- 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
- Another great day!
- Had 2 more people start a relationship with Jesus!
- As I mentioned last week we’re ramping up our set each week throughout the Christmas season so it made for another long yet productive set-up time this morning.
- Instead of trying to explain it all, I’ll show you through video.
- Thanks to Cris Cramer for videotaping the opener song and worship set.
- Not bad for a Flip cam.
- Not a huge crowd today but those that were there were pretty energetic.
- I continued the Party series today with a message entitled, “Bust a Move”
- You can watch the first few minutes of it here…
- …or listen to the entire thing here.
- We’ll call it a day of rants…can’t really say I left anything unsaid.
- Also said some things…”peachy keen”…that I’m not sure where it came from.
- As I said, you never know why the Spirit may have you say something…gotta trust “peachy keen” really needed to be heard by someone…at least that’s what I’m telling myself. :)
- Seriously I think it’s a message that many people need/needed to hear.
- Had a bunch of cool conversations afterward…great questions…love that people are seeking the truth and how to live it out.
- As a reminder, we’ll be meeting on Saturday morning for the next 2 weeks.
Saturday December 24, 10am
Saturday December 31, 10am
Inside Today’s Experience
- Great day!
- Had to start the morning out scrapping the ice of the windshield and wearing my beanie…definitely the coldest Sunday morning we’ve had so far this “winter”.
- Had to use the quotes because I know some of you would correct me and say it’s not yet winter…ok but did you really expect me to say it was the crispest fall morning so far. Yeah right.
- Oh wait I did just say it…
- OK here’s the deal…it was cold this morning.
- Anytime we start a new series it’s always an adventure since we have no way to have tested the new stage design up until that time.
- With this one Bill built 4 “candy cane” looking contraptions with multiple color Christmas lights strung between them.
- What’s cool is we can control each color independently…which is harder than it sounds.
- In fact it required 8 extra extension cords since you can’t put them into a power strip and then to the lighting control…each one needs to run separate.
- All that to say…we had to send Gayle out on an extension cord run since we were short a few.
- Amazingly we were short even with taking 6 of our normal lights out of the equation altogether.
- We’ll add them in over the coming weeks.
- So set-up and practice were longer than normal this morning.
- Another factor was that Steve our drummer missed practice on Thursday night…something about getting engaged or something. :)
- Congrats Steve & Kelsey!
- In any case, the band did a great job pulling it altogether.
- However, the crowed energy was down today…not sure why.
- Again using a however…on this day last year we had one of our worst days we’ve ever had…so today was light years better.
- Chad did a great job preaching the first message in the Party series.
- His message was about getting an invitation and not being left out.
- You can listen to it here.
- Since he preached that allowed me a chance to walk around a see some other things I normally don’t get to.
- I twice stopped by and watched Chelsea and the kids in the theater next door.
- Awesome to see them worshiping, having fun and learning about Jesus.
- Also spent some time in the nursery/toddler area where one of our normal toddlers was crying hysterically.
- I tried picking her up and holding her but to no avail.
- So I put her down and quietly slipped away before anyone noticed I had left. :)
- It’s always good to have days like today where I can walk around evaluating things without the “pressure” of knowing I have to preach.
- Got some things we need to work on but for the most part we’re light years ahead of where I thought we’d be at this point in our now slightly over 1 year of existence.
- God has and is so good to us!
- Lisa has been out-of-town all week-long so afterward my mom, dad, sister and I went to lunch together.
- To the best of our recollection it was the first time in about 20 years since it was just the 4 of us together to eat.
- Not sure why but I took a longer nap this afternoon than a typical Sunday.
- That shouldn’t have been…I didn’t really do anything today.
- Lisa flies back tomorrow…can’t wait to see her!
- Next week we’ll continue the Party series with a message I’m doing called, “Bust a Move”.
- Once you’re at the party, it does you no good to stand against the wall…time to get out on the dance floor.
- What’s that have to do with the Bible and your life?
- You’ll have to join us to find out.
- Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Saturday, December 24 & 31 at 10am which will take the place of our normal Sunday morning Worship Experiences.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Well this is going to be short and sweet.
