salvation Archives - Page 10 of 10

Inside Today’s Experiences

April 19, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Another great day but I’m whooped.
Typing this on my phone sitting at the airport getting ready to catch a flight to Orlando.
Great start to the new series.
9 more people came into a relationship with Christ today!
That never gets old.
Wasn’t planning on doing a call for salvation today and I didn’t at 9:15, but I really felt a strong prompting from the Spirit to give one at 10:45.
Glad I did!
Loved the satan video…I’ll get Aaron to shrink it down then we’ll post it online.
Maybe you can catch it on Facebook in the meantime.
Had our best non-holiday attendance ever.
Glad we kept the momentum going.
It was great to have some family members in attendance…some of them for the very first time.
Also the Executive Director for our entire denomination stuck his head in the door for a couple of minutes…that’s cool.
Great crowd participation today…especially during the message…love it when you guys talk back.
I’ll try to keep you up-dated from the road this week during the conference…have a great week.

Inside Today’s Experiences

April 12, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Wow!

What a great Easter day!

14 more people accepted Christ today…that never gets old!

United and the church as a whole didn’t just break our attendance records…they were shattered.

In total 1314 men, women, boys and girls attended today!

17 total 1st time professions in the entire church!

I am totally spent.

Not sure I’ve ever preached that hard before…my back is killing me.

The band did phenominal today…especially liked the opening instrumental piece with the thought provoking video.

Was really proud of the FIT and ushers as well.

They all did a great job of accomodating so many extra people.

Really great to see the ushers helping people find empty seats…which were few and far between.

Also really proud of our tech team…they did a near flawless job pullling of some pretty technical stuff today.

I loved the staging that Aaron and the creative team came up with…the trees to match the graphic and the LED strips were aweome.

Big thanks to Dan and Sherrie Bogle and Jason Kibbe for working so hard to make the stage design happen.

Loved getting to meet so many new people today…

…even better loved the stories of life change I was already hearing!

Hung out with relatives this afternoon and now I’m at a friend’s house hanging with some of my peeps (Easter pun fully intended).

I know I say this all the time, but I can’t wait for next week.

The new series called Re:Married on marriage, relationships, dating and sex is going to be great.

Don’t forget to invite someone!

We’ll post the invite video we showed today later in the week for you to use. UPDATED: (Here is the link)

Have a great week everyone…hope you enjoyed celebrating Jesus resurrection as much as I did!

Inside Today’s Experiences

March 29, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Ugghhhh…I was sick to my stomach today which didn’t make the Experience much fun.

Didn’t help this morning to walk through the parking lot and have to step over literally thousands of worms…the smell didn’t help my stomach feel any better.

Lots of small technical mistakes behind the scenes that drive me crazy.

All that to say that my head just wasn’t in it today…

…amazingly God even uses crappy messages like I gave today to reach people.

3 more people became followers of Christ!

And I had quite a few people stop me to share how encouraged they are that they can overcome their temptations.

I also had a few people ask me why all the text questions aren’t getting answered…or even put on the screens for that matter.

2 things…#1 we are doing a series on marriage, relationships, dating and sex right after Easter so I told the team to not ask those types of questions. We’ll take 4 weeks on just those alone starting April 19th.

The second reason is they only put up questions that they feel I’ll be able to answer on the fly and within only 5 minutes.

Speaking of questions, the two live questions today were, “Is it wrong to ask for a sign when I need to make a decision” and at 10:45, “Why pray if God already knows what is going to happen in the future”?

Both answers can be heard at the end of the podcast of the temptation message.

Again being sick I didn’t feel I gave my best on these so sorry if you really wanted to know.

Next week we’ll have an abbreviated message followed by multiple text questions so bring your phone and get your questions in!

Aaron, Adam and I had a great time making the “Easy Button” video. You can watch it here.

Ok I’m about done…need a nap…see you next week.

Inside Today’s Experiences

March 15, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Great Experiences today!

3 more people asked Christ to forgive them of their sins and asked for His leadership!

That never gets old.

Coolest part was a son and his mother were two of the three but they both did it at seperate Experiences.

In other words…God spoke to both of their hearts and they responded but about an hour and a half apart…amazing!

The 9:15 set another attendance record…total we had our 2nd highest attended day ever and church wide we did set a new attendance record.

So great to be a part of something where God is moving in so many ways.

The day started out real early…it was still dark when I got in, but all the extra work was worth it.

Got a call right before practice from Hannah to say she has laryngitis.

That meant a lot of what we practiced on Thurday needed to be changed but Aaron and Andrea did a great job of adapting.

Speaking of Aaron he and his creative team did an incredible job with the new stage set for this series and the corresponding lighting.

And what can you say about Brian? What an awesome job he did on the turntables. (pictured above)

What other church can say they used Fergie, the Beastie Boys, and the Shop Boyz to set-up a message today?

Brian did a great job mixing it all together and the lighting for it was sick!

I included Brian’s mix on the beginning of the message podcast.

And speaking of the podcast…I also included both live questions we took at the end of each message.

At 9:15 the question via text was “What happened to the dinosaurs” and at 10:45 it was “What does the Bible say about swearing”?

Ok actually at 10:45 they wanted me to answer, “How do you stay so good looking” but I refused.

The 9:15 crowd must have gotten a lot of sleep last night…they came in rowdy and ready to go…the energy was great.

I had alot of fun with today’s message and yes at 10:45 I did say that God can even use an ass to get his point across.

If you don’t believe me read this…Numbers Chapter 22

In the message I also referenced Tim Steven’s book “Pop Goes the Church“…seriously pick up a copy…you won’t regret it.

I can’t wait for next week…the next question you wanted answered was “Is It Alright for Christians to Drink Alcohol”?

Yet again you’re not going to want to miss what we have up our sleeves…do whatever you can to get people there!

Don’t forget to use our new Promo Video to help in the inviting process.

Ok time for a nap and then it’s off to some friend’s house for dinner.

Inside Today’s Experiences

February 15, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Had a great day today!

4 more people gave their lives to Christ!

I was really tired this morning…I had a call this morning at 1am saying I needed to come ot the hosptial because one of our members was about to die.

I went in and she did indeed pass away…please pray for the family of Belvia Chambers.

In any case, I was pumped for today and Brian and the team did a great job setting up the message with the song Undignified.

Sort of weird having two different Experiences in order to get everyone over to the baptism service.

9:15 had another record crowd…great job 9:15 in inviting new people in.

10:45 you guys better get busy inviting, or 9:15 is going to pass you by.

Awesome being able to baptism 14 people in front of such a huge crowd in the sanctuary.

Had to be a quick change artist today to keep chanigng clothes back and forth.

At 10:45 we had some friends in from out of town…all of them had heard of what we were doing but hadn’t yet experienced it for themselves…I think they liked it! :)

We all went out to eat at Red Robin…my 4th time there in the past week…Red Robin mmmmmm.

Time for a nap…have a great week!