- Before I forget, this week I posted a video of our Easter Sunday Experience. If you’ve ever wanted to see what we do at ExponentialChurch.tv, but haven’t been able to visit here’s your chance.
- This is also something you can share with your friends if they want to see what we’re about before actually showing up at the theater.
- Ok on to today…
- We continued the iLife series today by looking at how God wants us to have financial margin.
- The whole series has been about margin in various areas of life and today we had a great example of how it works in real life situations.
- What I mean is I wish we would have had some more time margin this morning in set-up.
- Andy was gone for his grandfather’s funeral and of course today just had to be the day that we had some equipment failure.
- This meant having to call him to figure out a go around.
- We got it all done, but that meant my emotional margin was about spent.
- This of course then affected the message.
- I think the point was still made but I know I could have done so much better.
- In any case we have a great team and everyone pitched in to help.
- Thanks especially to Mike and Cris for doing more than normal.
- My biggest disappointment was I missed out on Chelsea’s meeting she had for all the children’s workers and I missed our normal all-team meeting (thanks Chad for filling in).
- Congratulations to Dennis Kennel and Rhonda Arndt for winning the 5th and 6th iPads.
- Can’t believe I called the wrong name instead of Rhonda’s…incredibly she had 12 guests with her on the first week of the series.
- Technically her name wasn’t drawn but I wanted to make sure we rewarded her for doing such an awesome job of being a “World Class Inviter“.
- I talked today about online giving and our new initiative called “Automate the Important”. I’ll be sending out the link later today or tomorrow but if you already know you want to give, here’s the link to our secure giving.
- Thanks in advance for your financial support!
- Hope everyone has a great week…lot’s of cool stuff happening…keep being the church!
Inside Today’s Experience
- Had a great day…3 more people came into a relationship with Jesus!
- That never gets old…praying we continue to see God move in our midst.
- Nothing out of the ordinary with set-up, although Andy did install a wireless router for us in the building which allowed him to play around with controlling the sound board and in-ear monitors with an iPAD.
- He was like a little kid in a candy store.
- Great to have Chad’s mom and dad visiting with us from Illinois.
- Larry is a pastor also and is doing a great job as an interim turning around a more traditional church.
- Love seeing our various teams filling up the lobby early on Sunday mornings praying with and for each and for that day’s Experience.
- Definitely power in our prayers.
- Our theater seats 462 people and up until today we weren’t as aggressive keeping people from spreading out as what we should have been.
- Not that we didn’t try but people still were going around the barriers and ushers instructing them not to.
- Today I said that needed to stop.
- We also had people scoot more in towards the center.
- Wow what a difference!
- Makes it so much easier for me to preach and I could see a huge difference in Bill’s energy level leading worship and praying.
- I actually mention it in the message that I was so pumped up by Bill’s prayer I almost just said…”Mmmm why don’t you go ahead and preach”.
- By the way, we are going to have him preach this summer…from what I understand he won some awards as a kid for his preaching…cool, can’t wait.
- We started out today’s Experience with “Last Name” by Carrie Underwood. It was a great song to lead into today’s topic of temptation.
- As always Gayle did an awesome job.
- We used a click track to fill in some extra parts and we almost had a huge mistake at the beginning but our team kept their composure and didn’t miss a beat…literally.
- Great worship set today…the team rocked it out.
- Today’s message was based off of the movie “Hall Pass” and I gave 4 tips for handling temptation.
- I don’t recommend seeing the movie, but what we’re trying to do in the series is show how to take pop music, movies and TV, filter it through God’s Word, see how God is speaking and then use it as bridge to talk to those in our community that don’t yet know Jesus.
- I even showed a video of ways that I’m tempted and what I wish I could do about it…well everything but the end that is.
- Afterwards I had someone tell me that after last week’s Charlie Sheen interview and today’s video, maybe I should consider acting.
- Mmmm…not sure if that was a compliment that my acting is good or a complaint that my preaching is bad so I’d better do something else. 🙂
- Here’s the link for today’s message, Winning Over Temptation for those of you interested in listening and making that determination for yourself.
- I was so pumped up after the message, I basically preached another message after the message. It’s on the recording as well if you want to hear it.
- With all that I almost forgot to take the offering…glad Chad was doing announcements and said something.
- Mmm…let’s pretend that I did forget…here’s the link for our online giving. God wants us to sow our seed (money) into good soil (fruitful ministries).
- 71 people have begun a relationship with Jesus since we started 5 months ago…can’t think of much better soil than that so your generosity is appreciated and will be used to further the Gospel.
- Had a great afternoon…lunch at Olive Garden, sports on TV and of course my afternoon nap.
- Have a busy week ahead…hope your planning on making a difference like I am!