Gilbert Thurston

Random Thoughts About Life, Ministry and Whatever Else Happens to be on my Mind

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Thanksgiving 2011

November 24, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

Hard to believe but this is now my 5th year doing these posts ( 2007,  2008,  2009, 2010).  As always here are the things I’m thankful for in this past year.

  1. Jesus-  Well who else did you expect at #1?  As every year passes, I realize more and more how ugly, sinful and broken I am inside.  Yet Jesus loved me enough not to just be my friend, but to die for me so that my relationship to Him could be even greater.  I don’t deserve a love like that and so my only acceptable response is  to offer a life of sacrifice back to Him.
  2. Lisa-  Again who were you expecting?  Before each of my bi-monthly calls with my church planting coach (thankful for Vince’s friendship as well), I have to fill out a form reporting on various areas of my life and ministry.  One of the questions is, “How is your marriage”?  Recently during a time when I was feeling a bit down and depressed, I wrote for this question, “No matter what else is going on, this is the one area that I can count on to be great”.  Trust me, Lisa has far more to do with that than I do.  Every year I can’t imagine our marriage getting any better but yet it does…wow I’m such a lucky man that God gave me such a Godly wife.  Her passion, hunger for growth and servant spirit are truly an inspiration to me.
  3. My immediate family- I’ve seen my mom, dad, sister and niece as much in the past year as I probably did in the 10 years prior to that.  The irony is I had to move further away from them for it to happen.  Regardless, one of the highlights of my week is knowing that I’ll get to see them on Sunday mornings.   I’ll see them again today and tomorrow and I’m sure there will be times that we pick-on each other but underneath it all is a love and a bond with and for one another that can not be broken no matter how many miles the highway may now separate us.
  4. My cousins- This year has also given me a few times to reconnect with my cousins that I grew up with.  Life and circumstances have kept us a part for many years but I’m looking forward to hopefully more opportunities to  hang-out and reconnect.
  5. My long-term friends-   Andy, Gayle, Bill and Nicole.  It’s been an interesting year and not at all how I had envisioned it but yet these 4 at multiple times and in many ways continue to be there for and with me.  Words can’t describe how grateful I am for the 10+ years they’ve put up with me.
  6. My new friends I’m developing-  Some of these are at church but many of them are from the community.  As I mentioned in our current series, one of the problems many pastors have is waking up one day and realizing you don’t have any significant relationships with people who are far from God.  So this year I have been intentionally going out and building new friendships.  Not only have I been having fun meeting new people and hanging out, but a few I can see as becoming close friends.  Most significantly I can already see the difference I’ve been able to make in people’s lives.
  7. My staff- Chad, Bill and Chelsea.  To be quite honest, I’m in way over my head with this whole church planting thing, but these 3 make me look a lot better than I am.  I’m so grateful God has brought us together as a team and can’t wait to see how God will use us to further His Kingdom.  It’s an honor to be able to lead them and I pray I do it well.
  8. That ExponentialChurch.tv survived it’s first year-  I wish this were hyperbole but it’s not.  Most church plants die within their first 3 years.  We’ve got one of those under our belts but we’re not out of the woods quite yet.  However, as I already mentioned we have a great staff that’s sold out to seeing God’s Kingdom advance.  More importantly we have many others who serve week end and week out because they realize that life is not about them but in helping people far from God come back into a relationship with Him and then grow to become more like Him.  Thanks to all for an incredible year where we’ve now seen over 120 people come into a relationship with Jesus…but remember…the best is yet to come!
  9. Lisa’s business/God’s blessing- In order to start ExponentialChurch.tv, we had to sacrifice a lot to move here to Harrisburg.  One such sacrifice was I voluntarily took a 23% reduction in salary.  This meant the possibility that Lisa might have had to get a job (which would have been a huge sacrifice on her part because of health issues).  However, despite it all we continued to tithe and trust that you can’t out give God.  Sure enough He began to bless her business ,which for years had pretty much always made the same amount of money.  All of the sudden…through no real effort of her own, she has been swamped with work which has allowed her to stay at home!
  10. Chuck Frank- Chuck is a long-time friend and more recently became the Director of Church Planting for the Eastern Regional Conference of the Churches of God General Conference (catchy isn’t it).  It was Chuck’s email that spurred on the vision I had for Exponential originally.  Over the past year he and his team have been incredibly helpful and generous in numerous ways in helping us launch.  Chuck is a great cheerleader for planting and evangelism and his support this past year has been invaluable.
  11. Technology-  It can be both a blessing and a curse but for the most part I am very thankful for all that technology allows us to do.  Especially this past year I am grateful for two tools that make my life so much easier.  The first is www.audible.com.  Audio books have been around along time, but now with the ability to download them to my smart phone and then play back through blue-tooth on my car stereo, life is so much easier.  Literally I turn my car into a mobile classroom and can usually get through 3-4 books per month just during my normal driving time.  The second tool I’m thankful for is the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In Tool.  One of the audio books I listened to this past year was Getting Things Done by David Allen.  His system is tremendous and when I found out there was an add-in for Outlook, it was an easy decision to spend the $70+.  My life, tasks and schedule have never been more organized and de-cluttered and for that I am very thankful!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Andy Krull, Audible.com, Barb Thurston, Bill Butler, Bill Mellott, Chad Chute, Chelsea Miller, Chuck Frank, David Allen, Eastern Region Conference, ExponentialChurch.tv, Gayle Krull, Getting Things Done, Gil Thurston, Jesus, Lisa Thurston, Nicole Mellott, Tara Simmons, Taylor Duda, technology, Thanksgiving, tithe, Vince Antonucci, We're E-Business Solutions

