Judgment House Planning 2017
[Pastor Brian Loveless]
Today we’ve sort of
designated as Judgment House Sunday and by that we mean we are beginning in
earnest now to get ready for October.
Two sets of dates, two weekends in October, if you want to jot this down:
October 20th - 22nd and then October 27th - 29th. We will be doing a
production called Judgment House. This entire campus will be transformed into
an eight scene walk through drama that really vividly depicts a story of life,
death, and eternity.
We'll have thousands of people,
ultimately, walking this campus and going through this dramatic depiction of
those things. They'll end in a counseling room where we're able to clarify and
re-clarify the gospel and thus far in the years that we've done this production
we've had over a thousand people make professions of faith in Christ! It's a powerful, powerful thing.
I think the twin benefit
is it not only leads people to Christ, a lot of churches all year long will
befriended people with the intent of “I'm going to share Jesus with them and if
I can't win them to Christ just yet, I'm going to invite them to judgement house.”
A lot of our neighbors come to this production and they know that we put this
on. The other benefit is, frankly, it
brings our church together like crazy when we have a need for so many people,
hundreds of people, to be able to pull this off so everybody can have a role in
this whether it's security..
Well Ron's going to get
to that here in just a minute so I'm going to steal his thunder completely. We're
going to show you just a little promotional video for Judgment House and then
Ron Adams, who's done a marvelous job with us through the years, as well as a
brand new leader in this, Keith Fletcher, are going to come and say a few words
to you so watch this [promo video starts at 2:07]:
[Associate Pastor Ron Adams]
All right, does it make
you want to get ready to do it now? And
just seeing those videos and watching them this week and seeing which ones to
pick out it just makes me ready to do it again.
I’m looking forward to it. Like
we said, we're going to be starting on here pretty soon. For those that are in
the cast, we will be starting up in July.
It's going to be a long process but we always have a good time doing it.
Before Keith comes up here I'm going to give you some statistics from years
past and then I'm going to introduce the coordinators for each part of Judgment
House.
The last time we did judgment
house, in 2015, we had 2,870 people come through our church with 518 salvations. The national average for Judgement House is 7%. That is 18% of the people that came through
last Judgment House received Christ as Savior.
In six years, the
cumulative totals (and this is really exciting) six years of Judgment House we've
had 16,142 people come through Judgment House with 2,034 receiving Christ. Yeah again the national average is 7% and we're
at 13% for the six years! Wo what we have done here in Grand Prairie at Calvary
Baptist Church we have made a name for, not only our church, and for the city
of Grand Prairie, but for our Lord and Savior!
We've got churches that are calling now,
wanting to know when it starts, and when we're going to be doing it. The word
is out there they know we're doing it and they can't wait to come.
The prayer request that
I'm going to ask of our church is start praying for those souls that are going
to be coming. Start now. Start praying for those churches, and for the
people that are coming, that their hearts will be prepared when they come
through judgement house this year.
Keith will come here in
just a second, he's going to describe the script and all the different opportunities
that can take place during judgment house, but I'm going to give you the
coordinators. When you get your sign-up
sheet and you see what area you want to do, you'll know which coordinator you
need to go to see about an opening or if you can volunteer to help with
them.
- Registration - Karen Snead
- Security - Mike Snead
- Construction - Terry and David Green
- Counseling - Pastor Brian Loveless
- Prayer Team - Marsha Adams
- Tour Guides - Ashley Contreras
- Concessions - Dan Bickle
- Cast Refreshments - Teresa Dixon
- Cast - Jamalyn Bowen
So those are the
different areas, those are the different coordinators that you want to speak
with if you're interested in taking part in judgement house this year. Now I
want to introduce this gentleman right here because I got to thinking last year,
you know Keith has worked for Fox Sports Southwest and he's been a director and
a producer behind the scenes of all of the programs that happens on that TV
station. I was thinking “man, what
talents that we could use for judgement house.”
So he's going to co-direct Judgment House with me going forward and so
if you need to speak with someone you can speak with either me or Keith and
hopefully we can give you the information that you need. He going to come and
describe the script and some of the other volunteer opportunities that we have.
[CO-PRODUCER KEITH
FLETCHER]
Thank you. Y'all ready for a little Christmas in October? The scene one is going to open up with a Christmas Eve service has just let out and a church reception hall (for lack of a better term and to be sure it'll still be the Williams building) but the church service has just let out and we meet our three central characters:
Thank you. Y'all ready for a little Christmas in October? The scene one is going to open up with a Christmas Eve service has just let out and a church reception hall (for lack of a better term and to be sure it'll still be the Williams building) but the church service has just let out and we meet our three central characters:
Alice, an older teenager
who lost her father a few years back kind of went all in on religion and God in
prayer and after her father's death is kind of “meh”, she's done with that.
Next we meet Clyde. Clyde is, well he's been around awhile and
has a past and he's not proud of, he's kind of past those days, but church and
church people it's not a place for him.
Heaven’s not a place for him and he's at a point where it's like he's
okay with it. You know, “I made my bed I
got to sleep in it, its fine. That's the
way the cookie crumbles.” and we'll see how things go for him.
Next is Betty, a member
of the church and she's one of those who knows everyone and talks about them
and is one of those little church hens who just has done you know “yadda yadda”. The Judgment House veterans don't see a very
good path for Betty in it. You know? We'll see how things go!
I want to make a plea to
those who haven't exactly got involved in a ministry effort. The Guatemala trip
is like a bucket list thing, maybe someday, its not your budget this year,
probably next year, you're in good company. If going door-to-door and handing
out Bibles isn't your thing, not that this church does this or has, not there's
anything wrong with that... I realize there's a baby step process in ministering
to other people - this is your golden ticket!
There is no role to
small. Preacher said its all hands on deck. A lot of us get involved as many of
you.... we need you! Don't think that we got it covered. There are a lot of
bases that needed to be covered. For some of you, I know that this can seem
like an awfully small church sometimes. It can seem very connected and you're
kind of on the outside. Can I tell you
that I've been there? I married into this church in 2005 to a third generation
member. My Mother in law, my brother in
law, know everyone. It took
so long, five or six
years after starting here, to kind of feel connected to anyone until six years
ago, three judgment houses ago, preacher asked me to be a tour guide. Reluctantly
I said “if you need help yeah that’s fine.
If I’m taking someone’s spot and they went back in that's fine too.” I did it and I got to meet everyone. I finally
made put names to faces, remembered names.
What it did was, it changed
how I came to church and how I interacted at church. It changed why I came to
church, really. To be honest it affected
my excuses for not coming to church. Slowly
it brought me closer to God! It changed my life. I realized, (are you sitting
down?) all that time before, what I was getting out of the church was exactly
what I was putting in to church. (Facepalm) Moses smell the roses! It's like this,
you know, Wow! So I'm just telling you
if you're looking for the opportunity to get involved, this is your golden
ticket to get to know everyone here. You're going to spend a lot of hours with
them. You're not going to do anything you don't want to do. Ushers, I I guess that's my cue to send
people down, and we're going to have these little sign-up sheets. Put your interests
and what you what you would like to do, and there's some options. You won't do
anything you don't want to do. We need you to get involved. The numbers don't
lie. Actually they do because that's just the numbers of people who commit to
Christ here. that doesn't account for those who go back to their churches, into
their hometowns, and do that the next week, or the next, or maybe six months
down the line. You got to get involved. It's going to be rewarding in many, many, many
ways. It's going to be fun.
Christmas in October! Thanks guys!
Christmas in October! Thanks guys!
