blog.arrowheadchurch.com

So excited to announce the launch of a website we’ll use throughout our upcoming seried 30 Days to Live! The site is arrowhead30days.com. The site has all the info about the series but asks the simple question: What would change if you knew you had 30 days to live?

We’ll be able to click 30 Days Stories and share our own. I can’t wait to hear stories of what God does in the series beginning August 9.

Which, OH BY THE WAY, is when we’ll add a second service. Arrowhead will begin meeting at 9:30 and 11am next week. Hard to believe!

On Saturday I had the privilege of setting up our sales tax exemption account at Lowe’s. In the course of conversation with the lady who was entering info into their computer, she asked what my title was. I simply replied, “Pastor.” Her next statement caught me off guard. She asked me how to spell it. The lady was kind, articulate, and very down to earth, but she genuinely didn’t know how to spell pastor. Why? My only conclusion is that she’s never interacted with the word in print or interacted face to face with a pastor before.

Before we started Arrowhead, there was a time when I really thought there were enough churches in every town from Kentucky south and from Texas east. Then the Lord began to open my eyes that there are unchurched, disconnected people in need of Jesus everywhere. And, the only reason to start a church anywhere is for them to have a place to connect. There still remains over 40,000 unchurched people in this medium-sized town of Morristown, and we want to be a church that is passionate about them hearing the gospel and finding life in Christ.

Can not believe this is the last Sunday in July. Where did summer go and where is my tan to show for it? Kidding. When I turned 30 I gave up caring about a tan. Now I just try to keep my bald head from burning. What does any of this have to do with church? Not sure…

• Solid day today. Had to work around James and the Giant Peach at Rose Center. No major hangups, but it changed some things up with setup and teardown and audio.
• Good service with a great worship set. We wrapped up our series on prayer. We’re praying for the world to meet Jesus because He prayed that He wanted them to be with Him.
• Got to introduce Tyler Rhoton and family to the church. I acted like I actually like the guy in the service and he made fun of me for it. We’re trying to come up with pet names to distinguish him from Tyler Patterson. On the short list are: Santa’s Little Helper, Patches O’Hoolihan, and Swamp Donkey. Let me know if you come up with any more or think any of these 3 should stick. =)
• Fun times hanging out at lunch after the service. It’s hard to beat the fellowship that comes around a cheap hotdog!
• Lots of great things to unveil in next week’s service and on the blog.

Have a great week!

We experienced one powerful night on June 28! Here is a video of our Picnic Baptism.

Arrowhead Church Baptism from Arrowhead Church on Vimeo.

Twenty-one church members step up and take a profession of faith through baptism. So awesome to see what God is doing in Morristown, TN!

Even if it’s not a permanent place for worship, it feels great to be announcing that we are moving into our first office and meeting space. It’s located at 1843 Morris Boulevard, in the same building as Sherwin Williams Paint. Plenty of space for our staff to work together and plenty of space for us to host all kinds of events throughout the week. It will be a place for meetings, small groups, partnership classes, student ministry, and much more! Drop by and check us out, but don’t stay too long! We’ve got work to do people! Ha.

Just an FYI…

I get REALLY tired of getting spam porn comments on the blog sent to my email and I’m always wondering if some lame attempt to bait me into looking at porn is somehow going to end up getting posted to the blog as a comment. If you don’t blog and don’t know what I’m talking about, basically you get about 10 commenters a day (I’m sure many widely read blogs get many more..I’m a small fish in a big pond) attempting to sell you prescription drugs or providing links to porn sites. After someone comments, you then have to approve, disapprove, or mark as spam any comment made. If you do blog and know how to prevent this other than spam settings and plugins, let me know.

So, here’s the plan. I get very few blog comments anyway. You people are so shy. So, you’ve now got 7 days to reply to a post or it becomes un-comment-able. Also, you now have to be registered with Wordpress and logged in to comment here.

I could be wrong, but I think the days of commenting on blogs for quick interaction are soon to be gone anyway. Twitter has defeated that idea. So, once again, quit fighting it and start Twittering! You know you want to. All the cool kids are doing it.

I know I sound like a broken record, and I know a day will come when things will be hard, but my life is really fun right now! I love Sundays. Setup is fun (though hard at times), teardown is fun (though hot at times), and the service is just a blast. I’m so thankful for the people I get to live life with right now!

