Weekend In Review
- Eric came in on Saturday after a 17 hour day including a 7 hour taxi drive from Syracuse.
- Church was canceled on Sunday due to 2ft of snow.
- 3 Christmas experiences in 2 days.
- Close to 800 people in attendance.
- About 24 people crossed over from death to life.
- “That Night” was a huge success…people saw Jesus as more than just a baby.
- A relationship with God was enabled because of that night.
- God uses the ordinary to the extrodinary.
- I am on a 5 day “cat hatred” sabbatical…to be honest it is actually tough.
- We are speaking next week on, Leaving Your Mark.
- Salome is speaking on the 10th of January.
- Eric begins his “full time” reign on the 17th with a series called…BRICKS. (I believe)
- Set design was ridiculous. Dan McInnes and Ben Jones were awesome at that.
- Jeff Ream and the praise band did a great job…a lot of stuff to learn and people saw church differently because of them.
- Eric did a great job on his talks…people walked out saying he was so funny.
- Volunteers were amazing getting everything set up and torn down.
- 74% of our people serve in an area of the church…wow!
- The staff has been stretched and is better because of it.
- I believe that God is up to something here…and I believe God is reigniting the passion in the local church all over the United States.
- Just in the churches that I watch…thousands of people put their trust in Him.
Randomness
So much has been happening over the last couple weeks. Some things life changing and some just schedule altering.
First off great weekend. Kid Kollage was great, 15 students received Christ at UNITED, great turnout on Sunday with a lot of energy and Gus did a great job wrapping up Udderly Stuck.
Brandon is back home from the hospital and is doing good. He went in Friday morning and came home Sunday night. He had a temperature and an ear infection. They did a spinal tap on Friday and all the cultures came back negative (which is good). He still struggles badly with his acid reflux which keeps him and mostly Jess up at night so prayers for that would be appreciated.
Backstage Leadership started and last week had a chance to listen in on a conference call with Chuck Colson. I guy with tremendous wisdom and at age 77 is going as strong as most thirty year olds. Out of respect for the program I will not blog on the details but will say that I am so fortunate to be able to learn from so many influential leaders as well as walk through this program with guys who are just like me and trying to figure all this out.
Get a chance to go to the Catalyst conference and listen to leadership “stuff” for 12 hours a day and if you know me that just gets me fired up so be looking for blogs and possibly some live blogging (if I can figure it out) from the conference.
Weekend Wrap Up
- Made series started today and it still amazes me that I get to do what I do.
- Great energy this morning…love seeing the teenagers worship up front.
- Ton of hands raised to put their faith in action this week and serve with no expectations or agendas.
- Love the opening song today called What A Shame by Shinedown
- Heard of lots of people today contemplating their lifestyle and how to live different.
- Lots of planning done this week for the fall and student ministries.
- Working on a new parent newsletter that I am really excited about.
- Next Sunday night is our Water Wars for teens…from 6-10:30, slip and slide, BBQ, Water balloons, Movie on the lawn.
- Met a really cool new couple at church today from Atlanta.
- Enjoyed the Sunday afternoon storms.
- Got a nap today, I really love naps.
- Looking forward to hearing about serving stories this week from everybody.
Weekend Wrap Up
- Great to be back from camp. Had 1 student give their life to Christ at camp and saw that he brought his family to church today.
- So many students were broken at camp. I have been involved with camps for 9 years and have never seen students broken after I did this week. Not in an emotional brokenness but an awareness of the junk in their life broken.
- Worship was full of energy this morning. Jeff does a great job leading his team.
- Set-up team had so many obstacles today and did a great job anyways. Being portable is always an experience and they rose up and got us ready today.
- Dan did a great job with video announcements from Kid Venture. Just so you know Dan I would have caught you.
- I got to watch the X-Games this weekend and loved it.
- Salome Thomas-EL brought it this morning and encouraged us to really step it up in our community. Share our faith and more importantly know what our neighbor’s faith is.
- Love how him and his family brings diversity to Fellowship, I wish there was more of it. There is a vision that Fellowship would look more like Heaven and I appreciate his willingness to be the catalyst for change.
- Got to see my 6 year old and 5 year old worship this morning with air guitars.
Weekend Wrap Up
- Grandfather died on Friday
- Somehow God gave strength in the moment
- I am more than happy based on our talk today with it
- Setup and tear down went flawless and I am so pumped about that
- Our worship band did awesome today
- Had a great time speaking today…it was hard because God has been kicking my butt all week
- Cannot wait until next week!!!
- Heard so many people today talk about how they were searching for happiness and not holiness
- We had a lot of guest today and one said, “that was church, I am so coming back!” Love to hear that
- Life groups went well tonight, some just took off to hang out together
- Can’t wait for UNITED next week
- I get to check out Shore Fellowship’s youth program on Wednesday…Eric Meyers is doing a great job there
Weekend Wrap Up
- Didn’t feel nervous today and had a great time.
- Our volunteers are doing such a great job with setup and take down
- Loved that we did a Linkin Park song in church
- So many people raised their hands that they wanted to walk away from the buffet
- Matthew had his first baseball game and is already better than me
- Life groups had a great turnout
- Students getting real with their junk and their past
- All 3 Philly teams won yesterday
- More importantly the LAKERS dominated to start the playoffs
- Sad that Kyle is done in two weeks
- Had a great time a Lee & Jean’s life group getting to speak to parents
- Still have parents coming into the Loft amazed at how it looks like.
