The Bomb.com!

Easter was the bomb.com! (Jeff I told you I would find a chance to use it) I stole the bomb.com statement from one of the Newspring assistants (sorry I didn't get your name). We had a blast. If you were not there you missed a good time. First of all Thank God! We had 4 people get saved. All the planning and work is worth that alone. Here are some of the highlights

• We had 313 people come to the service! That is over 200% increase from the week before. We blew out our 200 goal! Way to go Garr members.
• We had over 2,000 eggs for the kids
• We gave out over 300 free ice cream tickets
• Blow up jumpers, Face painting, and food!

Here is the biggest thing I want to brag on. I had a buddy of mine come from work and he said that he had at least 12 people greet him and his family and invite them in to the service. That is what I am talking about Garr Greeters!
Now if you think we are a one time shop then you are wrong. You don't want to miss next Sunday. We have a surprise in store for everyone. Make sure you are there in time cause you don't want to miss the beginning of Jeff's sermon. This new series "Live Like you were dying" is going to rock!

Good Friday?

As a kid I always wondered why it was called "Good" Friday. Why is the time that Jesus was betrayed, beaten, spit on, crucified, and speared threw the side, a time to call "Good". I grew up in church and as a kid the worst thing I did was run in the sanctuary or climb over the pews. (p.s. I always thought that a pew was a rather adequate name because they certainly stunk to have to sit in.) It wasn't till I was older that I committed a sin that even dropped my jaw! It was then that I went to God and asked for forgiveness and it hit me like a ton of bricks. That is why they call it "Good" Friday! This horrible point in time in humanity was part of the biggest landmark spiritually.
That being said. I do believe that there should be an amendment made to this holiday. All of you who have the day off and are not working. Your spending time with the family or doing yard work. You should not be allowed to celebrate it as a holiday unless you celebrate Easter Sunday with even more excitement. You see this holiday is nothing to rejoice over without Easter. The death is only the first 1/4, to make it whole you have to celebrate the Resurrection.
So if you do not have a church to go to this Sunday then you will not want to miss the opportunity to go to Garr Church this Sunday at 9:00am. It is going to be off the hook! Plus as an added bonus you get to see yours truly rocking out on the drums. See you there.

No time to say Hello, Goodbye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm Late!

There is so much to do that in one day, there is not enough time.
I just wrote two sentences and now I am behind.

In order to go BIG, you have to think small

I so often get caught up in how many people are coming to the church. How many visitors we did or did not have. I was reminded last night that I can make a bigger impact by directing my focus better. I preach to the youth all the time about reaching your friends. Inviting them to come to church. (cause I want to see more visitors). I end up waiting for those visitors to show up so that I can tell them the good news. Unfortunatly, I usually don't get to impact very many lives that way.
With a money market account you put your money in one account and that account invests in several stock accounts. Your focus is just on that one account. I need to be the same way. If I find a few people in my life that I invest in, then they in turn go and invest in a few in their lives. We've all seen the example and know where that is going. So now by focusing on those few I am impacting many.
Who are the few in your life? The ones that you are loving, sharing the word with, investing in.

You can pick your nose and you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friends nose!

So I have waited way to long to post this story. Sorry life gets busy and posting drops down on the list. They say that you can tell a lot about someone by being around their friends for a day. Whelp, I don't mean to boast about me in this, but I do mean to boast about my friends. A few weeks back one of my good friends walked up to me after church and handed me some money. He said the Lord spoke to me and wanted me to invest in your family a little bit. He said it is not much money, but take it. He was not aware of my family situation at the time. We were getting ready to take my youngest daughter (Riley) in to have tubes put in her ears. The cost to us on top of what insurance would cover was just over $1,000.00. The money he gave went to help with that. The Lord works in awesome ways! To be honest I think the gift was more about impacting my life than paying for a bill. I had to look at my time with the Lord and ask: Am I listening and ready to do what he asks me to. Am I ready to walk up to a buddy and hand him some money and say "Lord just wanted me to invest in your family". I pray that I can be the same kind of friend back.

P.S. Riley is doing great now with her tubes in. Everything went smoothly and she has had no ear problems thus far.