- I give up!
- What I mean by that is…I give up trying to figure out attendance patterns.
- Today being Memorial Day weekend, most churches see a dip in attendance.
- This week I personally knew of 18 people that said they wouldn’t be with us…who knows how many I didn’t know about.
- So my expectation was a really low attendance day…
- So of course we end up with our 2nd highest attendance ever…God amazes me.
- Best of all we had 5 more people pray today for Jesus forgiveness and leadership!
- Funny thing is I didn’t plan on offering a call for commitment today, but I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me at the end to do it any way.
- Glad I listened!
- As for the rest of the day, we couldn’t have asked for it to be much smoother.
- In fact, the band got set-up, had their warm-up and run through and still had so much time that they were actually able to do some Thursday night practice kind of stuff.
- Big thanks to Kristie Frownfelter for stepping up and leading the Children’s Ministry today while Chelsea was away on vacation.
- I peeked in and it looked like you were doing an awesome job.
- Speaking of an awesome job, the pic for this post (sorry it’s so dark) is of our tech team. Andy, Mike, and Cris have 3 computers to run with the assorted programs we use plus then the sound board.
- They consistently accomplish the best thing a tech team can do…not be noticed.
- If the technology itself or the operators through error draw attention, that means the attention is off of Jesus. So thankful to have a team that knows what they are doing and do it with excellence.
- Mike though did do a funny thing this morning when he and I went out to set up signs. We got to an intersection that we put a sign out at. The plan is for me to jump out, reach in the back to get the sign, then Mike takes off and turns around while I’m putting the sign in the appropriate place. This is all done at a busy intersection and it’s best if the light is red when we get there. Today though it was green and so imagine my surprise when I jump out and Mike starts to take off before I’ve been able to get the sign out of the back. Not sure if this is making sense, but it was funny.
- This was the 5th part to our iLife series and I’m not sure why but on Thursday I started to get really excited about today’s topic which was gaining professional margin.
- Was also nervous a bit though because the one visual illustration I wanted to do involved me juggling. Now I have juggled for years but in order for the illustration to really work it was vital that I not drop any. You’ll have to listen to the message to understand why. Whew…was able to do it!
- Always great to be able to look out and seeing a visiting pastor. Today we were excited to have Charlie Hostetter and his wife Linda with us from the Mechanicsburg First Church of God.
- Charlie said they wanted to come check us out because they’ve heard so much.
- Never really sure how to take that since as much negative is said about us as positive.
- They seemed to like it though and we were able to provide Linda with a pair of complimentary ear plugs in case the music got too loud for her.
- I know it seems silly but it’s the little things like this (and the mints and hand lotion we provide in the restrooms) that really help create wow experiences for people.
- Noticed afterward a lot more people hanging out in the lobby. That’s great that people are getting connected with one another. Technically we need to get out of the theater ASAP, but as long as were not in the way, then I’d love to see these interactions continuing.
- Had lunch with my mom and dad today and then Lisa and I went swimming. Our pool is already at a very comfy 82 degrees…tomorrow should help even more.
- On a personal note, today marked the one year anniversary since my last day on staff at the Chambersburg First Church of God.
- Wow do I miss them tremendously. At the same time though I’m so grateful for the new relationships we’ve made here in Harrisburg as we’re getting ExponentialChurch.tv launched.
- I have no doubt we’re exactly where God wants us but it still doesn’t make it easy to be away from so many great friends. Thanks United and CFCOG for 3 awesome years together.
- Next week at Exponential we’ll wrap-up the iLife series by discovering how to get moral margin in your life.
- I want to talk to 3 groups of people…teens, singles and married couples about how to make sure when it comes to purity (especially sexual purity) you have the margin that God desires.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Before I forget, this week I posted a video of our Easter Sunday Experience. If you’ve ever wanted to see what we do at ExponentialChurch.tv, but haven’t been able to visit here’s your chance.
- This is also something you can share with your friends if they want to see what we’re about before actually showing up at the theater.
- Ok on to today…
- We continued the iLife series today by looking at how God wants us to have financial margin.
- The whole series has been about margin in various areas of life and today we had a great example of how it works in real life situations.
- What I mean is I wish we would have had some more time margin this morning in set-up.
- Andy was gone for his grandfather’s funeral and of course today just had to be the day that we had some equipment failure.
- This meant having to call him to figure out a go around.
- We got it all done, but that meant my emotional margin was about spent.
