I’m really looking forward to this coming Sunday, for a number of different reasons. One, though by no means the most significant, is that late afternoon Gill and I are headed out east for a couple of days where I will chill out and catch up on some reading.

Before that, there will be a difference in the flavor of the activities at our two campuses this week.  While the folks in Mastic have the fourth worship service out there, in Ronkonkoma we’re going to pay a little attention to the fact that it will be exactly eleven years since we first started Grace Church which has morphed into Church At The Movies.

Sunday October 4th 1998 we got everything in place in the Inn At Medford for day one of this amazing journey.

During that time we’ve worshiped in a lot of places,  had a lot of opportunities to share our faith, watched a lot of people come and go, but above all we have seen hundreds of unchurched people come into a relationship with Christ.

We’ll be celebrating that on Sunday, starting from 8.30am with a full breakfast – eggs, bacon, sausage, the works – and then I’m going to be continuing teaching the Hostage series, looking at how people get imprisoned by unbiblical ideas they often hear from the pulpit.

Over in Mastic, our good friend Michelle Margiotta is back with us to lead worship and we’re anticipating a full house again as word continues to spread around the community that we’re there.

Eleven years ago I had no idea that I’d be driving between movie theaters on a Sunday morning to teach at two campuses. I wonder what the next few years will bring!

Can’t say it better than Perry Noble said it on his blog today -We get things messed up from time to time…especially the words of Jesus…here is what He did NOT say…

#1 – “They will know you are my disciples by your theology, and the arrogance that accompanies it.”  (John 13:35)

#2 – “Dream really small dreams and make sure you never ask for anything big!”  (John 14:12-14, Psalm 2:8)

#3 – “If someone doesn’t believe just like you believe…make sure to do all you can to attack, criticize and beat them down as much as possible.”  (Mark 9:38-41)

#4 – “Be tolerant of everyone…I am one of the many ways to God.”  (John 14:6)

#5 – “Make sure you make the church about you…that you are served well…please, don’t do anything that might cause you any type of inconvenience.  My goal is for you to be happy!”  (Matthew 20:28, Luke 9:23-24)

#6 – “Please, whatever you do, DO NOT tell people the good news…keep it to yourself!  The reason I died on the cross is so that you could get into really small groups of people and talk about ‘deep things’ that aren’t going to help anyone when it comes to eternity.”  (Matthew 28:20, Mark 16:15, Luke 24:48, John 20:21, Acts 1:8, Romans 10:14, Romans 10:17)

#7 – “Don’t EVER try anything new…don’t ever take a risk…don’t ever take a step of faith.  Be AVERAGE!”  (Isaiah 43:18-19, Hebrews 11:1, Hebrews 11:6)

#8 – “You can follow me and it will not impact your money at all!”  (Matthew 6:19-24)

#9 – “Pray a prayer to get out of hell…and then live however you want.”  (John 14:15, John 14:21)

#10 – “You can do it without me!”  (John 15:5)

#11 – “I don’t expect you OR your church to be fruitful in any way.”  (John 15:4)

#12 – “Isolate yourself from the world!”  (John 17:15)

#13 – “Make sure there is a time when you question my word because it will one day be no longer relevant.”  (Luke 21:33)

#14 – “Stop crying out to me in desperation…can’t you see I’m busy.”  (Mark 10:46-52)

+ Vikings win in the dying seconds; Lions win for the first time since December ‘07; Yankees win the AL East; Jets win; Giants win, heck even the Mets win.

+ Definitely a winning day at Church At The Movies too.  Pardon me for saying this, but we have an excellent teaching team. Lesaya was outstanding today wiith her message on Toxic Waste in our Hostage series. Outstanding.

+ Spent the first couple of hours at our Ronkonkoma campus as we got ready for service there. The band sounded good as they practiced and Jaimee Saponieri was getting ready to rock the place again.

+ Not sure what it is with church and rainy days, but the miserable weather didn’t help the crowd. Their loss.

+ As service started in Ronkonkoma I headed over to Mastic and had the chance to meet some of the folks over there. It’s weird to feel like a stranger on your own church campus. Lots of people to get to know.

+ Had a great band from Lamb’s Chapel helping us out over there. They were more than good. Great to have a nearby church recognizing we’re not competition, but are on the same team. They have been a terrific support to us.

+ Did I say Lesaya did a great job teaching?

+ Looking forward to continuing the series next week with Seven Lies Pastors Tell Churches.That’ll raise some eyebrows.

