Inside Today's Experience - Gilbert Thurston

Had a pretty decent day today.
Nothing to out of the ordinary with set-up which was a plus after all the hassles last week.
The only thing that went wrong was a battery needed to be replaced in on the bass guitar components…not exactly sure what it was.
I only mention that because the picture that is with this post now answers the question of how many people it takes to change a battery.
Look close…not sure why almost the entire band was needed to do this but they all huddled around.
We were up in the tech booth laughing because it from a distance looked like some sort of surgery was taking place.
The other out of the ordinary thing that happened today was the theater opened at 8:30am today because of Harry Potter.
I actually don’t mind having others in the building because inevitably someone sees something out of the ordinary (us)…inquires about what’s going on and then decides to attend.
Don’t know for sure but I’m guessing we had 4-6 people like that today.
Also cool was the distances we had people in town for…I thought for sure Seattle was going to be the furthest but it turned out to be a couple and their daughter from Germany. Cool!
Does that mean we’re an international church now? :)
Great also to have the Pastor Bryan Lingle and family with us from East Shore Baptist.
Great family and great church!
I was reminded today why I’ve often kept myself holed up on Sunday’s before speaking…the last thing you want is any drama or controversy and unfortunately something like that happened just minutes before the Experience started.
This of course meant that now my mind was focused on that instead of my message.
I’m sure it will get resolved but it almost makes me want to go back to the old days when I’d basically hide except for a few trusted people who knew to wait until after Sunday was over to bring up bigger issues.
In any case, I’ll continue with my current routine unless these types of things pop-up more and more frequently.
I’m always amazed how many people show up either right on time or slightly late.
When the Experience started I thought we were in store for summer crowd type of numbers.
By 5 minutes after I could tell we were actually going to have one of our highest attended days ever…which we did!
Great energy today from the band and the crowd…the “worship” time was awesome.
I was able to pull myself together enough to preach on Jonah chapter 2.
It’s often called the “Prayer of Jonah”. You can listen to it here as I talked about the power of prayer in our lives.
Next week we have a special surprise for Jonah 3…make sure you’re there!
Afterward I got to meet a ton of new people which is always exciting.
From there I left for Lancaster to participate in a Texas Hold’em Tournament that I qualified for.
I took 11th place which now qualifies me for the yearly tournament…I was pretty happy with that.
Someone asked me today because they saw it on Facebook if it was alright for me to “be gambling” like that.
I think I’ll answer in full this week what I’m doing but for now let me say the tournaments I’ve entered have all been free as was the one today.
Again though it’s a great question about games, gambling, etc, which deserves a more in-depth discussion…so watch out for that later this week.

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