Worship in Spirt

As I was studying today for my message on Sunday, I came across a concept I havn't seen this way before. In John chapter 4, in the story with the Samaritan women at the well, Jesus tells her the kind of Worshippers that the Father is seeking. The kind that will worship in Spirit and in Truth. So we often think about what Jesus is saying here. What does that look like for me to be a worshipper in Spirit and in Truth? So flip over to Romans 12:1-2 you have Paul explaining here what worship should be in our everyday life. The NIV version says "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your SPIRITUAL act of worship". Offering our bodies completely is how we worship in Spirit which is the kind of worship the Father is seeking. The kind that will take their everyday, ordinary life- their sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life- and place it before God as an offering. When we get our minds off of ourselves and onto Him then our spirits connect with His and God heals us, and frees us, and gives to us everything we need. So to worship in Spirit and Truth is to give our bodies to him, everything we have, everything we do to knowing him more through his word and prayer and giving him our time, attention, and affection. This is true worship. I love learning and seeing new things in the scriptures.

Worshipping,
Adam

desperation update

Hey everyone, Its a beautiful morning here at the base of the Rockie mountains here in Colorado Springs. My wife and I have had the privelage of being able to jump on the bus of our old youth group as they passed through. Last night was the first night and what an incredible night it was. God was moving. Worship was intense. John Bevere spoke on something really powerfull for all of us at all ages. How a lot of people use the excuse of grace as a cover up to continue sinning vs. the empowerment not to sin. 5 of our students and 1 of our leaders made REAL first time decisions for Christ yesturday. YEA! The heavens are rejoicing. I love it. We were out late and we are up early, are bodies will be tired but God is going to be praised with our lives. Pray for us and the continuing of God igniting a fire inside the hearts of these students that lasts forever.

Loving Jesus,
Adam

Life can be fun!

We had a great life group tonight. We were missing a couple of couples. ha. but we gain a new one. we have been doing the Nooma videos by Rob Bell, which are great discussion starters. Tonight we talked about needing things and really needing things but trusting God to give us what we really need. And only letting Him satisty our hearts desires. But then we had a great discussion of just life. One of the guys in our group brought up the fact that he knows guys that party and live this care free life and how many of them so often have great friendships that develope out of the partying together and such. They look back years later and reflect on the crazy things they did together or camping trips or whatever just being guys and how those times hold a lot of value in their friendship. So we started talking tonight about how as christians we so often make life so serious or always are having these hidden agendas but loose the spark of just good fun and life together. Nothing profound here but we get caught up in doing the right bible study and being at church to fulfill my duty and you know try and bring Jesus into every conversation or event instead of just literally living out our lives for God in everything we do. Every thing we do is for God. And so we can have fun and go camping and serve and read the bible and worship and rock climb and everything we do is for God but we can have fun and create lasting relationship that contain great stories, through lives of integrity and morals. There is a balance but I think that we can have fun for no other reason than having fun together while our lives spill the things of God everywhere we are.

Just a thought.
Adam

Where is the Pastor?

Today we had an almost scare that was saved literally 2 min before we started. It seems every time the pastor leaves things just don't go the way they should. And being portable brings on a whole new set of potential problems. Jeff went to Montana with his family to speak at a Jr. High Youth Camp, so I got to the Holiday Inn at about 8:45 to get an early start on setting stuff up for our Unplugged service. Luckily we dont have a ton of stuff to set up but the most important thing is what wasnt working today. Our projector was not getting the signal from the computer for whatever reason. So we spent till about 9:40 messing with it, trying all sorts of connections, restarting the computer and projector several times, and actually went and borrowed a projector from the holiday inn. We were desperate for something to work because it contains all our lyrics for worship and points for the message. So finally we gave up, of coarse Jeff in unreachable and he usually sets this up. (ONE MORE REASON NEVER TO OWN ANYTHING BUT A MAC)! So I actually changed the entire worship set to songs that everyone would know without having lyrics up on the wall. And then finally about 2 min before service Jeff calls and of coarse its something easy, but we get it working and we were saved. But man I hate these scares that always seem to happen when the Pastor leaves. All in all the service went great. We had new faces, God was worship, His presence was there, Grant did a great job teaching and we all ate lunch together afterwards. We are going golfing in less than 2 hours. Its a good day. We learn something new everytime we do this.

Oh by the way God is so good. I almost bought a djembe the other day and we dont even have someone to play it so we decided to wait. And no kidding this morning, Curtis, a new commer to element church said to me, "would you ever be interested in a djembe player for unplugged". HAHA how cool is that! He owns his own instrument and knows how to play, God is always looking out for us. Love doing this.

Pray for Jeff and his family this week that they would have a great time together and for energy for doing a full week of camp.

Loving Jesus and loving you,
Adam

Preview Service Video

Here is the VERY ROUGH CUT of our first service!

Preview Sunday

We had our first preview service this Sunday. It went over well. As of Monday it was going to be just me leading worship. But we wanted the feel of a band but had no one. But our intern Kyle knew a guy that was a part of the OWU ministry team that was coming in (which by the helped a ton) who was a drummer. So saturday night we set everything up ran through a practice with a full worship team and they did a great job. So to Blaine, Morgan, Kyle, Amber thanks for putting in the time, great job. I broke a string first song, which is always the fear as a guitar playing worship leader cause you can't exactly go do anything about it. But luckily we had put Jeff's intro slot right after the first song so I was able to change it fast. Fun Times. The stage was extremely small, the lights were really close and hot, our sound engineer had never seen a sound board before, we had lots of reasons to prove the need for doing a preview service. Its PRACTICE! But for our first service we felt like it went really well. Jeff did a great job with his message. He had a great opening cliff hanger story, then had props for each point. It was well presented. Our volunteers were priceless. We couldn't have set all that we did up in the time we did with out you. And greeters and children's workers, you were all essential to what happend Sunday. We had 75 people that attended with a few of them being from HPCC in Gillette (thanks for coming down). We had our first comments/critic write in on Monday morning, didn't see that coming (haha). But its good. Its good cause it challenges us to get better but it also challenges us to stick to what we know we are supposed to be doing. I think its timely cause Jeff just last week talked about people and their ideas but staying focused on what you know God has called you to.

So here we go. Back to Unplugged and casting vision. And preperation for our next preview on August 5th and then launch October 7th. I will post pictures and the service video later today.