Inside Today’s Experience

June 12, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • Weird day today for a number of reasons.
  • Everything started as normal and we even got set-up quicker than normal despite a brand new stage set being put up for the first time.
  • Great job by Bill who puts these together on a very limited budget.
  • Part of the weirdness today was that I wasn’t preaching.
  • I have my normal Sunday routine and quite a few times I found my self just wandering around going, “mmmm ok what should I do now?”
  • Because I wasn’t preaching and because of a last minute cancellation, I… instead… served…in…the……………………….nursery!
  • Pretty ironic since just two weeks ago in my message I stated that you wouldn’t want me serving in there.
  • In any case, there is a great crew working in there so I never felt overwhelmed and I only got thrown up on 3 times.
  • Chad started the new Thrive series today which is all about the Church.
  • Pretty cool to start it on Pentecost Sunday which is also our denominations “Plant a Church Sunday”.
  • They take one Sunday to concentrate on raising funds to help new church plants...their generosity helped us immensely 8 months ago.
  • We decided though from day 1 of Exponential to give back not just 1 day per year but all year long.
  • To date in just 7 months we’ve been able to give nearly $11000!
  • One of our core values at Exponential is that “It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people”.  So giving back to church planting is just one way to put our money where our mouth is at.
  • Now to be honest being a new church and struggling financially it’s tempting to not give but I personally feel that it wouldn’t be right to ask for people to support us financially and trust God that He’ll meet their needs and then not do the same thing ourselves.
  • Ok back to Chad’s message…I hear it went well and I’d love to be able to listen to it…but the next weird thing that happened was every channel on our multi-track recorder stopped about 18 minutes into today’s Experience which means we’ve lost it forever.
  • I called Chad this afternoon to see if he wanted to re-record it but he felt he could do better just doing a brief re-cap next week before week 2’s message.
  • For those of you used to listening or were especially excited to hear Chad’s message, I greatly apologize that we don’t have it and we’ll work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
  • It was great that we could give everyone a copy of Guerrilla Lovers today.
  • It was written by my good friend Vince Antonucci who is super funny, super creative, as passionate about reaching the lost as I am and as passionate about “being the Church” as Chad is.
  • I hope everyone enjoys it…if you didn’t get a copy (I understand we ran out), we’ll get more copies and have them ready for you next week.
  • Last weird thing that happened was Chad left everyone out early and our tear down crews must have been super hungry because we left the theater a full 1/2 hour earlier than normal.
  • Heck we even beat the main-line denominations to the buffet line…and that’s saying something!  🙂
  • Got a busy week this week as we prepare for vacation coming up…hope to get it all done but yet still have time to enjoy these beautiful days God has been giving us.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bill Butler, Chad Chute, church planting, Churches of God General Conference, ExponentialChurch.tv, gilbert thurston, Guerrilla Lovers, nursery, Pentecost, Plant a Church Sunday, serving, Thrive series, Vince Antonucci

