Inside Today's Experience - Gilbert Thurston

Don’t know if I’ll do this every week, but we’ll call this one, “The Time Change Edition”.
This is actually the first time in the past 4 years that the time change has affected me.
Why you ask?
At my old church I convinced them not to observe the time change until after we were done on Sunday mornings.
In other words, everyone got up at the normal time, came to church and then once we were done, everyone moved their clocks forward.
It was awesome…you didn’t lose sleep and we even got a write up in the paper about it.
The only people it affected were people who had to work around noon, but better to affect a few than affect everyone.
Problem is this only works when you have your own building.
At the theater we couldn’t do this because it would affect movies.
So the morning got started earlier than normal but I felt good because I went to bed earlier last night to try to make up for it.
Today was a big day because Andy and Gayle were away for the first time since we launched.
For those that don’t know Andy, he’s a tech wiz and designed our system.
This is the 3rd church now that Andy and I have been together and not only are we best friends but he gives me a high degree of comfort on Sunday mornings because I know he can handle just about anything thrown at him.
However, we’ve assembled a great tech crew at ExponentialChurch.tv and so I wasn’t too concerned unless something completely out of the ordinary happened.
When you’re doing portable church that’s not completely out of the question, but today we got lucky…or prayer really does work. :)
We ran into a few minor problems but the team of Mike, Cris, and Benji were able to handle it.
Great job guys and gal!
All in all the entire day went very smoothly. The band did great as usual…the flow of the day went well…our volunteers are world class…I felt good about today’s message…just one problem…
Hardly anyone was there.
I’m talking we just barely had half the normal size crowd.
Had a few of those tell me that unless they had gotten my email reminder they would have forgotten as well.
My feeling is two things were at play…
First, many people just forgot the time change…already gotten some messages to that regard.
Second, we’re doing a pretty good job of reaching people who either have no church background or little church background.
While they’re making good spiritual process either as now baby Christians or investigating the claims of Jesus…church attendance still isn’t high on their list and even the slightest little thing (like the time change) can get them out of rhythm.
That’s one of the challenges of doing “church for people that don’t like church” but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Regardless of the small crowd, we still had 2 more people today pray to become followers of Jesus!
My first pastor used to say that if you don’t preach the same regardless of the crowd size then you’re probably doing it for the wrong reason.
I’ve always remembered that and so whether it’s a small crowd like today or 13000+, I always try to preach, speak and teach to individuals in the crowd so it doesn’t matter how many total are in attendance.
That philosophy has served me well not to get discouraged by small crowds and too nervous for big ones.
Again today was excellent…sorry so many missed it.
Jump online to listen to the message about the “One Simple Truth” that will transform your life.
And don’t forget we’re still in the midst of reading the Book of John together as a church. Today is John 7, tomorrow John 8 and so on.
Then go to the Exponential Facebook Discussion page to share your thoughts via the SOAP method. Not sure what that is? It’s all explained online.

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