Gilbert Thurston

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

June 3rd

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The day started out earlier than normal for me.  With nothing else to do, for some odd reason I watched an episode of Barney and Friends then headed over to the church. 

Now I know what you’re thinking…Gilbert aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?  And the answer to that is yes, but I’m not talking about today…I’m talking about June 3, 1995…that was the day I made the second best decision ever in my life…I married Lisa.

Now here we are 13 years later and happier than we’ve ever been.  I truly would be nothing without her.  She is the most incredible person I’ve ever met, not only  as a Christian woman but also just as a normal human being…to top it all off, she is off the charts hot!!!

Happy Anniversary baby…I love you!!!

Inside Today’s Experience

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  • Wow glad this week is over…I’m whupped.
  • After working on 3 weeks worth of stuff this past week, it showed up today in my energy and brain.
  • Pretty smooth set-up time this morning, although Brian Miller was out of town and so I ended up having to help with some set-up in the sanctuary.
  • Yet another reason it will be nice to have a Creative Arts Pastor so all the tech side of stuff falls to someone else and I can just concentrate on the message.
  • Never sure what attendance is going to be like when the kids are doing something special over in the sanctuary.  Sometimes it means we’ll be down, sometimes up…today was down.
  • We’re in the midst of our regular worship team members being off for vacations, so we had a lot of fill-ins or playing out positions today.
  • With all that being said, I thought the team did well.  Dave, really wailed on the guitar solo for Everlasting God…great job Dave.  Also, many thanks to Jeff for filling in and to Karl for playing out of position.
  • To the rest of the team…yeah, you guys are alright as well…  ; )
  • I had some friends in from MD and WV today and they must be bad luck…they always tease me about getting my words messed up and sure enough when I combined guts with bold and it came out as butts, it had struck me again.
  • We had some other minor technical problems this week, which makes 2 weeks in a row….AAHHHHH.  We had a good run of a few straight months there without any, so I’m concerned with them popping up again.
  • Don’t forget this week to order your t-shirts…certain sizes are quickly selling out.
  • While on vacation I’ll blog about what we’re doing from time to time, but don’t expect the normal 4-5 times as usual.
  • Make sure to come out and support Gene and our Youth next week and also don’t forget to vote in favor of the Creative Arts Pastor.

    • Random Friday Thoughts

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    • Really busy week.
    • I’ve been getting 3 weeks worth of stuff done so I can head off to vacation!
    • To accomplish this I’ve been getting up between 6-7am each day and then working most nights to 9PM or later.
    • If I didn’t need a vacation before, I need one now!
    • This week I’ll wrap-up the IMPACT series with really practical steps you can take to implement what we’ve been talking about in the first 3 weeks of the series into your life.
    • Then afterwards Lisa and I will head out of town.
    • The week I’m gone will be Youth Sunday at United.  Gene and his youth team have an exciting Experience planned for you…make sure you attend and bring along some middle and high school age students with you.
    • I’ll be back then the following Sunday for the start of the One Prayer series.  I’ve been doing all the preparation for that day this week and let me tell you I am pumped up…this is going to be AWESOME!
    • Make sure you pick-up some invite cards this week in at the resource table.  You’ll definitely want to invite your friends to this one…4 weeks of some of the best communicators in the whole world and we get to enjoy them right here in Chambersburg.
    • Thanks to all of you for sharing your stories in response to this post.  Keep them coming.  Not only have they been an encouragement to me, but they have also been inspiring other people that the ways they serve in the church truly is making a difference.
    • This afternoon I’ve got a video shoot for 2 up-coming videos…can’t wait!
    • Speaking of can’t wait…I can’t wait until we hire a Pastor of Creative Arts that will be able to do all the shooting and editing for me.  That will free up some of my time to help United in other areas and the quality of our videos and other technical elements will improve throughout the church.
    • Don’t forget to stick around after the Experience on June 8th and vote for the hiring of this position.
    • I can’t say this strongly enough…if we want to truly make an IMPACT on our community, this is an important next step. 
    • Enjoy your weekend…don’t forget to invite someone to come with you this week.

    The Summer Slump?

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    Well Memorial Day is behind us and this is the time that many churches enter into the “summer slump.”  This has always been a pet peeve of mine…churches shut everything down for the summer expecting things are going to be bad.  Two thoughts on that.  First, you get what you expect.  Second, people still die and go to hell during the summer, so why should we do any less than we normally do?

    Last summer we continued to grow in United during the summer months and I don’t expect anything less this year.  Yes, take a week or 2 of vacation (Lisa and I are), but the rest of the time, be at church, keep serving, keep inviting.  God didn’t say “Honor the sabbath but only on days that are cloudy.”  A nice day outside, gardening, amusement parks, picnics, reunions, your kids sporting event, boating, camping, etc., are never a reason to miss church.  Anytime you put something else before church on Sunday, that’s called an idol and that’s called sin.  And by the way, even when you’re on vacation, find a good church to attend in the town your visiting.

    One of the reasons I thought to post this, is that Craig Groeschel posted something similar this week.  Craig will be our first guest speaker at United for the up-coming One Prayer series.  The closer and closer we get to it, the more excited I get!  I’ll post more about Craig and the rest of our speakers here soon…they are definitely not to be missed…even if it’s a sunny day.

    Inside Today’s Experience

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    • What an interesting day.
    • Much busier Sunday than usual.
    • After getting things set-up this morning, Andy and I shot some video for next week.
    • It meant changing clothes for consistency.
    • Once we got back, I noticed the hazer wasn’t putting out enough haze so we had to get that going again.
    • The crowd today was about what I expected…lots of people off visiting families out of town, while at the same time we had people from all over the country in with us…Seattle wins the award for the day for people who travelled the furthest to be with us.
    • I loved the We Shine video we played behind the song.
    • One of our debates was whether to do it as a special or not.  It was hard to follow along with if you didn’t already know the song, but yet it was too energetic for people just to sit there, so we decided to go with the former.
    • I think our team was so jazzed up to do that…technically it was very difficult…that once it was done they relaxed and we had quite a few technical mistakes from there on out.
    • I hate that.
    • It’s sort of like how more climbers die coming down a mountain than they do going up.  The problem is you relax because you’ve already met your goal….however, it’s about finishing, not about making it half-way through.
    • Oh well, we’ll learn from it and do better the next time.
    • Even I was having problems today…I was all over the place in my message, but I was able to tie it together so that you probably didn’t even realize it. 
    • In other words it still flowed alright, just not in the order I thought it was going to…in cases like that though I trust God led me to remember things in the order He wanted me to.
    • I HATE ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!
    • However, this week so much was going on I had cover it all.
    • For those who missed it, let me quickly recap two big ones.
      • June 8th Vote:  Immediately following the Experience all members need to come to a brief meeting in the sanctuary to vote on hiring a Pastor of Creative Arts.  To read more, click here.
      • Also we announced that United Worship Experience t-shirts are now available in a limited quantity.  Click here to purchase one or click the t-shirt link to the left.
    • It was great having Mike Schooley in town.  He along with a few other people got United started a few years back. 
    • We took some time to sit down for a video interview after the Experience which we’ll show in the future so you can hear the full story of when United was in its infancy.
    • I’m watching the INDY 500, getting ready to eat and then of course my Sunday afternoon nap won’t be far behind….can’t wait for CAYA tongiht…the new series is going to be awesome.