where do you worship

Following a night at Crossroads Church, where I got to be part of  a Christmas production we pray brought glory to our Savior, I stood at my kitchen window worshipping Him this morning.

I just looked at the post on Facebook by a photographer who photographed individual snowflakes showing design perfection at the highest level I've ever witnessed.  As I looked across my yard full of melting snow - I was nearly overwhelmed with awe picturing every - single - snowflake being so meticulously designed.

I then fixed a cup of coffee next to the window and saw just seconds after I had filled empty bird feeders - swarms of birds returning for a morning feeding. 

How do they know I just put this out when moments ago there was no hint of a bird in any of the trees surrounding the feeders?

I stood and worshipped Him!  Our meticulous designer - creator!

If He cares enough to invest His time designing EVERY SINGLE snow flake and instilling survival instincts in EVERY SINGLE specie of bird, how much more does a our God desire to shape and use our lives?

So, where do you worship?   Have you experienced worship?

This Christmas accept the ultimate gift God offers, Himself...

This brings a peace that is impossible to understand, no matter what circumstance you find yourself in. Because when you're in relationship with the God of the Universe, you understand that He also designed you exactly the way you are, and is just waiting until you surrender completely - to use your life the way He designed you to be used.  For the exact purpose only your life can fulfill in this amazing, endless, meticulously designed world!

If you want to know more about the Peace only He can offer you, please join us for one of our remaining Christmas at Crossroads services

Tonight at 7:00
Tomorrow and Tuesday at 5:00 and 7:00.

May God reveal Himself this Christmas to you in the simplest of things...and worship Him!

Christmas time is here

I would appreciate prayers today as I tackle Crossroads' Christmas.

It's such an opportunity for visitors to come and hear the Gospel that I take it very seriously!  We put a whole lot of prayer and planning into this one service - so prayers would be appreciated.

I value all of your friendships so much! Thanks for always being willing to pray!

Fa la la la la!

what Christmas meant

As we get rested up from Christmas, I've had some time to consider what Christmas meant this year...

The emotions ran high!

I went from doubting that it would ever come together - to the excitement or progress, and then felt loneliness under the weight of responsibility  - I went from exhaustion to the exhilaration of accomplishment and then fell into a deep contentment as we were surrounded by family!  I just love the challenge to create and relish the years I've been involved with many other team members working on the details.  The enjoyment of creating doesn't lessen the emotions we experience, but this year when we gave out over 60 new believer packets to people that raised their hands indicating a decision to follow Christ, any worry we had experienced was immediately forgotten and turned to praise!

In the midst of preparing Christmas there were intentional moments of reflection on the true meaning of a Savior born for me...a breath taking realization!

I love the season despite it's hectic requirements - and realize what a privilege it is to try each year to tell the story in a true, compelling way praying it makes the story of Jesus come alive to someone for the first time!

You can watch our service here Christmas at Crossroads

I took many pictures that I'd like to share - they tell the story of the journey called Christmas!

Crossroads Artist Group created light-bulb decorations
for the Crossroads tree at Kingwood

Grandmas helpers with the Crossroads' Christmas
tree!

When your talented daughter writes a book...what a blessing to read this Christmas!
Jocelyn Hunsader, author.

This precious little one was part of our Christmas video shoot!

My talented son Eric Biddle shot the Christmas videos

Our precious friend Kristin playing the part of the doctor in our video

It was a cold video shoot day

Such generous Crossroads' attendees braving the cold for our video shoot

Family all together at the carousel! 

Ernesto brought the house down with "Mary Did You Know"!
It was a definite highlight!

Loved working with these hilarious, talented gentlemen!!

A whole row of my Ashland cousins - so thankful for extended family I love!!

Blessed to have the amazing group The Trio playing in our lobby!

Beautiful flowers for the talented granddaughter dancer!

A star is born!

Good friends for Christmas lunch - Dana and Sue!

Cousins so happy to be back together!

Not sure who likes legos more?

Oliver and grandpa carrying Grandma Forbes' new tv down to her!

Family helping to take all the decorations down and clean for the Celebration services!

Loving being together again!

I encourage all of you with grandkids to let them serve with you and see you serve in the church,
if they grow up doing it they take such pride in serving others and spending time at church!!

This about wraps up my blessed Christmas.  I can't thank all of you who made Christmas at Crossroads a possibility, and all of my friends that prayed for me and encouraged me as we planned and executed the services with our amazing teams!!  Happy New Year!

a Crossroads Christmas

It's so difficult to believe how many Christmases we've created at Crossroads!  This year was particularly meaningful.

