• Best news from the day, another person gave their life to Christ!
• We wrapped up a worship series that was a good change of pace, focussing on what it means to worship.
• The main thing God wants from us is for us to be true worshippers.
• If the Samaritan woman had been from Powell in 2010 when she met Jesus, she would have asked “Some say we should worship with piano, organ, and choir robes. That crazy church at the high school says they worship with guitars, drums, and skinny jeans. Which is right?!”
• Jesus would answer: “My Father seeks true worshippers who worship in spirit and truth.”
• In other words – the method doesn’t matter! It’s the heart of the worshipper that matters.
• The way true worshippers worship is with awe, abandonment, and intimacy.
• We wrapped up the service worshipping with all three thanks to a song that has hit home with our church – With Everything. Look it up on iTunes and download it today!
• This coming weekend we celebrate communion and talk about the importance of baptism.
• And then next weekend we celebrate one year at OneLife with nearly 20 people being baptized!!!
• Start inviting your friends and family NOW for next week. One HUGE service at 10 a.m. DO NOT MISS IT!!!
• Sunday was also our second Partnership Class. Between the two we had somewhere around 80 people join OneLife!
• We also had some great conversation after each of the classes as people wrestled with their salvation stories, baptism experience, and other spiritual issues. Some great ministry happened!
• Up next for our church is the start of OneLife Communities. Get more info or sign up today! www.onelifeknox.com/communities

Number 2 on The Gauge – the driving principles for everything we do at OneLife – is “we sacrifice freely.” The premise is simple. Jesus gave his everything for me. He left heaven…why would anyone do that?! But he did, lived a life on earth as a poor man, then died the most gruesome death you could imagine.

He sacrificed freely. As a follower of Christ, I should do the same. As his bride, the Church should, too. Not because we have to, but because it’s my natural response of worship when I reflect on who God is and what He has done for me.

Come early on Sunday to volunteer? No problem considering where Jesus went for me. 10 percent of my financial “increase”? That’s nothing compared to the 100 percent He gave for me. All of my preferences aren’t met? That’s cool – Jesus got pretty uncomfortable on my behalf. Submit to the authority of a church and its leadership? Gladly. I submit to Jesus so of course I love what He loves.

We want to be a church that sacrifices freely filled with people who sacrifice freely. We will sacrifice our time, preferences, comfort, and finances to do whatever it takes to reach people for Jesus. It’s the least we can do.

After all, He sacrificed freely for me.

Wow. That word sums up this week at OneLife. I believe it was our best Sunday worship experience yet. Here’s why…

• The energy in each of the services was through the roof.
• We started a two-week series on worship, so we reversed our order a bit.
• We started with just a couple of songs, jumped into the sermon, and then wrapped up with an incredible worship set.
• We responded through worship to the following questions: Who is God and what has He done?
• The answer to that question will drive us to worship.
• We cleared up the fact that when we come to worship, we should come worshipping. And we don’t come as an audience to watch a performance. Instead, we are all the performers!
• Check out the video of the sermon here: www.onelifeknox.com/watchonline
• Sometimes things aren’t planned that I say. This week sounded like a middle school playground with “poo” “holy snot” and quoting a friend’s experience when inviting a very unchurched person to church. Haven’t gotten any hateful emails yet, so I guess nobody was offended!
• Our college students were back in full force and so were a lot of our families. It showed as attendance was at its highest in more than three months!
• Best of all, I saw lots of second time guests who came for the first time last week.
• We also had several college freshmen come early and jump right in volunteering on their first Sunday of college. Incredible!
• Our first partnership classes are this week and we get to talk about worship again this weekend. It’s keeping me busy but I’m loving every second of it.
• Our staff is doing an incredible job leading each ministry and building leaders along the way.
• The proof is in the pudding as volunteerism continues to grow and grow. On top of that, people are “getting it.”
• Kydon talked about our culture of valuing rest and creating a culture where no one is anonymous during our VIP meeting. He got a call today from a volunteer wanting to make sure Kydon was being taken care of and getting a chance to rest. That’s a huge win!
• This is only the beginning, OneLife! The future is bright because HIS is the VICTORY! Bring someone with you and let’s experience it together this Sunday!

Over the next 5 weeks, we will be sharing with our awesome volunteer teams the OneLife Gauge during our VIP meetings (where volunteers gather before each service). The Gauge outlines the vision for why everything we do at OneLife revolves around volunteerism and what drives our strategies for volunteer teams. We will use it to evaluate, or “gauge,” how we are doing along the way.

Kydon Bowen, our volunteer coordinator, has been doing an incredible job completely revamping our volunteer teams and the process for becoming a OneLife Volunteer. A special thanks to our friends at Elevation Church for their advice and help as we have tweaked this process. It’s always good to learn from those who’ve been there, done that!

So each week, after Kydon has shared with our teams the vision behind each part of The Gauge, I’ll download here on the blog. So, here’s part one!

We anticipate radical life change each and every Sunday. That is the number one priority behind everything we do. I once heard Pastor Jim Cymbala from Brooklyn Tabernacle talk about why this is important within the context of their incredible choir ministry. He said this is what they share with new choir members to make sure they are up for the challenge and opportunity of volunteering:

“When you come to church in a bad mood, the prostitute on the 12th row doesn’t care. She needs to experience the love of Christ. When you have a fight with your spouse on the way to church and don’t feel like leading worship, the drug addict in the balcony doesn’t care. He needs hope. When you wake up on a Sunday and just don’t feel like coming to church and fulfilling your commitment to serve, it will show in your attitude. The couple whose marriage is falling apart that decided to give it one more shot – they don’t care. They need you to point them to Jesus.”

Understanding that kind of opportunity drives commitment and this kind of commitment only comes when you anticipate – and even expect – life change to happen every week. OneLife Volunteers, we see life change happen in our midst every Sunday. If you want to get the full OneLife experience we ask you to do one thing before you even step foot on the property at Powell High School: beg God for life change to happen!

He wants it more than we do. So let’s anticipate that it will happen.

• We talked again this week about how OneLife is “Growing Up” – we’re almost 1 year old!
• This week we talked about growing up by getting into life-changing community with other believers.
• We do that at OneLife through groups of 8-12 adults called Communities.
• Like the church in Rome (Romans 1:7-12), we will mutually encourage each other’s faith and “bridge the gap” when we hear and tell our faith stories to each other.
• Communities kick-off on September 19! Group leaders met for the first time Sunday afternoon…can’t wait to see how God uses them to lead OneLife to the next level!
• Want to find out more info or let us know you’re interested in finding a community? Watch the sermon from Sunday and then visit www.onelifeknox.com/communities.
• It was good to have a lot of our college students back this week and a lot of their families, too. Should have them all back in full force next week.
• On Saturday we “Served the City” by helping move in new UT students. Let’s just say it was about 1,000 degrees and way too many stairs in that dorm!
• But we had an incredible group of volunteers make it happen and represent Jesus in a great way.
• This week we start a two-week study on worship. After this series, you hopefully won’t think of worship the same anymore!
• Share your faith story with someone this week and bring ‘em with you to Powell HS at 10 or 11:30 am!