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At 9:30 I looked into the crowd and genuinely had the thought that we have more first-time guests than regular attenders here. That’s a lot of fun, provided you regular attenders get regular again after summer’s over!

First week of A Place for Everyone, and we talked about volunteers by using the analogy of a restaurant. Every great restaurant serves a great product, knows its target, is run by a great team, and eventually feels like family. LOTS of people responded to volunteer, and I can’t wait to get started getting people into places where God will use them.

Songs were I Will Give You All My Worship, Everlasting God, Glory to God, and Your Name.

It was Tyler Rhoton’s one year staff anniversary, and I bragged on him. Shoulda been here if you wanted to hear it!

We’re doing a Gas Buydown again on August 7. This event in January of ‘09 was the first time our community really heard about us, and I’m so pumped to do it again. If you want to help, send us an email at info@arrowheadchurch.com.

It is very surreal that we worshiped today in our first permanent facility for the first time. We never thought we’d be in a place of our own so soon, but the Lord had other plans. It was so fun today to see the stunned look on people’s faces as they saw for the first time what we’d been talking about for several weeks. I’m so grateful for the team God used to pull all of this together so quickly.

• I’ve never been prouder of the work of God because He did it all through His people. Our contractors, Total Property Management, worked really hard to make it all happen, but it couldn’t have been completed without volunteers. Over the last 2 weeks we made memories painting, cleaning, sticking on vinyl baseboard in what seemed like mile-long rolls, and in just doing whatever it takes. I’m so humbled and blessed.
• Just the environment that has been created in the lobby is enough to help us fulfill our relational mission. Loved seeing people sitting in our lobby and hanging out before we opened the doors.
• Songs were Today is the Day (Lincoln Brewster), Awesome is the Lord Most High (Chris Tomlin), Hosanna (Hillsong), How Great is Our God (Chris Tomlin), and Reign in Us (Starfield).
• God changed the message on me on Saturday morning. We talked about milestones. Some milestones come naturally and some have to be chosen. Choose salvation, baptism, repentance, and connection to a church.
• We’re baptizing in the lake on June 20! If you know you need to do it, now is the time. Send us an email to sign up at info@arrowheadchurch.com.
• Huge kids crowd, and I think we laid out the space well. So glad to be able to add a class to our lineup starting today.
• Just a few odds and ends from today: the sign isn’t permanent (it’ll get bigger), we’ll get the lights right eventually, and there’s a student room for 6-12 grade that I don’t think anybody even went in!
• Largest non-Easter crowd we’ve ever had filled up the room nicely, but remember that Carson Newman is gone home for the summer. Stay tuned for talk about 3 services this fall (or sooner if you keep inviting!).
• Sara and I are getting some time out of town this week as I teach at the beach for FBC Sevierville’s College Ministry, so pray for us and for the rest of the staff as we recuperate from the madness of the last few weeks.
• Thank you for your commitment to help people take their next step with Jesus! And praise God that He’s moving through us!

If you just dropped by for the first time or the first time in a long time, this Sunday is the first week in our new location! Join us at either 9:30 or 11:00 at 6111 W. Andrew Johnson Highway in the Fred’s shopping center. See you there.

One of our core values is Biblical Teaching. A church isn’t a church without the Bible. Heck, many churches have a hard enough time living out what a church should be even if they do believe the Bible. I can’t imagine trying to stand for God without being fully convinced of the truth of His Word.

We believe the Bible is fairly simple to understand. There are many mysteries and we surely can’t understand everything about God, but most of the basics are black and white, so we try to teach it that way. The Bible speaks to our everyday lives - our homes, habits, friends, finances, fears, and struggles.

Day in and day out we are sustained by the simple truths of God’s Word.

Mother’s Day is such a funny church phenomenon to me. Either a mom wants everybody to come to church with her and so the whole family is gathered together or mom wants to sleep in so lots of people are absent!

