Carl Thomas dot net

5 Things I Am Loving About Our New Location

1.  By far the number one thing I love about this place is that the school wants us there.  We had a great relationship with the administration of our last school but they were not the ones working on Sunday.  When I found out that there were several people that wanted to work the Sunday with us I was blown away.  On top of that they have been super friendly from the administration to the head custodian.

2.  It is right up the street from our new office.  On Sunday morning I prepare in my office then within a few minutes I am on campus.  After service when we are done packing the truck it is a short distance to park it at the office.

3.  It is right across the street to Lynn University.  I don’t know how we are going we are going to reach that school but it is a challenge I am looking forward to.

4.  We have some great plans for Mission Kids growth.  We were kind of stuck I the last place but we are about to blow this spot up.

5.  The presence of God has been there every service.  That is pretty much all that matters.

Monday Morning Musings – Fit In Edition

Yeah it’s Tuesday.  Sorry about that.

It’s funny the more I have to say the less time I have to write about it.  This was our second week at our new location and I think we have most of the kinks worked out. 

This week we had Lillian leading worship backed up by my beautiful bride and Courtney.  We even had a guest appearance by Corey on stage.  We are blessed with the vocal talent at our church. 

Now that I have somewhere to prepare for Sunday outside of my house it is throwing me off a little, in a good way.  In the past, I would leave the house with Tracey and show up at church.  I would help setup whatever was not getting done.  I would put out fires and help troubleshoot.  Then I would hide myself somewhere with God, pray, and get my thoughts together on my message.

Aside from various video issues, I have not had to set anything up in a long time.  My dutiful wife makes final walkthroughs of all the areas and we have developed and released competent people to oversee things.

And now that I have an office, I can leave the  house early and collect my thoughts before I ever show up at church.  This is almost too good to be true.

I did not know what to do with myself this past week and I liked it.

The tension I have to manage is that I want to talk to people before service but I don’t want to counsel them or talk about anything heavy because mentally, I am preparing to preach.  I am sure there are more talented and anointed guys that can do it but I am not at that place so I often find myself telling people, “Let’s talk about that after service.”

That is not a put off!  I promise.

We started a new series, “Get in where you fit in.” I think this is going to be a massively significant series for the future of our house. 

It is vital for believers to see that our call stretches far beyond the Sunday morning meeting.  Just like folks in our church get visions for healing, and words of prophecy, I hope we begin to receive divine direction on influencing every facet of society.

Not exactly sure why but Holy Spirit had me deal aggressively with pride.  I can guarantee you one thing, if you come to The Mission you will have plenty of opportunity for your pride to be offended.  Happens to me all the time.

I was really blessed to have a good friend of Tracey and I visit, Charles Carrin.  I really meant to recognize him from the pulpit but I don’t have things written in my notes when I get in the pulpit, there is a 99% chance I will forget about it and that happened this Sunday and I really regret it.  Pastor Charles has been in ministry as long as my mother has been alive.

That’s a big deal.

Sunday afternoon we did marital counseling and Sunday night I whipped up a big batch of my spaghetti sauce for Isaac’s Washington D.C. fundraising spaghetti dinner.  It really blessed me to see people blessing my son.  Raising children is a constant stream of Father’s love revelation.

I have a prototype of our new carts built and I must say I am impressed.

Message and worship videos are up.  Podcast and pix sure to follow.

Fellaship and Work Day This Saturday

Calling all the fellas.

Tomorrow some of us are going to meet at the church office to some fellaship and to clean the place out.

As you know, we recently signed a lease for some storage / work space but currently it is a mess.  Show up Saturday morning with a bagel or whatever you want to munch on.  I will brew a pot of coffee and when we are done talking about nothing important, we will clean the place out.  The whole thing should take an hour or so.

The shop is at 4301 Oak Circle Suite 11, Boca Raton Fl, 33431

We will be meeting at 8 and should be done by 9.

The Quest for the Zero Inbox Has Been Delayed

I try to live in the cloud both spiritually and naturally.  For the spiritual part see 1Ki 8:10-11.  For the natural part I am talking about cloud storage.  I use online apps for almost everything.  The few tasks I don’t use it for are prohibitively expensive.

