As I’m sure many of your have already heard, our Associate Pastor of Worship, Phil Chaney was ushered into Heaven by the Angels of Glory last evening.  It's an honor to have served Jesus with a man of such Christ-like character and desire to lead others into His presence as Phil.  Many of you have been blessed as a result of his nine years of faithfulness to God here at First Baptist Indian Trail.

Will you join me this Sunday morning in the FBCIT Worship Center for a tribute service to Phil and his ministry to our church?  It will be a great time of honoring the Lord and lifting Him up while at the same time thanking Him for allowing us to be gifted with such an incredible man as Phil.

So come to church as you normally do and instead of coming to the Family Life Center, attend the 9:30 or 11am service in the main worship center.   Please lift up in your prayers the Chaney family and help us honor Jesus this weekend by your presence Sunday morning.

God Bless,

Lance Bradley
Pastor, The Lift
First Baptist Indian Trail

Sunday in The Lift was another good day.  We continue to have great worship leaders fill in each week.  This week we had Jordan Connell.  He has led many times for The Lift.  Jordan is an amazing young man who can flatout kill a keyboard.  He does such a great job of leading the congergation in worship and preparing them for the spoken Word.  You can get more information about Jordan on his website. 

We had a guest speaker on Sunday.  His name is Dr. Jeff LaBorg and he is the pastor of B3 Church in Central, SC.  You can view his sermon here and follow along with his sermon notes on YouVersion by going here.

I want to say thank you again to our production volunteers.  Every week you do a wonderful job of transitioning a gym into an environment for worship.  I can't tell you how many people I have met who did not know we met in a gym.  That's a testament to the awesome job you do each week!  Thank you!

I'm excited about this coming Sunday.  It's Orphan Sunday and we will be speaking on the subject of adoption.  You'll meet several people in our congregation who were adopted and hear their compelling stories.  We will also tell you about a new program our church is involved with in order to assist families who are seeking help with adoption.  Sunday's going to be exciting, so don't miss it!   

10-30-11 Set List
You Hold It All - New Life Worship, You Hold It All
Hands Of The Healer - Eddie Kirkland, North Point Live: Awake
Beautiful The Blood - Fee, We Shine
The Church - Elevation Worship, Kingdom Come

• When do people click?
• Top social service growth rates.
• Up/down trends.
• How well are sharing tools doing?
• and other facts.

Visit Mashable for the full story plus a infographic summarization.  A sample locate below.

I was able to capture a few seconds of the Brewster tune on the iPhone Cam.  Kyle did an awesome job on the electric and check out Bill killing the keys.  I did not know he had moves like that!!  Amazing!  The full song in SD is located at the end of this post along with sermon notes and our setlist for the day.

Our Senior Pastor, Mike Whitson continued his sermon series on 1 John.  To view the sermon notes, click on the YouVersion graphic below.

10-23-11 Set List
Happy Day - Tim Hughes, Holding Nothing Back
All To You - Lincoln Brewster, All To You
Never Once - Matt Redman, 10,000 Reasons
Sometimes - David Crowder Band, Passion: Here For You
King Jesus - Roger Williams & The All Mixed-Up Quartet, A Different Road

NOTES from JR Vassar's sermon on The Holy Spirit

• Do not settle for the works of your flesh, but be dependent on the works of The Spirit.

Intimidation can create ONE or TWO things in you.

1. It can drive you to the Lord in desperation.
2. It can lead to imitation.

What happens is we become so overwhelmed and intimidated by the things infront of us that we begin to look for somebody thats doing something that works and when we find them we just imitate it. 

The danger is we adopt a vision that's not from God.  It's a vision God gave someone else and God didn't give us the capacity to fullfill it, so we spend our ministries frustrated.

• When you begin to imitate, you start manufacturing things in your flesh instead of really manifesting the power of The Spirit.
• John 20:19-21

Jesus had a Prophetic Mission, Priestly Mission and a Kingly Mission.

• Prophetic - Jesus was to reveal God to this world.
• Priestly - He was to redeem this world to God.
• Kingly - Jesus was to renew this world with His reign.

Followers of Jesus have the same mission.

• Prophetic Community - speak the words of God to reveal the salvation of God.
• Priestly Community - care for the spiritual needs of people and share with them the message of redemption.
• Kingly Community - live under God's reign and extend His reign into this world to bring healing and renewal to it.

"The Father sent Me so now I'm sending You."

• If your going to carry out the mission of Jesus, your going to need the same resources as He had. Look at John 20:22
• When you become envious of someones ministry, you will always credit it to something other than the Spirit of God.

When we become envious or jealous of someone's success, we usally try to credit their success to something in their flesh rather than the move of the Spirit of God.

