when it's undeniably Divine

For those of you that I've had a chance to directly talk to about Jocelyn and Jared's marriage, I've described it as a Fairy Tale, too good to be true.  And it continues to be so...

As I talked to Jared's family when we were there recently, his father again described to me the impression they all had when meeting Jocelyn for the first time years ago in Cambodia.  His father talked about the comments he made to his family about Jocelyn being perfect for his oldest son Jared, and said he couldn't stop thinking about that possibility.   Later of course they found out she was married and obviously gave up on the idea, but the Lord didn't.

When Joci first told me she was talking to a guy on-line that contacted her when he saw that she had adopted Trinity as a singe mom, I thought to myself "please Lord - not someone on-line", then I realized whose family he was a part of and hope again filled my heart for my daughter and grand-daughter.  Jared was interested in adoption or fostering as a single dad and wanted to know more.

It fills my heart with worship as the full understanding of the fact that all these years after our two families first met in Cambodia, God already knew our kids would spend the rest of their lives together...  and as we prepare to say goodbye to our girls 2 weeks from now,  our hearts are totally at peace despite how far God's chosen to move them.

Today as she lead us in worship I praised the Lord that we've had her here in Mansfield for most of her life.  I thanked Him that we got to watch her become a mother and how unbelievably natural she is with her daughter, and thanked Him that she's spiritually so mature and ready to be used of Him somewhere new.

This weekend was the last music package that she will plan for Crossroads and lead for one of our worship services and it was amazing!

I have loved worshipping with our daughter

Ernesto and Jocelyn delivered a powerful thematic song that stated "We all bleed the same" challenging our congregation to
avoid the sin of partiality!

Our precious, faithful team!

I'll never stop being amazed at the time our team members
give to serving at Crossroads on top of busy work schedules and life!

Set List:

Lord I Need You
From the Inside Out
Resurrecting
Broken Vessels

Video:  Guatemala Volcano Relief
Announcements including special offering for Volcano relief

Bleed The Same

Reluctant Followers: Pt. 5 The Partial Game - Mike Mahek

Exit song:  Bleed the Same

To watch our service on-line go to crossroadswired.com

weekend report

It's been a busy, amazing, growing, unbelievably worshipful 2 weeks at Crossroads!

Last week we celebrated Pastor Dave's birthday with our amazing choir and this weekend we added a beautiful cello to the team!

I'm thankful every single weekend as I participate in worship with my friends and brothers and sisters in the Lord at Crossroads...so thankful.

These pictures give just a glimpse into the privilege we have to gather each weekend together to express love to the Lord!

Take a peak!

Michael having fun drumming!

Our choir was amazing

Cello has always been my favorite instrument - so thankful!

Ernesto and Jocelyn's voices were beautiful together!

I love these band guys!

This weekends setlist was so amazing!

Our setlist:

Announcements on video

Call Upon The Lord
When the Fight Calls
Closer
In Christ Alone
I Have Decided

Bumper
Message:  Project Next Step - Jesse Rider

Exit Song: I Have Decided

Additional praises - we adopted out every single child in our community that would have been without a Christmas without us!  Thank you Crossroads for being the most generous church I've ever known!

We start our "Messy Christmas" series this coming weekend - you definitely don't want to miss!!

To watch our services go to crossroadswired.com

weekend report

Well, not sure where to begin!  It was a weekend full of blessings, so I guess I'll write about our service first and then show you the rest of our blessings in another post.

Twice each year when there is a 5th weekend we do a Student Takeover where the students run most of the areas of the church, but this one was especially special.  This was the first time Students lead worship alone without any of our worship leaders helping them on stage.  And they were amazing!

They parked cars, welcomed everyone, worked in the Coffee House, ran cameras, video directed, ran lights helped with audio, sang and played in the band, there were students that cooked breakfast for the teams and then did all the clean up.  We even opened with our children's choir and had a child dedication lead by our Family Ministry Director, Jeanette Chase while Mike Mahek our generations pastor continued teaching in our HOME series - thematically everything supported one another beautifully.

The congregation talked about how much hope it gave them to see students loving Jesus and they talked about the encouragement it brought them, so good!  Take a look!

These were our front door greeters in their HELLO T-shirts - so good!