- This of course then affected the message.
- I think the point was still made but I know I could have done so much better.
- In any case we have a great team and everyone pitched in to help.
- Thanks especially to Mike and Cris for doing more than normal.
- My biggest disappointment was I missed out on Chelsea’s meeting she had for all the children’s workers and I missed our normal all-team meeting (thanks Chad for filling in).
- Congratulations to Dennis Kennel and Rhonda Arndt for winning the 5th and 6th iPads.
- Can’t believe I called the wrong name instead of Rhonda’s…incredibly she had 12 guests with her on the first week of the series.
- Technically her name wasn’t drawn but I wanted to make sure we rewarded her for doing such an awesome job of being a “World Class Inviter“.
- I talked today about online giving and our new initiative called “Automate the Important”. I’ll be sending out the link later today or tomorrow but if you already know you want to give, here’s the link to our secure giving.
- Thanks in advance for your financial support!
- Hope everyone has a great week…lot’s of cool stuff happening…keep being the church!
Inside Today’s Experience
- First things first…Happy Mother’s Day!
- Especially to my mom…I love you!
- Mom is actually in Jamaica on vacation so this is the first time I’ve not been able to talk to her on a Mother’s Day.
- So thankful that her, dad, my sister and niece have been traveling each week to be a part of ExponentialChurch.tv.
- They were all away today though along with quite a few others so we were a bit short-staffed.
- In addition, I didn’t want to have any of the moms have to miss the Experience so that meant Chad, my wife Lisa, Tania and a couple of teens were in charge of nursery and toddlers.
- When Chad’s wife, Tammie, found out she decided maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to be there as well.
- Thanks Tammie for all you do!
- Set-up was a bit weird today…for whatever reason, we made a couple of silly mistakes.
- One took quite awhile to figure out…we had to re-route some cables and then…
- …we realized we didn’t have the power turned on.
- Another one involved some things not getting plugged in…
- In any case, that’s why we build in plenty of margin to our morning so that we can catch these things, resolve them and still have plenty of time to relax before the actual Experience starts.
- As for the Experience itself, it was cool to be able to do some child dedications on Mother’s Day.
- Congrats to Lorraine Weaver and her twins, Shawn and Annette.
- The worship time was certainly emotional.
- The Krull family (parents, kids and grandkids) who all made the move with us to get the church started, unexpectedly lost Jan’s dad (Andy’s grandad) yesterday.
- Andy’s wife Gayle who is on the worship team did her best to hold it together as she lead “How He Loves”, but understandably was not able to.
- Thought it was a very authentic moment…as good as the team is, it’s just a good for people to see that the band is real people as well.
- Truthfully, I didn’t feel comfortable with this week’s message.
- I was gone for most of the week at our denomination’s annual regional conference, which meant my normal routine was disrupted.
- I went over the message twice as many times as usual trying to make up for it, but felt really unprepared.
- Oh me of little faith! Like always God was able to give me just the right words.
- Was it the best message ever…no…but it was what God wanted to people to hear.
- I love how even now we’re already hearing how much of a difference this series is making!
- Good news is we’ve still got 4 more weeks left in it so that means plenty more life-change!
- Don’t forget that everyone as a church this week will be reading through the book of James.
- Loved Chad’s idea of how to make our Mother’s Day gift a missional opportunity.
- Basically we gave all the ladies baby bottles filled with candy.
- Next week we’re asking them to bring the bottles back filled with coins or even cash.
- All the money will then be given to the local crisis pregnancy center to help a mom or mom’s who are at risk.
- Overall, a really good day…the momentum we tried to create from Easter and last week’s iPad give-away was sustained, mom’s were honored, babies were dedicated and most importantly God’s Word was proclaimed and transforming!
- After 3 consecutive weird weeks and lots of travel, I’m looking forward to something a bit more normal.
- Monday afternoon and night the staff will be doing some strategic planning for the remainder of 2011. Please keep us in prayer.
- Next Sunday we’ll continue the iLife series by looking at God’s app for handling money.
- If you have financial stress or know someone who does, you’re going to want to make sure you and they are with us.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Had a great day…3 more people came into a relationship with Jesus!
- That never gets old…praying we continue to see God move in our midst.
- Nothing out of the ordinary with set-up, although Andy did install a wireless router for us in the building which allowed him to play around with controlling the sound board and in-ear monitors with an iPAD.
- He was like a little kid in a candy store.
