Movement

Posted: 10/09/2009 | Author: | Filed under: Spirituality | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

God is moving.  I’d like the next few paragraphs to show you just how real that is, just what that looks like.  If you know me personally and have talked to me in the past month or so, you probably already know what I’m about to write, but I would be amiss to not do my part to let this information be known.

A little over a month ago, Crosspoint Church was challenged by our pastor to pray and fast.  We were doing this not only to beg to move at Crosspoint, but to move in a whole city, a whole region, and a whole campus.  As our pastor told us, “You can’t plan a revival, but you can prepare for one.”  So that’s what we did.  We prepared and presented a three week series entitled Awakening.  It was basically three weeks of straight up Gospel, all this time the church was fasting, praying, and trusting God.  We were asking, begging God to save 100 people in three weeks.  That’s nearly as many as He had saved through Crosspoint in the first 18 months of the church.  Some thought that was a lofty goal, some thought we were praying to small.  It turned out that the latter were correct.  In the first week alone, we saw 101 people meet Jesus and fall in love with Him for the first time.  Over the course of the series over 140 people handed their lives over to their Creator and nearly 40 of them followed Him in baptism on the last week of the series.  Amazing.

Now mind you, I said we were fasting and praying not only for Crosspoint, but for a whole region.  God was faithful.  My good friends Kyle and Ryan are the youth pastors at Rose Hill Baptist Church in Ashland, KY.  That church brought in speaker Tony Nolan one Wednesday night in the midst of all this for a youth event.  Rose Hill’s youth group normally averages around 20 kids, but through the faithfulness of His people, God brought nearly 1,000 people to the building that night to hear Tony speak.  93 teens met Jesus.  Astonishing.

Days later, I got a message from one of my close friends from home telling me that 8 youth had accepted God’s way for their lives at my youth group back home. Awesome.

Needless to say, people are overwhelmed with what God is doing through His church right now, and we are all thrilled to be a part of it.  The impact this has had on my life is insane.


Breaking the Break

Posted: 05/20/2009 | Author: | Filed under: Acts 1:8, Random Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Well, I’m back.  Obviously, it’s been a while… almost two months since my last post, but there is a reason for that.  I’d noticed earlier in the spring that I didn’t really want to blog anymore.  With the constant busyness of my spring semester and the little down time that I had, blogging had become just another thing to check of my To-Do list.  It was almost like a job.  It was just another thing I “had” to do. That is not at all what I wanted this blog to be.  I want it to be something I do because I want to.  I want to host a blog and I want to share my thoughts with you all.  So all this to say… I decided to take a break for a while.  School’s over now, and I’m a little less busy, at least for the next week or so, so I think its about time to get back to it.

There’s a lot I want to catch you all up on, but this post could get ridiculously long, and I don’t want that to happen.  So, I’ll just leave you with a few of the highlights for now… my TOP 5 of the past 2 months.

1. As I metioned, school is over.  This semester wasn’t near as easy as last, but it still finished out all right.  I’ll be thrilled to get back to production classes in the fall.

2. Acts 1:8 starts in just 11 short days.  I’m stoked to get to Louisville and start that whole deal up. We had our final meeting at LTC (Leadership Training Conference) during my “blogging break”… it went well.  I ship out on May 31st.  I’ll be sure and keep you all up to date on the happenings there.

3. As I consider my future, due to one of my friends, Josh Burns (happy birthday!), church media is becoming of much stronger interest to me than it already was.  I’m doing my best to delve into the depths of learning about running Front of House, Lighting, Video, pretty much all aspects of audio/visual production within a church.

4. Speaking of churches… I finished out my semester at Crosspoint on May 3rd.  I was sad to see it go… I’m really going to miss it this summer.  Thankfully I was able to go back and attend this past week for Thomas’s last Sunday.  It was good to go back one more time before Acts 1:8 and see everyone.  I’m looking forward to coming back in the fall and getting back into the swing of things. Daniel, Caleb, Weylin, Brad, Nick, etc. I hope the summer goes well.  You all will be in my prayers.

5. It’s great to be home with family and friends for a couple weeks.  I’ve got a lot to do in these next couple weeks to get ready for 1:8, but I also have a lot of catching up with people to do. Speaking of which… be on the lookout for a long overdue new episode of the JSquared Podcast!

Well… there you have it.  Hopefully I’ll be back soon with another update.  I do have a cool story to share with you that happened during “the break”… a lesson learned the hard way.  So hopefully I’ll get that to you soon.  Thanks for reading!

Follow me on Twitter: @josephdickens

Catching up

Posted: 03/04/2009 | Author: | Filed under: Music, Spirituality | Tags: , | 2 Comments

So it’s been a ridiculous amount of time since my last post.  Life has gotten crazy busy, and in the little bit of downtime that I’ve had I’ve been kinda lazy…  So, now it’s time to catch up.

Probably the biggest thing that’s been going on in my life is that I just recently started playing in the band at Crosspoint church.  Crosspoint is a fairly young church here in Morehead.  Our pastor, Daniel Lucas (His blog is linked on the side of this page) along with a small group of people started this church just over a year ago.  In its first year the church has grown to roughly 400 attenders Sunday to Sunday and it’s still growing each week.  I really believe in what the leaders at Crosspoint are doing.  Hearing some of them talk about their passion and their reason for bringing a church like this to a small rural Eastern Kentucky town is extremely powerful and humbling.  You must understand that the population of Morehead, Kentucky doubles when college is in session and  from anything I know, before this church came to Morehead, there was really no alternative to an extremely traditional service for students to attend.  Let me clarify.  First of all, I understand and am in no way demeaning the traditional way of “doing church.”  However, for many college age students in today’s world, that way of doing things simply seems outdated and is sometimes presumed to be judgmental and un-accepting.  Crosspoint offers a much more contemporary alternative for these students, not to mention, the thousands of others young and old that experience  God at Crosspoint every Sunday.  Also, Crosspoint is much more than a Sunday morning church service.   Crosspoint also offers several weekly small groups to train believers.  But possibly the most important and influential part of the church are the praying people who are reaching out to the commuinty and shining the love of Jesus by the way the live their lives and interact with people each day.  All that to say, that I feel extremely blessed to be able to be a somewhat direct part of what is happening through this group of believers.  I believe in what is going on here and I believe that greater things are still to come for Morehead, Kentucky and for Crosspoint.

Other than that, not to much is going on,  I’ve decided what I’m going to do as far as a major.  Business just really isn’t what I love, and I really don’t think I would be that great at it either.  However, I still think it would be a helpful thing to supliment my production major.  One, because someone in the production field (audio or video) has to deal with a lot of business issues as well, and two, because it’s a very versatile title to have on your diploma when you go into the working world.  So, I think I’m going to stick with my production major and go with a business minor.  Not that any of you really cared… but I just thought I’d share.

Well, I’m off to Lexington for now, but hopefully I’ll be back soon with something a little more interesting.