Gilbert Thurston

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

Random Friday Thoughts

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  • Enjoying my day off…just woke up from a nap.  :)
  • Last night’s practice for this weekend was awesome…I’m a combination of excited and nervous!
  • You’ll have to be there to see why.
  • This is about as edgy as I think we’ll ever be, but I truly believe that God has directed all of this to create an Experience that not only will you never forget, but will also get you truly re-thinking sex.
  • Speaking of excited, Andy and I got our tickets for Monday night’s Caps vs. Penguins play-off game. 
  • Alexander the Great vs. Cindy (oopps I mean Sidney) the Sissy   haha
  • Yesterday was Dianna Best, our children’s director’s, birthday.
  • The staff went out to a great liitle Italian place in downtown Chambersburg to celebrate.
  • For 44 days Dianna is a year older than me…ha!
  • In all seriousness, Dianna does an awesome job with “little people church”…please don’t forget to thank her for all she and her team does next time you see her.
  • Tonight CAYA is hanging out with a stop at Brusters in the mix.
  • If you’re in the 18-29 range stop by Brusters at 7PM to hang with them.
  • Going to try out Twitter for a week or so to see if I like it.
  • Got another busy week coming up where I’ll have to get 2 weeks worth of stuff done…definetely looking forward to vacation!
  • If you haven’t yet invited someone to United for this weekend…stop what your doing and do it now…you won’t regret it.

    • Important Up-date about this Weekend

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    United attenders and guests, 

    Due to some unforseen complications, we are having to pull some of our creative content for this weekend that I have been promising all week long.  I feel bad because all week long I’ve been promising you one thing and now you’re going to get another, but God is still in control and I still expect big things to happen on Sunday as a result of everything that will still be happening in the Experience.  So please still invite people, just don’t use any of the promises that I’ve made in the past week.  See you Sunday!

    Gilbert 

    PS…it will still be PG-13 so use caution.

    Sex, Sex, Sex

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    Mmmm…got your attention didn’t it?  Just even seeing the word sex so intrigues us.  In fact, I’m guessing that some of you are reading this that don’t normally read my stuff…why is that?  Well it’s simple, God put a desire in each of us to not only love and be loved, but to also express that love to another through the gift of sex. This weekend at the United Worship Experience that is going to be our topic.  Now let me give a couple of disclaimers:

    • If you’re are highly offendable, don’t show up. 
    • We are going to take a humorous, thought provoking, biblical look at what God says about intimacy.
    • I’ve given PG-13 warnings before, but this will be about as close to an R-rated message and Experience that you can get, so if you have children, make sure they are in children’s church, or make sure you are ready to process this information with them afterwards. 
    • Let’s face it, your 10 year olds and up are hearing about sex from their friends and Hollywood already, so hearing about it from their pastor can only be a good thing if you’re prepared to talk to them about it afterwards.
    • Alright with those warnings out of the way, let me encourage you to not only be there but to invite your friends with you as well. 
    • In fact, you probably don’t even have to ask them to come, you could probably just say, “I can’t wait for this Sunday, my pastor is going to be preaching about sex and he’s promised that they are going to some wild and crazy stuff”.
    • At this point you can shut up and they will probably beg you to tell them where there is a church where the pastor isn’t afraid to talk about sex.
    • In case your reading this and wondering will this really live up to the hype, here is a sneak peek at words that I guarantee will show up in the Experience through either the spoken word, video or song. 
    • Sex.  Masturbation.  Adultery.  Lust.  Pornography.  Ecstasy.  Oral sex.  Cleavage.  Homosexuality.  Condom.  Lap Dance.  Aborton.  Foreplay.

    I truly believe that God is going to use this message to challenge your thinking in some areas and to ensure that going forward you have the red hot sex life that not only you want, but that He desires for you as well.

    See you Sunday!

    Random Wednesday Thoughts

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  • My talk went well yesterday…thanks for the prayers.
  • Had about 50 pastors and leaders attend and even though I had some tough things for them to hear, I think it was received well.
  • The AC wasn’t working in the room I was in so I was roasting by the time we were done.
  • It was great to have our own Adam Swisher there assisting me with the tech side of things for my presentation.
  • Adam and a few other of the guys from church are actually running all the tech for this conference and using alot of CFCOG’s equipment to do it.
  • This is the 3rd year I’ve been there and it’s by far the best it’s ever looked…not that I’m biased or anything.
  • Funniest thing was right before my breakout and lunch was a talk to the entire group from our keynote speaker, Craig Sider. 
  • Craig kept on giving the same quotes, scriptures and illustrations that I was planning on giving in my breakout…it was like we had the same notes.
  • To top it all off was when he showed a picture of himself skydiving from last year…well guess who else had in his presentation a picture of himself skydiving last year…yep that would be me for those of you playing along at home.
  • Eventually I realized that wait…maybe God is in this and some people that would be attending my breakout needed to hear these truths two times instead of one so I kept it all in.
  • When I got home I spent some QT with Lisa and then watched game 7 of the Caps vs. Rangers.
  • Didn’t have a good feeling all night about the game…they played terrible…but yet they pulled it out in the end.
  • Not only does this mean they advance to the next round, but it also means at least another week and a half of Andy growing his play-off beard.
  • I was supposed to be doing it as well, but one thing after another kept me from letting it grow so now I have to keep shaving because it would be unlucky now to start…not that I’m superstitious or anything.

    • Other Weekend Thoughts…and Beyond

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    First Baptist Orlando

  • Wow sorry I haven’t been able to blog as much this past week or so…things have been crazy.
  • Many of you were following me on Facebook last week, so you’re at least partially in the loop.
  • If you haven’t yet signed-up for a Facebook account it’s easy to do and an awesome way to keep up with all of your friends at United.
  • Had a great trip to Orlando for the Exponential Conference at the First Baptist Church of Orlando.
  • Got to spend time with a few other guys from our region, including Mike Schooley who started United back in 2005 before heading to New York to start his own church.
  • Mike and I roomed together and every night after we’d turn the lights out we’d talk and dream about church stuff for a long time.
  • I told him the last night I was going to miss our “Walton’s Family” chats.
  • The worst part of the trip was when my good friend Chuck Frank had to fly home early because his wife, Tammy, fell and broke her ankle.
  • Please keep them in prayer…it’s going to be a long recovery process and may still require more surgery.
  • I got a ton of great ideas at the conference and can’t wait to try some of them out.
  • The pic above is of their sanctuary.  To try to give you some perspective, there were 3000 people at the conference and almost everyone sat on the floor level.
  • Perhaps the highlight of week was the very last thing.  Not only did Francis Chan deliever a great talk, but the intro that was given for him left everyone…including Francis saying wow!
  • Got to meet Francis then at the airport that day and he was still talking about it.
  • Was finally able to get the interview with Satan video online from the “Finding the One” message.  To watch it, click here.
  • Satan will be making another appearance this week as a part of the message about sex called, “It’s Business Time”.
  • Seriously the entire Experience is something that is going to be talked about for a long time…
  • …we have things in store for you that you just simply will have to be there to believe.
  • For those that can’t make it, the number of downloads I’m sure is going to not just break but shatter every record we have.
  • Tomorrow (Tuesday) I’m speaking for our denomination on how to reach the 18-35 crowd.
  • Please say a quick prayer for me.
  • Night!