+ Waiting for the Colts game to start. They’re my team. Just heard their new head coach asked how he would describe himself. His reply was,”Firstly, I am a Christian,” Gotta love that.

+ Feeling a bit light-headed, so only had an abbreviated workout at the gym this afternoon. Probably just tired. Man, I’m fed up with saying I’m tired. Taking a couple of days off after church next Sunday.

+ Wiinning day. A Colts victory will round it off!

I’m glad Rick Warren started Twittering. He keeps throwing out a bunch of good stuff on a daily – almost hourly basis. And yes he does post his own tweets. Here are some great things to think over -

God is love-1Jn4:8 Love is not self-centered-1 Cor13:5 God didnt need us.He WANTED us! U r an expression of God’s love.

You weren’t just made BY God,u were made FOR God.Until u get that, life will never make sense.God made u to love u.

Reconcile the relationship B4 trying 2 resolve the problem!

Loneliness=cost of VISION “I,Daniel,was the only1who saw the vision.Those w me didnt see it.So I was left alone…Dan10:7

We always get ourselves into trouble when we begin to doubt how much God loves us.

His new book – The Hope You Need – comes out in November. It’s based on the Lord’s Prayer.

There are many, many things I have never experienced during my 59 years on this planet, a multitude of which I could gladly do without. Like sitting in a dunk tank on a September evening, being periodically propelled into the cold water below.

But on Friday night I will add that adventure to my ever expanding resume at a Youth Rally at Integrity Christian Fellowship in Yaphank.

This act of lunacy is the climax of an amazing evening of activity a couple of weeks ago when youth groups from our church, ICF and Lamb’s Chapel competed to deliver thousands of door hangers as quickly as possible to announce the start of our new campus in Mastic.

Turns out our gang were the most highly motivated and they claimed the prize of the winning team – to have their pastor be the one to take a seat in the dunk tank.

I’m more than happy to do this, for a number of reasons -

1. It’s a celebration of churches partnering together to see the kingdom advanced.

2. It shows appreciation to over 80 teens who gave up theiir Sunday evening to share the news of a new church coming.

3.  It celebrates almost 6,000 homes being visited in less than two hours.

4. It reminds us of how we made connection with people who now worship with us.

5. It’s the kind of insane thing I do from time to time – life’s too short to let it be boring.

Recent accumulated wisdom from Twitter -

Rick Warren - You’ll never do anything creative,innovative or world-changing if you FEAR criticism. Pioneers are easy targets for arrows!

Timbo Fowler – Quoting Thom Rainer – 1990-2004 the US population grew by more than 18% & the number of peope attending church declined by 3%.

Mark Batterson - Success is trying harder and trying longer than anyone else. with the Holy Spirit’s help, of course!

Tony McCollum - Gossiping and murmuring are the primary tools the enemy likes to use to kill churches. Watch what you say.

Tony McCollum – Angry preaching (not intense or serious but angry) is usually a sign that something is wrong in the preachers personal life.

Rick Warren – Growing churches require growing leaders.The moment you stop growing,so does the church.Read to lead.

+ Time to relax at the end of a very good Sunday. I’m not a great Giants fan, but seeing them beat the Cowboys would be a good way to end the day.

+  Jets did amazingly to beat the Patriots this afternoon, but it’s beyond me how two teams who play in New Jersey by choice can honestly have New York in their names.

+ Mets won too and that’s two in a row for them.

+ Anyway, on to what really matters. The second part of our Hostage series went very well this morning on both campuses. I taught on dealing with bitterness. Love the Nelson mandella quote I saw on Twitter last week – Bitterness is like drinking a bottle of poison and waiting for your enemy to die.

+ Still adjusting to having around 50 or so of our Ronkonkoma folks go over to get the Mastic campus off the ground. They have left some gaps in many ways, not least the conspicuous empty seats. So that takes a bit of getting used to until they get re-filled.

+ Met several new folks before service there and chatted with one lady who was back for the second week.

+ Time was a pressure as I need to be on the road to Mastic by 10.45. It was 10.52 before I got going today, but it worked out well.

+ Band was on the ball.

+ We were using a downloaded worship set by the band from www.lifechurch.tv in Oklahoma over in Mastic. Excellent stuff. People were getting into it more this week.

+ Guitar Hero on the big screen was a huge hit for The Bridge (Grades 6-9) before service.

+ Had 183 people there, 20 down on last Sunday, which is a good progression from week one to week two on a new campus.

