Home

This weekend we are beginning a brand new series at freshlife. It’s called Clutch and I am really excited about it. Join us at one of our locations or online. You can also invite someone to come here

We are following the Lord’s leading and taking steps of faith towards opening the doors of another campus where we can make Jesus famous in Yellowstone County and beyond. Onward!

Today we finally went live with version 3.0 of the freshlife website! It has been in the works for a LONG time. Pretty much since the last version was rolled out. It was a team effort and as always they did a great job. Way to go freshlife creative! It is an honor to partner with you in the gospel.

It is, in my opinion, a major improvement over the old site, but the biggest change you will notice is the teaching archive portal. When you pick a series it loads up the first message in the HD player window and you can see all the different messages below. There is also a brand new feature that will tell you which messages are the most popular based on other people’s clicks. (unfortunately, it’s not retroactive so it is which is the most popular from here on out.) Once people start viewing messages it will be interesting to see what gets watched the most.

I also love the way they have made it super easy to tweet or post a status update about a whole series, or any message you are watching and it will preload your status update with the album artwork as well as the link. The online store is pretty epic too, there is some never-before-sold-online merch available now. (hint–awesome skull church stuff)

Anyhow, check it out. We are praying that God will continue to reach many who are stranded in sin with the life and liberty in Christ through our site. We see people come to Christ online all the time and it is a thrill to fish in such a big pond as the web. Even though we have been bug checking for a long time, feel free to post a comment if you find a glitch. You can also leave a comment on this post and tell the creative team how awesome they are. It’ll make their day.

Here is the link.

God gave Nehemiah the vision to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the crumbling walls and gates that had been burnt with fire. In that same way, we desire to show God’s love in a tangible way in the place that He has called us to live. Last year as a church we sought to be like Nehemiah and be agents of change in our valley. This summer we are going to partner with other churches in this high energy outreach and we are praying that God will Rock This City!

I intended on writing this blog post yesterday. But I woke up feeling like I had just gone over Niagara falls in a barrel (do people still do that?) and decided it could wait a day. I’ll write a whole different post about it later but I have found that in some ways the day after a significant event can be even more challenging than the days leading up to it. My serious business yesterday included coffee, Scripture, an omelet, and some quality time with my little women, the Lusko ladies. We sought to normalize and regain equilibrium after an adrenaline drenched week.

This past weekend is one I will not ever be able to forget. But before I get into why let me first tell you that one of the BIG things that God has tattooed on my heart is the principle of the empty vessel. It goes like this: Our God is a God who will fill a vessel as long as it is empty and offered up to Him in faith. You can have as much or as little of God working in your life as you want. It’s up to you. I tell my church all the time that God is not reluctant to revive, He is not stingy with His Spirit. He is literally looking to and fro on the earth for those whose hearts are His so He can work in their lives in power. As I cast vision I tell them that is the reason why we must continue to step out in faith to offer Him more of ourselves, more services, and more campuses so that there are empty seats for more people to sit in and hear about Jesus.

The temptation is to limit God based on your ability. To say to Him, “Here are five loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many?” Instead we must force ourselves to process things through the lens of His infinite ability and simply give Him what is in our hands in faith. He sees the loaves and fish as a feast for a multitude.

God is not limited, He is limitless. Even when we stretch our faith and dream big–He still has bigger plans than we do. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above anything we could ask or even have the guts to think. (Ephesians 3:20)

This weekend we saw that principle in action in a marvelous way. In all 5,143 people crowded into the Majestic Valley Arena for our Easter worship experience! The venue’s parking lots filled to capacity and traffic backed up for 3.5 miles. Eventually people began pulling off the hwy, parking their cars on the shoulder and in fields, and walking as far as 1/2 a mile to get there!. We also had over a thousand people watching the event live on the webcast in addition to those who listened on fresh life radio. Best of all, we saw 136 people make professions of faith in Christ!

I can’t tell you how proud I am of our team. I am inspired by their performance. Unbelievable. Professional. Excellent. They killed it. And I’m not just talking about those on staff. Every one of the 173 volunteers that it took to pull off this event put their hearts into it. It showed. I pinch myself everyday that I get to be apart of this movement of God’s Holy Spirit and that I have the honor of serving alongside such extraordinary people. The Skull Church Band was in rare form and it was awesome to have House of Heroes take part in the event.

I’d love to tell you that I fearlessly breezed through the whole weekend without ever doubting. I’d be lying though. I don’t think I have ever put on an event without at some point wondering–what if no one comes? And this weekend was no exception. I had moments of fear. But I like that. I want to keep doing things that scare me. I don’t ever want to come to a place where there is no faith required. Life is too short to use the cruise control. I am going to keep launching out into deeper waters, offering God empty vessels and trusting Him to fill them for His glory.

Onward and upward!

“Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.” -William Carey

You can check out more pics of the event here.
And you can listen to the archived message from the weekend here.