- The ups and downs of being a church planter continued today…
- Unlike last week, today was an up.
- We had our 3rd highest attended day ever!
- More importantly yet another person came into a relationship with Jesus!
- The day started out not so good though when I realized I had left my bible at home.
- Luckily Lisa had not yet left the house so she was able to bring it.
- Although we only live 3 minutes away so it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
- It was foggy and chilly this morning as Mike and I put signs out. I told him it reminds me of last year the first couple of times we did it.
- Hard to believe we’re coming up on our 1 year anniversary.
- Speaking of…we’ll be celebrating it on October 16th and we’re asking everyone who has ever come (even if it was just once) to be with us that day.
- Also for those of you who have been meaning to come this would be a great day to come as well.
- We have some special things planned and expect it will be a great day.
- Ok back to today…set-up went extremely smooth although it was really warm because the theater wasn’t sure whether or not to turn on the AC.
- Glad they did because I was drenched by the time set-up and practice was done.
- I think because of the big crowd, the band had their best day yet.
- The energy was incredible and the band and the crowd seemed to feed off of each other.
- It was great seeing so many people engaged in worship and hearing them singing loud during some songs that have “crowd” parts.
- I continued with the Unveil series by talking about what you need to do when you need to know God’s will quickly or when your facing a deadline.
- You can listen to it here.
- I didn’t feel like it was one of my better messages, yet many have already told me they really liked it so I guess that’s a good thing.
- Loved meeting so many new people today out in the lobby.
- Especially great to see a number of people that we’ve helped through www.HarrisburgFloodRelief.com.
- So today was a good day…from the bad end however…
- I shared briefly that one of the greatest challenges for a church plant is financially.
- To be honest we’re not doing well right now.
- So two things…
- First please pray.
- Second, if you’re feeling lead, please continue or perhaps for the first time consider supporting us financially.
- In 11 1/2 months we’ve had 108 people come into a relationship with Jesus and we’ve been able to help so many people in all kinds of ways in the community both from a practical and spiritual level.
- What I’m saying is your financial support WILL make an eternal difference…but we can’t do it without you.
- Thanks in advance…and thanks for your continued prayers through both the ups and downs of getting a new church off the ground.
- Next week we’ll continue the Unveil series by looking at how to discover principles in God’s Word that will help us determine what God’s will is for us…hoping we can keep the momentum going!
Inside Today’s Experience
- Weird day today for a number of reasons.
- Everything started as normal and we even got set-up quicker than normal despite a brand new stage set being put up for the first time.
- Great job by Bill who puts these together on a very limited budget.
- Part of the weirdness today was that I wasn’t preaching.
- I have my normal Sunday routine and quite a few times I found my self just wandering around going, “mmmm ok what should I do now?”
- Because I wasn’t preaching and because of a last minute cancellation, I… instead… served…in…the……………………….nursery!
- Pretty ironic since just two weeks ago in my message I stated that you wouldn’t want me serving in there.
- In any case, there is a great crew working in there so I never felt overwhelmed and I only got thrown up on 3 times.
- Chad started the new Thrive series today which is all about the Church.
- Pretty cool to start it on Pentecost Sunday which is also our denominations “Plant a Church Sunday”.
- They take one Sunday to concentrate on raising funds to help new church plants...their generosity helped us immensely 8 months ago.
- We decided though from day 1 of Exponential to give back not just 1 day per year but all year long.
- To date in just 7 months we’ve been able to give nearly $11000!
- One of our core values at Exponential is that “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”. So giving back to church planting is just one way to put our money where our mouth is at.
- Now to be honest being a new church and struggling financially it’s tempting to not give but I personally feel that it wouldn’t be right to ask for people to support us financially and trust God that He’ll meet their needs and then not do the same thing ourselves.
- Ok back to Chad’s message…I hear it went well and I’d love to be able to listen to it…but the next weird thing that happened was every channel on our multi-track recorder stopped about 18 minutes into today’s Experience which means we’ve lost it forever.
- I called Chad this afternoon to see if he wanted to re-record it but he felt he could do better just doing a brief re-cap next week before week 2’s message.
- For those of you used to listening or were especially excited to hear Chad’s message, I greatly apologize that we don’t have it and we’ll work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
- It was great that we could give everyone a copy of Guerrilla Lovers today.
- It was written by my good friend Vince Antonucci who is super funny, super creative, as passionate about reaching the lost as I am and as passionate about “being the Church” as Chad is.
- I hope everyone enjoys it…if you didn’t get a copy (I understand we ran out), we’ll get more copies and have them ready for you next week.
- Last weird thing that happened was Chad left everyone out early and our tear down crews must have been super hungry because we left the theater a full 1/2 hour earlier than normal.
- Heck we even beat the main-line denominations to the buffet line…and that’s saying something! :)
- Got a busy week this week as we prepare for vacation coming up…hope to get it all done but yet still have time to enjoy these beautiful days God has been giving us.