+ Serious space issues over there. We’re going to move the main worship service into the largest theater next week. After that? Jesus knows – I have no clue.

+ Was far freer teaching in Mastic today.  Last week was unfamiliar for everyone in the building.

+ Honestly felt God did significant stuff in a lot of lives today as I talked about forgiveness.

+ Don’t generally eat breakfast Sunday mornings, but since I don’t get to eat until around 1.30 now, I guess I’d better start the day better.

+ I love what I do. I love our church. I love our folks.  Life is good, God is good.

My friend Tim Fowler is in  the final stages of planting a church in an  underchurched part of Texas (yes such a thing does exist). Tim had just about everything in place except for one key component – finding a place that they could rent for services and just about every door seemed to close.

But today the issue was resolved and on Sunday October 18th, Church @ Skyline Valley will launch at Cinergy Cinemas in Copperas Cove, TX.  www.skylinevalley.org

I’m glad for Tim that the issue has finally been resolved and I hope he’ll love doing church in a movie theater. I do.

+ Movie theaters provide way more square footage than most churches could afford to buy or build.

+ They are a totally non-threatening environment for the unchurched.

+ They are available just when we need them.

+ They have big sccreens and we like big screens.

+ They have more comfortable chairs than any church building I’ve ever been in.

+ Did I say there’s tons of space?

+ Foyers convert into great cafe areas.

+ There’s a cupholder in every seat.

+ They were made for church.

+ And if you hide in a closet after service, you can stay and watch a movie for free!

If you’ve missed my random, (almost) daily ranting here since Sunday, I apologize. It has been a weird couple of days. I think the accumulated weariness of the last couple of weeks finally caught up wth me once I had got through our first two-campus Sunday.

Monday I slept late, got up just before 8.00 and ran a few miles at the gym. Not sure if I was physically tired or just emotionally drained, so I decided to have an afternoon away from it all and walked to Starbucks in Port Jeff. It was a beautiful afternoon and it might have been a good thing that my iPod didn’t work, because it was just me, my thoughts, my prayers for the whole of my stroll. Coffee finished I walked home – 10.6 miles roundtrip – ate dinner and watched football. A good day for someone in a brain dead condition.

Yesterday I just didn’t feel good. Nauseous. Light-headed. Not a good day, with not much accomplished, except meeting Gill at JFK after her visit to Texas. That was a good thing.

The fact is that this past several weeks have been very tiring for a lot of people, with long days and a lot on our minds. Part of the issue for me was waking up for that first middle of the night visit to the bathroom, so beloved by us all as we get older, and then not being able to get back to sleep because my mind was racing.

So I slept less, worked more and used up a lot of nervous energy too.

It all took a toll, but having 68% more people in Sundays services compared to our summer average makes it all worthwhile.

And I’m pretty much back to normal now anyway.

+ The day finally arrived and I am now officially shot, but so many friends are waiting for news that I figured I’d better get on here before I nap.

+ Great day – that’s what every pastor says on his blog on a Sunday afternoon, but this really was.

+ Over in Ronkonkoma we unveiled our new color scheme and the place looked outstanding wiith the aquas that my insider information tells me will be next season’s colors.

+ Met a number of first-time visitors and saw even more that I didn’t get to talk to. Good buzz around the place.

+ I knew I had to be disciplined with time as I needed to leave the building at 10.45. We pulled away at 10.46 – not bad at all for me.

+ Band had a good song selection and though the crowd was down – we had about 50 people in Mastic – they really got into the worship.

+ I kicked off our Hostage series and believe God touched a lot of lives.

+ Jaime Saponieri was incredible with “You raise me up”. Incredible.

+ Before I left Ronkonkoma, I got word that Mastic was crowded. Two text messages while I was driving over there confirmed that.

+ We had opted to go for the second biggest theater that seats 200 and it really was standing room only.

+ I was blown away – heck this is New York, not the Bible belt.

+ What a great team put this together and they were justifiably ecstatic to see how many people turned up for our furst Sunday.

+ Michelle Margiotta and her band did worship – she is great.

+ Teaching was a bit heavy going as most people didn’t know me and I didn’t know them. Limited interaction, but again I felt God was doing some serious stuff.

+ I had no idea how many people would be there today, but my ideal was to break the 100 barrier. Turns out we smashed through 200 – 203 people. Great start.

+ Remarkable day so far. More news when I’m more wiith the program.

+ Thank you for your prayers – God showed up big time!