Gilbert Thurston

Ever notice how sometimes you have a squeaky door around the house that gets on your nerves…it causes you to cringe every time you hear it and while you have good intentions of someday fixing it…you never do. Now why is that? Well one reason may be that you become used to hearing it and thus it doesn’t bother you as much anymore.

The same thing happens in churches all the time. You tolerate sister so-and-so singing off key, or brother so-and-so teaching in his normal boring way or the service being disorganized because it’s always been done that way. It used to bother you but now it doesn’t because that’s just the way we do things around here.

However, where your attitude begins to change is when your neighbor or your relative whom you’ve been inviting for years suddenly shows up for church one day. Now you are sitting there through the entire service watching and listening through their eyes and ears. “Wow I wonder what they thought of that” is the thought that keeps running through your mind. Whether it’s bad singing, bad teaching, disorganization, using words that only the “insiders” will know or a myriad of other things, you begin to cringe knowing that your friend or relative has got to be perplexed that all this is being allowed to happen.

If our God is as excellent as what we say He is, then He deserves nothing less than our best back in return. So I want to challenge all of you in your lives and in your ministries here at the church to remove the cringe. Always think through the eyes of the person walking in off the street for the first time. Will this make sense to them? Will they be more or less inspired to start a relationship with Christ? If my best friend was not a Christian and they said they’d give church one shot and one shot only, would I still do this, allow this, participate in this, etc.

I know each week as I prepare for the Experience, these are the questions that go through my mind, because I never know who may be giving God one shot. That’s why we do our best to make sure that what you see and hear from the platform is the very best it can be. That’s why in this blog on Sunday afternoons you read me complaining about stupid mistakes that could have been avoided. Is some of it because I’m a perfectionist…yes absolutely, but mostly it has to do with being able to say at the end of each day…”God I gave my very best.” So how about you…is there anything in your life or ministry that would cause the rest of us to cringe? If so, what are you going to do about it?

 I had a conversation with someone last week where we were talking about the process that we go through in coming to and then staying in a church. I was sharing with him that I pray that each week our services are filled with 1st time guests who reek of cigarette smoke, are coming down off a high or may be hung-over. I pray that young girls who just had an abortion or don’t “dress the right way” for church show up. I pray that men who beat their wives or who “don’t look the part” of being a Christian show up. Here’s the reason why…read this slowly until it sinks in an makes sense. In most churches the process is:

1.  Behave…if you want to attend here then you need to behave
     like a Christian.
2.  Believe…now actually become a Christian.
3.  Belong…now that you you look and think like us, you can
     become a active part of our church. 

Here’s how it should be though:

1.  Belong…right away no matter who you are or what you’ve done,
     we accept you.
2.  Believe…as you are here and feel the love of God, hopefully
     you’ll also respond to the message of God’s love when it’s
     presented.
3.  Behave…as we talked about in the Extreme Makeover series,
     true transformed lives don’t come from making a decision to
     behave differently, but rather from changing your thinking,
     which in turn will help you to make better, God honoring,
     decisions.  That type of thinking can only come when someone
     has the Holy Spirit living in them to help guide them towards
     the truth.

The lesson then is this…we can’t expect non-Christians to act like Christians until they are.  We need to radically love each and every person that walks through our doors and help them discover the love and grace of Jesus Christ.

• Wow just now getting to this…it’s been that kind of weekend.
• It started Saturday night with a belated Thanksgiving meal with my dad’s side of the family…I ate way to much sauerkraut and in addition the gravy for the mashed potatoes was yellow…something about that doens’t hit me right if you know what I mean.
• I was up at least 5 times Saturday night and didn’t sleep well at all.
• Have I ever mentioned that I’m not a morning person to begin with and that Sunday’s is the day I have to get up earliest…uhhh…not a good start.
• I hate when I’m sick it seems like the message will never end…but God is good, He still used it to bring yet another person into a saving relationship with Him.  I found out later that there was another hand raised all the way in the back which I didn’t see.
• These 2 plus the 2 from the office this week make for a total of 27 first time professions of faith during our first series!  Wow…yea God and yea you for inviting so many new people to join the Experience.
• The “bad” weather kept many people home this weekend…
• …too bad because you missed Guest Worship leader Aaron Schwindt lead us in an awesome time of worship.
• Nice to have Earl be able to participate as well…even if he did make fun of my toolmanship…or lack thereof.
• A big thanks to Kevin for coming in and being our guest light controller.
• Very few technical mistakes which always makes me happy, but setting up in the morning had all kinds of glitches that made me think we’d never be ready in time…Ah me of little faith.
• Had a great lunch with a group of people who are new to the church and then went and had lunch part 2 at the Krull house with Aaron and his wife Ashleigh.
• The 3 guys then rolled back up to C’burg to help get set-up for the hanging of the greens. 
• Still not feeling well when I arrived home, I watched the Redskins game on the TIVO….uhhh now I really didn’t feel good.  They’ve done that almost every week…dominate a team only to let them hang around and then lose at the end.  Especially bad this week in that a victory would have helped start some of the healing process after the death of Sean Taylor.
• Feeling much better today and I’m looking forward to our new sereis CRIBS which starts this week.  Don’t forget to invite someone.