A few thoughts

Posted under Church

Just a few random thoughts this morning:

• I thought yesterday’s services were awesome. 
• The song “Mighty To Save” rocks!
• I love the energy of our arrangement of “Nothing But The Blood.”
• The beauty of Barb’s voiced shined on “The Old Rugged Cross.”
• Another great night of Home Groups…heard wonderful reports so far.
• It was great to have Phil in town and share with us about what God is doing in Ecuador.
• I can’t hardly wait to start teaching through the Book of Judges.  Read ahead.

Awesome Weekend!

Posted under Leadership

Well, I finally have a little bit of free time to talk about our Staff Retreat to Portland.  We were able to visit four different great churches.  Our big picture goal was just to experience the “atmosphere” of these churches and their worship environments.  What was the music like?  How did they handle announcements?  What were they doing with lighting and video?  What was the mood?  Each church was different, but all in all, we took a little something, or a lot of something, away from each church.  I’ll give you a little bit of the low-down for each church:

The first church we went to was Abundant Life Church in Happy Valley.  We checked out one of their Saturday afternoon services.  While talking with Joe Flegal (with the Northwest Baptist Convention) and telling him about this trip we were putting together, he recommended that this would be an good church to add to our list.  Abundant Life has been experiencing a lot of growth (a couple thousand in attendance now) and they do some creative stuff in worship.  They did a great job with lighting, staging, video, and environment, but we were especially struck by the quality of their “Welcoming Team.”  Their level of “customer service” gave us a lot of food for thought.

The second church we visited was Greater Gresham Baptist Church.  We checked out their Saturday night service.  GGBC is one of our great Northwest Baptist Convention churches and it was awesome to connect with some people we know there like Keith Evans and Sam Fort.  They are a very strong church and it was good to see what they have going.  We were especially reminded of the importance of friendliness in church as they definetly exuded this.

The third church we spent time at was Athey Creek Christian Fellowship in Tualatin.  We checked out their 10:00am Sunday service.  Jamie’s cousin Ben and his family are part of that great church.  Ben is a deacon at Athey and we’ve always heard great things about what God is doing there and the tremendous growth they’ve experienced (thousands).  Wow! Phenominal teaching by their pastor Brett.  He’s just a great Book by Book Bible teacher…I definitely took some stuff away to chew on in terms of improving my own teaching and preaching.

The last church we experienced was Southlake Foursquare in West Linn.  We checked out their 12:00pm Sunday service…that’s right, Noon!  Southlake is known for their video and audio capabilities and facilities planning, but we also have another friend Rob who goes there.  The worship was “incredible.”  They definitely have a cool sound system and some amazing video and lighting stuff on top of it.  Southlake’s music and worship gave us a vision of some great stuff to work towards.

All in all, it was a very refreshing and inspiring trip.  It generated a lot of discussion and will help us further improve our own ministry at East Side.  It’s really amazing that we get to worship the Creator of the universe, and God deserves nothing less than our best.

I’ll do another post hopefully with some pictures of these church’s children’s and youth ministry environments.  That’s all for now.