Egg Drop Needs

Hey Element Church! We're in need of a few supplies for the egg drop.

3 Wheelbarrows
3 Scoop Shovels
We'll be using these to pre-cover the field with 10,000 eggs before we drop the 15,000 from the helicopter.

2 motorized kids vehicles. We have 2 little motor cars donated for the event, we'd like to have 2 more. One of the basketball courts in the toddler area will become a motorized car area. (Motorized Mayhem we'll call it)

If I think of more I'll post it!

Following Christ,

Jeff

Egg Drop Details

Hey Element Church! Here are a few VERY IMPORTANT egg drop details.

--- PRAY LIKE CRAZY! lol Calling for sunny and colder on Saturday. 40's. Snow showers on Friday. I'll take sunny and 40's. Snow would not be good.
--- Mail invites hit the boxes today. We've already been getting calls from people about the egg drop. I think this can be a GREAT turnout.
--- VOLUNTEERS please wear your red Element shirt or a red shirt in general.
--- VOLUNTEERS please park farther away from Miller field so close spots are saved for attendees. 3rd or 4th avenue is good. Also, we've been given permission to park at Lenox Auto Body which is a few blocks from the drop zone. DO NOT PARK IN THE PARKING LOT!
--- VOLUNTEERS timeliness is a must. We'll be meeting at 8 AM and then breaking to our assigned areas. We are putting the final touches on placing people, mapping the area out, doing some city approval stuff and talking with the helicopter company.
--- They are bringing two helicopters. That is going to be cool. Both will be doing rides and then one will do the drop. The drop is going to be wicked sweet. Just talking with Curtis about it gets me excited.
--- We have a local concession company coming to sell refreshments.
--- I can't believe what we've pulled off in two weeks. We are INSANE to try it this late but I CAN'T WAIT!

If you are volunteering and have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me or call the office. Thanks to all who are helping. See you Saturday.

Following Christ,

Jeff

Voice

Hey Element Church! Yesterday my voice was nearly completely gone. My throat is sore and I'm battling a small but annoying lingering cold. My concern is this Sunday I get to preach three times. I am VERY excited about e:coustic and the opportunity to reach new people but I have never preached three times on ANY day let alone three consecutive times with a 10 minute break. Normally I think I'd be totally fine, but with this cold and voice issues I need some prayer. SO, if you're out there and read this and are willing to lift me up in prayer, please do so. I preach a certain way (maybe that's a fault lol) but I don't want to let up one bit in any of the three messages and if my voice begins to go I may have to. Anyway, I trust God will have my voice ready and rested for Sunday morning.

Following Christ,

Jeff

Sunday Rumination (3-9-08)

Hey Element Church! Here are my thoughts on the day!

--- One person marked on their connection card that they received Christ today! PTL
--- MANY people responded through raised hand that they were a follower of Christ but wanted to be "wholehearted" in their devotion to Jesus.
--- We talked about Caleb today, who at 85 years old STILL was passionate about fulfilling his God given destiny.
--- God said of Caleb that he will receive the land that was promised to him because his "attitude was different than everyone elses". God said of him that he was "wholehearted".
--- I talked about "calendar challenged" people today. lol I LOVE Caleb's spirit in Joshua 14. At 85 years old he was PASSIONATE about his God. I want to have a faith like that. GIVE ME MY MOUNTAIN!
--- 336(?) in church today. I put the question mark cause can't remember if it was 331, 333, or 336 or some other 33#. It's in the 330's.
--- Band stinkin' ROCKED DA HIZZY today. Our new sound board and speakers made ALL the difference in the world. That new sound board is amazing. WOW!
--- We were much more even in the two services today. We've been HEAVY on the 9am attendance and slim pickins' at 10:30 lately. Today was way more even.
--- We got done with practice at 10 till today. That's a little to close for my comfort.
--- Our sound tech was sick today so I took on a much bigger set up role than I'm comfortable with. Thankfully Bryant and Curtis filled in on sound board. Thanks guys! You did a great job.
--- 15,000 eggs are going to fall from a helicopter this Saturday. Mailer should hit the boxes this week and we were in the paper yesterday and hopefully again this week.
--- Egg drop volunteers need to be there READY for the meeting at 8 AM.
--- I can't believe we are adding a third service on Sunday. Towards the end of my sermon today my voice just went for a few seconds. It was gone. I'm going to have to stop singing and talking until I preach. Crazy! Pray for me, Adam (and band) as we do the three services.
--- Easter already?
--- I hate the time change. Especially when the alarm sounds at 4 am.
--- Had several people showing up late for the services. I always think that's funny. How come no one ever forgets to change their clock on the day it would make them early to church? HMM...
--- I love speaking on purpose, destiny and passion. Life to its fullest fires me up. I think SO MANY Christians are content with wilderness living when the promise land is waiting for us to attain.
--- One of my favorite lines from today "Caleb received rest in his heart before he ever received the rest in the land." Joshua 14:10 Caleb says that God kept him alive the whole time that "Israel" wandered in the wilderness. Why not say we? I believe it's because Caleb didn't feel like he wandered. His spirit, his heart was at rest. He was WHOLEHEARTEDLY God's!

