I called a two week fast this past Sunday.  I did not do a build up to it.  I did not get a cool graphic or a mailer or write a book.  I did not give a pep talk or do a teaching on fasting.

There is nothing wrong with any of that but I did not do it.

Why?

Fasting is not a church growth strategy, it is a spiritual discipline.

There is a time to teach on fasting, prayer, submission, tithing, worship, and sacrifice but at some point folks at least some folks should be mature to use these things effectively when the Lord calls for it and for the people of The Mission Delray, that time is now.

This next two weeks is critical to the life of this church.  We are in a serious transition period and I don’t want to miss it. That is enough reason to fast.

But in prayer this weekend the Lord told me to call a fast.  That is a better reason to call it.

So what should you fast?  I can’t tell you.  And if I were you I would not tell anyone else what you are fasting.

Some may want to skip certain meals, like lunch for a few days. Others may do a Daniel Fast.  You could cut out certain foods that you enjoy or limit your portions.

You can also combine this with a spiritual discipline like extra prayer or cut out some things that crowd out your God time like facebook or television.

In addition to fasting I have decided to cut out Facebook for the next few weeks.   I have stuff that will auto post there but I will not be wasting my life trolling.  I think God wants to birth some things in this period and I don’t want to miss it.

Whether you attend The Mission Delray or not why don’t you join us?  You never know what God may do in this time.

Twitter can be a fantastic tool for promoting your book. But I see very, very few authors and publishers doing this well. They post some random tweets with no singular call to action and then wonder why their return on investment was so low.

Instead, Twitter can be a key marketing tool for driving sales and the bestseller lists. I have participated in both. BUT this only works if you take Twitter into account early enough in the product design and marketing process.

Here are nine ways to insure that you get the full benefit of Twitter for your marketing campaign:

Make sure the book’s title is short enough to tweet. One word titles are perfect (e.g., StandOut, Unbroken, Rework). Short phrases can also work (e.g., House Rules, Confidence Men, Do the Work). Long titles make it tough (e.g., Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There or, my personal favorite, All You Can Do Is All You Can Do But All You Can Do Is Enough!)
Use a hashtag so you can collect the buzz. A “hashtag” is used to mark keyword or topics within tweets. It was created organically by Twitter users to categorize messages. Messages with the same hashtag show up together in Twitter search. If you click on a hashtag, you will see all other messages with that hashtag. It is best if you can use a word in the book title or a shortened form of the title.
Make sure the author’s twitter username is relatively short. If it goes beyond 12–13 characters, consider using the first initial or two plus the last name (e.g., @MWBuckingham). The goal is to allow as much room as possible for the actual tweet.
Decide on a landing page. Where do you want to direct your followers for more information? It could be a custom website for the book (e.g., EntreLeadership), a product page on your main website (e.g., Nancy Duarte) or a the product page on an e-tail site like Amazon.
Use a URL shortener. I use bit.ly, but I have mapped a custom domain to it, so I get the value of branding. Mine is mhyatt.us. This enables me to turn something like this:

Here is the deal with this post, I woke up this morning with the beginnings of my wife’s cold and I began to feel worse throughout the day. I don’t feel like mincing words. Believe what I write here or not.

It is really hard to recap a service like we had yesterday.

Here is the deal, if you are going to be a church that preaches the baptism in the Holy Ghost, being Spirit lead, Kingdom minded, then every now and then your services are going to look like they came from another Kingdom and God may not tell you ahead of time how that is going to work.

The service really started earlier in the week. I began to experience a strong presence of the Lord before He started telling me He wanted to do some fresh things at The Mission.

I then began to notice strong angelic activity. What that activity was exactly will have to be for another post.

Friday night intercession was a real confirmation that the Spirit of God was going to move in a mighty way. I had everyone get on the mic and begin to prophecy over the people who would be in service that Sunday and release the gifts God had given them.

One of the things that blessed me was how eager the people of The Mission Delray are to see other people walk in whatever gifting they walk in. This is truly a group of people who want to give away what God has given them.

Sunday morning I was so overcome with the presence of God it was hard to function. I had to have Tracey help me pick out an outfit.

At service I was back in my little room getting ready for service. I cannot exaggerate how present the Spirit of God was. At one point my assistant came in the room and as soon as he came through the door he fell to the ground.

Fast Forward

Here is a link to worship. I left on it the music during the offering.

Right before it was time for me to go on stage I take a deep breath, run up and begin to flow with the Holy Ghost.

Here is the video of the service. The good news is that I taught long enough that we were able to have a podcast. It should be up soon.

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