The first thing that greeted you was our student parking team!

Dan, Milo and Joci loved working with the kids and when I looked at
them it seriously looked like proud parents looking at their kids!
Tremendous leaders!

Our children's choir opened the service with a beautiful worship song.

Today was a special Child Dedication for us as our daughter dedicated her daughter Trinity - it was a huge blessing to see
these parents make a commitment to lead their children toward the Lord!

The adults worked to get the pastor's mic working correctly,
but - funny we were the only ones struggling with equipment!

Jocelyn lead the pre-service meeting, and let me tell you, it takes a huge amount of focus to review
each element in the services including transitions and covering all their work in prayer.

Student enjoying running one of the cameras.

Running audio is not an easy job!

Camera student #2 on Camera 1

Running the video switcher is big work!

Running the CG (character generator) requires great focus!

MacKenzie read from God's Word as part of the worship team -
and we got to celebrate her birthday with her! Not sure how
many teens would tie up a birthday to serve the Lord!

The most precious moment of the weekend for me
personally, was witnessing my daughter dedicating her
precious daughter to the Lord!

Child Dedication was the perfect fit on a weekend we were studying the family!

Our students pictured here and below have become very dependable leaders!

Students lead us well!

Pastor's son Jacob was one of our excellent drummers!

Our setlist:

One Thing Remains - Children's Choir
Child Dedication (9:00 a.m. only) - Jeanette Chase, Family Ministry Director
Announcements - Jesse Rider - High School Student Ministry independent
Alive
Glorious Day
Scripture reading - MacKenzie
When the Fight Calls
Anchor
Message:  HOME series - Mike Mahek
Exit Song - Alive

To watch our ministry on-line go to crossroadswired.com

weekend report

As I got home tonight from work and began once again working inside to keep caught up as well as begin some Fall cleaning, the trees blowing and leaves falling created a scene I could not resist.  So now I sit in my favorite spot on our deck.

The sounds that greet me are everything from falling walnuts as they pound the ground below the trees each time the wind blows, to birds considering whether they'll fly in to the feeders for an evening snack, to the sound of the neighbors' nightly target shooting.  All these sounds are a welcome distraction from what I should probably be accomplishing.

But I can't resist!

This was a great day as I got to do a couple of my very favorite things!

I got to work with a brilliant young lady that came in to record this coming weekend's announcements.  She loves the Lord and we talked about the amazing things God's using her to accomplish and it was such an encouraging time together.  I pray I get to work with her a lot in the future!  Very few things excite me more than discovering new talent and connecting them to our ministry!

After that I had the privilege with my daughter to present the Crossroads Christmas concept to Pastor Dave.  I've worked on 20 Crossroads' Christmas concepts and I'm still as encouraged and excited as ever when all year long I collect possible creative elements, songs, videos and set design ideas - and then sit down with others and watch how the ideas they contribute fit hand in hand with them.  It's obvious that God's hand is on the concept when everything lines up beautifully.  (It's also obvious when it's just been my idea and isn't the will of the Lord!)

As we showed Pastor Dave each element for the first time, it was fascinating to hear his on-the-spot suggestions and affirmation as he graciously listened to us and was so encouraging as he approved the concept.  I left this meeting excited to begin work on the specific elements that I need to create and pass on to others to work on!

Now about last weekend - the Weekend Report

I don't remember another weekend which was so full of technical miscommunications about details of the service, equipment failure, announcement guy's car breaking down preventing him from doing the announcements at the 9:00 a.m. service and many more difficult details behind the scenes.

I believe with all my heart that the enemy was hard at work to discourage the teams this weekend that were involved in the services following an amazing rehearsal last Thursday night and time of devotions and sharing personal needs with one another - a break through moment of sharing according to several team members I talked with!

But despite all the behind the scene problems I received so many compliments and thank you's for the praise and tech teams that I knew God used it exactly as He had intended and nothing was going to stop it from happening.

Here's just a few pictures of our weekend services.

Jocelyn lead this great team as we all joined in for a glorious time of worship!

Austin, Scott and Johnnie all gave their talents to the Lord to help
make the weekend excellent!

Our tech guys play such a huge part in the worship services too!  The LED set design is one of my favorites!

