RobWestbrook.com

Rob Westbrook is the church planter and pastor of LifePointe Church, in Amory, Mississippi. He is married to Teresa and they have one daughter, Lauren.

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Great Easter at LifePointe

We had a fantastic day LifePointe Easter Sunday. For the first time we had two Sunday morning services. The first one began at 8:30am. I expected that service to be the lower attended of the two, which it was, but we still had at least 75 present (my brother Jeff counted and he's always pretty accurate). We also had our first baptism of the day in the first service. In between services there was a breakfast buffet served and it was way good. The second service was threatened because of the band and preacher's overeating! The second service began with two more baptisms. There was a different vibe in the second service. I think the first service fired us all up for the second and it just rolled well. Again Jeff counted at least 130. There was definitely some overlap with people serving the first service and participating in the second, but the final count is in the 205 area, by far our largest Sunday worship service crowd. I'm so proud of all our volunteers. We had many step up and serve, some serving in some capacity, such as our KidzPointe, for both services. The cooks, the greeters, the nursery, the LittlePointe teachers, the band, everyone really poured into this service. Thanks to all you guys for everything. For the first time we did some direct mailing to promote our Easter service. We mailed 2000 postcards in our particular zip code. We got around 150 back or failed to get out. Our average attendance is in the 120 range. We had 85 over our average. That would be a conversion rate of 4.5%. Not bad. In addition we had 1000 personal invitations, business card-sized cards matching out mailer. These were used by our guys as personal invites. No matter the conversion rates or effectiveness, we had many new faces in the crowd and the Gospel of Jesus Christ was proclaimed and heard. Now we see if the real "conversion rate" happens, those who come to Him. Below, you can watch our Easter service. This is the second service, with the baptism from the first service edited into the beginning. We're still working on camera placement and blurriness. But it's watchable. Watch the video and enjoy a Sunday service at LifePointe!
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How I Spent My Sunday

I had a good day today. Started off with the worship service at LifePointe. Here's a picture of the band practicing before the service.
[caption id="attachment_587" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="The LifePointe Band Warms Up"]
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We had a good full crowd and a good service. The music was off the hook. I delivered one of my most difficult messages: The Trinity. I hope it didn't come off as a professor addressing a class. The subject matter is sometimes academic and I tried not to be too overwhelming. I personally thought it went really good. After the morning service, a group of guys and I broke out the projector and watched the Daytona 500 in our building. We projected the race on a twelve foot wall, with a diagonal measurement somewhere in the sixteen foot range. Here's a few pictures of our NASCAR small group meeting.
[caption id="attachment_588" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="12 foot screen on right, 50 inch plasma on left"]
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Here's another showing our comfy setup. We dragged the couches from our lobby into the worship center and kicked back. It was great.
[caption id="attachment_589" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Mike, Vernon, Hans, Jeff, and Cory."]
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I left when they parked the cars because of rain and made a funeral home visit. I then went home where I played Guitar Hero III and Madden on our (to us) new XBox360. Now I'm headed to bed. I'm already looking forward to next week. God is starting something in me right now and I can't wait to see what He's going to bring out of this. I'm really connecting with what I consider some possible influencers in LifePointe and God is working in their lives, too. This could be the start of something huge for us. I'll keep you posted. Hope to get back into the blogging frame of mind this week. I've been so busy the past few weeks that I've not had time to blog. Getting home every night at 9pm or later really curtails my time to blog. We'll give it a try this week, hopefully. Have a good, influential, Godly week this week.
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Sunday Update

Over the past month or two I've quit doing the Sunday rundown or update. Frankly, I ran out of superlatives. Great, awesome, fantastic; all nice words to use but lose there meaning after a while. So I plan on giving updates only when I feel something great really does happen. Like Sunday. I don't know what it was (yeah, I do, God!) but we probably had the most first time guests in our service in months. And the service went very, very good. I think we had kind of drifted a little bit with our worship service, so we tightened it up Sunday. So good. And the final song, well, you just had to be there. It was, can I say it, awesome. We had a good response at the end of the service. I think we got back into the groove Sunday. We've got to keep our focus on our reason for the Sunday service: a safe place where people can forget there troubles, worship the Lord, hear from the Lord, and hopefully for some, meet the Lord.
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Sunday Rundown

It was so good to be back at LifePointe after missing the last two weeks for the mission trip. There's no place like home. Very good service. Worship was awesome and everything flowed well. We've come a long way on the way the service flows from one element to the other. The band was tight and the songs were spot on. My message was from Psalm 100, "Unconditional Thanksgiving." God used the mission trip to show me many things, one being the African's thanksgiving to the Lord, despite there circumstances and needs. The synopsis of my message was this: "We gives thanks to God for what He does, they give thanks to God for who He is." And that's what Psalms 100 is all about. God's attributes are the primary motive for thanksgiving. We, evangelical, American Christians, need to make the transition from conditional thanksgiving, thanking God when He does something for us, to unconditional thanksgiving, thanking God for who He is. To borrow a line from Rick Warren, it's not about us. After the service we had a Thanksgiving lunch. The food was awesome and abundant. Final count: 127, but I believe more came in a little later. The worship center was almost full.
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Sunday Night Review

Some highlights from a very solemn, wonderful service at LifePointe.
I'm more impressed with our worship and worship team as every new service happens. Good stuff. My message was centered around communion, coming out of 1 Corinthians 11. I had planned on it being a short message so that there would be more time at the end for communion. Shortening messages is not my strong suit and I'm never happy when I'm done. I think the message got across but I just wasn't happy with it. It just didn't turn out the way I wanted. But God was glorified and Jesus was lifted up. That's an end result I'm always shooting for. For the first time, LifePointe observed the Lord's Supper. The observation was very different from anything I've ever done but I feel it was much more meaningful. Everyone who participated came forward, broke off a piece from a round loaf of bread, dipped it in a huge chalice, and ate. Very moving. At the end of the service, I was surprised by the church with a very generous gift for Pastor Appreciation Day. They didn't see it but I cried afterward. Just thinking about where we were a year ago and where God has brought us now, it's just overwhelming. A year ago we had maybe 15-20 show up on Wednesday nights. Now we're searching for empty chairs to put people. Of course, I didn't do it alone. There's such a fine group of people who ARE LifePointe, who heard God's call to get in with this crazy, unorganized, big dreaming, fast talking guy on a brand spanking new church. And to believe they followed through. Wow, guys, look around. God's just getting started with you. Sunday night we held our monthly KidzClubb and this one was a good one. We've got some VERY talented people in our church and they really shine in KidzClubb. If you missed it, shame on you! This ministry to a very important segment of our church, our children, is so good. Look for the next one in December and make plans to be there. You will have fun and you might even show emotions of joy and elation. Yeah, I know, but you might. Now, this week will be terribly busy. I've got to get all the loose ends tied up early because I'm out of here Thursday. Still got a shot to get. And I haven't even started thinking about the supplies I'll need to take with me. I'll be on African soil, barring any problems, next Friday night. Our itinerary shows 50 minutes between flights in Amsterdam and I don't know if that's realistic. We'll see. Nevertheless, please pray for our African team. We really want to see God do crazy, tremendous things while we're there. As I've written earlier, I'll try to keep the blog updated while in Africa. The internet was spotty over there my last trip in 2005. It may be better now, we'll see. I'm hoping my Blackberry has an African setting somewhere.
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