Usually my weekend begins on Saturday night around 10pm. About that time we’ve wrapped up service, packed up, and the band is on their way to Chilli’s for some queso dip and bottomless chips. This weekend’s a bit different.
Pastor Brian is out of town for a couple of weeks and I filled the preaching slot last Saturday night. I spoke out of Genesis 12 and 13 about Abram’s faith journey. It was a great night. I love mixing it up and doing something different. I was able to pray with tons of people and have some great conversations about God’s call on their lives.
The most memorable part of the night had to be a guy named Arthur. I saw him come in and sit in the back. He was in a wheelchair because he was missing a limb. At the end of the message he came forward and said he wanted to pray to rededicate his life to Christ. I asked him how long he felt like it had been since he had a relationship with Jesus. He said it had been 35 years. I asked him what happened 35 years ago that caused him to walk away. He lifted up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo that said “USAF”. I said, “The horrible things that you’ve seen in war caused you to question how their could be a God who would allow them.” He said, “I watched my wife and son get blown up in the Vietnam War.” Then he said that he knew God still had a plan for his life. We prayed. As he left he said, “I’ll see you next week.”
Pic’s from my friend’s iPhone
This is the last post about our night of praise, I promise. I wanted to take several posts to show you all of the different elements we incorporated into the night. We incorporated various expressions of worship for three main reasons:
In addition to the artists, photographers, and musicians who participated in the night of praise, we also invited the congregation to write what they felt God speaking to them throughout the night. We had a large table set up with a long piece of craft paper and tons of markers. People were able to write as the Lord spoke to them. It was interesting to see a lot of common themes in what was written.
I believe that the church should be the most creative place in the world. With that in mind we incorporated artists into our night of praise. We had to two artists in our church up front painting and sketching during worship.
Crystal - Painting
Final
Sarah - Sketching
Final
Here are some pictures from our recent night of praise. Meet the band…
Me - Acoustic / Vocals
Kristin - Keys / Vocals
Lance - Electric
David - Bass
Chris - Drums
Photo credits: Chase Hagaman and Rob S.
musicians, rock stars, WorshipTonight was all worship at church. I am so excited because we did some experimenting with having people paint during worship…It was phenomenal. It will definitely become a regular occurrence around Victory @ Sarasota. I’ll post some pics of the art and of the evening in general when I have them. Until then, here’s our set from tonight:
This set is brought to you by the key of D 
Pastor Brian got me the self-titled, debut album from Deluge for my birthday. Deluge is the youth worship band from Bethany World Prayer Center. The band is lead by the church’s worship pastor, Jonathan Stockstill. I really like their music. My favorite tracks off the album are “Whisper His Name”, “I Believe”, and “Open up the Sky”. This CD doesn’t sound super youth-y and is a little more keys-driven than a lot of stuff out there.
Music, Worship
We had a fantastic Easter weekend at church. We had a our regular service on Saturday night and then we had a Sunrise Service on the beach to celebrate Resurrection Sunday. We had about 200 people at the Sunrise service. There were a bunch of people from church bit we also had a lot of people who just wandered up from the beach. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune covered the event and ended up putting it on the font page of today’s paper. They also did a photo expose on their web site. Gotta love that free advertisement!
Church, Resurrection, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Sunrise
Jordan | 
07 25th, 2008| 