Turning Point Church of God in Walhalla is building a new church facility.  So, they will be selling their current facility.  They are offering a very good sales price for it.  It looks like a traditional brick church building, and we would have to do some things to make it look more “modern”, but it is in very good shape.  It is certainly worth a look. 

I just discovered this past week that the school system is most likely changing it’s policy towards churches and school use.  The max they will let a school stay now is probably going to be 3 years.  And, the usage rates are going up. Most likely by a good stretch.  I also found out today that we are probably not going to be able to meet at the school July 12^th, 19th, and 26^th because of them waxing the floors.  All of this makes the possibility for the church building even more of an option worth consideration. 

SOOOOO, they have offered to let us use their building for a “test drive” on Sunday EVENING July 12^th.  Since we don’t have the school that day anyway, we will just NOT meet that morning and, instead, have our worship service that evening there.  The address is 311 S John St in Walhalla.  You go about 2-3 blocks past Hardees (from Ingles)  and turn left onto S John St.  The church is across the street from the old Chicopee Mill (right in front of the Chicopee ball field). 

Ya’ll please be in prayer about this!  It doesn’t really matter to me where we meet, but if we could get a building for less than we pay at the school, we need to consider it at least!

So, NO Arise service for Sunday MORNING July 12^th, we will meet instead Sunday EVENING, July 12^th at 7:00 pm at the Turning Point Church of God building.  311 S John St, Walhalla.

Excited to see what God does!!!

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Hey peeps!  Here are the ARISE T designs.  Which do you like?  Guys?  Girls?  Colors?  Feedback Plez!

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 Storms come into all our lives. Maybe you are facing one right now. They have different names. Failure, Discouragement, Rejection, Divorce, Illness, Layoff, Depression, Broken Relationships, Debt.  And when the storm begins to rage into our lives, we feel afraid, out of control, and panic.  Storms cause us to feel like we are going to drown and never get through it.  Storms cause us to wonder why, why me, why did God allow this to happen?  Storms are no fun.  But, here is some good news for you… We Are Gonna Get Through This! Did you hear me?  You can get through this!  God will see you through this!  Join us at Arise this Sunday as we begin our new Series, and let’s get through this ____________ together!

Mother’s Day Sunday was a Red Carpet day for the moms of Arise!  We rented a like 40 ft long red carpet (props to Grand Rental for the discount for the church) and had an archway, guys dressed in suits as escorts, flowers, and chocolates!  What more could a woman want?! 

Larry Skinner and Keith Grubbs were dressed UP, looking good in their suits all spiffy!  They met each lady who arrived at church at JMB at the end of the red carpet outside, greeted them with a rose, and escorted them into the building!  When the ladies walked inside the school, three of our kids greeted them with a special box of gourmet chocolate candies from Sweet Treats and a “Happy Mother’s Day” wish!  It ROCKED!  We need to appreciate our moms BIG TIME!!!  When you got to this world you ALREADY owed her 9 months back room and board!  We then showed (this) video during the service!  It was really cool celebrating our moms like that!  Good day!

My heart is about to burst.  I truly believe that God wants to create a great AWAKENING in Oconee County!  A true REVIVAL turning people’s hearts to God. (Not BACK to God, because I don’t believe, for the most part, God has ever truly had our hearts!)  We are religious, but it is, all too often, a dead religion.  We think if we GO to CHURCH on Sunday, that makes us good with God.  In the south, we think if we prayed the sinner’s prayer back in VBS as a kid, then we are right with God and we can live like Hell.  After all, we got our “get out of jail free card”!  But that isn’t true!  We are not to just GO to church, we are to FOLLOW JESUS CHRIST!  Praying the Sinner’s Prayer isn’t the END, it is the BEGINNING!!  Admit it, for most, church is about the most boring place on the planet!  You ask friends to go to a Tiger game, it’s on!  Go to the lake?  Word!  Go to a Kenny concert?  Woot!  Come to church?  YAWN!!! 
We are PASSIONATE about NASCAR, Tiger football, Kenny Chesney, American Idol, the lake… foot, we are even passionate about little league!  I have seen some grown men reach pre-coronary levels of passion at little league games!  But church?  JESUS?  Yeah, right. 

The fault is with US as God’s people.  We give the world the impression that church is boring.  We give the impression that Jesus is, well, just ok.  We are the ones that people look at and say, is THAT what it means to be a Christ follower?  It is time to anoint JESUS CHRIST as the ROCK STAR of OC!!!  It is time to become PASSIONATE about JESUS!  It is time for JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR to sweep, and become the BIGGEST STAR, in OC! 

