Gilbert Thurston

Random Thoughts About Life, Ministry and Whatever Else Happens to be on my Mind

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Inside Today’s Experience

July 31, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • 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!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Andre Pornel, baptism, Brian Gayman, Chad Chute, Dylan Krull, ExponentialChurch.tv, forgiveness, gilbert thurston, God at the Box Office series, Jonah series, Jordan Gayman, Meghan Butler, salvation

Inside Today’s Experience

June 19, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • 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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baptism, Bill Butler, Chad Chute, ExponentialChurch.tv, Father's Day, Gil Thurston, gilbert thurston, Harrisburg Senator's, Jeff Case, Jonah series, Lisa Thurston, Thrive series

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