Alright, my put on more later. I'm going to Billings for some denominational meetings tomorrow and Tuesday.

Following Christ,

Jeff

SPRING FORWARD!

Hey Element Church! No day where you are required to lose one hour of sleep should include the word "Spring". We talk about having a "spring" in our step. I got so much sleep I was able to "spring" out of bed. I love the sights and sounds of "spring". "Spring" is a positive word. Never the less, we are required tomorrow night to turn our clocks ahead one hour. I am blogging this so that as many of our Elementers who read this would remember. Also, I am officially changing the name of this day to "It sucks to lose an hour of sleep day"! LOL The great thing is, I'll be one hour closer to church when I go to bed. Only I need to be in bed by about 6 PM tomorrow night. PEACE

Egg Drop Invite Cards

Hey Element Church!  We got 2000 invite cards ready to go for the Cheyenne Egg Drop!  We'll have them available Sunday for you to take and hand out.  If you want to stop by the office and grab a stack we encourage you to do that as well.  If you have kids ages that are 12 and under in school,  have them take a stack to give out to all their classmates.  Jonah is taking one to all of his classmates today.  We have a limited time for the promotion of this event so your help in getting these invites out is HUGE!  If you've signed up to volunteer for the Egg Drop, we are working today on putting each volunteer at a station.  Someone will be calling you this weekend or early next week to tell you where you'll be serving and any instructions.  Continue to pray for the weather next Saturday.  The extended forecast now calls for being cold, with a mix of snow and rain.  God can, and I trust WILL, allow this event to take place.  (But even if he doesn't...)

Following Christ,

Jeff

ABSOLUTE CRAZINESS!!

Hey Element Church!  I apologize for the lack of blogging this week.  My oh my, this time for us at Element I think is crazier than launch.  Seriously, it is insane. Every day was like Christmas this week at the office.  Because of e:coustic we have add to duplicate our sound system, computers, stage, EVERYTHING, so we get boxes every day all day from UPS and FedEx.  

Adam and I took out as much of the stuff as we could to the other theater yesterday.  We are able to store, pretty much ALL of our stuff at the theater which is huge.  I am SO STOKED about our new sound system we're unveiling in e:worship this Sunday.  We basically are taking all of our current equipment to e:coustic and we upgraded e:worship.  New lights, sound board, speakers, etc.  It is super sweet stuff.  In fact, Adam, Morgan and I were on the floor laughing at how HUGE our new sound board was.  We seriously may not ever have to buy another sound board as long as we're a church.  It is stinkin' SWEET.  And sounds amazing!  Our current board had major problems so we had planned on upgrading anyway, before we even added e:coustic.  I think the board is bigger than Pam (sound tech) and she's gonna freak when she sees it.

We have 25,000 Easter eggs sitting in the office.  lol Boxes are everywhere from all this stuff we got going on.  You can check out the egg drop website here.  It's super simple but it gives us a web presence.  Adam is doing a TON of stuff right now so just to get this up was a chore.  Adam literally is a church planting stud.  I don't know of another lead pastor that could find someone like Adam with his skill set to put on a team.  He's been amazing!  Thanks bro!  He's so much more than a worship leader (although he's an awesome worship leader).  

Weather is looking decent for the 15th.  High of 43 and partly sunny.  We seriously need to pray like mad for God to help us with the weather.  I really feel as if God moved on our behalf for the drop.  Free helicopter, great location, and I found out today that the newspaper is going to do some stuff on the event. Look for a news brief in this Saturdays religion section and an article next week as well.

I'm VERY excited about this weeks message and worship set.  I actually got back on track in my schedule today and took the entire day to study.  I need to get back to being strict about that.  I typically take Wednesday and lock myself in my office and study study study!  When I don't get that I suffer for it.  

Ok, that gets you caught up a little bit.  I know there is probably so much more but it is literally mayhem right now.  LOL  The crazy thing is, I LOVE IT!  That's just how we roll.  

Following Christ,

Jeff

Sunday Rumination (3-2-08)

Hey Element Church! March is here, Easter is just around the corner and we're starting three services with a 15,000 egg drop on the same weekend. That's how we roll.

Great service again today. Below are my ruminations on the day!