• Kicked off a new series called punctuation. What goes between your quotation marks when you say “I’ll pray for you,” is a big deal.
• Do you pray casually or desperately? Do you pray whenever or are you persistent? When you pray, are you hoping or believing?
• Songs were You Are (Todd Fields), Hands of the Healer (Fee), Mighty to Save (Hillsong United), Jesus Paid It All (Kristian Stanfill version), and The More I Seek You (by…I don’t know!).
• Great to meet a few extended families of people who traveled in to come to church today.
• The big move is 5/23! The energy is building!

May 23 we are in our new location! Can’t believe it, but it’s going to be incredible. You do not want to miss it! Construction is nearly the close and we still have lots of cosmetics to do, but it’s just around the corner.

This space is going to give us room to see more people continue to take their next step with Jesus. I can’t wait to see what the Lord is going to do.

We need people to come work on Saturdays May 8 and 15 and probably the week in between at night. Don’t you want to be able to say “I painted that bathroom” every time you see someone go in to do their business?!

We’ll still be in two services at 9:30 and 11:00.

Pure madness from 6:30-1:00. Sometimes that’s all you can say to describe a Sunday at Arrowhead. Absent band members, sickness, a double-booked Rose Center…wow.

• Wrapped up The Dip. Sometimes God puts us in places to say something we could never hear if we were anywhere else. AW Tozer said, “It’s doubtful God can use a man greatly until He’s hurt him deeply.” Hard to get our minds around, but true.
• Acoustic worship set…out of necessity (remember the absent band members part…). Still things went great. Songs were Glory to God (Fee), You Said (Hillsong), Here I Am to Worship (Chris Tomlin), and Hands of the Healer (Fee).
• Proud to pastor a church where people really feel welcome. There’s no way to coach or prepare that before a Sunday. It’s just awesome people.
• College Cookout after the service was fun. We’ll miss the CNC students but the WSCC people will rule the summer!
• Shared the move-in date - MAY 23!  More to come tomorrow.

I get asked a lot: So where do you all get that stuff on Sundays? Meaning, where do you get all the graphics, promo stuff, etc. It’s a good question and we have no secrets.

Our sermon series are a mix of graphics designed by Tyler Patterson (on our staff) and from other churches across the country who give away their stuff for free. TP is very talented and learning more all the time, but we use programs like Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Final Cut to create graphics and video. We also utilize free resources from great churches with large media departments who are so kingdom minded that they realize they are blessed with resources that many other churches our size don’t have. So, they publish their stuff online for free. That means as a pastor and worship team we can decide what we want to talk about, write the sermons and choose songs then go out and look for graphics to “brand” the series.

Why is this necessary? The short answer is that it really isn’t. The Bible speaks for itself. But, we believe the Bible speaks specifically to our culture, and our culture speaks the language of media. We want our Sunday worship experience to match people’s throughout-the-week experience. That doesn’t mean we water anything down or try to look like the rest of the world. But, it does hopefully help communicate that our faith is relevant to our culture.

Kicked off a short series today called The Dip. Everybody hits the dip. When we receive Jesus everything is new and everything is great, but it doesn’t take long for things to begin sliding downhill. God has a purpose for the dip, regardless of how it happens.

• Songs were: All Creation Sings (Todd Fields), Your Grace is Enough (Chris Tomlin), From the Inside Out (Hillsong United), and Rescue (by lots of people).
• I love sharing the stories of what God is doing at Arrowhead because it reflects God’s heart for people. Getting to do that every week is a privilege.
• We have setup and teardown down to an art. Too bad we’re moving!
• I’m still amazed at the flood of first-time guests every week. So proud to be the pastor of a church where people love inviting their friends and family.
• Stay tuned for a moving date!

There is no one alive who is unimportant or insignificant. God sent Jesus to bring back people from every race, tribe, social status, financial status, and background. People matter to God. He knows and loves us all.

At Arrowhead we do what we do because we love God but also because God loves people. We try hard to do Sunday’s programming from music, video, and the sermon in a way that is excellent and well-done. But, if in the process we can’t do church without significant time to interact with people, it’s a failure.

If you live your life working hard, studying hard, trying to make ends meet, but there is no time for people, it’s a failure. It doesn’t matter whether it’s family, friends, classmates, co-workers, or the guy at the cash register - people matter.

I pray God makes Arrowhead a place where people from all walks of life recognize that God cares about them and we do too.