Monday Morning Download

Well, where do I start? We celebrated Christmas with my parents over the weekend, so I'm not getting on the scales until Wednesday. I was glad that they were able to be here for the kid's Christmas program. I am very proud of Joelan and Julia for their instrumental solos. Actually, I'm proud of all the Graystone kids. It is so neat for me to see them growing up in the Lord. I thought yesterday's program was the best yet. My biggest prayer during the service was that the stage would not collapse with all of those kids. The stage was built by a worship leader (no offense to worship leaders world-wide) and not an engineer.

There were 450 people in the auditorium for the 9:30 service. I think that is a new record. We are not sure how many people attended Graystone yesterday. Apparently, Jim is too intelligent simply to count the total number of people for both services. Jim prides himself on not counting people twice, so with several people attended both services, Jim was in quite a quandary. He is definitely not a baptist preacher. We like to count feet, and we could care less about double counting someone. Anyway, there were 650-750 people at Graystone yesterday, which is a ton of people to use only one bathroom.

Speaking of bathrooms, one of the toilets on Tuesday night overflowed and ran all night. On Wednesday morning, we had such a flood in the building that several animals were lining up two by two. It took several days to dry the place out. In fact, according to our "expert water extractor", there is still a little moisture in the walls and carpets. So, we will not be able to remodel before the Christmas Eve Services. But hopefully, everyone will understand. The important thing is completely drying the place out for safety and sanitary reasons.

Speaking of the Christmas Eve Services, all of the seats at 3:30 have been reserved, and we have around 100 available for the 5:00 service. It does look like we will be able to get 450 chairs into the main auditorium, and we only issued 400 tickets, so we should be good to go. We certainly will not turn anyone away who does not have a ticket, we just didn't want the entire church showing up at 3:30. I'm trusting God that we will have over 800 people worship at Graystone on Christmas Eve. We will definitely have 800 if I do the counting. In hindsight, we probably should of had 3 Christmas Eve Services.

Well, that's enough download for now. I need to go help my parents load their vehicle. They are heading home today, and Jennifer's parents are arriving tonight. On a side note, our family has watched The Elf, Santa Clause 2, The Grinch, and Home Alone. I just need to watch It's A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and Christmas Vacation over the next 3 days.

May you and your family experience the power and presence of JESUS this Christmas. And BTW, in my SHORT message yesterday, I clearly said "pitch a tent" unlike this youth pastor.

God is good! Go Falcons!
Johnny