- Just waking up from a 2+ hour nap!
- Very tiring yet productive day.
- Had 5 more people make professions of faith in Jesus!
- That now puts us over 150 since we launched 15 moths ago…amazing…thank you Jesus for allowing us to be a part of building your kingdom!
- For some odd reason I was wide awake this morning at 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep.
- It was weird having so much extra time this morning to get ready…sort of cool…but thus the 2 hour nap!
- After a couple of nice warm weather days, I almost left the house with only a hoodie on but then thought better and put my winter jacket on.
- Glad I did…it was freezing setting out signs this morning.
- The technology gremlins were out in full force this morning during set-up.
- Nothing too major but just a lot of little things that were annoying.
- Grateful for Andy, Mike and Cris and their willingness to keep troubleshooting until everything worked perfectly.
- Had a lot of people email/text/call in sick so we were short-staffed for serving but was able to get all the serving roles filled.
- Despite a lot of sick people out, we had a pretty decent size crowd today and they came fired up.
- Love when the crowd is engaged fully in worship!
- I wrapped up the “Little Faither” series by looking at the story of Elijah worrying after Jezebel threatens his life.
- You can
- I really enjoyed preaching this series…in fact one of my favorites since we launched.
- Had so many people say how helpful it’s been.
- Even if for no one else, it’s been helpful to me during some stressful times both personally and professionally the past few months as I prepared for it and now finally delivered it.
- Next week we begin a new series and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s going to happen next week…as a reminder…DO NOT INVITE ANYONE NEXT WEEK!!!!
- That’s right you didn’t read that wrong…do not invite anyone…this will make a lot more sense once you’re there and see the special surprise we have in store for everyone.
- Trust me you’ll be talking about this for a long time.
- So if you’ve ever been to ExponentialChurch.tv, do whatever it takes to be there next week.
- If you’ve never been with us, then hold off until February 12th.
- Speaking of February 12th, don’t forget to mark your calendars that we will be sharing communion together in the lobby at 9:10am that morning and then everyone going out to Infinito’s for lunch at 12pm.
- Should be a great day of sharing life together.
- Hope everyone has a great week…see you Sunday for our special surprise.
Inside Today’s Experience (Christmas Eve Morning Edition)
- 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
- The ups and downs of being a church planter continued today…
- Unlike last week, today was an up.
- We had our 3rd highest attended day ever!
- More importantly yet another person came into a relationship with Jesus!
- The day started out not so good though when I realized I had left my bible at home.
- Luckily Lisa had not yet left the house so she was able to bring it.
- Although we only live 3 minutes away so it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
- It was foggy and chilly this morning as Mike and I put signs out. I told him it reminds me of last year the first couple of times we did it.
- Hard to believe we’re coming up on our 1 year anniversary.
- Speaking of…we’ll be celebrating it on October 16th and we’re asking everyone who has ever come (even if it was just once) to be with us that day.
- Also for those of you who have been meaning to come this would be a great day to come as well.
- We have some special things planned and expect it will be a great day.
- Ok back to today…set-up went extremely smooth although it was really warm because the theater wasn’t sure whether or not to turn on the AC.
- Glad they did because I was drenched by the time set-up and practice was done.
- I think because of the big crowd, the band had their best day yet.
- The energy was incredible and the band and the crowd seemed to feed off of each other.
- It was great seeing so many people engaged in worship and hearing them singing loud during some songs that have “crowd” parts.
- I continued with the Unveil series by talking about what you need to do when you need to know God’s will quickly or when your facing a deadline.
- You can listen to it here.
- I didn’t feel like it was one of my better messages, yet many have already told me they really liked it so I guess that’s a good thing.
- Loved meeting so many new people today out in the lobby.
- Especially great to see a number of people that we’ve helped through www.HarrisburgFloodRelief.com.
- So today was a good day…from the bad end however…
- I shared briefly that one of the greatest challenges for a church plant is financially.
- To be honest we’re not doing well right now.
- So two things…
- First please pray.
- Second, if you’re feeling lead, please continue or perhaps for the first time consider supporting us financially.
- In 11 1/2 months we’ve had 108 people come into a relationship with Jesus and we’ve been able to help so many people in all kinds of ways in the community both from a practical and spiritual level.
- What I’m saying is your financial support WILL make an eternal difference…but we can’t do it without you.
- Thanks in advance…and thanks for your continued prayers through both the ups and downs of getting a new church off the ground.
- Next week we’ll continue the Unveil series by looking at how to discover principles in God’s Word that will help us determine what God’s will is for us…hoping we can keep the momentum going!
Inside Today’s Experience (Thursday edition)
- Wanted to wait this week to post this until I was done speaking Sunday – Wednesday nights at the Greenvillage Church of God.
- I’ll start though with our Sunday morning at ExponentialChurch.tv.
- The morning went pretty smoothly however I was probably as discouraged afterwards as I have at any point in our almost 1 year of existence.
- We did a big mailer for our new series on how to discover God’s will for your life, plus I figured everyone would be done with vacations, etc.