• Week 3 today of our Prayer series. We looked at John 17 again and saw how Jesus prayed for His disciples. Continue to pray for protection from division, protection from falling away, an experience of joy, a life of purity, and an understanding of mission. All of these things are elements we’d love to see woven into our DNA as a church. And, we can be the answer to Jesus’ prayer by living out each one.
• I thought the band nailed the worship set today. I think the set was so much of who we want to be musically. Great job by Tyler P., A. Dibb, Carson, Josh, and Jessica.
• Tyler and Emily Rhoton join us next week, and I can’t wait. He won’t be leading in the service until the following week, but I can’t wait for our people to get a chance to meet them.
• Just for the record, I do think car dealers can go to heaven =). You had to be there.
• Unbelievable temperatures here in good old East TN this weekend. Teardown was bearable today.
• Great crowd today. Always fun when the house is full. Correction: usually fun when the house is full.
• Spent a while this afternoon watching the British Open. Fun to watch. Congrats to my Twitter buddy @stewartcink. What? You don’t think he knows who I am because I follow him on Twitter?
• Then spent some time doing sprints for the first time in a long time. Observations: I’m old. I’m slow. I jar a lot when I exert myself. I gotta get back in shape. I don’t think I could run a 40 in less than 7 seconds.
• Our kids volunteers are so incredible. Some people stepped up in a huge way today. You guys rock!

I’m out of energy now. Have a great week! It’s gonna be a full one for us: moving into an office and ordering a church management system. Wow. I love making progress!

Having a hard time getting the recap up on Sunday afternoon these days. Too much happening to be in front of the computer this summer. It’s more fun than I deserve. What a great day today. 4th of July weekend made me wonder if we were gonna have to close the doors (kidding!) but everybody was back today.

• Made the big announcement that we are going to be adding a 2nd service on August 9! Beginning on that day, we’ll offer identical worship and kids programming at 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.
• Why? Because God is moving in our church! It’s nothing special we’ve done and nothing we can manufacture. He has simply chosen to bless us with more people, and we must make space for them to meet Him on Sunday mornings.
• So, we’re asking everybody who calls Arrowhead home to GIVE AND RECEIVE. We want you to receive ministry by being a regular part of a service each week. And we’re asking you to give by volunteering in a ministry role during the other service or before/after the one you’re worshiping in. It will take twice the volunteer force to make Sundays happen. But, it’s worth it. The changed lives we are experiencing make all the hard work joyful.
• To find out more and give us your input, take this survey.
• People are already beginning to step up into new volunteer roles. That’s really cool to see.
• Today was week 2 in our series called Prayer. Talked about praying for the glory of Jesus to be seen. That was the beginning of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1-5, and it should be the beginning of our prayer lives as well. It was definitely a difficult topic, but I fully believe God is more concerned with making us like Jesus than He is making our lives easy. Sometimes that requires prayers that are answered yes and sometimes no.
• It was so great having the full band back on stage today. Incredible worship set. That sound and vibe is much more in line with who we really are as a church. The acoustic feel is great for a change, but after 2 weeks of it I think we were all ready for yesterday’s worship.
• I love meeting new people each week! Our area is full of people who are broken down from life and church. I pray we’ll be a place God can rebuild!

Have a great week!

This Sunday we’ll make a major announcement in the life of Arowhead Church. It’s tied to the idea that you and I should be willing to give ministry and receive ministry. Of course it sounds backward but there really is nothing like giving. The giver is always more blessed than the receiver. But, you can’t give unless you have something to give. That means you have to receive. Come here what all this is about on Sunday.

Happy 4th of July to everybody. Apparently a lot of our people were still celebrating this morning! Or at least into the hours of the morning last night. =)

• Kicked off a 4-week series called Prayer today. Talked about the simple facts of prayer. Nothing mind-blowing and no new information today. We all left with a simple challenge to take a practical step to pray this week.
• Got to show the church the baptisms this week. I’ll link to the online video later in the week. Still so pumped about it.
• Went acoustic again today. Great simple worship set. Ready for the band to get back next week.
• 3 weeks until Tyler R. joins us. I can’t wait. Pray for the Rhotons house in Knoxville to sell.
• Setup and teardown are absolutely flying right now. It’s really encouraging to all of us I think.
• Big announcement next week in church! Don’t miss it! And invite someone back with you. Help ‘em snap out of their summer slump!
• Sara’s in Nashville with her family for a couple days, so I’m a bachelor. I make a really bad single guy! Miss her and Eli already. Good chance to get a little ahead on work for a few days though.

That’s it. Off to get the work party started. Have a great week.