- Had another great day!
- First it never hurts when you get an extra hour of sleep…although as I type this at 5pm it’s already pretty dark outside so I’d rather have stayed on daylight savings time.
- Is it spring yet?
- Actually the weather today wasn’t bad.
- We started a new series today called, Just Walk Across the Room”…which meant the morning started with getting a new stage set up and running.
- Bill did a tremendous job and put tons of time into creating the 2 huge signs you see in this post.
- It’s hard to tell from the pics but the letters light up and then of course we can light the boards any color we want.
- The letters are also raised so it creates a cool drop shadow effect.
- Again the pics don’t do this justice…really cool all the effects that can be created.
- Next week we’ll be using the boards for something special that will make them very personal to every single person in attendance.
- So it’s about to get a lot cooler.
- Despite figuring out how to set up the new set, set-up itself went smoothly…in fact the band had enough time after the warm-up and run through to work on some stuff for next week since they will be out performing this Thursday night and won’t be able to do their normal rehearsal.
- I always love getting to briefly talk with the entire serving team at 9:20 and then having everyone pray for each other and for the day.
- It was great to see another big crowd today.
- It’s been weird over this past year to have really wild swings in attendance from week to week.
- So a pretty steady day was a welcome sight…especially since both days were some of the highest ever.
- Today as the kick-off to the series, I shared the vision of ExponentialChurch.tv.
- IMPORTANT: If you’re a regular attender of Exponential and didn’t hear today’s message, it’s very important that you take the time to listen either online or download it for an MP3 player.
- In the message you’ll learn how to make sure you are “in the right business” and I give a very impactful iillustration to demonstrate how much work we have left to do to reach the 425000 people in the metro area that don’t yet know Jesus.
- God has allowed us to do some pretty awesome things this past year but much more is still expected…Jesus said that when much has been given, much will be required.
- Again it’s important that you listen so you know how together we can partner to make an eternal difference.
- One way as I mentioned is to “Automate the Important”.
- Vision doesn’t come cheap and to be honest the church is really struggling financially right now to survive.
- I don’t for one minute think that it’s God’s will for us to fail.
- So if you are a regular attender of Exponential then I encourage you to begin tithing online and set it up so that your tithe automatically gets debited either monthly, bi-monthly (that’s what I do) or weekly.
- If you’re someone from outside our church yet you believe in what we’re doing I encourage you to give as well whether it be a one-time gift or some sort of ongoing automated contribution.
- Again to be honest, I’m tired of talking about money but the mission and vision are too important.
- I honestly believe that the best is yet to come and as I prayed at the end…I’m not so sure God wasn’t laughing at me today because I dream too small.
- God is a great God, He has given us a great mission and with Him all things are possible…let’s keep thinking exponentially and trust Him to “do exceedingly, abundantly more than we could ever hope or imagine”.
- After the message and during the announcement time, I was surprised to see Larry Evans and Lorraine Weaver make their way down to the stage and interrupt.
- I normally hate any surprises like that but in this case I’ll forgive them since they wanted to honor myself and the rest of the staff with a gift in honor of Pastor Appreciation Month.
- Thanks to all for the cards and gifts.
- As I said…we’re all a team and while God has given me a unique role to play, I/we can’t do it without you…We are the church and again the best is yet to come!
Inside Today’s Experience
- I like to think of myself as someone who depends on God’s Spirit, but today I didn’t have an option but.
- Last night just before midnight as I was looking over my notes for today’s message, I heard Lisa yell for me to come to the basement right away.
- Our bedroom is down there and unfortunately water was seeping up through the carpeting.
- We did what we could to make sure nothing was damaged and finally went to bed around 1am.
- The problem was it wasn’t to bed since our new house has two offices for us but no spare bed room.
- So I ended up on the sofa and she ended up on the love seat in my office.
- Of course I couldn’t’ sleep well for various reasons and only ended up with 2 hours sleep.
- How I ended up functioning properly is beyond me.
- How this turned out to be my favorite worship Experience since we launched 6 months ago has to do with the Holy Spirit and the awesome team that we’ve assembled.
- We were doing a lot things differently today so our warm-up time went super long, so big thanks to Chad for filling in at the last minute to lead the team meeting and prayer time. By the way their basement flooded last night as well…ughhh.
- The band as always did an awesome job leading worship.
- After the greeting time we took a brief moment to prayer for the Fox family.
- Their son JT passed away this past week at the age of 32. He was 1 of the 71 people who have made a profession of faith since we launched in October.
- Just goes to show we never know how much time we have on this earth and why evangelism is so important.
- Today was the wrap-up to our “Winning” series where we’ve been learning how to take filter pop culture through God’s Word so it helps us bridge the gap between God and the people in our culture.
- Here’s a video showing how some are applying last week’s message.