--- 6 people today acknowledged that they prayed to receive Jesus into their hearts. PRAISE THE LORD!
--- 15 -20 people indicated that they really felt challenged to "step it up" as a follower of Christ. That was cool.
--- Each week, regardless of what our topic is, we try to do some sort of spiritual decision time. I'm not sure we've had a service where we offered a specific time for a spiritual decision and not one person responds. That is the most important part of our service.
--- 366 in church today. I really feel like we've maxed out what two services is capable of handling. Before we hit 300 our staff felt like 350 was the most two services could accommodate. We've been over that three times in four weeks now. I'm really hoping that e:coustic enables us to see even more people come to church and to Jesus!
--- I LOVED our worship set this week! Adam and the band did incredible. God Of This City is my new favorite song.
--- Our scheduled drummer (Bryant) got called into work early this morning (search and rescue I believe. He's an AF helicopter pilot) so we didn't know what we were doing for a drummer. At least one of the songs HAD to have a drummer to really make it work. Adam called our other regular drummer and he came at a moments notice. We have two AWESOME drummers. So amazing who God has put on our team. Thanks Bryant and Brian for your faithful drumming. (Brian did awesome too. Without any practice)
--- During communion the band did another one of my favorite songs and it fits our series perfectly. It's called "Faith Like That" by Jonah 33. Amazing song and the band knocked it out!
--- The city scape set design looked great! Adam built 2 skyscrapers, we had chain link on the stage, stop lights and other stuff. It looked cool. Hopefully we'll get some pictures up soon!
--- The lobby was set up different today and it looked and worked GREAT! We have a merchandise table now and a Life Group table. Putting a Life Group table in the lobby has REALLY helped us getting people signed up for groups. Not sure who's idea that was but it's working great!
--- If you are an Elementer and not in a Life Group, I encourage you to get in one. As the church is growing you need to be connecting with people in a smaller group. I am convinced that a church is NEVER too large if it has effective and healthy small groups. We're working hard to ensure that ours are effective AND healthy.
--- If you want an easy way to invite someone to Easter, use some of the Heroes invite cards we gave out today.
--- We have Egg Drop invites coming and will need your help in getting them distributed around town. We didn't order them on time because of the craziness of last week and trying to get the event finalized. If you have kids, send some with them to school to give to their friends. We're hoping for a HUGE turnout.
--- If you can help by serving on the team for the Egg Drop or by helping with supplies that would be great. We need several of the motorized kids cars to use in a pre-school game area. (The cars they can actually drive like the jeeps, corvettes, etc.) We need someone to build us a bean bag toss and ring toss game for the little tykes as well. (Or if you know where we can get those) And we need one of the kids basketball goals. We want a pre-school game area for the 3 and 4 year olds to participate in and we need those games. The older kids will have races to participate in.
--- We are THRILLED about this event and hope it's a wonderful service to families in Cheyenne. If you could help us spread the word that would be AWESOME!
--- Three services is gonna wipe me out.
--- Three services is gonna HYPE ME UP!
--- We pretty much have our e:coustic team in place. Could use a little bit more help with set up/tear down.

Alright, that's about it. I'll add more later. Off for my AWESOME Sunday afternoon nap.

Following Christ,

Jeff

Egg Drop Weather!

Hey Element Church! Ok, here's where we are at. It sure seems God has helped us out in some Egg Drop details. The helicopter company doing the event for free is a HUGE God thing. The approval from the school district at literally the last minute for us I feel was a God thing. The company we got the eggs from was able to prepare 25,000 eggs. YES, 25,000! Now, I ask us to approach God in prayer for some good weather. Here is the forecast right now, 2 weeks out from the event. Obviously the biggest factor for us is wind and precipitation.

Today's weather was unbelievable. 66 degrees and very little wind. Let's collectively join in praying for good weather and a GREAT event!

Following Christ,

Jeff

New Series!

Hey Element Church! Tomorrow we start a new sermon series and I am REALLY excited about it. It actually has been weird preparing for it. It is a totally different feel from the previous two series'. Heroes, I hope will be inspiring and motivating for us to awaken the Hero within. Lurking inside all of us are Heroes of the faith. As we take an inside look at some Biblical heroes, what I hope we will see is that they were just like us. They were ordinary people living extraordinary lives because they believed in an EXTRAORDINARY GOD! We've got a worship song that is the theme for the series that is ROCKIN' MY WORLD right now! It's a song that I feel is exactly where Element is at. Adam has worked REALLY hard on a cool set design. As a portable, new and growing church we try to do some cool set designs on a budget. I think Adam could write a book called "Set Designs On A Budget". This one (I think he got it done) is going to be a cool fit for Heroes. Come as we look inside the lives of people like Esther, Caleb, Gideon, Jesus (Easter DUH), and one person who the Bible doesn't even give a name!

Following Christ

Jeff