Just the way the live actors combined with the amazing music and pre-shot video to tell the amazing story of God sending us His son, it felt like the story came alive in front of us.  We considered how a human mother was chosen by the God of the Universe to give life to His son.  A mother who herself had spent her life waiting for the Savior of which she'd been told.

During the process of preparing the services, through the discussions we had with Pastor Dave and Jocelyn's beautiful writing, I felt like I understood just a little bit more of how shocking that would have been to receive the angels' news.

The way the Lord chooses to use His children to be part of His story is always amazing!

Here are some pictures of the process to create Christmas at Crossroads.

We had a blast creating the services!  Here
Pastor Dave was doing a crazy commentary keeping us laughing!

We practiced like crazy

We made trees

Ernesto was so good!

Our beautiful dancer

These were some of the paper rocks we made!

I can't even guess how many hours Jackie Crawfis spent
building our set - such an amazing job!

We had an extraordinary string section!

Each song was carefully chosen to help tell the beautiful story!

Abi played the part of Mary beautifully!

Our 3 shepherds - Kevin, Hayden and Eric

 I love Monty's stand-up bass

Our amazing quartet!

Sherri Stewart played beautifully for us in the lobby!

Eric's beautiful video work added so much to the production.

It was an unbelievable privilege to help tell the story and to know that a few people came to know the Lord through our work!

Thank you all for attending, we pray it made your Christmas a little more special!

blessed

I just got to work and immediately was in tears...again.

Our family has had an emotional year for sure, like many of you have.

The separation from us that someone we dearly loved chose to make caught us totally off-guard.  I guess we had bought into 'having the perfect family' as my friends teased me often.

I've been very emotional this year.  Those I work with have shown patience and my family has all rallied together in Christ to move past it.  But it's very humbling how emotional I still am at the most unexpected things.  I like being in control of my emotions more than I can say.  More than is healthy I suppose.

I totally believe I'm watching God's will unfold in front of us and am very excited about the future!

But, this morning I felt God's presence totally and unexpectedly wash over me when I got to work.

I realized just how unbelievable God has been to me, allowing me to be surrounded by family and getting to see them all use their talents for the Lord!

My son pulled me into his office this morning to show me the Christmas promo he created to use for our Christmas services in a couple weeks, and I immediately began to tear-up.  As I heard the words on the video that my daughter wrote, I was completely overwhelmed with the sacrifice God made to send us His only son.

We're telling the Christmas story from the perspective of Mary this year.   It's made me consider again how God can use the most-unlikely, unexpected people and things to change our world.  In fact He chooses to.

If He used extraordinary people - none of us could relate to them!

As I watched Abi's image come across the screen when my son showed me the promo - it all came pouring back to me.  My family's opportunity to get to know Abi's family when they first arrived from Mexico.  It took my breath away as God revealed the 'good' He's allowed us to be part of.

I left my son's office too emotional to talk - I believe our Christmas services are one of the most important projects that our team creates and our team takes it very seriously.   Our jobs are to tell the story of Jesus.  To use our creativity and talents to make it applicable to people's lives.

So that's my request to each of you.

Please invite your friends to one of our 5 services this year!

Pray for unsaved friends and don't hesitate for one moment to invite even unlikely friends, if they hear His Word, and SEE the story, they just may gain a new understanding of their need for a savior!

This could be a new beginning for many, just as God is moving our family into a new beginning!!

Please plan your holiday around our services and bringing friends and family to Him!  Merry Christmas!

Christmas prayers

I'd like to ask for Christmas Prayers for myself and our teams as we prepare for Christmas at Crossroads.  We are adding a 5th service this year and I'd love to fill every single service with your help!

Each year my job is to create a concept for Christmas and then invite one person at a time into the process.  This requires that my vision remains strong for the concept and ability to rally the troupes around it, after thinking about it for months.

As each person gets invited into the original process I always begin to doubt myself, so I know this is normal - but it takes God's strength to fully develop a program that delivers the message of Jesus in a creative way while remaining strong in content.

I also know that usually all I have to do after praying like crazy, is to listen again to the music we've chosen and to re-read the beautiful original words that our writer (Jocelyn) has written and I'm again lost in the wonder of what I get to be a part of.

Christmas at Crossroads is a huge opportunity to invite friends that are willing to come to holiday services that maybe are difficult to get to attend normally.  These need to be services that are full of people each of us have invited because we care about a lost community around us.

Please pray for our teams and pray asking the Lord for names of friends and co-workers that you know don't know the Lord - you'll be surprised how many say yes when they are asked by someone they know and do life with.  You have a month and a half to decide who you'll bring with you.  You may be the only person in their life that has the answer to what they've been searching for.