Foot, we get to a Clemson game three hours BEFORE the game starts and TAILGATE in EXPECTATION!  And, then Sunday we get to church 3 minutes AFTER the service starts!  We come home from the Valley hoarse with excitement, and we can’t stay AWAKE in church!  We pay 100 bucks to see Kenny in concert, but I wonder what we would do if we were asked to give $100 each to help put on a ROCKIN’ Summer event for the children of Walhalla?

When JESUS walked this earth, HE was a SUPERSTAR!!!  You might have loved Him, you might have hated Him, you might have wanted to die for Him, you might have wanted to kill Him, BUT YOU NOTICED HIM!!!  You could NOT be in His Presence and be INDIFFERENT to Him!  He healed the sick, He loved the hurting, He gave hope to the hopeless!  He would save a rich dude leader of the city one day, and redeem a prostitute the next, but He was ALWAYS STIRRING UP SOMETHING!!! 

After He left, His rag tag group of followers that NOBODY would have given a plug nickel for, CHANGED and ROCKED the WORLD for Him!!!  They DIED for Him!  They lived for Him!  He was their ROCKSTAR!!!
What would happen today if JESUS showed up BIGTIME in Walhalla?  What would happen today if His followers got radical, and became groupies of JESUS CHRIST, THE ROCKSTAR?!!  What would happen today if a leading business man of the city was SAVED one day, and then sitting at church right beside the town whore who was SAVED and REDEEMED the NEXT!!!  What if rich and poor, white and Hispanic, young and old, sat together and worshipped God at church on Sunday?  What if CHURCH was the hardest seat in town?  What if we saw lives CHANGED, marriages HEALED, souls SAVED, addicts FREED?  What if we went into every project in the county and IMPACTED the lives of every child there?  What if?  What if?  What if JESUS was the most famous person in Walhalla?  What if our youth looked at HIM as the ULTIMATE ROCKSTAR??? 

I plan to give the REST of MY LIFE to make JESUS the ROCKSTAR of Walhalla and the OC.  I am looking for people who want to join me!  We are starting a new series is 4 weeks called ROCKSTAR, Making Him Famous!  If your church is making JESUS famous, if it is PRAISING His Name and PREACHING His word, if it is ALIVE on Sunday, then PRAISE GOD!!!!  Get in there and help!  If it isn’t, then MAKE it that way!  If you can’t, then come join me! 
Are you ALIVE?  What would your kids say YOU WORSHIP????  What would they say YOU are FANATICAL PASSIONATE about?  It is time to make JESUS CHRIST THE SUPERSTAR of Oconee County!

I am JACKED UP!!!!  I am a GROUPIE for JESUS!  I am a JESUS FREAK! 

Hey peeps!  I want to ask everyone who reads this post to pause for 15 seconds and ask God if he would have you be a part of this.  Sunday at ARISE, about 45 minutes before the service, Michael and I were standing on the stage at JMB.  Michael was trying to pull a mic cable to move it, and it happened to be under his guitar stand.  When he pulled the cable, the stand turned over and his guitar, his 2300.00 guitar that he had sacrificed so much to buy, fell to the floor with a thud.  The neck had been broken.  A freak accident 45 min before service.  Michael was sick.  But, he regrouped, composed himself, and led us in worship with an attitude that just as a testament to his faith in Jesus.

Michael and Jess serve ARISE as volunteers.  They put more volunteer hours into the ministry of ARISE than anyone, with the exception of maybe my wife!  Michael is also working an outage right now at Duke, so he worked like 60 hours last week, getting up every day at 3:30, and still was there to serve the Lord at ARISE Sunday morning! 

Being a brand new church, our dollars are very limited.  We just don’t have 2300.00 to pay for a new guitar.  Now here is the deal, WE KNOW that God wil provide.  We KNOW that.  Our question is, would you like to be a part of it?  Would you like to be a part of helping do something that is truly a great thing to do?  Would you like to help “bring the music back”? 

You may be thinking, “Trav, buddy, I would love to.  But I just don’t have an extra two grand sitting around.”  Neither do I.  BUT, I remember once a boy giving Jesus his sack lunch and Jesus multiplying it to feed over 5000 people!  Would you be willing to give the equivalent of a pizza dinner? 

If only 100 people would give 20.00 each, we could buy Michael a new guitar!  Will you be one?  You are probably thinking, “You know, SOMEBODY should do that!”  The question is, will YOU be SOMEBODY??!!

I will go first, count me in for $20.00.  I will use my B-day money!  One down, 99 to go.  Who’s next?

