- Very happy with today!
- 3 more people started a relationship with Jesus.
- Many people commented how much they needed to hear and now apply the message I did on having proper priorities when it comes to how to spend our time.
- As Chad said earlier in the week, today was reset day as far as attendance goes since the last two weeks were holiday weekends.
- We had a really great sized crowd…hope to keep it going.
- Alright as for the other details of the day…
- Nice to be back on a normal schedule and without a lot of extra stuff.
- Band was done set-up and warm-up early (actually normal time) but after the past few weeks it seemed way early.
- During set-up, Lisa called me and said her car broke down so I had to run out to get her.
- Once I got there though it started working again…it’s been acting weird the last few weeks so we’ll have to take it in this week for “repairs”.
- The band started today with a cover of Coldplay’s song “Paradise”. As always they did awesome but I know Bill was glad to not have to do any more Wooooo’s…especially that high.
- Speaking of, he said something awesome during his prayer that Spirit spoke to me about. He said that “today was going to be a day where people go God’s way full-heartedly”. It hit me in the moment that yes as a result of each message people either go FULL-heartedly or FOOL-heartedly.
- Aren’t you glad we have a choice!
- Speaking of choices, the message today was about making sure as we start a New Year that we don’t misuse our time chasing our things but instead prioritize our relationship with God and family.
- The gist of the message was that someone is going to feel cheated, but we get to choose who or what that will be.
- For the first time ever, I accidentally forgot to put my phone on vibrate and it went off during the sermon.
- You’ll just have to listen to the message to see how I handled it. :)
- Love hanging out in the lobby and hearing people’s stories afterwards…God is doing some amazing stuff in our midst!
- Next week we start the “Little Faither” series on how to overcome worry.
- Here’s a Facebook invite you can share.
- Also as I mentioned today the invite cards got delayed in shipping.
- If you want some when they come in this week (and you haven’t already let us know), email me and I’ll make sure they get to you.
- One of our core values at Exponential is that we must all become World-Class inviters.
- Please help to do your part to make sure your family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers come out for this series!
- This is such an easy series to invite people to since everyone wants to overcome worry…don’t waste this golden opportunity.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Good news, bad news kind of day.
- The bad news is I thought my sermon was one of my worst ever.
- I just never got into a good flow.
- Usually when I’m not really feeling a message, God takes over and it all seems to click.
- Not today though.
- However, just because I wasn’t feeling it doesn’t mean that God didn’t still use it.
- Had a few people tell me this was one of their favorite messages they’ve ever heard me do.
- And now for the good news…
- 4 more professions of faith today!
- Like last week i find this slightly amusing since today’s message was on how to verbally share your faith with other people.
- Ironic huh? Taught on how to share your faith and 4 people realized that they first need to have faith.
- You can listen to the message here if you’re interested.
- As a reminder…practice the Bridge Illustration (can be downloaded at the above link under the documents section) and don’t forget to email me your 3 minute testimony so I can review it and make suggestions.
- As for the rest of the day, it was kind of weird as well.
- Normally we have 40-43 people serve on a Sunday to make everything happen.
- Today so many people were gone because of the holiday that we only had about half of that number.
- Considering half of those are in the band or tech area, it made for a very short staff.
- However, everyone stepped up and did what they could where they could and we didn’t seem to skip a beat.
- Love my team! What an awesome group of servants.
- Surprisingly, attendance was actually really good today even with a lot of our regulars away.
- That’s a good sign that perhaps we’re going to get some good momentum going.
- The rest of the day was pretty much as normal…
- Set-up and tear-down both went quickly and smoothly.
- The band as always did a great job.
- It was great to have George and Rebecca Spangler with us today.
- George is the current pastor at the Camp Hill Church of God and will be planting Turning Point Church next fall.
- We’ll be sharing with you in the coming months ways that we can partner with George to help him as he starts from scratch just like we did in the fall of 2010.
- One of our core values is that, “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”. We’re honored to be able to help another church here in the local area reach the 425000 that currently don’t have a relationship with Jesus.
- Next week we wrap-up the “Just Walk Across the Room” series by looking at having a personal vision for your life that includes being an eternal difference maker.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Another great day.
- Had another person start a relationship with Jesus today.
- The amazing thing about that is we’re currently doing a series on how to share your faith.
- Amazing how God can speak to people’s hearts even in messages that aren’t necessarily evangelistic in nature.
- In fact, a big misconception of churches like ours is that we must only preach seeker friendly, evangelistic messages every week in order to have as many professions of faith as we do.
- The truth is in now a little over 1 year of existence, I’ve only done 1 message that was strictly the Gospel message and geared for a response at the end.
- Every other week messages are about growing in your faith.
- In other words, I assume that everyone will want to be a follower of Jesus so here’s what it means to follow Him more closely.
- Now of course I present this in such a way that it does make sense to non-followers, but for the most part we tackle some pretty serious discipleship stuff.