- After having looked at a popular movie and TV show the past two weeks, today we did a song that has been near the top of the rock charts for nearly 7 months now…”Waiting on the End” by Linkin Park.
- It was cool having our drummer Steve do some of the vocals…reminded me of how Phil Collins used to sing and play drums at the same time.
- I used this song as a jump off to the thing that is most valuable to God…people.
- The key thought was…”Everybody that I have ever laid my eyes on is somebody for whom Jesus died”.
- It of course helped to reinforce one of our core values at ExponentialChurch.tv….”Lost people matter to God and therefore they must matter to me”.
- I can’t describe it but I knew something special was happening even as I was sharing the message…you’ll just have to listen for yourself.
- The band came right out of my message with one of my favorite songs…”Tears of the Saints”.
- This went right into communion and then back into everyone singing along to the bridge and chorus of “Tears of the Saints”.
- I was a mess by this point and was somewhat relived when I got back on stage to see that most of the crowd was a mess as well.
- God showed up big time and spoke to our hearts about how important people are and the urgency for reaching as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
- To be honest I wasn’t sure how to transition at that point to offering so I just stood there like a deer in headlights for awhile and then had the people applaud for all that God has done and is yet to do.
- During the announcement time I then announced not only what we’re doing next week for Easter (a message called, “Marked”…which I think will be at least as powerful as today) but also our next series starting May 1st.
- It’s called iLife and as a part of the series we’re giving away 4 FREE iPads!
- We had 2500 invite cards/tickets made up that look like iPads and our people can give them away to as many people as they want.
- It was awesome seeing people walking out of the theater with huge stacks in their hands.
- After the awesome Experience today I dreaded coming home.
- Thanks to Larry and Melissa Evans for letting me borrow their shop vac.
- I vacuumed for 6 hours this afternoon…not fun but necessary.
- Hopefully now I can enjoy a relaxing evening and get some much needed sleep.
- This week I’ve got two funerals to attend (including an out of town one), I’ve got to wrap up last minute details for Easter and prepare for the following Sunday as well since I leave early next week for Florida.
- It sounds like an impossible week but as God proved today if I’ll rely on Him, He’ll give me all the strength I need.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Fun day…fun series!
- Day started out a little different than normal. I drove south and picked up a young guy who wanted to help with set-up today…love his heart to serve!
- For the first time since we launched I had moment once we were at the theater were I realized I had left something at home…so I turned back around and got it.
- Love that I only live 1.7 miles away…I was home and back for the second time before most of the crew even arrived.
- Easy set-up today…love my team…they do such an awesome job.
- For various reasons we again had many of our normal people gone (think I counted 8) so it was interesting having people in roles they normally don’t fill.
- Everyone did great though!
- Please pray for our Children’s Director, Chelsea Miller who went to the ER on Thursday for pain and is still not doing well. She tried to come in but left to rest because it hit her again. Tests are supposed to come back early this week.
- Big thanks to Larry Evans for stepping up and leading today!
- Great to see many of our guests from last week return again this week.
- We also found out that many of our mailers never hit mailboxes until this past Monday so we had a second wave of new people come in which led to a pretty good attendance day.
- The Top 10 things never to say on a Valentine’s Date went over much better than I thought…might have to do some more of those sometime.
- Band as always did a great job and it was awesome to hear the crowd still singing loud when the instruments drop out in “How He Loves”.
- Today we talked about “Finding the Two“.
- Let’s just say I didn’t hold anything back…I laid out a pretty clear plan for singles based on God’s Word that in the moment doesn’t seem popular, yet I had many people (both singles and married) thank me for having the boldness to tell the truth.
- Andy and Mike were joking afterward whether our attendance will break 10 people next week since I about offended everyone. My response…”I’m an equal opportunity offender”.
- Seriously though…to me the worst thing a pastor can hear after a message is “Great message pastor”…the reason being is it means you agreed with everything I said and weren’t challenged by God’s Word.
- I know a lot of people were squirming today, but that’s because the Spirit was convicting people of sin. My prayer is that they’ll do something about it.
- Had a lot of interesting conversations afterward…most were very positive, but one lady was upset about the housekeeper joke. I thought it was funny, she didn’t…guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
- At least she had the guts though to say something to me about it…I hate when people talk behind your back…so I respect that she said something. She did say she thought the rest of the message was what people needed to hear so I don’t think my attempt at humor will keep her away.
- Next week we’ll talk about sex.
- Again as a warning…this will not be a message for elementary aged kids so make sure they are over in the kids theater.
- As for those of you with middle school aged kids…I’d rather your kids hear about sex from their pastor than kids at school, so I’d encourage you to be there and then use the message to have an honest conversation.
- Listen…they’re hearing it all any way so don’t delay or there will be a new word to describe you in a couple of years…Grandparent.
- Ok see you next week…in the meantime if you haven’t seen our new promo video, you can view it here.