I use a variety of platforms when working and living my life an cloud based applications make me able to live life not tied to one computer or device.  The problem I have recently discovered is that I have not done a great job of organizing that system. 

In an effort to start the process I wanted to clean my inbox.  I use GMail exclusively for my email.  When I decided to start organizing my email I discovered that I have 536 emails in my inbox . . . that are unread.  Not total emails, I have no clue how many emails are in my inbox.  I just know that there are 536 unread emails.

If you use GMail and are curious how to find unread emails search for “is:unread” without the quotes.

Before you judge me, they are almost all emails that are automatic notifications, newsletters and the likes.  But nonetheless they are just a small taste of what I need to do to get organized.

Pray for me. lol

Monday Morning Musings–Don Estridge Edition

What a great day at The Mission.

It started a little early for me.  I had to show up at Isaac’s school around midnight to pick him up after getting home from his trip to Washington D.C. with the safety Patrols.  He had a great time.  He is going to tell all about it when he has his spaghetti dinner.  –>That’s a pic of him getting off the bus.

I was exhausted but excited when I woke up Sunday morning for a couple reasons.  We set up on Friday night and I thought the new location looked really good.  We have to figure out some things with children’s ministry but all in all it worked really well.

For the first time I got to stop by my office and pray and look over my message before I got to church and the office not be in my house.

Worship was great. 

We had a good attendance.  Like every other week we had first time guests.  That amazes me.  I am not exactly why they don’t always come back, I am thankful people keep coming to check us out.

I preached on the baptism in the Holy Ghost.  Plan to do that for a while.

Had a great altar call.  the Holy Ghost moved.

Met a bunch of really cool people. 

Tear down was flawless.

Did some pre-marital counseling with a couple that are going to have a great life together. Then I watched her Patriots lose to the Giants.  I did not care who won the game but it would have been really neat to see the win come on that last hail mary.  Oh well.

Monday Morning Musings–End of the Trail Edition

Oh the joys of being a portable church.  We showed up at the venue for Sunday morning service and found that we had mail there waiting for us.  Also, it was still set up for a party from the night before.  We were able to change some things and some things we had to live with.  That is the nature of the beast.

When you are portable, you have to get to the place where you are satisfied with lights and air conditioning.  We had both, we were good.

We had a worship service where we talked about worship, then went back into worship after the word.  I love those services.

Donnie Williams sang a song with the band for the first time.  I hope we see more of that.

Our bass player is getting married and is taking some time off.  If you play bass, and you love Jesus, see Khamille.  There may be a place for you on the team.

At the end of service we had a fire tunnel simply because it seemed like the thing to do.

Had a first time visitor come through and get delivered.  How do I know?  You had to be there.

After service we went to look at The Mission’s new office space where we will be storing stuff and I will have an office.  Really excited about what is coming in the future.

Podcast, pix and video are sure to come up soon.

Next week at Don Estridge High Tech Middle.

Less than 5 Days Left on the Awakening Fast

Less than 5 Days Left on the Awakening Fast. Let’s finish strong.

Monday Morning Musings–Final Marriott Edition

We had a new room at the Marriott this week.  The last service we had at the Marriott was really good and I was looking forward to another.  This room was bigger and it fit us much better.  We are meeting this week at The Loft at Congress and hopefully we will no longer be on the trail after that.

Khamille lead worship.  Good as usual.  Little better than normal for some reason.

Lucas is straight killing it on the drums lately.  I was really digging his playing this Sunday.

I am hoping either we have more musicians raised up in the house or God brings some to join what we are doing.

Told the folks that we are should have a lease on a new place this week.  Keep that in prayer.

I am looking forward to having Friday night prayer again.

Had a teaching I was really excited about regarding prayer. 

If prayer seems like a chore, you are doing it wrong.

The Lord told me to deal with the spirit of barrenness. Had amazing altar ministry at the end of service.

We are looking at getting office space for mid week meetings and a moving truck for storing our gear.  If you have the hookup let me know.

Fast with Purpose

In this last week of our Awakening fast, fast with purpose.

Don’t Give Up!

Don’t give up. Some is better than none.