- At the end then I usually say something to the effect of, “Ok now the first step to applying today’s message is starting a relationship with Jesus if you don’t already have one”…then I present how to do that.
- Ok didn’t mean to start this with my philosophy of preaching but there it is.
- In any case, nothing out of the ordinary today with set-up.
- Had fun at our team meeting today giving a quiz on our core values.
- During it I said, “We say there are 2 things which we say are not optional, what are they”?
- One of the teens said, “Clothes”?
- Haha…gotta love those teens!
- All in all people did pretty good at least knowing the gist of each value.
- Huge difference though between intellectually knowing these things and living them out.
- Making great progress though!
- Very funny yet potentially embarrassing thing happened to Lisa today in the lobby.
- I went out and her and Meghan were laughing so hard they were in tears.
- I’ll let Lisa decide whether to fess up to what happened.
- Band as always did a great job.
- So interesting watching Jeff use a bow on his electric guitar for the one song.
- I continued the “Just Walk Across the Room” series by talking about the 3 D’s we all need to do to help people who are far from God.
- They are…Develop friendships, Discover their story and Discern appropriate next steps.
- You can listen to the full message here.
- As I mentioned in the message, over 300 names were written on the walls last week.
- I prayed for each one by name before today’s Experience.
- As I mentioned in the message, 3 things happened as I did it.
- First, the reality that these are real people that we know that are bound for hell unless we do something about it.
- Second, that reaching 90% of them is not enough.
- As I said, “That’s 30 people…anyone want to volunteer any of your people for hell?”
- Last thought was actually a feeling of righteous anger that so many people waste their lives on things that don’t really count for eternity while real people, like on these boards, die and enter into a Christ-less eternity.
- Whether you attend Exponential or not, let me ask you a question…What are you investing your life, time and resources in? Is that going to last for eternity?
- If not, then stop wasting this one and only life on things that don’t really matter.
- Ok shifting gears somewhat…one of the best things about Facebook’s new list feature is I can get pretty instant feedback on the Experience.
- Came across this earlier from a 1st time guest of ours…”Had a great morning with family and friends at a new church. Cried the first 3 songs. Praise God! Got my love for Christ back this morning”.
- Awesome…that’s why I love what I do!
- Next week we’ll look at how to verbally share your faith with 2 simple short stories you can tell.
- In the meantime…have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Inside Today’s Experience (Vacation Edition)
- Big thanks to Chad for finishing up the Thrive series as Lisa and I wrapped up vacation.
- One thing we like to do at the end of vacation is get back in town and visit a local church.
- Today we chose Christian Life Assembly across the river in Camp Hill.
- I know a couple of people who attend there including the lady who does the processing for all of our mailers.
- I had been there previously during my Purpose Driven days for a technology conference and was very impressed by their team and facility.
- Again today I was really impressed…as I’ve said before and is one of our core values, “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”.
- With that said, I was slightly disappointed that their contemporary service wasn’t more contemporary than what it was.
- That’s not their fault…I just sort of assumed it would be and also we can blame the broad range that now falls within the terminology of “contemporary worship services”.
- Their web-site says that the 11am service is contemporary music and casual dress.
- When we got out of the car with jeans and t-shirts on, I immediately knew we were way under-dressed.
- Many were still in suits and dresses and those that came “casual” were in khakis and button down shirts.
- The worship team was in suits and skirts and most of the “contemporary songs” were from the late 90’s and early 2000’s down in multiple part harmony.
- Again nothing wrong with any of these things, I just wish there was better terminology.
- Ok with all that said, the service itself was awesome.
- It had a July 4th theme throughout and from the music, to special music to message, it was done with excellence.
- I especially enjoyed the worship pastors leading style and a cover their lead guitarist did of Jimi Hendrix’s version of the National Anthem.
- Ironically that was the most contemporary feeling thing they did even though it was the oldest song, other than “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”.
- There was sort of an awkward moment when a lady came up on stage out of the crowd, grabbed the Christian flag and walked it all the way across the stage and put it in front of the American flag. She could be heard telling the pastor, she wasn’t happy seeing the American flag get honored while the cross took a back seat.
- The Lead Pastor handled it well and was able to tie it into the intro of his message to affirm that yes if it weren’t for the cross and the power of God and the faith of our founding fathers, then our country wouldn’t be nearly as great as it is.
- I really enjoyed his message and it was a good reminder that Israel, not the USA is God’s nation. If God upon the disobedience of Israel removed His blessing and allowed them to become enslaved to others, what makes us think the same won’t happen to the US if we continue down the path we’re on.
- Overall we both really enjoyed our time there and I’d recommend them as your church home if you don’t have one or if ExponentialChurch.tv is not quite your style.
- Excited to get back to work tomorrow…yeah I know it’s a holiday, but Sunday will still come regardless so I’ve got to get stuff done.
- Next Sunday we start a brand new series looking at the life of and book of Jonah.
- Should be a great series and will include some special surprises and events including our very first baptism service on July 31st.
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!