Mike’s Musings

Thank you to our eXperience crew

 

To our eXperience crew: WE ARE SO EXCITED AND ABSOLUTELY IN AWE OF WHAT GOD DID ON EASTER SUNDAY! With the help of all our “roadies”, we moved into a new space, people showed up, and lives were changed! YOU were a part in that… a new beginning for the life of eXperience church, as well as a new beginning for the lives of many people! We wanted to share a few things with each of you:

#1 – THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO INVITED PEOPLE to come to the service! We know for a fact that some of those very people invited, gave their lives to Christ! You invited them, they came, God spoke to their hearts, and they responded! There were 5 people who said they made Jesus the leader of their lives! We also had a record-setting attendance of over 230 people in our service! God has awesome things planned for this church and THIS IS JUST THE START! The people who came for Easter NEED to come back! Ask the people back… please make the connection this week! We’ll be continuing our series REVOLUTION, and continue sharing how Jesus can revolutionize our lives.

#2 – BE READY and keep inviting people to come… Even if the people you invited didn’t show up for Easter, DON’T GIVE UP ON THEM! Continue to ask them to check eXperience out, keep praying for them and being a friend. Ask God to show you new people to invite as well… keep those invite cards where you can give them to someone God brings into your life who needs to come to eXperience!

#3 – THANK YOU TO ALL OUR “ROADIES” (aka volunteers) who sacrificed their time and money to make our service a success. We could never do what we do without you! Your commitment to ACCEPT people where they’re at… LOVE like Jesus… choose GRACE over anger… FORGIVE as Christ’s forgiven you… and believe that God can CHANGE anyone and any circumstance will continue making a difference in the lives of those who walk in the doors of our church! We’ll be missing extra hands this weekend (we had people who came from 1 hr, 2 hrs, and even 4 1/2 hours to help for Easter), so we need to have more volunteers to make sure we continue to have things go smoothly… IF YOU HAVEN’T HELPED BEFORE, THERE’S NO BETTER TIME!

#4 – We also want to say THANK YOU to those who have given financially to this church. Because we are a church plant, we still rely on others outside of our church to help support eXperience church. There are many who are a part of this “experience” who are giving and praying from afar. Thank you for believing in something bigger and supporting eXperience church!

#5 – WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR AWESOME GOD STORIES FROM THIS PAST WEEKEND! We had people share on their stories on connection cards… people who thanked us for being a “different kind of church”… and people who never thought they could even like a church. Please email the church at office@eXperiencethechurch.com and tell us any stories you heard from that day. Thanks again to all of you who are helping eXperience EXPOSE people to Jesus and EXCITE them to move one step closer to Him! We’re so excited for all God has in store for this church, the people who attend, and this city! Let’s get ready to ROCK, eXperience! This is only the beginning!!

We love you guys! Pastor Mike and Amy

eXperience gets a new venue

Easter is right around the corner and we are moving to the Historic Holmes Theater in Detroit Lakes.  Starting Easter Sunday at 11:00 am we will be meeting weekly in the theater.  As if that wasn’t enough great news, we also received some great press from the Detroit Lakes Newspaper this week.  The article can be found by clicking here .   It’s going to be a great week and  a new chapter in the life of eXperience Church in Detroit Lakes, MN.

Something different…

Someone once said the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

I remember when Amy and I quit going to church. We just didn’t feel like we “fit in” and honestly, it just was too traditional for us. If any of you have met my wife, “unique” is a light adjective to describe her. It was over a year before we walked into a church again, and we stayed at that particular church because it was unlike anything we’d seen before. It was something different.

Walking into that church for the first time, we analyzed EVERYthing… the people, the talk from the pastor, the music, the way things looked, the things they offered for kids… we noticed things that didn’t mean a lot as far as “Christians” go… but we weren’t Christians… we were a couple that were seeking something different… something more… something more different than what we’d been experiencing in our life.

Funny how as much as things changed while we grew spiritually in that church, that we still didn’t “fit”… and we just couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting something different. At first we thought we were wrong… and as we continued to move one step closer to Christ, we realized that God had called us to do something different… NOT for the sake of being different, but because there are so many who have given up on the church… set God aside… refused to believe… or walked away feeling unworthy and dirty because they were different.

It kills me to think that there are people who feel they will never be what God wants them to be… when all He wants is for us to be His… that’s it… faults and all (and we all have them… it’s just some of us are less willing to share them with others). He just wants us…

And so we’ve launched eXperience church… something different in Detroit Lakes, MN.  We originally thought we’d be in a building, but things fell through and the VFW opened up for us.  Yep, church in a bar… how’s THAT for something different?  And people who have come have written to us telling us that they came BECAUSE of where it was… people have come because they thought it might be something different than what they’d experienced from other churches… not “better” just different…

So while this may not “look” like what some people may think church should… we are seeing lives change because we’ve been willing to do something different for the sake of those who need a different way to hear about Jesus… and a different place to hear it in… and I know that our church isn’t a church for everyone.  We’re not even trying to reach everyone because we believe it takes all kinds to reach all kinds… and so we’re doing something different than what’s been being done in Detroit Lakes to reach those who haven’t been going to church… there are over 20,000 in a 20 mile radius who aren’t connected to a church… and I wanna make sure that each and every single one gets connected…

Now, that may not be a “normal” way of thinking… but we’re already established “traditional” isn’t really in my vocabulary… doing something different has always excited me… which is why my wife tells me God chose us for this…

Something different… and doing something different has never been so crazy or felt so good.

Ready…

Our launch date is set for September 26th! God is doing BIG things and we’re so excited to see how He’s answering prayers and providing for our needs!

Currently, we are looking at a building that’s 20,000 square feet! It’s a big building… for a very big vision… to reach the MANY people far from God in Detroit Lakes, MN.

And so, we’ve come to a point where we are asking God to provide through others for this very large mission He’s called us to…

Please help us launch eXperience church by giving how ever you can… it all adds up and is GREATLY appreciated!

For more information on the church, check out our website at www.eXperiencethechurch.com (which also links lead pastor, Mike, as well as his wife, Amy (aka “Dandelion Seeds”) blogs…

Thanks so much for your support! Please share with anyone who may be interested in helping us get this thing started!

Tags: church planting, fundraising, miracles

Those People

I’m once again reminded why it is that we do what we do. We are those people, you know the ones… the people who seem to be a little different than everyone around them. The ones who seem to be unable or unwilling to conform. The people that others will say, “you don’t want to be like those people”.

It’s funny, at one time I wanted to be like everyone else, cool, popular, handsome and all together. I wanted to be happy and in my search for happiness all I found were dreams and ambitions that never seemed to be realized or never quite seemed to be enough. What I needed was love, acceptance and forgiveness and I found it with someone who loves “those people”. Jesus said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” Jesus didn’t turn away those who didn’t look like him, those who had a past, he shunned those who thought they had it all going on. Those who thought they were already good enough.

If you think that you are too far gone, that you’ve done too much or been to bad, if you are one of “those people” I invite you to come and hang out with some more of us, Real people with real lives…   eXperience church is coming to Detroit Lakes.  Join us as we experience life together and explore what it means to live like Jesus.