Wow! Tonight is my last night in my 20's. Not sure how I feel about this. Look for a post tomorrow about 30 things I have learned in 30 years. OK, maybe like 10 things I have learned.
Happy Birthday to me!
A Little Help From My Friends
If you have followed me on Twitter or you read the post on Monday then you know we got kicked out of our school at 8:30am on Sunday due to a water main break under the school. Right now the bill to fix the place is at about 1.2 million! Wow! Glad we don't own that place! Yea for portable church right?
BUT, with all of this coming the week before our biggest week of the year it has been crazy busy and forced us to get creative with the stage and stuff. I just wanted to give a shout out to the people making it happen in the face of a tough deal:
First to all the volunteers that got "church" from one location to another in 2 hours and still had some sound, video, coffee!!! Wow. You guys are the best volunteers I have ever worked with. You will do whatever it takes I love that about you all.
Then I want to thank the staff. Linda and Rita just started doing the stuff and made it happen at the Warehouse. Steve got the band set up and still got through a rehearsal in that time. Crazy stuff I am telling you! Andre has been working on like 6 videos this week, no lie! And, this Sunday will be great and Christmas Eve will be off the hook yall! DO NOT COME LATE! The experience will begin from the parking lot to the pre-service stuff and the opening will be hot! Suncoast send your staff a thank you e-mail this week!!!
I also want to thank some church planting friends of mine. First Danny Schaffner loaned us some extra stage so that we can fit everyone with our limited stage use this week. Then Paul Wirth gave us some invite card sleeves so that we can create a cool little way to get invite cards in some creative places. Church planters are the most generous guys in the church world!
Finally, I want to thank our set up guys. They are having to come in at 8pm on Saturday night and do set up because of the changes in the stage. What a great group of guys! These guys are my church hero's! Week in and week out they are the ones that make it happen! Mad props fellas!
This Sunday and Christmas Eve are going to be amazing events in the life of our church. There would not be this much resistence if God wasn't about to kick a dent in the size of hell!
Sunday - 10am @ Rushe Middle
Christmas Eve - 5pm & 6:30pm @ Rushe Middle
BUT, with all of this coming the week before our biggest week of the year it has been crazy busy and forced us to get creative with the stage and stuff. I just wanted to give a shout out to the people making it happen in the face of a tough deal:
First to all the volunteers that got "church" from one location to another in 2 hours and still had some sound, video, coffee!!! Wow. You guys are the best volunteers I have ever worked with. You will do whatever it takes I love that about you all.
Then I want to thank the staff. Linda and Rita just started doing the stuff and made it happen at the Warehouse. Steve got the band set up and still got through a rehearsal in that time. Crazy stuff I am telling you! Andre has been working on like 6 videos this week, no lie! And, this Sunday will be great and Christmas Eve will be off the hook yall! DO NOT COME LATE! The experience will begin from the parking lot to the pre-service stuff and the opening will be hot! Suncoast send your staff a thank you e-mail this week!!!
I also want to thank some church planting friends of mine. First Danny Schaffner loaned us some extra stage so that we can fit everyone with our limited stage use this week. Then Paul Wirth gave us some invite card sleeves so that we can create a cool little way to get invite cards in some creative places. Church planters are the most generous guys in the church world!
Finally, I want to thank our set up guys. They are having to come in at 8pm on Saturday night and do set up because of the changes in the stage. What a great group of guys! These guys are my church hero's! Week in and week out they are the ones that make it happen! Mad props fellas!
This Sunday and Christmas Eve are going to be amazing events in the life of our church. There would not be this much resistence if God wasn't about to kick a dent in the size of hell!
Sunday - 10am @ Rushe Middle
Christmas Eve - 5pm & 6:30pm @ Rushe Middle
Don't Be Hatin'
From the Urban Dictionary:
"Don't be hatin"
A phrase you might have heard from Malibu's Most Wanted. MEANS: don't be a hater don't dislike somebody because you're not them. Don't hate on somebody because of your jealousy
Yo, don't be hatin. Why you hatin on me. Don't hate me cuz you aint me.
As I read this morning in Galatians 5 I came across this:
"The fact that I am still be persecuted proves that I am still preaching salvation through faith in the cross of Christ alone." Galatians 5:11 LB
The main idea here is that Paul was defending himself by saying because people were still hatin' on him proves he was still preaching an offensive Gospel of faith in Jesus alone, not religious traditions.
God kind of hit me over the head with this (because of some religious people hatin' on me) by saying don't be surprised when religious people bash you. When you preach about my love and grace it will offend religious types and they will attack because they feel threatened by true grace.
