WHAT A WEEKEND! I LOVE serving @ Northgate!

Here’s the scoop…

• We wrapped up the “Just Walk Across The Room.” The last three weeks we did team teaching (I enjoyed teaching with Vern and Anthony), but this weekend I went solo. I answered the question, “What happens when you and I walk across the room?” The answer… Chaos and a consistent lack of predictability! The text for this sermon was Mark 5:1-20.

• The basic story line was this… when Jesus cast the demons out of crazy man in the graveyard and into the pigs, the people were scared (I would have been too)! Everything that was predictable and familiar in their lives had just run over the hill! But what happened when predictability was compromised was that a life was radically changed! For the most part, you cannot have predictability and radical life change at the same time. What will you choose?

• We had a total attendance of 807 this week.

• After the 11:00 service we had lunch and a movie – Face the Giants (read about it here). We asked people for donations and all of the money is going to the Emily Grace Pavilion (a pavilion being built as a memorial to Emily Grace Klein who God took home at 19 days of age). We brought in $4834.01!!!! Way to go Northgate!

OK, time for a “straight from the gut” take on the weekend…

I love to watch the church come together! Today to wrap up my message I shared with the church that I am ready to put down my stake on this premise, “I choose chaos and unpredictability every time if it means that more people come to Jesus.”

I then asked the church to join me around the front of the church as a sign that they too were putting down their stake! Hundreds joined me!

Here’s what we know… when each one of us begins walking across the room for the purpose of leading someone to Jesus it is going to get chaotic around here! When hundreds of unsaved/unchurched people meet Jesus this year because you and I are walking across the room… it’s gonna get crazy… but BRING IT ON!

• Parking is going to get screwed up… but BRING IT ON!

• Service times will change and I’ll have to preach more… but BRING IT ON!

• Our kids ministries are going to bust out the walls and we’re going to have to move them into the adult wing which means we will have to rearrange the ABF schedule… BUT BRING IT ON!

• Where you sit, where you serve, the service you attend, where you park, who you know… all of this may change, it will be unpredictable, but that’s what happens when Jesus starts changing lives and I say… BRING IT ON!

• May Genesee County say of us what the religious leaders in Thessalonica said about Paul and Silas, “These that have turned the world upside down are come here too!”