Message me a comment here on my blog, or Facebook me, or email me at Travis@Arisechurch.tv if you want in!

Lord Jesus, I know you see the love that Michael and Jess have for you.  I know you see the desire of their hearts to serve you and help people to know you.  Multiply this meager 20 bucks Lord, into a new guitar that for years to come will proclaim your praise!

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Have you ever just wanted to know the basics about the whole “Jesus thing”?  What all the “saved” stuff means?  What it means to “follow” Jesus?  Have you ever wished someone would just simplify it for you?  Give you the stripped-down version?  If so, then check us out at Arise Church this Sunday as we begin a new series:  “STRIPPED”:  What it means to follow Jesus.

Good day at ARISE today.  Preached my heart out!  I can’t describe how burdened I feel for people to connect with Jesus.

Trying to build momentum.  We had some new people, some returning people, but a lot of regular people out today for various reasons.  We are right on the verge of being able to build mo’ and take off.  I believe God wants to create a move of God here and bring a true spiritual awakening to our county. 

I was discouraged after the service today and just wiped out physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  Not sure why.  I had a lot of people say that the message was really good.  Sunday afternoons are just weird for preachers.  I guess we just leave it all on the stage.

So glad to have Steve and Tammy Hightower and Keith and Rebecca Grubbs.  Sometimes people just don’t know how encouraging they can be to a pastor by just caring.  Keith and Rebecca even stayed until everyone left, helping with tear down.  Keith was like me, sweating a river.  He really worked his tail off helping out.  Pretty unreal for only the second time there.

Kevin and Kim Gasque are a church planter’s dream come true family.  They love ARISE, they have such passion and enthusiasm for what God is doing, they are growing in their faith, they bring people, they serve, they encourage me and Kris.  We just love them!  Kim had to work today and Kevin still came to help set up and was he taking care of their two year old daughter by himself!  I wonder how many guys woud have even come to church on a Sunday that their wife was working and they had a two year old by themselves.  Last week he moved his mom from Hilton Head and still made it a point to get home in time to be at church on Sunday and help set up and tear down.  They are just great and I think that they will become great friends to me and Kris for years to come.

Michael and Jess are just AWESOME.  They are the real deal and love Jesus.  They truly desire a move of God in our town and for the church to truly be the church to people.

I don’t know of ANYONE who can “bring it” with a song and move you any better than Jess.  I truly think that sometimes when she sings and “wails” on it that the angels of Heaven even stop to listen.  She is truly as gifted vocally as anyone I know anywhere.  Michael is just the real thing.  Steady.  Godly.  Wise.  He is a man of God.  I trust him on the stage as much as anybody I have ever known.  He is a Jesus freak.  And he is extremely gifted too.

M wife truly loves me.  You should have seen the care and tenderness she showed me when I bottomed out and was discouraged today.  I thank Jesus for her.  She is a woman of God.  I am blessed by God to have her be my wife.  God knew EXACTLY who I needed.  He tailor made her for me.  i LOVE u babe!

My sister came to the alter to pray today in response to the message.  Can’t tell you how that impacts me.

I am so burdened for people to know Jesus it hurts.  Honestly, I have to get a grip.  I feel soul burdened.  Restless.  It is weird.  I also feel a unreal burden for Christians to become passionate followers of Jesus.  I mean really LOVE Him wildly.  I mean be Jesus Freaks.  I have to be honest and say that most “churchianity” makes me sick!  Most people just GO to church instead of FOLLOW Christ.  There is a HUGE difference.  Churchianity sickens me.  JESUS should be the center of your life, first, nothing more important than Him.  For so many people it is just a Sunday thing.  No wonder the church is in a perpetual state of decline.  Christians should be PASSIONATE about JESUS!  If we were, maybe the world would notice instead of yawn at the sight of us!  My rant…

I love kids. Honestly, I LOVE kids.  If I was Santa, every day would be Christmas!  I want our house to swarm with kids!  I want our church to be a place that kids LOVE!!! 

I am preaching a funeral tomorrow for someone I have never met as a service to a friend.  That is hard. Pray for me.

Got to say that the more I am around Ted Booker, the more I like him.  He went out to the field when my nephew Zack got hit by a baseball the other day.  He didn’t have to do that.  He also doesn’t even really know me, and he is always encouraging me about ARISE.  He is a real good dude.  I like him.

If you need a church to learn about God, a place that will accept you where you are, but also help you draw closer to God.  We WANT you at ARISE. 

 If you are looking for a place to make a difference with your life and want to be a part of a true movement of God, and not just play church, then we NEED you at ARISE.

Happy birthday mom.  I love you!

Good night peeps!