Our Setlist:

Announcements - Jesse Rider

Behold
Scripture Reading
King of My Heart 
The Lion and the Lamb
Special Music:  Home - Jocelyn Nicolas

Video Bumper
Message:  Our Home Pt. 2: Expectations in the Home - Pastor Dave Vance

To watch our services go to crossroadswired.com

I hope you all have an amazing rest of your week - and thanks for reading!

weekend report

I knew this weekend was going to be something special and I was right!

We hosted guest speaker, A. J. Sherrill from the Mars Hill church this weekend.

A. J. Sherrill

He shared a great challenge encouraging our congregation to be involved in community!   We launched our Fall Community sign-ups and have so many groups and classes to offer!  It will be a very strong Fall! Thank you Doug Taylor!

We had the privilege to shoot a music video at our new downtown City Center with the Young Adult worship team and used that under the first song of worship.  This is not the mixed audio version - just a live chunk during rehearsal.

It gave us both the opportunity to show our congregation an update on the City Center progress as well as feature our Young Adult group as they launched their fall program last night.  They had nearly 60 in attendance and had a great time of worship, teaching and fellowship!  This area of our ministry is SO vital to our continued maturity and the invitation into ministry to our younger adults!  And to provide the connection so vitally needed in a large ministry!  Our 18-35 year olds meet once each month for a service and also have small groups that meet each month.  We are so blessed by them!

From the minute the first music video/song began in worship - I don't know when I've heard louder singing from our congregation - I closed my eyes and just imagined for a moment being surrounded by brothers and sisters for all of eternity worshipping our Lord!

Darin is such a faithful - excellent drummer!

Jocelyn lead us to the thrown!

Tammy serves so faithfully on the team!

Our 4th weekend team prepared well and lead us strongly!

When we see the Lord someday we will not be able to resist falling to our knees in worship and praising Him!

It was SO strong!  A huge thank you for everyone's hard work on stage and behind the scenes our tech team was amazing too working to make the weekend so great!

Our Setlist:

Jocelyn and Pastor Jesse did a live Welcome and told us about Les and Leslie Parrott and Young Adult announcements.

With Everything/ From the Inside Out
The Stand
Lord I Need You
Do It Again

Bumper video transition

Doug Taylor promoted our Fall Community Groups and introduced A. J.

Message:  Communities - A. J. Sherrill

Exit video:  Pastor Dave Vance ended our services by encouraging every one of our congregation to join a group or class!  It should be a really strong Fall!

_______________________________________________
To register for our Fall groups go to Crossroadswired.com

You can also register to attend our FIGHT NIGHT event in 2 weeks with Les and Leslie Parrott by going to the above link and clicking on events.

I pray you all have a blessed week as we're planning special things for next weekend too!

weekend report

I say this every weekend, but, man...it was great to be at Crossroads this weekend!

It was just one of those weekends where everything flowed, volunteers and staff were amazing and I was thankful to be there! Everyone was excited to be involved serving!

Jocelyn our worship leader, created lyric videos that ran during our music bringing a fresh look to the lyrics as well.

Pastor Dave wrapped up a great series called "Doubting Doubts" and people hated to see it end!  So thankful for such Biblically based teaching - strong theologically and teaching just absorbed by the congregation!

Take a look!

This was part of our strong praise team this weekend

Pastor Wendell Anderson transitioning out of the Memorial Day
video tribute into announcements.

Special Music "Doubt" with music video

So thankful for all of our instruments making songs so beautiful!

We honored our graduating seniors during our 11:00 service - very thankful for them all!

Our setlist:

We began with a powerful Vimeo video called "Memorial Day" by Ezra Cohen
Announcements:  Executive Pastor Wendell Anderson
Glorious Day
One Thing Remains
Be Though My Vision
Resurrecting
prayer transition/11:00 service only recognized our graduating seniors
Doubt - We created a music video made up of footage we shot that was used as our bumpers to bring pastors to the stage, throughout the series
Message:  Doubting Doubts: How to live with nagging doubts...doubting the Bible - 
Dr. Dave Vance
Exit song: Doubts

To watch our services on line go to crossroadswired.com

To see what other ministries use in their service go to www.theworshipcommunity.com