Today was a good day in the life of Focal Point Church.
We had a solid Easter Sunday. Not as many guests as I thought would be here. One funny thing about us has been that several of our families travel during Easter and some (because of the military crowd) don't get the day off. We had a few military families out and some guests in so it was a little up but not as much as we suspected it'd be. All in all it was a good morning.
One great thing about the Easter Egg Hunt was the 100 or so new contacts we have from the event. A vast majority of the contacts said that they attend church "rarely" or "never". Only a handful said "regularly" and even among that group we had two families write on the side "We're new to the area." We'll begin follow up and let these folks feel appreciated and loved.
Today's message was original. It was about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'm certain none of you did anything like it. I'm certain no one referenced Matthew 27 like we did and I feel extremely confident that no one mentioned the tie-in with Psalm 22. (sarcasm) I purchased a video from Worship House Media for this week and ran it as a part of the intro for the message. It was a cool setup. I hadn't used them before but it went over very well.
As I said, we had a good day. We had a crew from my Alma Matre Liberty University on hand filming our service and doing some interviews for a DVD they are putting together for us. Apparently they worked out a deal with the state convention and we were invited to participate. For next to nothing we're getting a master copy of a DVD that we'll be able to give out as a part of our outreach. In addition, we'll add the videos online for guests to get the feel of who we are before they check us out in person.
I wrote three messages this week (can I hear a 'stupid' from the crowd?). I tell ya... it was tougher than I thought it would be. They all centered around the cross but they came from different angles. The audience got to pick to hear the resurrection from the view of 'people', 'Jesus', or 'Our Father in Heaven'. They chose the aspect of 'Our Father in Heaven'. That message was all about the sin nature and the concept of atonement. It was actually probably the heaviest of the three. The other two focused more on the love aspect. Obviously the atonement is about love but a good 1/3 had to be about God's relationship to sin and what it meant in Isaiah 53... so anyway... it was heavy at the beginning but the word was taught today. "Preach it, Preacha!"
After church Kristy and I went out with three other young couples and grabbed lunch together. Lots of laughs and good grub. A portion of the conversation drifted south and I just smiled inside because I Pastor a church where people don't try to figure out how to parlay everyone at the table. We have some people who are as real as they can be. I joked about how I'm just glad they feel comfortable enough to talk in front of me instead of act all holy and then jump in the car and talk about me. Pastoring a young church isn't done with your nose in the air... that's for sure.
This afternoon we cleaned up a little and we're spending some time with one another. Speaking of family time... my son Caleb just woke up... I'm out for now... later...
No comments:
Post a Comment