- What a day!
- I was just thanking God the other day for how smoothly things have been going.
- Oops spoke too soon.
- Set-up went really well…even have a couple new people helping out which is a huge asset to a team that was already functioning on all cylinders.
- When it came time for the band to do their morning warm-up, we noticed that Bill’s mic was distorting badly.
- I won’t go into all the details, but it spread to Gayle’s mic as well.
- We tried all kinds of things…switching their mics, trying corded mics, switching locations for the wireless receivers, changing channels on the front of house board, changing channels on the back of house board…
- We never did get it completely resolved but finally went with what was the best of the worst.
- I’m not discounting some spiritual warfare going on. I know Satan was not happy that we were going to get serious about some usually not talked about topics so he was doing whatever he could to discourage us.
- Haha jokes on you Satan…goin have to try harder than that.
- Other than that it was a good day…a few minor things here and there but nothing major.
- Of course the big topic of the day was how will Gilbert handle all these questions about marriage, dating, relationships and sex.
- To be honest, I was not nervous at all because I intentionally was keeping it as biblical as possible with very little personal opinion.
- Still…talking about things like porn, masturbation and oral sex is not easy…especially with a bunch of people staring at you…and your wife sitting in the crowd…and the director of church planting and executive director of our region of the denomination in the crowd.
- Still I’m pleased with how it all went.
- Especially proud of the Wordle Picture that is the picture for this post. It shows the amount of times a word was used in the message by size. Notice that even in a message that was pretty edgy, the 4 biggest words are God, Jesus, bible and marriage!
- I knew it was going to be a long message but I wanted to get as many questions answered as possible.
- Unfortunately, the live questions via text never made it to me until after the Experience…luckily the broken crock pot question that came in yesterday was still fresh in my mind.
- So many things I could say about today’s message but you’ll just need to listen for yourself.
- All in all I was pleased with the response afterward.
- Had some guys asking for help and the overall response was thank you for being so open and honest about topics like this and keeping it biblical.
- Honestly I can’t think of any other way to be.
- Why would you want to go to church only to hear something watered down that makes you simply feel good.
- Oh wait I remember.
- Great to have our good friends Bill and Nicole up from WV today to visit and then hang out.
- Next week we begin a new series called ME*TRADE where we’ll look at what to do when life just seems to be in a rut.
- Going to be powerful…make sure you invite a lot of people to come along with you!
Inside Today’s Experiences
- Thank you all so much!
- We couldn’t have asked for a better send off.
- The Experiences, party, cards, gifts, plaque, poster, etc all meant so much to Lisa and I.
- We are emotionally exhausted but praising God for the 3 1/2 years we spent together and the awesome send-off you gave us.
- Thanks to Thom Lambert for driving me to church this morning.
- Thanks to Brian, Earl and Aaron for putting together a very moving Experience.
- Loved all the testimonies and the video’s.
- Thanks as well to visiting family members and denominational leaders who came in to be a part of the day!
- Thanks to Chris and Amanda for heading up the party…I’m stuffed!
- Wow, I’m so tired and my mind is swimming so I’m sure I’m forgetting tons of things and people to thank.
- In any case, thanks again for a great day and all the support we’ve received.
- Again we’d appreciate your prayer support. If you’re interested on being on our prayer team, please e-mail to prayerteam@exponentialchurch.tv
- Also other ways you can help us financially and thru short term missions trips can be found at the links.
- I’ll hopefully post some video’s and pics soon, but for now it’s time for a nap and then Lisa and I will be off for a vacation before we start the real work of getting the new church up and running.
- Thanks again and much love to you all!