kylegilbert

If you attend Faith Promise Church, you can hardly help but get into the spirit of personal evaluation during this time of year.  Both Josh and Pastor Chris start focusing their attention on personal growth and establishing their plans for the coming year (excellent post by Josh here).

I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon to let you know about a cool update to YouVersion (a free Bible website that is mobile enabled and supported with mobile apps) that now allows you to select from a variety of reading plans.  This is a very cool update, and if you’re a person who struggles with reading the Bible, I’d highly encourage you to take a look at their reading plans and find a good fit.  There’s nothing that will help you grow spiritually like the systematic reading and application of God’s Word.

If you’ve ever attended an Internet Campus and dropped into the chat room, you’ll probably like this video. It’s a parody done by LifeChurch.tv, and I recognize quite a few of their staff playing roles in the video.

Funny stuff! Thanks, LifeChurch.tv for your innovation and humor.

Last night I realized that it was time to update the KyleGilbert.com page.  In the photo above, you can see the old design and the new design format.

I like how it turned out for a few reasons:

• Larger and bolder fonts
• Clear focus on content
• Super monkey-huge photo
• Red hair

The new format is highly borrowed from flavors.me, and I would highly suggest it to anyone who’s looking for a cool and easy portal-style page.

My wife is an amazing photographer, and I love this picture that she took of me holding my son while we waited for a train.

Today was the day of group presentations at Faith Promise, and I have to say that I was totally blown away by the quality and creativity of the presentations presented by our staff today. Each had a unique approach and a fresh way of communicating their ideas.

My group decided to do almost the entire presentation through video, and you can watch it below.

(better quality video coming soon – Done, thanks to Matt James)

In case you weren’t able to attend our last First Wednesday service at Faith Promise (or if you just want to enjoy it again), this is the “Jesus in the Manger” skit from that service. The two guys carrying Jesus around are the Pastor’s sons.

I think it’s amazing how a short presentation like this can be so funny and yet also get to the heart of things.

Things have really busy since the Thanksgiving holiday, largely due to a group project that I’ve been working on. Our entire staff was divided up into interdepartmental teams to compete against one another as we each worked to come up with solutions to various problems that are facing our church body. (You can get Josh’s perspective here.)

Like normal, I’ve found myself in the position of project manager. The process has been both very fun and very challenging at times.

We’re putting the finishing touches on our presentation now, and I hope to share it in video format once the presentation is over. I was tempted to put a couple of behind-the-scenes photos in with this post, but I don’t want to spoil any surprises (or give away any ideas to the other teams).

I love being the pastor of our Internet Campus, and I love the people who gather there each week. It’s an eclectic group from all over the United States (as well as a few from other parts of the world), and I get to listen to the stories as we see people’s lives impacted by God. It’s amazing.

Some people who log on there are just checking out our church before they visit. Others are attending because they’re sick, home with a new baby, or home bound. Some attend because they are Deaf, and we offer ASL interpreted worship services. Even though it’s different from traditional methods, God is meeting people there.

Let me give you one recent example:

Last week I made a follow up phone call to a young woman who lives out of state but attends online each week and wants to start serving through our Internet Campus.* After a short conversation with her, I realized that she hadn’t committed her life to Christ, and I got to lead her to the Lord. Since then, we’ve connected a couple of times, she’s going to be visiting Faith Promise over the Christmas holidays, and I’m scheduled to baptize her during the service when we do the recording for iCampus. Amazing.

While some are suspicious and fearful of this kind of ministry, we see both the current impact and the future potential. Because of that (and a group of people who have stepped up to the plate in service), I’m very pleased to announce that beginning this Sunday, our iCampus will now feature three service times: 10 am, 11:45 am, and 9:00 pm.

I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Please join with me in praying that God would continue to bless this online ministry – to impact lives for His Glory alone.

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*In case you don’t know, we have online greeters, prayer volunteers, administrators, and soon we’ll have our first online small group. There’s room for more, so shoot me an email or drop a comment on here, if you’re interested.

It’s a little bit difficult to tell from the photo, but at my request, my daughter took the time out of her playing at Chick-fil-A to wipe her brother’s nose.

What did people ever do without camera phones to capture these moments?

Keri and I just got back from a fantastic night at the Whitestone Inn. It’s really an amazing place. The rooms and scenery were very nice, and the food was delicious.

With little kids, it’s hard to find the time and resources to get away like that, but we’re more committed than ever before to carve out time to spend together.

The top image below is a panoramic image that I created from our photos, so you can click the left and right buttons to pan across the view.