Christmas prayers are needed immediately please!

It's going to a time of some people discovering Jesus for the very first time...the reason we do any of this!

always preparing

As I was working on Christmas at Crossroads today, I realized I was doing what I'm always doing - preparing!

As I listened to some pieces and parts for Christmas I got a call from Les Parrott who will be with us this weekend at Crossroads. He was calling to answer my final questions regarding preparations for he and his wife to be with us this weekend.  He seems like someone that would be a lot of fun to have as a friend - so it caused me to be even more excited about the weekend.

So I continued to prepare by adding notes to my Les and Leslie folder!

Earlier this afternoon at Crossroads - two local art teachers stopped by with my friend Vicki following up on some details we needed to discuss in order to prepare for a "Coffee and Painting" event we're going to be hosting in a couple of weeks.  Who needs wine anyway!  Ha ha!

More preparing...

As I prayed for wisdom with our Christmas services I pictured God preparing to send His son to earth - preparing the event we now call Christmas.  How careful I want to be to preserve the integrity of that sacrifice.  How I long to have even a tiny understanding of how terrified Mary was when she was told she was carrying the Messiah, the promised one she had been taught about since she was born.  She knew what it would cost her, her reputation, possibly Joseph the man she hoped to marry and any chance of a normal life.  Still she chose obedience - all part of God's amazing plan...

And when the time had come he sent His son for us and now I need to prepare well and somehow tell the amazing story in a way that conveys who this Savior really was!   I really, really covet your prayers!

the longest time

I think this is the longest time I've gone without writing.

There's been no particular reason.

My days are completely filled with family and work and all things Crossroads.  And I'm so thankful!

I'm praying over Christmas and working specifically on that right now, so I can hand it off next week for all of our talented staff to 'take it' and make it happen like they always do!

I pray it will meet people where they are, that Christmas at Crossroads will cause the miracle of Jesus to come to life in a very personal way they've never experienced before!



Pray for us as we work to prepare Christmas...


"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory To God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"

Our Christmas Report

I wish I could calculate how many volunteer hours went into our Christmas at Crossroads services!  It took SO many brothers and sisters in Christ working unselfishly each doing what they are gifted to do to make the services possible!

Some of those jobs included:

-Greg Crawfis and Jean Sloan creating the stage pillars from a picture I took of one of The Voice programs

-The Crossroads' Artist group created the picture boards for friends and families to take Christmas pictures in front of in our Town Square lobby

-The choosing of music then scoring, editing and uploading of every song.  Countless hours of each volunteer and staff member rehearsing and memorizing music.
-Hours of off-site/ and on-site video shoots and then many, many hours editing are way too huge to calculate!

-Tryouts for our children and then rehearsals and services

-Adopt A child details too many to estimate over the past 3 or 4 months!

-Shopping for and the packing of the children's Christmas goodie bags by the Family Ministry Department
-Adding chairs in the auditorium and then cleaning the facility after every service

-And endless attention to the 'story' of our services ensuring that the message of Jesus was proclaimed in all of our work!

-The entire staff worked so hard to make sure every question was answered and every guest was greeted by both our volunteer greeting team as well as our staff!

Enough said - it was a glorious example of what the Lord expected His Church to be - working together to make dreams a reality!

And then God moved people to attend as we were just a couple hundred shy of 6,000 people attending!  I am SO thankful to have been a part of these extraordinary services!!

Watch our service at this link!

 https://vimeo.com/149996872

A precious Crossroads' girl trying out for the Christmas services!

Aaron and Jocelyn working on the mics preparing!

Aaron opened the services with a techno Christmas!

Aaron Nicolas

It was so much fun to use footage from Downtown Mansfield
as well as photography of Mansfield on our
Environmental Projection backgrounds.

Jocelyn leading "Do You Hear"...

Melissa performing the beautiful song "Adore"

Stephanie performed a beautiful monologue from the perspective of Mary.

Levi was our lead children's voice this Christmas!

As soon as our Christmas services were over - it was time to
teach that "It (Christmas) still matters".  The staff was more than
willing to contribute all of there used boxes and paper to cover
the stage and auditorium.  It really surprised the congregation!

These little ones helped me cover the floor of the
auditorium with lots of left over paper!

We enjoyed a Crossroads paper fight at our Sunday service!

It Still Matters - included entire families when no child care above pre-school
was provided.  I loved watching these young children worshipping with 'their father!

I felt like the deflating snow-globe best described
the feeling and the lack of stamina following the
busy Christmas preparations!

These beautiful picture boards were created by our Artist Group!