- What an awesome day!
- Had another profession of faith and then afterward we had 13 baptisms!
- The challenge as a portable church is how to do things like communion and baptism in an environment that’s not really conducive for things like that.
- For baptism it meant setting up a swimming pool out back.
- Chad, his boys and Andre set it up last night at 10:30pm and began the long process of filling it up.
- The fire department was supposed to do it but they stopped after someone complained their water made them sick. :)
- We were concerned whether the pool was going to collapse but it held up fine.
- As for the day itself set-up went well, nothing out of the ordinary.
- During run-through time I gave everyone instructions on how , who and when we’d start tearing down so we could get out to the baptism and have the theater ready for movies to begin.
- Glad we did that because when it came time later in the morning, everything ran like clockwork.
- For some reason energy was down today in the Experience but the band as usual did a great job leading.
- Today was the last in the Jonah series…you can listen to what I consider the shocking conclusion here.
- Amazing how we so often want forgiveness for ourselves but judgment for others.
- The plan was for the band to come forward during the prayer time and get ready to start tearing down once I started doing announcements.
- Instead they started during the prayer itself…
- Wow was that hard…
- I’m trying to lead a very Holy moment and dodging people left and right who are literally taking the floor out right from under me.
- Still God is amazing and despite everything, we still had a young lady come into a relationship with Jesus!
- By the time I was done with announcements, the only thing left to tear down was sound and projection…amazing how quickly they did everything.
- I dismissed everyone to exit out the back door and I ran off to get changed and put the closing touches on things I needed to do before exiting the theater.
- Here’s a link to photos from the baptism.
- Huge thanks to my brother-in-law Brian for traveling in from out of town to take these…also to my nephew Jordan for shooting some video…can’t wait to see what he puts together.
- Check other people’s walls on Facebook for more photos…I’ve seen them starting to be posted.
- Got to admit I got choked up a number of times during the baptisms…one of my favorite things to do in ministry.
- What an honor to be a part of such a special moment in each of these people’s lives.
- Special mention for Dylan Krull…I remember him being born and dedicated and so many other milestones in his young life…now to get to baptize him is so awesome.
- Big thanks to Bill & Meghan Butler for building changing rooms in the trailer so people didn’t have to go home wet.
- Although I was amazed how warm the water was so I didn’t mind staying wet.
- As the guys started collapsing the pool they let too much go at first and it ran down the sidewalk and right into another theater!!!
- Luckily nothing was going on in that one yet and we were able to go in and clean it up…oops.
- Other than that it was a tremendously successful day.
- Best part was I ended up leaving the theater basically at the same time I normally do!
- Next week we begin the “God at the Box Office” series by looking at the spiritual lessons from the newest Transformers movie.
- Please share our commercial for the series with as many people as possible and keep handing out the tickets.
- The commercial can be found here on YouTube or here on Facebook.
- Can’t wait…I love doing series like these!
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.