So from now on I am spending a moment in each hatin' comment or e-mail then trashing it forever. I'm letting myself feel it all but then moving on. Why? Because I always want to preach an offensive Gospel of faith in Christ alone!
Anyone have any thoughts? Leave a comment but don't be hatin' !!!
Big Bucket of Suck Sunday!
I have a friend Paul Wirth who calls bad situations a big bucket of suck. We had one of those on Sunday at Church of the Suncoast. Here is the timeline as best I can remember it:
6am - Arrive at the school for set up. No big suck here.
7am - We notice that the part of the school we don't use, but store some empty carts, was under about an inch of water. We told the custodian and kept on setting up.
8:30am - The vice principal arrives and tells us we can't meet today! We could have, but they just wouldn't budge even after my best persuasive argument.
8:30 - 9:45am - We pack everything back up and send some people to our 1,200 sq ft warehouse to get things set up to try to do church there. Hey we even had coffee and donuts still!!! But for kids space we rolled out some carpet and pillows and they just hung out in the back of the room until the message time when they went out to the amazing parking lot for games and paper airplanes!!!
9:45am - We unpacked the remaining stuff we needed from the trailer and send people back to the school with maps and that we will be meeting at 10:30 and not 10.
10:15am - We open the doors to the Warehouse.
10:30am - We start the service with one projector on the wall that was just covered a little by the florescent light. The band had all acoustic guitars, the drums and bass were in an amp along with the lead vocal (who was sick and lost his voice on the last song). We also had issues with MediaShout so during my talk people kept looking over my head at the stuff on the wall. All in all about 70% of our normal crowd found us and no one really complained.
11:30am - The service ended and we started packing stuff back into the trailer but left early for our volunteer thank you at Shane's Rib Shack.
12:30 - We got to Shane's and 50+ of our volunteers showed up for free food and fun!
1:30pm - Headed back to the Warehouse to pick up and get ready for our student ministry Christmas party also at the Warehouse.
3:30pm - Came home to a sick wife and a quick shower and 30 minutes of TV time.
6:30pm - 8:30pm - Back to the Warehouse for student ministry party.
9pm - Got an e-mail from someone who lives near the Warehouse complaining and telling me he was going to call the county about us.
MONDAY
9am - Got a phone call from the school telling us we can meet on Sunday but that we can't use the stage until January! SUCK! So we are trying to get creative with folding stage stuff and figuring out the lighting. Help!
Something big must be about to happen at our Christmas Eve services because this has been a big bucket of suck :-)
6am - Arrive at the school for set up. No big suck here.
7am - We notice that the part of the school we don't use, but store some empty carts, was under about an inch of water. We told the custodian and kept on setting up.
8:30am - The vice principal arrives and tells us we can't meet today! We could have, but they just wouldn't budge even after my best persuasive argument.
8:30 - 9:45am - We pack everything back up and send some people to our 1,200 sq ft warehouse to get things set up to try to do church there. Hey we even had coffee and donuts still!!! But for kids space we rolled out some carpet and pillows and they just hung out in the back of the room until the message time when they went out to the amazing parking lot for games and paper airplanes!!!
9:45am - We unpacked the remaining stuff we needed from the trailer and send people back to the school with maps and that we will be meeting at 10:30 and not 10.
10:15am - We open the doors to the Warehouse.
10:30am - We start the service with one projector on the wall that was just covered a little by the florescent light. The band had all acoustic guitars, the drums and bass were in an amp along with the lead vocal (who was sick and lost his voice on the last song). We also had issues with MediaShout so during my talk people kept looking over my head at the stuff on the wall. All in all about 70% of our normal crowd found us and no one really complained.
11:30am - The service ended and we started packing stuff back into the trailer but left early for our volunteer thank you at Shane's Rib Shack.
12:30 - We got to Shane's and 50+ of our volunteers showed up for free food and fun!
1:30pm - Headed back to the Warehouse to pick up and get ready for our student ministry Christmas party also at the Warehouse.
3:30pm - Came home to a sick wife and a quick shower and 30 minutes of TV time.
6:30pm - 8:30pm - Back to the Warehouse for student ministry party.
9pm - Got an e-mail from someone who lives near the Warehouse complaining and telling me he was going to call the county about us.
MONDAY
9am - Got a phone call from the school telling us we can meet on Sunday but that we can't use the stage until January! SUCK! So we are trying to get creative with folding stage stuff and figuring out the lighting. Help!
Something big must be about to happen at our Christmas Eve services because this has been a big bucket of suck :-)
100 People in a 1,200 sq ft Warehouse for Church on the Fly:
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