Archive for the ‘GP Stuff’ Category
Here’s a video we put together to show where your money goes when you give to GP:
Here is the overview video of Egg Drop that we showed at GP on Sunday…
Egg Drop 2010 from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
We usually do some goofy video for our big events (to help offset the previous weeks of recruiting, etc). Here is our “What Not to do at Egg Drop” video. Warning: there are a few inside jokes for GPers.
Egg Drop 2010 Promo from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
I plan to post a blog after Egg Drop and “full circle” this event in light of our vision but for now let me just fill you in on the basics:
- Egg Drop 2010 will be the largest Easter event in N Las Vegas
- Egg Drop 2010 is expected to be the second largest community event this year in N Las Vegas
- We are on pace to pre-register over 6500 people
- We do not know how many people will show up without pre-registering but we are anticipating between 8-10k
- We will have City of NLV representatives including the mayor, our local councilman, the fire department, the police department, and parks & rec. The mayor and councilman of our district will be speaking from the main stage.
- We closed the event to 12 community sponsors. We have had multiple others inquire about getting in but we shut it down.
- People are registering from all over the Las Vegas valley.
- GP will be providing close to 150 volunteers for this event
- This event will be by far the largest community service project in our 4-year history
- We will be dropping thousands of Easter eggs from a helicopter along with thousands of other pre-placed eggs
- We will have 4 designated, age-specific egg hunt zones
- We will provide FREE face painting, bounce houses, obstacle course, crafts, games, and giveaways along with live music, food, and a family-friendly fun time.
Check out eggdropvegas.com for more info.
It has been awesome to see GPers step up for this event. We have some incredible team leaders and our Community Service Director Ashley Criswell is knocking it out of the park. I can’t wait to see what happens this week and at the actual event. We are living with an eager anticipation and overwhelming nervousness at the same time. We trust God while working hard. We know there will be unexpected details that arise but we have spent some serious time and effort detailing this constantly growing event.
Like I said, I will be detailing the event in light of our vision after it is all over. We do pray God uses this event to connect people in our community to the gospel and to help restore the shalom (wholeness/peace) to our city.
Some of you might find this interesting … it is the blog account of a lady in Vegas who is taking a year to visit the different churches in the valley. She is on a pilgrimage of sorts for a year. Here is her take on GP. I would say I agree with almost everything in the article. From what I understand, she arrived at GP after our worship and just as I started teaching so she missed some of who we are in that regard. Also we are not really a “Hope plant” even though a church in Vegas called Hope did partner with us for our first year. We were planted by a group of churches – a couple who invested in us heavily for 4+ years. Anyway – here is the article.
Here are a few random highlights from 09…
We saw dozens of more people baptized this year at GP. Baptism Celebrations are some of our favorite moments.
Once again our band continued to amaze me this year. It blows my mind the talent God sends our way.
Part of what defines GP is our use of video. We live in the entertainment capital of the world and so video is important to us. This year we started regular video updates to keep our people informed of what is happening at GP. We also introduced a couple of new funny characters who give us some good laughs. We have learned in tough times it is good for people to laugh some so we want to help people do that. Below is a sampling of some of our videos from this year.
Here are a couple of weekly updates that got some laughs. Make sure you watch the outtakes on the first one & the second one happened during the Kanye West controversy:
GP Weekly Update 9-27-90 from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
GP Weekly Update 9/20/09 from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
GP implements different creative elements into our services. Here is one of our youth performing a dance for our Mirrors series:
Mirrors Week #2: Michaela Tindall Dance from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
Captain Obvious provides obvious answers to GP questions & might be the most popular person at GP:
Captain Obvious #1 from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
A video created for one of our GP Student Series:
GP Students: Who is He? from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
Big Earl is one of our new favorite characters who just hasn’t quite figured it all out:
Big Earl – Small Groups from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
Here is a video of Julie Cole giving her “atheist turned Jesus follower through community service” testimony:
Community Service – Julie Cole from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
And finally here is a 2009 Overview we did for Vision Sunday:
Grace Point Church – 2009 Overview from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
Grace Point Church is officially 4 years old. It has been a crazy journey and we can’t wait to see what 2010 holds. 2009 is another year in the story with transformed lives, ups & downs, people coming and going, and new opportunities. Through it all, we pray the gospel continues to transform our individual lives, our families, our church, and our community.
Check out the previous blog post for the first half of this summary.
Every July since our inception we have done a series called Blockbusters. During this series we take blockbuster movie ideas and talk about a relevant biblical topic from an exegetical point of view. This year I taught on the birth of the church (Year One), the doctrine of reconciliation (Terminator: Salvation), spiritual warfare (Angels & Demons), and putting on the armor of God (G.I. Joe). Here’s the series blurb description:
“Grab some popcorn and soda and experience God in our third annual series that deals with topics inspired by the summer blockbuster movies of 2009. Discover how God and culture collide in this unique and fun series.”
During July we also serve at the Independence Day Jubilee. This year over 30,000 people came and were were able to touch thousands of people. They even allowed me to speak in front of the crowd and give a tribute to our troops. We love our partnership with the City of North Las Vegas.
Although I missed the first two weeks of the series (Family Ministries Pastor Ty Neal and Vegas Church Planter Vince Antonucci preached for us), our David series was one of my favorite in 2009. For five weeks we walked through the life of this incredible but very human man the Bible calls the “man after God’s own heart.” Also our very own Alexandra Kahr painted some incredible portrayals of David’s life for our stage. During this time Grace Point also took its first ever mission trip to help South Bay Church in San Jose, CA. We are a partner church of South Bay and it was so exciting to be part of this trip – full circle!
Perhaps the most climactic moment of 2009 for us was Servolution weekend. Without getting into details, the City of NLV had to cancel for financial reasons our largest City event. So we decided to use Labor Day weekend to go back to our roots and do some raw serving. It was so much more than we ever anticipated. Here is a video of the highlights.
Coming off Servolution weekend, we started our Mirrors series which was no doubt our series of the year. This series dealt with what it means to see ourselves “in Christ” instead of how we tend to see ourselves. We had many adults commit their life to Jesus and many others take huge steps on their spiritual journey. It was one of the most impactful series that we have ever done.
Here is our teaser for the series:
The creative elements in this series were powerful. Here is the cardboard testimonies experience portraying real life stories of real GP people.
Mirrors Week #3: Cardboard Stories from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
Do What? focused on the controversial statements of Jesus. It was an insightful series. Some of the highlights of the Do What series were the “do what” videos we made. Here is the do what teaser and the infamous “Skiing on the Strip” where I almost got arrested.
Do What Teaser from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
The Disciple series focused on what it means to be a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. We also introduced a new paradigm for our family ministries during this series. During this series we had a young man who served in our GP Students area tragically killed in an accident. Although the event was heart-wrenching, God used it to bring several people to Christ and remind us of why we do what we do. Here is the Weekly Update that I did that week.
GP Weekly Update 11-8-09 from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
We finished 2009 with our Vision Sunday where we recast the vision for why we do what we do and for our Vision Offering Goal of $40,000. So far we have received over $50,000 to go outside our walls. Xmas was our Christmas series that warned us of the danger of leaving Christ not just out of Christmas but out of life. Here’s the Xmas teaser.
Xmas Teaser from Grace Point Church on Vimeo.
I will post one more blog on just random stuff that happened throughout 2009.