- To all my youth pastor friends who think they have the best youth staff, your wrong I do…sorry you just have to know that.
- God has been rocking me through our practical atheist series…
- Just finished my study in James and looking for direction on where to start my next study
- Can’t believe Jess and I have been at Fellowship 2 full years
- Can’t believe we are having a 3rd boy
- So glad it is Monday
Weekend Wrap Up
- Never have I been more nervous than I was this week.
- Perry Noble said that Easter is the Superbowl of Sunday’s.
- Got great advice from Gary Lamb this week to just put my talk away or I will tweak it forever.
- Got a great idea from Tadd Grandstaff to record my message and listen to it on my iphone.
- Had almost 40 receive Christ today. God you are incredible!
- I hope that the energy that happened this weekend will happen every weekend.
- Praise band was sick (for those over the age of 35 that is a good thing)
- Production was great from start to finish.
- 2 years ago today was Jess and I’s first day at Fellowship. Here’s to a great start to year three.
- Our volunteers did a great job and some of our new ones blew my mind today.
- Tear down was a success…if everyone did that every week we could have tear down finished in 30 minutes. That would be awesome.
- Would love to get more and more of you to serve at our new guest services and greeter team.
- Can’t wait to find out if we are having a boy or girl tomorrow…I will keep you informed.
- Practical Atheist has been such a challenging series for me.
- I can’t believe that God added almost 40 to His kingdom from our church.
- I watched online church services and the churches I saw were packed.
- Newsweek may be a little off that Christianity is dead.
- I heard of thousands of people who came to Christ today.
- Next week we are answering the question, what does it mean to fear God?
- I am beat…ready for bed
Week In Review
- In no particular order…
- Matthew started baseball yesterday. Crushes the ball but still learning to catch. He is so quick. Love to watch him try. Likes baseball better than soccer because he doesn’t have to run as much.
- Kevin Short may be the smartest preacher I have ever met. Dude can pull more out of one passage than I can out of the entire Bible.
- Worship was awesome this weekend. Jeff and his team did a great job.
- Went to Shore Fellowship this week with Ben and learned so much. Walked out with a cool perspective on ministry. Thanks Shore for invite.
- Had a chance to speak at Delaware Women’s Prison and saw God bring 62 women into a relationship with Him.
- We had the privilege to baptize 13 people today and 5 of them were students.
- We have baptized 19 students this year. How cool is that? I know of churches that don’t do that many in a year.
- We had 63 students at life groups last week which is what we were averaging pre-renovations of the loft.
- We are averaging 122 students at UNITED since our renovations.
- We have over 40 students who serve on Sunday morning each week.
- I am getting my butt kicked in March Madness…but have almost every team in the Sweet Sixteen, how is that possible?
- Wawa toasted flat bread is good.
- Had Famous Daves three times last week…convinced there will be one in heaven.
- Got to give a shout out to one of my faithful blog followers who is down…Betty Malar, get better Betty we miss you.
- More and more students are twittering and we are leveraging technology to connect them with God.
- We are starting our series called SEXED on April 4th at UNITED.
- We have a ton of Urban Promise stuff coming up thanks to Mary Davis planning.
- God continues to blow me away at how he is stretching our staff.
- Watching the apprentice and I don’t like Clint Black, I may never listen to his songs again.
- Our volunteers did a great job today.
- New volunteers are awesome and I was so thankful for them today.
- Had a blast with Matthew this weekend.
- I’m exhausted…peace out blog world
Weekend Wrap-Up
- Buddy Cremeans brought it today talking about honor
- Donny and the praise ninjas did a phenomenal job, very proud of them
- My son came in to worship with us this morning because he loves music and when I raised my hands to sing so did he. So cute, he had no idea why he was but so cute how he followed what daddy did.
- Baptism next Sunday, love to see life change happen
- We had over 50 new volunteers sign up to serve in setup and take down
- We had over 50 new people sign up for life groups
- We had 63 at life groups tonight, we continue to grow. 2 months ago that is what we had at UNITED.
- We are averaging 122 since renovating our youth room…environments matter
- Jessica had a birthday today. She is a phenomenal woman whom I don’t deserve
Weekend Wrap Up
- UNITED was awesome last night.
- Our Fellowship staff did an amazing job of doing everything technical
- We almost were streaming live but ran into some last minute glitches…I think next month might be the month
- Our praise band was awesome. Donny has really developed into a great worship leader and we so many guys sacrifice and give time last night to really rock some difficult songs.
- Launched the Nickelback song Gotta Be Somebody and it was good.
- Did a cool abstract art piece during worship that was pretty powerful.
- Talked about respecting and honoring families.
- Had 107 total with 5 students receiving Christ
- Church was good today…we had so many people sign up to get into a life group and to serve on Sunday mornings.
- Not to late to sign up for that.
- We have a baptism March 22 and some of our students are getting really excited.
- Great turnout tonight for life groups.
- Got a lot of students to start Twittering.
- Heading to a camp planning meeting tomorrow
