- What an awesome day!
- We had 15 people make professions of faith in Jesus!
- We also broke our attendance record.
- Not bad for having our Christmas Experience on Saturday instead of Sunday.
- Honestly I had no idea going into this morning whether switching to Saturday morning was a good idea or not.
- For multiple reasons it seemed to be the right decision but I figured it would either be a hit or a complete flop.
- Thanking God this evening that He honored our efforts and that we in turn were able to honor Him through our efforts.
- Just like last year’s Christmas Eve Experience, set-up was a bit stressful because of all that we were trying to pull off.
- So thankful for the entire team. They came in at 7am this morning and we finally finished up getting ready at 9:47.
- Considering I had told everyone last week to be in their seats at 9:50, we were cutting it real close.
- Special thanks to Andy, Mike and Cris for the extra work they accomplished from the tech side. Your hard work paid off…thanks!
- As always the band…Bill, Gayle, Jeff, Mike, Steve and Aaron did a fantastic job.
- They put in a lot of work Thursday night and this morning to get ready and the results were fantastic.
- This week they were also joined for one song by Jake Sellers on drums…he did awesome for his first time with us and considering how young he is…thanks Jake!
- Here’s the opener we did called, “Let There Be“…I put together a video for it and Gayle as usual killed it!
- The other special we did was our rockin version of “O Come O Come Emmanuel“.
- And yes for the 2nd year in a row we used trash cans.
- Who says we’re not traditional? :)
- I actually had an “older” guy stop me in the lobby who was disappointed we didn’t do “The Little Drummer Boy” again.
- Funny thing is he was being serious.
- Again couldn’t be prouder of my team…from the parking lot to the “pew” our people serve with all of their hearts and with excellence!
- My message focused on how King Herod missed out on what should have been so obvious…the birth of God Himself just a few miles away.
- Of course the application was not to miss out on Jesus in the midst of the busyness of the Christmas season.
- You can listen to the entire message here.
- Or you can watch the Experience from start…to almost finish here. (Note: it is uploading as of 6:30pm. It should be live by 9-10pm).
- Unfortunately the camera battery died a few minutes before we ended.
- What you miss in the video is me leading the 15 through a prayer to receive Jesus and then everyone standing to sing along to the remainder of “It is Well”.
- Yep…that’s right the hymn…done as a hymn not Exponential style.
- A couple of brief announcements followed and then we closed with the “Party” song which you can see the band perform from last week’s Experience.
- FYI…on of the announcements I gave was the results of our Contagious Christmas Challenge…you/we gave enough that we were able to help 50 needy families have a Christmas that wouldn’t have otherwise! Way to go Exponential!
- Again it was an incredible day…what’s weird is coming home and the NFL was on anyway…feels just like a Sunday except it wasn’t.
- So glad we decided to worship and celebrate today!
- In fact…we’re going to do it again next Saturday at 10am to avoid New Years Day.
- Hope to see you then for the conclusion of the “Party” series.
- As I announced it’s called “The After Party” and will be a recap of every series we did in 2011.
- Going to be an awesome time looking back on God’s faithfulness.