- 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.
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
- Really appreciative to have Chad on staff.
- We’re still in the midst of trying to get our old house in Chambersburg fixed up after our old tenants left it in bad shape.
- Lisa and I are worn out but it made it easier working so hard this weekend knowing Chad was preaching.
- It also didn’t help that I woke up at 3am this morning and had trouble falling back asleep.
- All that to say when the alarm clock went off this morning I wasn’t really motivated to get up.
- We had some new equipment arrive today to replace some stuff that had gone bad so set-up took a bit longer than normal.
- What was funny was when the band went to do their warm-up and run-through, we were not getting any sound out in the house.
- Checking…checking…checking…ummm wait nobody ever ran the cables.
- Not sure exactly how after 8 months something like that happens but it did.
- I joked with the team, “Good thing we’re working all these issues out in our preview services so that when we officially launch the church we won’t have any issues”.
- The Experience started today with our first original song called, “On the Edge”.
- Jeff wrote it in response to the iLife series.
- Awesome job by Jeff, Bill and the band working on it the last few weeks.
- It was cool watching and listening each Thursday as it took shape.
- I was excited to be able to announce our first baptism service will take place on July 31st immediately following the Experience.
- I’m hoping many will take the plunge both literally and figuratively and be obedient to Jesus command to be baptized.
- Surprised by how few father’s we have that attend.
- We still honor you anyway! :)
- Especially good to have my dad with us…guessing that’s the first time in 18 years that we’ve been able to worship together on Father’s Day.
- After last week’s weirdness in having the recording stop unexpectedly, it was a relief to get home today and see that everything worked well today.
- You can listen to Chad message here.
- He joked about not being good with kids, but he does an incredible job with his own 3…glad he can model that for others.
- Lots of good interaction afterward…love seeing how people are coming earlier and staying later to hang with one another.
- Speaking of, we’d love to be able to hang with as many of you as possible on July 15th at the Harrisburg Senator’s game.
- We bought a block of tickets…you can purchase them for only $7.50 each on our web-site. Hope you can make it!
- This is a great event to invite someone to that isn’t quite ready to come with you on a Sunday morning.
- It will help them see that followers of Jesus are normal people not some weirdo’s.
- Insert your own joke here ___________________.
- Came home and took not just 1 but 2 naps.
- Finishing up some stuff this afternoon and then start 2 weeks of vacation tomorrow!
- Please pray for us that it will be a relaxing time and that we get the housing situation wrapped up between now and then.
- I’ll be back preaching on Jul 10th with a new series on Jonah.
- Was able to get the majority of it written in the last few weeks…should be exciting and in week 3 we’ll have a very special surprise.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Guess we’ll have to call this the Monday edition.
- We didn’t get home until after 10pm last night from a wonderful day of Easter activities and by then my brain was too fried to do this post…so here it is a day late.
- Let me start by saying how proud I am of our team. This was probably the least stressful Easter I’ve had since being a pastor.
- Everyone knows their roles and does them very well…going the extra mile to make the ordinary, extraordinary.
- Being the nut for excellence that I am, doesn’t mean I still don’t check and sometimes double check, but 99% of the time things are exactly as they should be and the little extra things to make something even better have already been implemented or thought of.
- With all that said, we had a great Easter Experience!
- Had our 3rd largest crowd ever…which made the theater feel nice and full.
- Most importantly we had 7 people make decisions to become followers of Jesus!
- As for the day itself, set-up went very smooth with nothing out of the ordinary.
- Big thanks to Jeff and Alana Case for cutting their vacation a day short to come back to be with us so Jeff could do all his guitar magic.
- FYI…they also host our practice every Thursday night in Jeff’s basement studio…oh and Alana makes us all dinner as well…awesome couple…couldn’t do what we do without them.
- Also big thanks to Chuck and Tammy Frank. Chuck is the director of church planting for our region of the Churches of God General Conference.
- It was Chuck’s email in October of 2009, that God used to give me the vision for ExponentialChurch.tv.
- In any case, we had a lot of families out of town this weekend that normally serve and so Chuck and Tammy came to not only celebrate Easter with us but to also serve on our First Impressions Team. Thanks!
- We threw a lot of extra elements in the Experience itself but everything went off pretty well…for the things that didn’t we covered them in such a way that nobody even knew.
- No I’m not telling you!
- The band as always did a phenomenal job…I could tell they were really feeding off the energy of the crowd.
- As for my message, I talked about how many things in life “mark” us and how the marks Jesus took have changed history and has the power to change lives as well. You can listen to it here.
- Loved the song /music video the band did coming right out of my message called, “Beautiful Things”. It really brought home the point that God wants to take the old and turn us into something new.
- Afterward the buzz in the lobby was awesome…met so many new people who were really excited about what’s happening.
- Wish I could share all their comments but just a few were…”best church service I’ve ever been to”…”I didn’t want it to end”…”I haven’t been to church for years but I’ll be back”…”very moving”…”thank you, that’s exactly what I needed to hear”.
- Had a nice mix of guests come from personal invites, our Facebook posts and ads, our mailer and even one couple that came because they saw our signs out on Sunday morning and said, “Maybe we should go to a church this morning”. That’s awesome…huge thanks to Mike Sellers for faithfully coming in earlier than anyone else every Sunday and getting the signs out by the road and intersections.
- We video taped the entire Experience yesterday (with the exception of a couple minute period near the end when the camera shut off) to see what it looks/sounds like. Hopefully it came out well and I’ll be able to post it for you to watch online soon.
- Once we were done we went to MD to visit and have lunch with family and then from there went to WV to visit with friends and have dinner.
- Also found out I was quoted in yesterday’s Patriot News on my thoughts about using social media in the church.
- Excited about the kick-off next week to the iLife series.
- We’re giving away 4 FREE iPads to those in attendance (reminder you have to be present to win).
- Been hearing some cool stories of how people are getting the tickets out to their friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers.
- Remember the more people you invite, the greater your chances of winning so keep getting those tickets out…if you need more let me know we still have a few left.
- In the meantime, I’ve got a busy day ahead…I leave tomorrow for a conference in Florida…supposed to be in the low 90’s…oh yeah!
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.