We got this e-mail from Veronica this morning:

You'll be excited to know that last night in discussing with out community group the new evening service our church has started, we discovered 3 of the 4 couples TiVo CBS Sunday Morning! Who knew there were 12 people in this country (including yourselves) under the age of 65 that liked that show! We are forever grateful to you for introducing us to it. Love & miss you both!

 Ironically enough - the e-mail arrived in my inbox at 9:52am and I was indeed partaking of the Charles Osgood led craziness that is the CBS Sunday Morning Show. The girls were both down with colds today so we had to skip the first installment of Gospel at our church (more on that in a second) but that meant we were able to watch the Sunday Morning show. This show never lets you down - whether a piece of history, art, or random bit of Americana - you are always enlightened. Today's standout piece was one on a sport known as "Chessboxing". There are youtube videos, including a piece from ESPN - but due to comments, I will leave the links out - check it out though.

As to the beginning of our new series "The Gospel" - head over to Pastor Furtick's blog to see what has happened in our church today. Absolutely amazing - PRAISE GOD!

This is the number of people that were baptized both yesterday and the week before during Elevation's first two weeks of doing the Awakening series. I found this out through pastor's blog.

This week they played a video of a guy named Leo that got saved at our church a couple of months ago and then felt the call to get baptized - it was moving. It would be worth keeping tabs here at our church's website to watch pastor Furtick's message and see if they put it in. I hope they do, it is why we attend where we do. Our church's heart is amazing and it lights our family up to super intensity. I think the video should be up by tuesday. If you're feeling really frisky and have some time on your hands - head over there now and watch week one's baptism message.

The other stories to come out of this are amazing as well. Two in particular that I will relay in very sparse detail. One was a husband and wife who were recently separated - they both showed up at the same service unawares that each other was there. They both decided to get baptized. Then they noticed one another and ended up getting baptized together. Pastor said they were embracing after the event. Another story came from the staff twitter:
Executive Pastor, Chunks Corbett: At 7:45 Sunday, I watched a lady walk up (who was just out exercising and saw our roadsigns). She walked home after being baptized.

Amazing.

Today was a wonderful day in the history of our church. This is the second time that I know of that Elevation has done this - last time being during a series called "Deep" last year. Basically - Pastor Furtick understands the weight and gravity behind the symbol that is public baptism. This led him to set up these services where he Redefines what baptism is and then attempts to Remove any (and I mean any) roadblocks to doing it right away.

In order to redefine baptism, Pastor took us to John the Baptist and then made connections in Acts about baptism references always occurring after someone professed Christ and not before. He explained that it "does" nothing - but made a great analogy that I'm hoping is his. He said that baptism is essentially the wedding ring of salvation. It is not the event in and of itself - but is a symbol of a very real life commitment. He went on to explain that there is a decline in men wearing their wedding rings due to them being uncomfortable (I bought mine with a comfort fit :) ). This idea really didn't sit too well with him - he kept referencing how little the "embarrassment" really cost us in light of Christ sacrifice.

I didn't realize this until way after - but Pastor Furtick really understands our congregation. We are made up of many denominations - several of which practice infant baptism and not believers baptism. His encouragement to our congregation today was to be baptized if you have never done so. This went for the new believer as well as believer for 40 plus years.

In order to remove roadblocks - the Elevation staff went out of their way to prepare for any excuses. On-hand today they had T-shirts, shorts, boxers, sports-bras, blow dryers, make-up, soap, shampoo, and feminine hygiene products. In order to deal with wanting family to be there - Pastor made constant reference to the biblical description of doing it on the spot. If that wasn't enough - they hired a professional photographer to take pictures of everyone and they will be sending those pictures free of charge to the people who got baptized. This was amazing.

They played one song and told people if they wanted to get baptized to head to the back. Outside they had a huge tank set-up with dozens of Elevation volunteers surrounding it. When people got baptized - it was (by design) a party. They dismissed the service for the rest of us and Em and I got the girls and got to witness no less than 50 baptisms. We were able to rejoice with these people in their decision.

I was waiting until one of the big-guns over at our church posted something on their blogs about today's baptisms and Larry Hubatka won the prize...I don't want to steal his thunder - so if you are curious how many baptisms we had at the 5 services today - click here - Praise God for what he is doing in Charlotte! Leave us a comment if this encouraged you!

No seriously - it does rock. The new album made almost entirely of songs our church leaders have written is now available. The Elevation Worship CD - We Are Alive can now be experienced from the comfort of your own car, home, or ipod. We just got ours today and have enjoyed it immensely. Congrats to Chris Brown, Wade Joye and Mack Brock for an album well written and recorded. Bravo. You guys are part of the process of restoring my faith in Christians to set the pace artistically. You can listen to one of the songs "Sun Stand Still" here.

