jasondunton.com: Two Years and Counting!

Wow, this is an update that I have been wanting to write about for a while now. We finally got the pictures from our 2nd Anniversary Celebration at Harvest Houston and I wanted to share them as well as the service break down with you!

Our new sermon series banner

On Sept 12. we celebrated the 2nd Anniversary of Harvest Houston, along with kicking off the new sermon calendar. This year (as well as some of next) we will be taking on the Gospel of John verse by verse in a series called 'Revealed: A Glimpse of the Almighty'. There's a full description of the series here.
Being that it was such a big day in the life of our young church, the staff wanted to put together a special service to truly celebrate all that God had done in our brief history and all that we expect and are excited for Him to do in our future. It really was an amazing day of worship and fellowship with the body of believers.

Our newly designed bulletins
(with sermon notes pages inserted)

The service itself was designed with the specific intention of pointing people to the truth of God's glory and transcendence. We wanted our people to grasp that He is Creator, above all, and that everything was created BY Him and FOR Him. The title of the message was 'Glory Beyond Our Comprehension' from John 1:1-18 and can be listened to here. The sermon points (in case you wanted to follow along) were that God's glory is:
i. Eternal (vv. 1-3)
ii. Brilliant (vv. 4-8)
iii. True (vv. 9-11)
iv. Life- Giving (vv. 12-13)

New offering bags

v. Visible (vv. 14-18)

When planning this service we decided to implement several unique elements, which for me turned out to be a lot of fun (lots of work, but fun still). Back in April I had been a part of an 'Impromptu Choir' during a service at Harvest Elgin, IL while I was there for Harvest U (the annual Harvest training conference for Harvest Churches). The idea behind an 'Impromptu Choir' is to invite members from the congregation to join the worship team in leading the worship set that day. One of the purposes behind this is to continually teach your people that worshiping God is something you participate in, not something you spectate. So during the weeks prior I had asked a few key members to be 'instigators' and come forward as soon as I was done with the invitation and instruction for the choir. The response we saw was incredible! We usually run anywhere from 95-125 people on a Sunday morning, so I was expecting 6-8 people to come forward (apart from the 3 that I had asked ahead of time). Instead, we had close to 20 people come forward and take part in this act of worship. I was blown away. Thats 20% of our people!

Another element that was unique to this service was a video that I made as a sermon opener called "How Great You Are' designed to magnify the greatness of God. You can check it out below:

How Great You Are from Jason Dunton on Vimeo.

The last element that was used in this service was a song that I wrote called 'The Name of Jesus'. This was used as the closing song of the service. At Harvest we always stress the "power of the close" in that it really brings everything that has gone on that day to a head and nails it down with a response. At Harvest Houston, my Pastor and I always discuss the close and plan it together every single week. is The story behind the song (as well as the track so you can listen to it) is in a previous post so you can check that out if you'd like.

Here's the run-down (w/ pics) for the service:

WELCOME VIDEO/ COUNTDOWN

WORSHIP SET:

The Lord Reigns w/ greeting during (Gateway Worship)

The Greatness of Our God (One Sonic Society)

Worship Rises (Joshua Seller)

Our God (Chris Tomlin)

Glory to God Forever (Steve Fee)

ANNOUNCEMENTS/ OFFERING

OFFERING SONG:

Hosanna (Hillsong)

HOW GREAT YOU ARE (video introduction for sermon)