Gilbert Thurston

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

Inside Today’s Experiences

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Co-habitation Ceremony

  • Another fun day!
  • I’m really enjoying this series.
  • Wow something happened to the air conditioner so it was HOT!
  • Of all days that I needed a jacket as a prop!
  • Oh well it was worth it!
  • I could tell a lot of people thought it was the real deal…suprise, surprise, surprise.
  • Many thanks to Dan and Sherri Bogle as real life married couple for playing the part.
  • An even bigger thanks to Sherri’s dad for showing up to walk her down the aisle.
  • It’s amazing how humor like the “co-habitation ceremony” can drive home the point.
  • Wow look how short I am as compared to Dan and Sherri in the picture….eeeshhh.
  • The 10:45 was really into things today…
  • I first noticed it during the worship time and then during the message you guys were responding great.
  • Keep it up…I love when you give verbal feedback like that!
  • Had a lot of guests at the reception today…so great to meet so many new people and hear their stories.
  • With the weather getting nicer, United t-shirts are back in high demand.  To get yours, click here.
  • Had a great afternoon and evening…the Caps won their game and we had ribs with friends tonight for dinner.
  • I’ve got a busy week coming up…I’ll hopefully fill you in tomorrow.

    • Inside Today’s Experiences

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    • Another great day but I’m whooped.
    • Typing this on my phone sitting at the airport getting ready to catch a flight to Orlando.
    • Great start to the new series.
    • 9 more people came into a relationship with Christ today!
    • That never gets old.
    • Wasn’t planning on doing a call for salvation today and I didn’t at 9:15, but I really felt a strong prompting from the Spirit to give one at 10:45.
    • Glad I did!
    • Loved the satan video…I’ll get Aaron to shrink it down then we’ll post it online.
    • Maybe you can catch it on Facebook in the meantime.
    • Had our best non-holiday attendance ever.
    • Glad we kept the momentum going.
    • It was great to have some family members in attendance…some of them for the very first time.
    • Also the Executive Director for our entire denomination stuck his head in the door for a couple of minutes…that’s cool.
    • Great crowd participation today…especially during the message…love it when you guys talk back.
    • I’ll try to keep you up-dated from the road this week during the conference…have a great week.

    Other Weekend Thoughts…and Beyond

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  • Had a great Easter week.
  • Thursday night’s service was quite full and Aaron’s use of architectural projection on the sanctuary walls was quite impressive.
  • I had prepared the message for that evening earlier in the week and had run through it a few times but was going to have notes on stage with me.  About 1/2 hour beforehand, Aaron convinced me I should have it memorized…talk about a cram session, but I got it done with God’s help.
  • Friday I enjoyed my day off and just vegged while Lisa went to CAYA’s Good Friday service.  Heard it went very well.
  • Saturday I was up early to go in to help with the Easter Family Fun Fest.
  • The rain was a bit discouraging, but kids and their parents just kept flooding into the buidling.
  • I ended up floating around helping where needed…the football toss game will never be the same after Andy and I got a hold of it…but for the most part I hung out in my office answering the phone with “yes we’re still having the event..it’s just been moved indoors”.
  • Around 11:30am I was asked to run to the grocery store to buy 100 more hotdogs and rolls.
  • I had no longer gotten back and they asked me to go buy 200 more of each.
  • By the time it was all said and done, they had prepared for about 600 but ended up with over 1000 people altogether!
  • I got yelled at by the clerk at the grocery store for taking all of thier stock of hotdogs and rolls.
  • He kept telling me that we needed to pre-order such large amounts.  I kept explaining that we had prepared for 600 but now we needed to feed 1000, but for some reason that wasn’t computing for him.
  • As Andy said when I got back, “It’s not like you were stealing them…you still paid for them”.
  • With all those people on Saturday, I’m not sure why I’m still so shocked about the record crowds we had yesterday.
  • If I’m being really honest I thought United would have 450-470 and I was praying for 500.
  • So to have 550 was amazing.
  • The two sanctuary services combined for about 560 and the children had right about 200…amazing.
  • This week I’ll be planning a little further ahead than usual becuase I’ll be in Florida all of next week at a conference.
  • Please be praying that we can get everything done that needs to happen.
  • Also don’t forget that this Saturday at 3PM & 7PM in the multi-purpose room is a free community-wide date night where we’ll be showing the movie Fireproof.

    • Inside Today’s Experiences

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  • Wow!
  • What a great Easter day!
  • 14 more people accepted Christ today…that never gets old!
  • United and the church as a whole didn’t just break our attendance records…they were shattered. 
  • In total 1314 men, women, boys and girls attended today!
  • 17 total 1st time professions in the entire church!
  • I am totally spent.
  • Not sure I’ve ever preached that hard before…my back is killing me.
  • The band did phenominal today…especially liked the opening instrumental piece with the thought provoking video.
  • Was really proud of the FIT and ushers as well. 
  • They all did a great job of accomodating so many extra people.
  • Really great to see the ushers helping people find empty seats…which were few and far between.
  • Also really proud of our tech team…they did a near flawless job pullling of some pretty technical stuff today.
  • I loved the staging that Aaron and the creative team came up with…the trees to match the graphic and the LED strips were aweome.
  • Big thanks to Dan and Sherrie Bogle and Jason Kibbe for working so hard to make the stage design happen.
  • Loved getting to meet so many new people today…
  • …even better loved the stories of life change I was already hearing!
  • Hung out with relatives this afternoon and now I’m at a friend’s house hanging with some of my peeps (Easter pun fully intended).
  • I know I say this all the time, but I can’t wait for next week. 
  • The new series called Re:Married on marriage, relationships, dating and sex is going to be great.
  • Don’t forget to invite someone!
  • We’ll post the invite video we showed today later in the week for you to use.  UPDATED:  (Here is the link)
  • Have a great week everyone…hope you enjoyed celebrating Jesus resurrection as much as I did!