The coolest thing about this whole process is being involved with the church while most of these songs were written. They were all born out of certain times in our progress and specific things that we were/are asking of God.  Further confirming our choice to worship/work with Elevation is their choice to donate all of the first day sales to Wade and his wife Ferris to help cover the ongoing medical bills for their twin daughters Adleigh and Liana. According to Pastor Furtick's blog - the total given to the Joye family was well over 17,000 dollars! Amazing.

Many of those who know me know that I am not a big "prayer request" kind of guy. It seems that far too often these request are used as a vehicle for gossip. With that in mind I am throwing a genuine one out now. Having just gone through childbirth as a family ourselves, I can really sympathize with the situation that our worship pastor Wade Joye and his wife Ferris are going through. You can read more on the situation at his blog, but suffice to say they had complications arise recently which led to an emergency c-section of their children. Their two babies were small and now a complication has arisen with the smallest Liana.

Please pray - seriously - take 2 seconds or more to stop and pray right now for this situation. We are praying together for a full recovery for Liana...will you join us?

I have another sad thing to write about - but have not yet been able to formulate my words.

Elevation church is joining up with over 1300 other churches this month for an event called One Prayer. I am trying hard to wrap my mind around this concept as it is slowly being unveiled to us by our leadership. The problem is that while Pastor Furtick usually does an excellent job of explaining things that we are involved in or are partnering for, I really feel like the ball has been dropped on this one. You see, this One Prayer thing is so much bigger than they have been telling us and I have had to do some research to understand it more. The long and the short of it is that the Church (notice the capital C) is coming together in a way heretofore unthinkable through the use of modern technology. In the past several months 65 pastors have filmed sermons under this premise:

"If God would answer 'one prayer' for the Church at large, what would you pray?"

And now LifeChurch.tv is using their online resources to make all 65 sermons available to the 1300 churches worldwide that have signed up - free of cost. During the month of June the churches are to pick 3-4 of the sermons to show to their congregation. But, and this is where it gets really cool and where I consequently felt a little left out in the dark, then something else happens (from One Prayer's site):

And now for the action: week three, each participating church takes a special offering. The combined money goes to four international organizations that work locally to build 500 new churches where building churches is particularly tough: Sudan, India, China, and Cambodia.

On week four, clusters of local churches will work together in community projects. The idea can go on a long time but the bulk of the idea will surge through four weekends in June.

This is incredible. Did you read the list of places that this initiative is attempting to go? It is easy to breeze through that list and not take note of the extreme difficulty that is represented with those four countries. Amazing. We found out at Elevation yesterday that 10 percent of our tithe from this month is going directly to this church plant initiative. Amazing. This is why I love my church.

Pastor pointed out something great yesterday - something that made Em and I turn to one another. In dealing with Acts 2 and the comments on speaking in tongues he made and observation to this effect: the tongues came about in order to unify everyone that came from very diverse backgrounds for the purpose of the gospel being spread. The goal of speaking "in tongues" was unity - but for so long all "speaking in tongues" has done is torn the Church apart into smaller churches. What One Prayer is attempting to do is be a cross-denominational approach that will bring the original focus back in - unity for the sake of the gospel.

So, in the spirit of the conversation at One Prayer - what would your One Prayer be for the church? Mine would be that we be more active with the knowledge that we have.

I'm sure I am breaking some sort of unwritten blogger rules by posting twice in one day, or perhaps it is just the excitement - akin to that proverbial new car smell that is going to wear off. But I don't give a rip, I need to talk about stuff.

At church we are in the midst of a series called "Old Time Religion". The idea behind this series is simple: let's revisit some of the modes and ideas that got us where we are today. The set-up for the stage has been incredible - follow the links to Wade Joye's website if you want to see them. Last week was a great challenge from Pastor Furtick to come together as an Old and New Generation of Church goers for the purpose of the gospel. He referred to Ezra 3 when the new temple was built and the old generation lamented and wailed at the site of the temple because of what it used to be, but the new generation shouted for joy because they had never had anything like it. The problem, however, was that because both sides were so loud it was just noise to those that heard. Indistinguishable noise. The challenge was to come together and to stick to "what has been written" (a recurrent theme in Ezra 3) and to leave or be willing to leave other non-essential items such as how things are run.

Today was a continuation of the topic of sticking to what has been written. Clayton King took us to Acts 6 and spoke about the Place of Priority that Preaching should have in the church. I have several friends in the ministry whose congregations would do well to hear what Clayton had to say. But this passage lays out the idea that the Preaching of the Word should be the primary task of the Pastor (or elder) - and that other church tasks, while being important, can fall to someone else in the Church - in this case it was caring for widows (which Clayton did so well in laying out the context of this situation.

Clayton went on to point out the 3 Priorities of a Pastor
1. Get alone with God
2. Get a Word from God
3. Speak to the people of God on the behalf of God

When laid out like this - Ruth Graham's words to Billy become really apt: "When God has called you to be a preacher - you shouldn't stoop to be a King or a President". Thanks Clayton for really laying out and setting up for our church the way to view our pastor. Thanks for being honest in elevating (no pun intended) the pulpit and causing us to take a realistic look at what goes on during the rest of the week.