Kenny Hibbard

Philippians 2:1-8

¹ Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? ² Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.

³ Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. ⁴ Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

⁵ You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

⁶ Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
⁷ Instead, he gave up his divine privileges
he took the humble position of a slave

and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,

⁸ he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

A few years ago I broke down and purchased a very nice 10ft pre-lighted Christmas Tree.  The first couple of years it was great.  Pull the three large sections out of a box. Pop together and plug in.  Instant Christmas Tree and then the rest of the time could be spent putting on the decorations with the family.  Not this year……hundreds of little lights were burned out and not working. It took my wife two long nights of discovering and then cutting out the broken lights.  Then we had to buy new lights and carefully weave them into place.  On the fourth night we finally hung our ornaments!

Like it or not……Christmas decorations take time and energy if they are done well.

Team Church once again looked great this Sunday as we kicked off our Christmas Season Series.  The atrium and stage looked great!  Every year our atrium area looks as good as any mall in the city! I wanted to take this time to thank Seana Corbiel who once again headed up the atrium design and gave creative leadership to Thom and the host of volunteers who came to decorate all week.   Also, once again, Judy Herring led the charge with Brad Tatum and the stage design volunteer team to create a beautiful Christmas stage!

We had many first time guest on Sunday! Great job to all of you who invited your friends and family. This Sunday will be a FIRST time occurrence at Team Church. Be sure to invite your friends to enjoy a Bluegrass Christmas Music Set. We will have banjos, fiddles and everything else to make this Sunday a festive and very fun Sunday as we focus on Unwrapping the gift of JOY.

Also…our creative arts team has a dramatic presentation of the 12 Days of Christmas that will make even the grumpiest scrooge laugh and experience JOY.

Pas the word…..this Sunday will be another Christmas Classic at Team Church.

PS….if you show up 10 minutes late….you will miss it!

10 minutes…….600 seconds... can make a huge difference!

• I came home the other night and my 6 year-old son asked me to play “in-door” catch football with him. To be honest, at that moment…..I really did not want to do it. However, after only 10 minutes of throwing him “diving-touchdowns” in our living room…..I was having fun and the expression on his face was priceless.
• I was working out the other day and added about 10 minutes to my normal Cardio workout part…..it was hard…but I noticed a big difference in my heart beat.
• Adding 10 minutes to your personal devotion time each day is an amazing thing as you can spend more time in prayer, reading, or reflection time.
• Hitting the snooze button in the morning for 10 extra minutes can seem like a welcomed mini-vacation in the morning.
• When your young and in-love…..10 more minutes of texting or talking on the phone seems like the best thing ever, but only seems to last 1 second.
• What would happen in your marriage if you added an uninterrupted “talk” time with your spouse each day? What about with your teenager?

10 minutes.….not much time…..but can make a HUGE difference in many areas.

Starting on January 15th we will be adding 10 minutes to our Sunday Services. We will go from a planned 65 minute service that we have been doing for 13 years….to a definitive 75 minute service.  We think 10 extra minutes will make a huge difference in your ability to enjoy and experience fully what God has for you each Sunday.

We also feel:

• There are times we need to slow the pace of the service.
• There are times we need more time to teach and unpack messages.
• There are times we need to create a more reflective and creative response time. Time to digest what you just experienced, felt, learned and then process it in a God honoring way that gives the best chance for decisions and commitments to be made.
• There are some services where we need more time for creativity.
• There are some services we need more time for music and other creative arts.
• There are occasions when we need more time to simply communicate information, vision, etc.

Also, we want to make sure we honor our hard working and dedicated Sunday Morning Volunteers. We want to set a service time that everyone knows we will not go over. This is especially helpful and important in our All-Stars Kid’s Ministry.

Starting Sunday, January 15th  our new service times will be:

• 1st service will start at 9:30am (same as before)  and be over at 10:45 sharp or before.
• 2nd service will start at 11:10 (10 min later than before) and be over at 12:25 sharp or before.