- Great to have Chad’s mom and dad visiting with us from Illinois.
- Larry is a pastor also and is doing a great job as an interim turning around a more traditional church.
- Love seeing our various teams filling up the lobby early on Sunday mornings praying with and for each and for that day’s Experience.
- Definitely power in our prayers.
- Our theater seats 462 people and up until today we weren’t as aggressive keeping people from spreading out as what we should have been.
- Not that we didn’t try but people still were going around the barriers and ushers instructing them not to.
- Today I said that needed to stop.
- We also had people scoot more in towards the center.
- Wow what a difference!
- Makes it so much easier for me to preach and I could see a huge difference in Bill’s energy level leading worship and praying.
- I actually mention it in the message that I was so pumped up by Bill’s prayer I almost just said…”Mmmm why don’t you go ahead and preach”.
- By the way, we are going to have him preach this summer…from what I understand he won some awards as a kid for his preaching…cool, can’t wait.
- We started out today’s Experience with “Last Name” by Carrie Underwood. It was a great song to lead into today’s topic of temptation.
- As always Gayle did an awesome job.
- We used a click track to fill in some extra parts and we almost had a huge mistake at the beginning but our team kept their composure and didn’t miss a beat…literally.
- Great worship set today…the team rocked it out.
- Today’s message was based off of the movie “Hall Pass” and I gave 4 tips for handling temptation.
- I don’t recommend seeing the movie, but what we’re trying to do in the series is show how to take pop music, movies and TV, filter it through God’s Word, see how God is speaking and then use it as bridge to talk to those in our community that don’t yet know Jesus.
- I even showed a video of ways that I’m tempted and what I wish I could do about it…well everything but the end that is.
- Afterwards I had someone tell me that after last week’s Charlie Sheen interview and today’s video, maybe I should consider acting.
- Mmmm…not sure if that was a compliment that my acting is good or a complaint that my preaching is bad so I’d better do something else. 🙂
- Here’s the link for today’s message, Winning Over Temptation for those of you interested in listening and making that determination for yourself.
- I was so pumped up after the message, I basically preached another message after the message. It’s on the recording as well if you want to hear it.
- With all that I almost forgot to take the offering…glad Chad was doing announcements and said something.
- Mmm…let’s pretend that I did forget…here’s the link for our online giving. God wants us to sow our seed (money) into good soil (fruitful ministries).
- 71 people have begun a relationship with Jesus since we started 5 months ago…can’t think of much better soil than that so your generosity is appreciated and will be used to further the Gospel.
- Had a great afternoon…lunch at Olive Garden, sports on TV and of course my afternoon nap.
- Have a busy week ahead…hope your planning on making a difference like I am!
Inside Today’s Experience
- Nothing out the ordinary today…oh unless you consider our special guest!
- That’s right…I had the opportunity for an exclusive sit down interview with Charlie Sheen.
- You can watch my interview with him here.
- We did this to help us kick off our “Winning” series.
- The series is looking at how God speaks to us through pop culture.
- Today I talked about whether or not followers of Jesus should be involved with pop music, movies and tv shows.
- The number one response I heard afterward was people thanking me for sharing my personal journey with this topic and then showing scripturally why I’m where I’m at today.
- You can listen to today’s message here.
- Here’s a link to the book I referenced…Pop Goes the Church.
- From a technical standpoint, everything went very smooth today.
- Love the attitude and hard work that our team puts in every week!
- Especially grateful today for Jeff Case and Aaron Hoke for playing through pain.
- Jeff tore rib cartilage and Aaron has a bad cold…both soldiered on though…thanks guys!
- Attendance has been down the last few weeks which quite honestly is discouraging.
- But no one said that church planting would be easy so we’re just continuing to do the things we know God is calling us to and allowing Him to determine our fruitfulness.
- Lots of other great ministry and outreach is being done throughout the week so we’re keeping our heads up and kicking the devils butt anyway!
- It was awesome having our friends Chris and Amanda Short visiting today from out of town.
- We did the Japanese buffet with them afterward along with the Krull’s…mmmm sushi!!!
- Tonight I’m traveling down to Chambersburg to my old church for a special worship concert they’re doing. It’ll be great to catch up with even more friends.
- Next week we’ll continue the “Winning” series by looking at how to overcome temptation. The cultural jumping off point will be the movie “Hall Pass”.
- Have a great week…don’t forget to invite someone to come along with you…Easter is coming soon and it would be great to get our momentum back before then.