Kirk Bowman's blog

From The Message:

Luke 3:16 The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out.

Wow! This verse grabbed my heart this morning. Amazing how many layers of truth are in this one sentence.

This weekend we begin a new series – “Beneath The Surface”.

I have become so convinced that all of us make most of our decisions on an emotional level. Then we build a rationale for that decision. We think our decisions are rational but in fact, they are quite emotional.

This has been a new revelation for me. I have always considered my self not too emotional but I am seeing how much my emotions impact my decisions.

With that being the case - dealing with negative emotions becomes so important. How many stupid decisions born out of anger have ruined people’s lives. How many times has insecurity made us decide not to move forward into what would be amazing for us.

Here’s our trailer:


Believing that God will heal many hearts in this next month.

Still hearing the reports roll in from Easter. Lots of people genuinely touched. It really was a great day.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to reaching so many people.

Easter Sunday for the church is like the day after Thanksgiving for the mall. It’s always our biggest day and our guys did shine yesterday.

We did a huge series of commercials inviting people to our Easter service. Met quite a few people who came because of them.

The energy and expectation level from our church was the best I have felt in a long, long time. Everyone was on their game – our guest service team was amazing. As always, our music team nailed it again. Kids ministry team was phenomenal. So proud of all of them.

We were completely packed with late-comers having to watch the service from the café and the foyer.

31 people responded to accept Christ.

Met tons of new people in the café after service.

We had a great day! Thanks to all who prayed and worked so hard to make it happen. You guys are awesome!

Today is the first day of spring. And it looks like it outside here. Yahoo! I am so looking forward to warm weather returning. Having grown up in New Orleans, even though I have lived in Asheville for over 18 years, I still have thin blood and I’m freezing every winter. Come on, Spring!

Today also marks my one year anniversary for my blog. It has taken me a while to gather a consistent blog-o-rhythm but I have gotten better. I hope to make my blog better this year than last year.

I started tracking the number of people who are reading my blog on Feb. 6. From then until Mar. 19 there were 586 different people viewing my blog with about half of them being repeat viewers. Google analytics tells me where the viewers come from but not exactly who they are.

Hey you closet blog viewers – how about leaving a comment that lets me know who you are. I’d love to hear from you.

BTW –if you are part of our church, invite someone to Easter service this Sunday. It’s going to be awesome!

With all respect to Bono......

Came across this video on Seth Godin's blog.



It underscores a concept I have held dear for a long time:
You always find what you're looking for

If we're looking for blue objects in a room, that's what we will find.
If we're looking for faults in someone, that's what we will find.
If we're looking for good things in that same person, that's what we'll find.
If we're looking for bad things in the world, that's what we'll find.
If we're looking for the goodness of God, that's what we'll find.

Our outlook depends on what we're looking out from

MAT 6:22 "The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.

Unleash at Newspring was awesome. All of our guys had a blast. It was fun to do this together. Newspring has got it going on. 2nd year of their conference and it was totally sold out. Completely filled their 2,500 seat auditorium. They have the best guest service, volunteer culture I have ever seen. Way to go, Newspring.

This weekend we're going to continue in our series "Our Love Is Loud".

We're just taking a couple of weekends to push the refresh button on our church-wide understanding of expressing worship.

There are too many references to clapping, shouting, gladness and joy for us to think Biblical worship is supposed to be a "quiet" event.

Here's a fun litle video on "Worship Workout Extreme" we showed last weekend. This was part one. We'll be showing part two this coming weekend.

Don't miss church. It's too fun. Invite a friend!

Easter is coming and we are looking forward to the opportunity to reach people.

People in the South will come to an Easter service more readily than any other time.

We're looking forward to loving them into the Kingdom of God.

Here is a commercial we'll be running starting today that will run 40 times a day all the way up to Easter. It will be showing on:

The Weather Channel
Fox News Channel
TV Guide Network
ABC Family
Hallmark Channel
MTV
Nickolodeon
E!TV
USA Network
The Golf Channel - (Yeah, baby!)

Tomorrow promises to be a great day.

We are taking 56 people from our church to Unleashed. This is a one day conference held by Newspring Church.
Newspring has an amazing story. Started just 8 years ago in the small town of Anderson, SC (pop. 26,000) they have grown to 8,000 in Sunday attendance. Amazing!

We took a small group last year and loved it.

Love getting around great things God is doing. Love giving our guys exposure to what God is doing in the earth.

Should be fun.

I just want to give a big shout out to our amazing church.

Together we gave $14,725 in an offering to the Youth Champions program headed up by Chims Phiri. He told me this was the largest offering their ministry had ever received for Youth Champions.

Youth Champions gives support to high schoolers in Zimbabwe who have literally become orphaned by their parents dying from AIDS. Some of these households are being run by 13 to 15 year olds taking care of their younger siblings.

We are planning a trip to Zimbabwe in late August. A part of that trip is going to be about making a personal hands on investment of time and love in to those students in the Youth Champions program.

I want to brag on our church for a minute. We just do it! A lot of people talk about helping the poor. Our guys step up and do it.

When we called on our church to help underprivileged kids have presents this last Christmas – our church sponsored 541 children to the tune of $100 a child. Do the math on that! It wasn’t just money thrown at the kids, either. Dozens of people worked tirelessly to make this happen.

Way to go Rock Church! You guys are amazing.

Well, Blue Man Group was a great experience. Very creative, interactive, funny and excellent musicianship. Definitely a show worth seeing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Learned a lot - thinking about how to do church better - and had fun.

This weekend we are starting a new series on worship called “Our Love is Loud”. Looking forward to having a great time with this.

Worship is intended to be an amazing interactive experience. Not a performance from the stage but a participation of all of us giving great big praise to God.

Here’s the trailer for the series:

Looking forward to seeing these guys tonight. This is my first time to see them but I’ve heard great things. I’ll let you know how it went. They are all about the experience.

Going with a group of friends. Should be fun. Always love the experience of doing life with friends.

We live in an experience economy. Even Starbucks is not just about the coffee but about the whole experience.

Of course, part of my reason for going to this is to learn more about the "experience". We are always trying to upgrade the church experience. We want people to experience the goodness of God in every way possible. Our goal is to make Sundays the best 100 minutes of a person's week.

This weekend was amazing.

First, so enjoyed hanging out with the pastors at the roundtable in Birmingham. What a great group of guys! Looking forward to what the future may hold for connection with this amazing group of leaders.

These guys are a part of the “new breed” of spirit filled churches. So refreshing.

Then Chims Phiri (what a great name!) from Zimbabwe was with us for church on Sunday. Our church fell in love with him.

He was taking about the Holy Spirit and made this great observation: When the Holy Spirit brooded over the chaos in Gen. 1, He brought order to the chaos.

I love the Holy Spirit, His gifts, His power, His voice and His presence. But a lot of my previous experience with “spirit-filled” ministry has been the opposite of this idea of order being brought to chaos. The more chaos there was, the more it was considered “the Holy Spirit”.

Looking forward to our ongoing partnership with Chims and his church in Zimbabwe. We talked for a long time about a trip to Zimbabwe in August to equip leaders, minister to teens and strengthen their business leaders.

Then our volunteer fair on Sunday was a total hit. Hundreds of people checking out serving opportunities. Love the guys who have been serving for years. Love the new guys who want to get on the team.