Weekend Reflections

Wow, it was great to reach the end of summer (still hot!) and see everyone back from vacation. We’ve got a ton of momentum right now, and I’m excited to see the number of changed lives happening each week at Palm Valley. Here’s some thoughts from the past weekend…

• Sean Smith did an incredible job with the staging for At The Movies. Sean’s a volunteer-extraordonaire!
• We had a ton of snags in set-up all across the campus. I was proud to hear our team reminding each other that it was just because the evil one knew God was ready to do something big this weekend; and not to let him win!
• Josh did a great job with the intro video for ATM, Indiana Jones always gets me pumped.
• Crowds were back up, we’re ready to bust through 3,000 this fall!
• My wife Lori was singing on praise team. I love when she sings. I had to get in the crowd last service just to watch her
• Student Ministries is hitting on all cylinders! Darius, Jeremiah, Christina and all the mentors are seriously bringing the passion and energy each week. Our students are on fire for Christ. 266 kids yesterday!
• KidZone started “Spy Chase” yesterday, and I heard it was awesome. They also introduced new student led music and drama. I love to see young people using their gifts to serve. If we believe they can know Jesus, we must believe they’re gifted and called to serve. They’re not the church of tomorrow, they’re the church of today!
• A lot of hurting people with the economy, cool to see so many people praying for each other between services.
• I really enjoyed teaching the message on “following Jesus”. I had a lot of non-believers tell me that Christianity finally made sense to them. Many of them stepped over the line and established a relationship with Jesus this weekend.
• So proud of palm valley’ers who invited friends this weekend.
• Sean had the worship team rollin’ with his story: when he was in jr. high he called a girl and sang LL Cool J’s “I Need Love”. She never talked to him again. Too bold! :)
• I’m ready for the heat to be over. I was wiped after teaching 5 services and greeting on the patio, it’s too dang hot!
• Palm Valley gets it! I love that the people of PVC receive tough teaching and applaud, cracks me up
• Big meetings coming up on our building project, please pray for Art and his team.

Week 2 of At The Movies is “Get Smart”, make sure you invite people who need to know Jesus!

At The Movies

I’m pumped about our new series, “At The Movies”, beginning this weekend. We’ll be taking the hottest films of the summer and using them to build a conversation about the spiritual truths they contain. This week we begin with the adventures of Indiana Jones, “Discover Life’s Greatest Adventure”.

It’s been cool to hear how people are using the popcorn bag invite cards to invite people to church this weekend. I even heard of one group that went to Fry’s and gave them out to people coming to the store. I believe God is honored when his children get out of their comfort zone and invite people into conversations about Jesus. With 10,000 popcorn bags being handed out this week, I believe there’s a lot of conversations about Jesus going on.

I believe this week is going to be huge at Palm Valley Church!