Sherrie Bogle and Jason Kibbe for working so hard to make the stage design happen.
  • Loved getting to meet so many new people today…
  • …even better loved the stories of life change I was already hearing!
  • Hung out with relatives this afternoon and now I’m at a friend’s house hanging with some of my peeps (Easter pun fully intended).
  • I know I say this all the time, but I can’t wait for next week. 
  • The new series called Re:Married on marriage, relationships, dating and sex is going to be great.
  • Don’t forget to invite someone!
  • We’ll post the invite video we showed today later in the week for you to use.  UPDATED:  (Here is the link)
  • Have a great week everyone…hope you enjoyed celebrating Jesus resurrection as much as I did!

    • This Sunday

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    Hey thanks for RSVP’ing for the Experience this Sunday.  We had our run through last night and it is going to be incredible!  I have a few favors to ask of you…

    1. Please continue inviting like never before…even that person that’s turned you down a million times.
    2. Please pray for the team, myself and all those who will be attending.
    3. Please BE IN YOUR SEATS at least 5 minutes before the Experience starts.  The beginning is going to be incredible…you won’t want to miss it and quite frankly it will be hard to find a seat during it and would be distracting to others.
    4. Once you find your seat if you can sit in the middle of a row that would be great.  I expect it’s going to be a madhouse and the easier it is for our ushers to find aisle seats for our guests, the better and smoother things will be on Sunday.
    5. Did I mention yet to invite someone?  I’ve been hearing of people using Facebook to invite, text messaging, e-mail and yes even the good old fashioned face-to-face.  I will be giving a clear message on the whether the resurrection was an Urban Legend or a true historical event.  If it was a true historical event then the implications are huge.  Do your part this week to make sure that by Sunday afternoon hell will be a little less crowded in the future!

    Thanks…love you all and hope you have a great week…I’ll see you and your guests on Sunday!

    Gilbert