Inside Today’s Experience

January 16, 2011 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • The pic on this post is Chelsea leading our kids in worship today.
  • So awesome to see the kids that excited about Jesus.
  • I hated church as a kid so offering something for kids that is fun, relevant, but most importantly points them to Jesus is very important to me.
  • So thankful we hired Chelsea…she’s doing an awesome job!
  • It was funny…I left the main auditorium after giving the welcome and the band was doing 3 more songs.  When I left the crowd was about normal size.
  • When I came back I had to do a double take…where in the world did all these people come from.
  • I saw my dad and said, “Wow late arriving crowd”.
  • I’m not surprised though…late arriving for church seems to happen everywhere.
  • Wonder if people who are chronically late for church would also be late if they had tickets to see their favorite band in concert or sports team in action?
  • My guess would be no…which tells you something, doesn’t it?
  • My friend and coach Vince Antonucci had a different take on this today in his blog.
  • Think there’s probably a middle ground to be found.  Teach people why showing up on time honors people and God (which coincidentally was a part of my message today) but show them grace when they’re not.
  • Ok, now back to the beginning of the day.
  • You know how you sometimes sleep on your arm and it “falls asleep”?
  • Well I woke up today with my shoulder behind me and “asleep”.  Never had that happen before…man did it hurt.
  • Doesn’t help then to go into the theater and have all kinds of heavy things that need to be moved.
  • Thankfully we have an awesome team who keeps getting better and better with getting set-up.
  • Today we did full set-up, warm-up  and a full run-through in 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Wow…when you consider all the equipment and lighting we have to set-up, that’s amazing!
  • I also loved that after our team meeting and prayer time was over a little boy (7-8 years old) came up to me and said, “You forgot to tell them the 3 things”.
  • So cool that he’s heard me instruct the team enough that he picked up on important instructions I forgot to give.
  • Even cooler than he had the boldness to confront me about it.
  • Even better that when I got everyone’s attention again…Kendrick actually gave the instructions.
  • Not sure why everyone applauded when he did it but they don’t for me.  🙂
  • Nothing really out of the unusual as far as today’s Experience goes.
  • Band did great as usual and I felt good about today’s message talking about how to have both someone who believes in you and someone you do the same for.
  • Best part of the day was that 4 more people today prayed to ask for Jesus forgiveness and leadership in their lives!
  • I love seeing that…I’m addicted to lives being changed.
  • Don’t forget that our dinner for parent’s and those interested in knowing more about our children’s ministry is this Friday night at 7pm.  It’s a FREE dinner so come on out and check it out.  You can register here.
  • Also don’t forget that dinners with me will be held February 8, 9, 15, 16, 18, 22 and 23.  Online registration will begin soon, but if you want to get on the calendar before a particular date fills, then email me and we’ll get you registered.
  • Have a great week…I know mine is going to be really busy…so if you don’t mind saying a quick prayer for me, I’d appreciate it!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Chelsea Miller, ExponentialChurch.tv, Gil Thurston, gilbert thurston, Vince Antonucci

Guerrilla Lovers

February 2, 2010 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

A few years back I got to know a pastor down in Virginia Beach by the name of Vince Antonucci who is not only a really fun guy to hang with but as passionate if not more passionate for evangelism as I am.  Vince has a really funny testimony that he shares of his journey from atheist to follower of Jesus.  More recently Vince moved from Virginia Beach to Las Vegas where he is getting ready to start Verve a church right on the Strip for the people of Vegas.  Lisa and I are going to be out there in a few weeks and we’re excited to get to see him again and experience all that God is doing in and through him.

I shared all that because today is another exciting day in Vince’s life.  His second book, Guerrilla Lovers is being released.  If you want to not just say you love Jesus but also show the love of Jesus to others, this is the book for you!  If you’re still struggling with the whole what’s it mean to become and then be a follower of Christ then check out his first book, “I Became a Christian and All I Got Was this Lousy T-Shirt.

For pastors and church leaders, Vince is also providing all kinds of cool guerrilla loving resources for individuals and churches at www.guerrillalovers.com

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Guerrilla Lovers, I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt, Verve, Vince Antonucci

Inside Today’s Experiences

October 25, 2009 by Gilbert Leave a Comment

  • Not the best of days but anytime you’ve got people giving their lives to Jesus, there’s not much you can complain about.
  • We had a brief power outage this morning during set-up time which delayed things a bit and then we had a cable connector go bad on my mic which meant Andy had to do some early morning solidering work.
  • We had two of our teens running projection and lights today and both did a great job.  Well done Ben and Dustin!
  • As always the worship team did an excellent job…both crowds seemed to really be into the music today!
  • I re-did the message on Monday, which I’m glad I did…still not one of my best but I think the point was clear…don’t be just a consumer, become a contributor.
  • I’m glad this series is over…not because I didn’t like it, but because I’m really excited about the Maverick series which starts next week.
  • I got to see a little bit of the stage design changeover that the team was doing this afternoon and it’s going to be awesome!
  • During the 1st Experience announcement time I kept getting tongue tied.  I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to say, “the dictionary definition” or the “definition in the dictionary says”.  My mind couldn’t figure it out so I kept saying, “the defionary”.
  • The more I tried to get it right the harder it got…finally I just gave up.
  • I met a great couple after the first Experience, who just moved here from Hawaii,  who get what we’re all about.
  • They loved United and realized it’s not about making them happy but reaching out to those who are far from God.
  • I attribute this great attitude to their former pastor when they lived in Virginia Beach.
  • He’s a friend of mine by the name of Vince Antonucci.  Vince is passionate about reaching out to his community and just took a big step of faith by leaving his church to start a brand new one on the Las Vegas Strip.
  • Thanks Vince for such an awesome job of teaching and modeling for people that it’s not about what we want, but it’s all about sharing the good news of Jesus with others.
  • Speaking of…make sure you invite lots of people for the new Maverick series…I think people will be surprised by the fresh look at Jesus we’ll be taking.
  • Be there…be there early…and don’t forget to sit up front!
  • I’ll be posting the final Reality Check video later in the week…great job by Brian and Aaron in making these happen!
  • Ok time for a quick nap before heading back over to the church for our annual congregational meeting…come on out to hear the exciting things we have in store for 2010!

Filed Under: Inside Today's Experience's Tagged With: Aaron Schwindt, Andy Krull, Ben Myers, Brian Miller, Dustin Swartz, ForeFront Church, gilbert thurston, Jesus, Maverick series, Reality Check series, United Worship Experience, Verve, Vince Antonucci

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