Inside Today's Experience (vacation edition)

First here is Bill’s message from today. 168-Hour Energy.
Had a great week in Williamsburg, VA on vacation.
Kind of weird though since the city was without power for much of the week.
Thankfully our resort had power all week long.
Guess you see where priorities are. :)
Saturday we drove to WV to spend the night with our friends Bill and Nicole.
Andy and Gayle came down as well and we celebrated Andy’s birthday.
Really it was just an excuse to eat Gayle’s mom’s cupcakes!
Today we went to church at New Life Christian Ministries.
I got saved at New Life, discipled there, went on staff there and eventually became a pastor there.
They were one of the 30+ churches that supported us as we launched 10 1/2 months ago and they have a part in the now 100 salivations that have taken place. Thanks NLCM.
It’s been 8+ years since I left staff so there are now far more people there that I don’t know than I do.
It’s always good though to see some familiar faces.
Especially good to see the founding and Senior Pastor of New Life, Ken Harris.
PK next to my wife Lisa has probably been the greatest spiritual influence in my life.
When it comes to my love for Jesus and His Word, you can look no further than him.
Through the years our ministry styles have greatly differed but even in that, he helped influence one of our core values which is, “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”.
It was great to be back in their new facility they moved into last year and see the growth they’re experiencing even with it being a holiday weekend.
Pastor Ken apologized when we walked in that they were doing a retro day music wise.
However, I liked it because it meant all songs I knew so it was nice to be able to worship without having to look at the screens.
New Life likes to worship and after 40+ minutes of music and their extended greeting time, PK began his message on persecution.
As always it was a good message…here are a couple of quotes I wrote down in my notes.

“People point out the wrong in you so they feel better about the wrong in themselves”.
“It’s hard to grow a garden but it’s easy to grow weeds”. This was said in the context of it’s easy to do the wrong thing but often hard to do the right thing.
“One of the best ways you can witness to people is to clean up your dirty mouth”.
After this quote, PK told a story of how he recently posted a scripture on Facebook (can’t remember which one) about watching your language. He said he put it as a witness to unbelievers but had about a dozen Christians comment saying they were guilty. This doesn’t read funny but it was when he told it. Regardless, hope people take it seriously…and as I’ve said recently myself, abbreviating it Facebook is just as wrong.
“It’s more important to win someone to Christ than it is to win an argument with them”. That’s good preaching.

Ok now for the funny part…or at least the part I found funny.
PK likes to preach…I mean an hour+.
He himself used to joke that the week after vacation was the worst because he had 2 weeks of talking to get out. :)
In any case, his outline today was 4 points. Point 3 had 4 subpoints.
The funny thing was I preached an entire 30+ minute message on just 2 of those sub-points just a 2 weeks ago.
I kept thinking…”Kenny you’ve got an entire series in just today’s message…save it man, save it”. :)
Again though our styles are really different and for that I’m grateful. As the old saying goes, “If two people are exactly alike then one of them is not necessary”.
The really funny part was in my message I actually told a story of his about how he used to get raises at work when nobody else did. Then today he tells the same story. Weird.
In any case, the message was really practical. New Life’s motto is, “Learning Real Christianity in a Real World”.
Persecution is definitely a real thing and PK gave some great advice on how to deal with it from a biblical perspective.
Afterward we stuck around and talked to as many people as we could…until finally getting kicked out.
So I got kicked out of church today…how about you?
Wait is that persecution for being friendly? :)
Double wait…did I just use myself and the word friendly in the same sentence? What is this world coming to?
Ok seriously, I can’t wait to get back to work this week.
Next Sunday for 9-11 we’ll be doing a special look at the hope that was found in the tragedy through a film called, “The Cross and the Towers”.
Invite as many people as you can to take part in this special event unlike anything we’ve ever done.
I’ve created a Facebook invite for you to share on your wall.

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