- 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
- Good news, bad news kind of day.
- The bad news is I thought my sermon was one of my worst ever.
- I just never got into a good flow.
- Usually when I’m not really feeling a message, God takes over and it all seems to click.
- Not today though.
- However, just because I wasn’t feeling it doesn’t mean that God didn’t still use it.
- Had a few people tell me this was one of their favorite messages they’ve ever heard me do.
- And now for the good news…
- 4 more professions of faith today!
- Like last week i find this slightly amusing since today’s message was on how to verbally share your faith with other people.
- Ironic huh? Taught on how to share your faith and 4 people realized that they first need to have faith.
- You can listen to the message here if you’re interested.
- As a reminder…practice the Bridge Illustration (can be downloaded at the above link under the documents section) and don’t forget to email me your 3 minute testimony so I can review it and make suggestions.
- As for the rest of the day, it was kind of weird as well.
- Normally we have 40-43 people serve on a Sunday to make everything happen.
- Today so many people were gone because of the holiday that we only had about half of that number.
- Considering half of those are in the band or tech area, it made for a very short staff.
- However, everyone stepped up and did what they could where they could and we didn’t seem to skip a beat.
- Love my team! What an awesome group of servants.
- Surprisingly, attendance was actually really good today even with a lot of our regulars away.
- That’s a good sign that perhaps we’re going to get some good momentum going.
- The rest of the day was pretty much as normal…
- Set-up and tear-down both went quickly and smoothly.
- The band as always did a great job.
- It was great to have George and Rebecca Spangler with us today.
- George is the current pastor at the Camp Hill Church of God and will be planting Turning Point Church next fall.
- We’ll be sharing with you in the coming months ways that we can partner with George to help him as he starts from scratch just like we did in the fall of 2010.
- One of our core values is that, “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”. We’re honored to be able to help another church here in the local area reach the 425000 that currently don’t have a relationship with Jesus.
- Next week we wrap-up the “Just Walk Across the Room” series by looking at having a personal vision for your life that includes being an eternal difference maker.
Inside Today’s Experience
- Another great day.
- Had another person start a relationship with Jesus today.
- The amazing thing about that is we’re currently doing a series on how to share your faith.
- Amazing how God can speak to people’s hearts even in messages that aren’t necessarily evangelistic in nature.
- In fact, a big misconception of churches like ours is that we must only preach seeker friendly, evangelistic messages every week in order to have as many professions of faith as we do.
- The truth is in now a little over 1 year of existence, I’ve only done 1 message that was strictly the Gospel message and geared for a response at the end.
- Every other week messages are about growing in your faith.
- In other words, I assume that everyone will want to be a follower of Jesus so here’s what it means to follow Him more closely.
- Now of course I present this in such a way that it does make sense to non-followers, but for the most part we tackle some pretty serious discipleship stuff.
- At the end then I usually say something to the effect of, “Ok now the first step to applying today’s message is starting a relationship with Jesus if you don’t already have one”…then I present how to do that.
- Ok didn’t mean to start this with my philosophy of preaching but there it is.
- In any case, nothing out of the ordinary today with set-up.
- Had fun at our team meeting today giving a quiz on our core values.
- During it I said, “We say there are 2 things which we say are not optional, what are they”?
- One of the teens said, “Clothes”?
- Haha…gotta love those teens!
- All in all people did pretty good at least knowing the gist of each value.
- Huge difference though between intellectually knowing these things and living them out.
- Making great progress though!
- Very funny yet potentially embarrassing thing happened to Lisa today in the lobby.
- I went out and her and Meghan were laughing so hard they were in tears.
- I’ll let Lisa decide whether to fess up to what happened.
- Band as always did a great job.
- So interesting watching Jeff use a bow on his electric guitar for the one song.
- I continued the “Just Walk Across the Room” series by talking about the 3 D’s we all need to do to help people who are far from God.
- They are…Develop friendships, Discover their story and Discern appropriate next steps.
- You can listen to the full message here.