WHY. Because we wrap our identity up in the success of our ministry and it causes us to be driven to comparison. 

• Hebrews 9:14
• If you are going to carry out the ministry of Jesus, you will need the same resources as He had.
• John 16:7 - It's one thing to have God among you, it's another thing to have God intimate and within you.
• Ezekiel 36:25-27 - The promise of the new covenant is that God would give us His Spirit.
• The point of the new covenant is there will be a removal of your sin and corruption and a bestowal of the Spirit of God.
• The message of the Gospel is your sins are forgiven so that all obstacles in your life are removed so that the Holy Spirit can come live in you.
• Galatians 3:13-14
• Imitation slaves creativity.

What would it look like if we experienced the Spirit in similar ways that Jesus did?

Confirmation of our sonship.

• What the Spirit wants to do with increasing clarity is for you to know you are a child of God.
• You will have contempment in your identity.  Luke 10:20
• Don't rely upon what you can produce.
• Identity wraped up in ministry vs identity wraped up in your status as a son of God.
• Identity achieved vs Identity received.
• You will use people to build up your ministry instead of using your ministry to build up people.
• If you have to succeed, people become tools.
• Jesus continued to refer to God as His Father and it was that confirmation of His own sonship that allowed Him to press on even when the people rejected Him.

Prompting toward ministry and an empowerment toward ministry.

• The Holy Spirit is wooing this world to Jesus.  He does that through the hearts of His people.
• You have no idea what's on the other end of a prompting that you forfeit when you quench the Spirit.
• "Only as I'm linked to God's purpose can I expect God's power." - E. Stanley Jones
• Many people want power so that they can become prominent and important...so the power never comes.  It eludes them and God withholds it.
• God entrusts the prompting and power of the Holy Spirit to people who actually attempt things that require it and to people who are ready and willing to respond to the prompting of God out of love for people and not for reputation. 
• There has to be an expectancy in our hearts for this prompting. - Luke 11:11-13
• "You don't have to overcome God's reluctance, you just lay hold of His highest wellingness." - E. Stanley Jones
• Live with Expectancy
• A lot of us overlook the significant because we're looking for the sensational.
• The anguish of aspiration. I want to experence the Spirit like Jesus experienced the Spirit with similar results.
• Repent of grieving the Spirit.
• "You can not expect God to come into the occasional, if you refuse Him in the continuous." - E. Stanley Jones

Thanks to everyone who hung around and helped break down The Lift.  You are awesome!  We have the greatest volunteers of any ministry I know.  

10-16-11 Set List:
Go - Hillsong Live, God Is Able
Glory To God - Fee, Hope Rising
You'll Come - Hillsong Live, This Is Our God
Desert Song - Hillsong Live, This Is Our God
Always - Kristian Stanfill, Passion: Here For You

This new update brings many new features to the iOS platform like, Notifications, iMessage, iCloud support, Twitter integration, Wireless syncing, Reminders and many other features.  Over 200 in all. 

The YouVersion Live graphic below links to our Senior Pastor, Mike Whitson's sermon notes from Sunday.  It's week two in his series from 1 John.  The title of the sermon is, “The Bliss of Sin Forgiven.”

Besides the obvious move of God, volunteer teams are absolutely necessary for making a worship service like The Lift happen each week.  Our "front-line team" is what we call our greeters.  If you are a greeter it's important to have an understanding of the value your position has to the church.

“Acceptance is an act of the heart.  To accept someone is to affirm to them that
you think it’s a very good thing they are alive.” —John Ortberg

Our church should be a place of acceptance.  When a guest or regular attendee walks in the door they need to know we are glad they are there.

We are told that seven minutes makes a difference.  Seven minutes is all we get to make a positive first impression.  In the first seven minutes of contact with our church, a guest knows whether or not they are coming back.

A few weeks ago Boeing delivered its much anticipated first 787 aircraft, known as the Dreamliner. It's said that the new jumbo jet will revolutionize the way we fly.  One thing that the airline industry is known for is its poor performance with customer service.  United Airlines CEO, Jeff Smisek said this about the new Dreamliner. "If you’re not getting good customer service you won't enjoy the flight.  If you do get good customer service you will enjoy the flight, and you and I know the difference between good customer service and bad customer service." The bottom line is no matter how nice the aircraft, you won't be impressed if you get bad service.

The same is true in churches.  You can have the best sounding band, the coolest lighting and video and a compelling sermon, but if our guests don’t feel welcome they won’t come back.  It’s my desire to move people from just visiting our church to belonging, and it primarily begins with our greeters.  People need to know they matter.  They need to know someone thinks it’s a good thing they’re there.

If you are interested in joining the greeter volunteer team or any other team for that matter, click here.