- The reason…I can’t remember much of today.
- The last thing I said to Lisa before I went to sleep last night was, “My stomach doesn’t feel right”.
- I’ll spare you all the details…but let’s just say I was right.
- Apparently the milk I had with my cereal last night must have been bad.
- It smelt ok but Lisa this afternoon saw that it was about a week expired.
- So with my energy drained and feeling extremely nnauseous, I made my way to the theater this morning.
- To be honest everything seemed to be going in slow motion.
- Big thanks to the entire team for picking up the slack.
- Basically I sat around the whole time, got up and preached and then went home.
- I’m told the message came out ok.
- I was really excited about this one and can’t imagine it came out nearly the way I had hoped.
- What I do know is that God’s Spirit gave me supernatural strength that I didn’t have.
- Thank you Jesus!
- You can listen to the message here.
- This was the end of the “Just Walk Across the Room” series.
- Today’s message was about how God personally has a vision for your life.
- Hope everyone grasps it and lives it out.
- Next week we start the “Party” series as we celebrate the Christmas season.
- Make sure you’re there and make sure you bring along a bunch of people because we’re going to party hard!
- Also don’t forget to mark your calendars…Christmas and New Year’s weekend we’ll be meeting on Saturday morning at 10am instead of Sunday.
- Let me say that again. Mark your calendar to come to church on Saturday, December 24th and 31st at 10am.
- Sorry I missed out on joining everyone at Infinito’s this afternoon for lunch but I heard another big crowd showed up.
- I got a nap in and I’m keeping food in and down…in fact, I’m really hungry and keep eating which is a good sign!
- Hope everyone has a great week…see you Sunday for the “Party”!
Inside Today’s Experiences
- Now that was fun!
- For those of you not with us, we recapped every series from 2009.
- That’s 52 hours worth of content that we condensed into an hour’s worth of highlights.
- I figured this was going to be one of those hit or miss type of things.
- Luckily it was a hit…I’m not sure I’ve ever had this much feedback so soon after an Experience.
- One of my big fears was whether it would translate to people who were guests.
- I had one lady come up afterwards who was from North Carolina and she said the format helped it all to make sense and she was wishing she lived close so she could attend all the time.
- The other cool part was the number of people who shared with me how it brought back memories to the week/series which they got saved or for some it was a reminder of when they first started attending.
- I was so excited for today that I was wide awake at 5am and ready to go.
- Set-up and the warm-up time were super easy today!
- That’s a good thing because the tech for today was crazy.
- Great job by Chris, Andy and Crissy making things happen behind the scenes exactly when they should have!
- Also I’ve got to give a big thank you to the band.
- In the midst of Christmas and everything else, they have spent 20+ hours at the church in the last week getting ready for and playing in Experiences.
- If you haven’t thanked them in awhile for what they do, please be sure to do so soon.
- In fact, I thought the standing ovation you gave them Christmas Eve after the Trans Siberian song was cool and I know they appreciated it.
- Back to today…it was strange for both me and the band because we were basically doing something the entire Experience…usually it’s one or the other at a time so you get a bit of a break. Not complaining, just different.
- It would be hard to post the audio online for today, but I am going to try to put together a video at some point in my “free” time.
- So in the meantime take the outline from today and go through each of the application questions so you see your growth from 2009 and evaluate in what ways you need to grow in 2010.
- The funniest/most painful moment of the day occurred backstage during the 2nd Experience during the 1970’s medley. Andrew wasn’t playing but was watching from the side wing. He got excited and went to do an “Elvis like” windmill with his arm, but didn’t realize I had come up and was standing behind him. When his arm came (rather hard and fast I might add) it grazed me in the face then hit me squarely in the upper chest. I t hurt but we had a quick laugh about it.
- He wasn’t laughing though when he then went back on stage and dropped his guitar, breaking a part of it.
- I guess that’s what God does to people who punch the pastor. :)
- All in all a very good day and hopefully an inspiring look back at all that God has done in 2009.
- Enjoy the pics below.