- As I mentioned in the message, over 300 names were written on the walls last week.
- I prayed for each one by name before today’s Experience.
- As I mentioned in the message, 3 things happened as I did it.
- First, the reality that these are real people that we know that are bound for hell unless we do something about it.
- Second, that reaching 90% of them is not enough.
- As I said, “That’s 30 people…anyone want to volunteer any of your people for hell?”
- Last thought was actually a feeling of righteous anger that so many people waste their lives on things that don’t really count for eternity while real people, like on these boards, die and enter into a Christ-less eternity.
- Whether you attend Exponential or not, let me ask you a question…What are you investing your life, time and resources in? Is that going to last for eternity?
- If not, then stop wasting this one and only life on things that don’t really matter.
- Ok shifting gears somewhat…one of the best things about Facebook’s new list feature is I can get pretty instant feedback on the Experience.
- Came across this earlier from a 1st time guest of ours…”Had a great morning with family and friends at a new church. Cried the first 3 songs. Praise God! Got my love for Christ back this morning”.
- Awesome…that’s why I love what I do!
- Next week we’ll look at how to verbally share your faith with 2 simple short stories you can tell.
- In the meantime…have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Inside Today’s Experience
- Well we’ll call today unexpected.
- First was the unexpected snow storm this weekend.
- Man am I sore today…that was a heavy snow.
- This morning, even though I had cleaned my car off yesterday, it took me 10 minutes to “break” into my car because all the doors were frozen shut.
- Other than that the rest of the mornings set-up was about as normal.
- The last 2 weeks I’ve had my niece Taylor hang with me all morning as my “personal assistant”.
- It’s awesome being able to hang with her and have her pray for me right before the Experience starts.
- Today she told me she thinks people like me because I’m funny.
- Had someone else tell me today that I remind them of a cool Catholic priest they once knew.
- Hmmm…now I know my Halloween costume for tomorrow night…a Catholic priest that does stand-up comedy. :)
- Another unexpected thing was how good our attendance was today considering how yucky the weather was.
- Oh well we’ll take it.
- Great energy from the crowd today…perhaps it had to do with so many people sitting as close to possible to the stage…never seen the first few rows that full…it really helped.
- The band did a great job with “Secrets”…I hope when you hear it on the radio it reminds you of today’s message.
- Speaking of the band, huge thanks to Tim Arthun! Today was Tim’s last day as a part of the band (other than being a potential fill-in for the future). Tim has been with us from the beginning and has a bright future ahead of him. Thanks again Tim…couldn’t have done the first year without you!
- Wrapped-up the “Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them” series.
- To be honest all week long I was ok with the message but not extremely excited.
- Last night though something clicked…and I couldn’t wait.
- You can listen to it here.
- I talked about the need for getting real with others.
- Seriously take a listen.
- Best of all…6 more people came into a relationship with Jesus today!
- That never gets old!
- Excited that 30+ more people have decided to get involved in a Life Group as a result of this series.
- That’s in addition to the 40-50 that were already involved…great to see so many becoming a part of the “Be With” plan.
- I love meeting in a movie theater but one disadvantage is having to clean-up so quickly which means not a lot of time to hang-out afterward getting to know people.
- So today we invited anyone who wanted to out to Infinito’s.
- The third unexpected thing of the day was how many showed up.
- We had reserved their backroom and not only filled it up but also another whole section towards the back.
- We had 60+, which not only is good for their business but also good for us as I heard many say they got to meet some people that they normally don’t get to talk with.
- This Saturday at 9am at the “Pot of Love” restaurant we’ll be doing it again for anyone that’s interested.
- Got a couple of nice cards and gifts today as a part of Pastor Appreciation Month…certainly appreciate the encouragement!
- Also one final reminder that anyone interested in the FREE Church Planting Dinner here in Harrisburg on November 10th needs to RSVP immediately.
- Next week we begin a new series called, “Just Walk Across the Room”. What if you impacting someone’s eternity was only 20 feet away…come next week to find out what that means and what you can do!