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Invite… Invite… Invite

December 19, 2011 in Christmas Outreach, church at the bay with Comments Off

Christmas Eve is a special time for me and my family.  For over 30 years we have been a part of a Christmas Eve Celebration.  So it will be cool for us to have both of our children and their spouse in town for Christmas Eve.  I am sure we will go for our traditional Christmas Eve “Banana Split and French Fries”.

Christmas is a great time to invite a friend to attend with you.  This Christmas Eve at Church at the Bay you can expect:

  • Great Christmas Carols
  • Parties in all the kids rooms
  • A message about what Jesus really wants for Christmas
  • Apple Cider after the service
  • Bounce Houses and a jolly fellow from the North Pole
  • And a bunch of people celebrating the birth of Jesus.

I am asking God to use me in big ways this week as I make personal invites for Christmas Eve and I am asking Him to use you.  In fact, most days I am going to take my lunch break and invite a bunch of people to attend.  I have set a goal to personally invite over 100 people this week (Monday until Christmas Eve) to our 2 Christmas Eve Services.  Because I am the lead pastor at Church at the Bay I know I need to set the pace- so Monday’s number for me was 31 personal invites!  Did you hear Blaine’s story Sunday about Beckett, his 5 year old son, making some personal invites at Chili’s?  I love it when the kids get the message- Mom and Dad are teaching him how to honor God.   My prayer is God will use all of us to help introduce Jesus to a bunch of new people on Christmas Eve.  Some of you will be out of town for Christmas Eve this year- tell me who to expect and I will greet them for you.  If you run out of invite cards, call the office.  We have a couple hundred left.

All Jesus wants for Christmas is… Our Obedience

December 12, 2011 in All Jesus wants for Christmas, Christmas Outreach with Comments Off

This weekend at Church at the Bay was overwhelming!  There is just something about people publically taking next steps with Jesus that fires me up!

 

We began our new series- “All Jesus wants for Christmas is …”. The whole idea of this series is to refocus Christmas on Jesus- not a bad idea because it is His birthday we celebrate.  I challenged people to take their next step with Jesus and then asked them to raise their hand (because I wanted to pray for them) as I mentioned areas of next steps.  Our folks honesty was inspiring.  Hands went up when I talked about the next step of:

  • Inviting a friend or family member to CATB
  • Taking the first step to reconcile a relationship
  • Making Jesus the Lord of their money
  • Those who needed to obey Jesus in believer’s baptism.

After I prayed for their needs we invited people whose next step was baptism to do it now!  You have to watch the video to see the response.  I tried to say this clearly Sunday: Salvation is free; discipleship will cost your obedience.  I am honored to lead a church where people are taking next steps of obedience to Jesus.

By the way- what is your next step?  If you will email me I would love to pray for you: nextstep@halmayer.com.  And, here is the message if you missed Sunday…

No video?  Click here

It’s On Like Donkey Kong!

December 4, 2011 in Christmas Outreach, Outward Focused Church with Comments Off

This Sunday I unpacked our plan for reaching as many people as possible on Christmas Eve. We gave you two different invite tools.  Let me talk about them one at a time.

Tool #1 … The invite card

We gave you five this week and we will give you five more each week until Christmas Eve.  Use these to invite a friend, someone pumping gas beside you, your check-out person at the mall, your mailman, your boss and on and on.  I told you that our pastors have challenged each other to make at least one personal invite each day.  We actually have a board in the office that makes us accountable to each other.  If you know your pastors, you know we want to win- so this inviting is going over the top- one guy actually invited 7 on the first day!  We are having some fun and here is the best part-our invitations will lead to lives being changed as people come and discover God’s love!  Help us make a difference.

Tool #2 … Post-it Note

This is a pretty cool idea, actually one of my favorites.  This note has a QR code and the website url.  Both lead to a video invite to Church at the Bay for Christmas Eve!  Now let’s have some fun.  We want you to post these in unusual places and snap a picture.  You see my strategic post-it at the top of this post. Once you have taken your picture, upload the picture to our Facebook Page (click here) and get your friends to “like” it.  On Saturday Night at 6pm each week we will post the name of the winner- the person with the most “likes” for their picture posted on Church at the Bay’s Facebook Wall.  So what does the winner get?

1.  The warm feeling of knowing you had the coolest invite out there…

2.  A $25 Gift Certificate to Chili’s

3.  The envy of everyone else who posted a picture of their invite.

At the end of the day- what really matters is people discovering the love of God and a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.  How cool would it be if the gift you were able to give someone this Christmas was a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Remember – each week we will give you 5 invite cards and some post-it notes and a winner will be announced every Saturday night on Facebook!

Ready GO!

Bring These 2 Sunday!

November 28, 2011 in Christmas Outreach with Comments Off

For the past few weeks I have been encouraging you to make sure you attend this coming Sunday at Church at the Bay (December 4th).  I want you to hear the vision and passion of Pastor Luther Eatman.   Luther will tell his personal story and the story of his church start that Church at the Bay supports financially.  I don’t want to steal his thunder… so I will just say this: 

YOU NEED TO BRING TWO THINGS SUNDAY:

A FRIEND- Do you know someone who needs to be encouraged?  Do you know someone new to the faith?  Do you know someone who enjoys hearing stories of God showing up?  Got the idea- invite and bring your friend!  If you don’t have a friend to bring- bring an enemy.

A GIFT- We are partnering with Crossover Church of Tampa this Christmas.  This partnership means we are bringing new, unwrapped, children’s gifts to CATB for the next two Sundays.  Please place these gifts in the marked trailer by the bounce houses.  Remember gifts should be in the $5 to $10 range.  Sandy and I plan to bring several. Will you help Church at the Bay help Crossover Church reach their community?
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