- 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 Experiences
- Wow what a day!
- 13 more people became followers of Christ today…amazing!
- Wish the roads hadn’t been so bad so more people could have been there, but God knows exactly who needed to be there and they were.
- The set-up for the morning was interesting with people rolling in when they could because of the bad weather.
- In fact, Aaron never made it to church until the 2nd Experience which kept us from having the dance part of the Experience that we had planned.
- Oh well at least he and everyone appear to be safe.
- Great to be able to dedicate 6 children this morning.
- Even better was I was able to get the baby to stop crying during the first one.
- Usually I have the opposite effect. :)
- The first Experience had a lot of behind the scenes technical issues, but as usual the team covered them well and for the most part I don’t think it was too evident.
- To be honest God really did something awesome with today’s message. I felt comfortable with it, but once it was actually being delivered I realized that God might be up to something special.
- As I shared after each message, we can never allow God showing up like that and people giving their lives to Christ to get old.
- What an honor that we get to serve Him!
- Met a group of people after the first Experience from the Hanover First Church of God.
- They are getting ready to start a contemporary Experience and came by United to get some ideas.
- I absolutely love being able to help other churches in any way that we can!
- Please pray for them as they get started.
- I also had some family in attendance at the 2nd Experience including 3 from FL.
- Welcome to our weather!
- Well time for a nap…day’s like this always kick my butt.
Inside Today’s Experiences
- Typing this on my phone in the back of Dianna’s van as she, Gene and I are on our way to OH for a week’s worth of classes.
- Rough day today especially in the first Experience.
- When I plugged the cables in the back wall this morning things seemed weird but then everything booted up fine so it appeared we were ok.
- Everything worked fine through practice but then the computer locked up 2 minutes before we were to start.
- In the midst of fixing that we realized the lights were not responding either…
- aaahhhh! We were at least 5 minutes late getting started which it figured was on a week we were doing really long music.
- Had 6 children total get dedicated today.
- Really cool seeing parents step up in that way for their kids.
- At 9:15 the wrong phone number to text in questions was on the screen.
- As I said…can you imagine what the poor guy who’s phone it was was thinking when all these questions about divorce and sex kept flooding his inbox.
- 10:45 went much better.
- The two live text questions are each on the podcast. They were…
- …Will I know my spouse in heave and at 10:45…If you get pregnant outside of marriage do you then have to marry that person.
- I can’t wait for next week…the new series called HOSTAGE may end up being the best yet.
- Pray for us this week as we travel and for us to pass our class.