- Guess not…we had 12 alone from our serving team gone and by the time the day was done we had even less people than we had the weekend before.
- It’s frustrating putting all the time, energy and resources into something and then not seeing the results you had hoped for.
- Oh well, God knows what He’s doing and our job is to continue to be faithful and plant seeds and He’ll bring the results.
- Speaking of…we had 2 more people pray to ask Jesus for His forgiveness and leadership on Sunday!
- Amazing how that puts everything into perspective.
- That makes 107 salvation’s now in 11 months!
- Even though I don’t understand it all and get frustrated, God continues to do amazing things so my I’m just trying not to hinder His work.
- Speaking of good work, it was great to have Greg Hench and George Jensen with us on Sunday.
- They are both pastors in our denomination doing a great job.
- The band as always did an amazing job on Sunday and it was cool having my niece Taylor help out in the tech area.
- She was so nervous that she was going to mess up but she, Mike and Cris did a great job in Andy’s absence.
- For those of you who might have missed the message, you can listen to it hear.
- As I mentioned earlier Sunday-Wednesday night I spoke at Greenvillage on relationships.
- It was a great 4 nights getting to know people and share God’s Word about marriage, dating, relationships and sex.
- I essentially used a lot of the content from the ONE series I did in February here at Exponential if you’re interested in hearing what I shared.
- The only exception was last night I did a message on communication instead of doing the Q&A like I did at ECTV.
- For those of you who were there, you can probably figure out why.
- I was surprised they wanted me to do the content for the 1st 3 nights much less what gets discussed in the Q&A.
- Monday night I left the house at 5:10pm for the 45-50 minute drive. This would still put me there with an hour to spare.
- By 6pm I had gone all of 11 miles. I knew right then and there I was in big trouble.
- Turns out they had closed I-81 because of a bad accident.
- I contacted the church and told them I’d get there ASAP.
- It was 7:35pm until I arrived but they were very gracious.
- In now 22 years of doing various types of public speaking, this is the first time I’ve ever been late.
- The only thing I kept thinking though was…”At least now I can use a joke I’ve always wanted to use in a situation like this”.
- I’m not sharing what it was in case you are ever at a place I’m late for, but let’s just say it got a roaring laugh!
- It was great seeing the crowd get younger and younger each night…young people definitely need to hear what I shared.
- Last night I guy shared a funny story with me that you’ll will get if you’ve ever heard me talk about sex (which I did on Tuesday night). He said he went home and started folding laundry. His wife looked at him funny and said, “What are you doing”? His response, “Starting the crock pot”! :)
- All in all it was a great 4 nights and many said how much they enjoyed it so hopefully I’ll be invited back someday.
- I also challenged them to be more evangelistic as a church so pray that those seeds I planted take root as well.
- Pray for their church as they are between pastors right now and seeking who and what God has for them next.
- I’m pretty exhausted but yet excited at the same time for what God has in store for us at ECTV this week as we continue the Unveil series.
- See you then…don’t forget to invite a friend.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Another great day!
- Weird not starting the day by meeting Mike to put out signs.
- He missed his first day today which now only leave Chad from the original group that has not yet missed a day.
- Thanks to John and Sara Fox for taking care of the signs today.
- Not sure how we did it but everything got set-up about 1 1/2 feet off center on the stage today.
- Weird since we used the same marks as usual as a guide…looked funny.
- During our team meeting Lisa and I were surprised with a cake for our birthdays & anniversary.
- Great to have the Bricker’s and Deihl’s pay a visit today from Chambersburg.
- Loved the new song the band did today called Manifesto.
- Poor Bill…the bridge part is essentially the Lord’s Prayer except you’ve got to sing it all in 1 breath…he’s been struggling with it but during warm-ups this morning he was nailing it.
- Mmm not so much during the Experience but he pulled it together and it still was a powerful moment.
- Great to also bring back the song Beautiful Things which was a major part of our Easter Experience.
- I wrapped up the iLife series today by talking about how to get moral margin in your life regardless of whether you’re a teen, single or married.
- I had no idea the impact the message was going to have.
- Person after person came up afterward saying it was one of the best messages they had heard.
- That’s a very humbling thing to hear but I’m glad it immediately resonated with people…now I hope they apply it.
- This will be hard to describe but I hear all the time, “Gilbert I love how real you are”.
- Honestly I can’t imagine preaching any other way.
- We also had 2 more people make a decision to become a follower of Jesus today!
- That’s now 93 since we launched 7 months ago!
- Can’t wait for the Thrive series to start next week…it’s going to be awesome and everyone attending will be given a special gift that will help you apply what Chad’s going to be talking about.
- Big thanks to my niece, Taylor Duda and to Kiara Pornel for all their help serving each Sunday. These two young ladies will be going off for the summer and today was their last day for awhile. Thanks again ladies…serve Jesus as you travel!
- Folks God is doing some amazing stuff in and through us…keep it up and I promise you one thing…The Best is Yet to Come!