My Worship Revolution

So it’s been almost 2 weeks now in our new offices/ministry center, "The Hub."  We now have 2500 square feet of office and 2500 square feet of warehouse where the band will practice, youth will meet, and seminars can be held.  After 2 years being cramped up in the "single-wide" it has been so different actually having my own office for a change!

I’m pretty stoked about the warehouse being all set up, but I’m not too excited about all the work that’s gonna go into getting it finished. The plan is to have it all organized with a new stage built, lights hung and working, sound system set up and ready to go, and painted and decorated in like a week and a half. If you have skills, let me know, please!

Here’s a shot of the trailer to give you an idea of the space that like 6 of us were crammed into:

And here’s a few pics from The Hub:

Welcome to The Hub.  (We’ll have a sign up there soon enough.)

Team meeting area.

My office!  (Soon to be decorated in Tiki wonder.)

The warehouse.

Still some decorating and fixing up to do.  I’ll post some pics when that’s done.  We’ll be hosting an "open house" for everyone sometime next month.  In the mean time, it’s just awesome to have a great facility to be doing ministry out of!  We are definitely growing and God is doing great things.

This past Saturday we got together for our life group bonfire.  It was actually a gathering of three life groups that have multiplied out of a group that started in our condo in downtown Long Beach. We probably had 15 or so people come out and we had a blast throwing the football, making s’mores, and playing some worship at the end of the night.

A few days before the bonfire, I realized nobody had talked about getting wood for the fire.  As I asked around, I was made aware that there were some headboards around that were gonna be thrown out, so we loaded up the back of my truck after cutting off the legs.  Unfortunately we didn’t have the saw to cut them in half, so we had some pretty large board to try and figure out burning in the firepit.

So after putting the few small pieces we had in the pit and dousing it with lighter fluid, we decided we would start by making a teepee of these rather large boards.

That made for a good looking big fire for about 2 minutes till the boards collapsed and came tumbling out of the pit.  Kinda dangerous, but it was hilarious to see us trying use other boards to control the wood.  We finally found that the best way to go about it was to just lay it over the pit and let it burn til it could fold into the fire.  Good times!  Lots of laughs.  Our life group rocks!  Here’s a few other pics from the night.

Stephen displays his faith in God.
(His foot’s not really on fire, but that picture looks pretty cool!)

Our fire was ragin all night!

So Bret showed me this mock up tonight during worship rehearsal of what the future video iPod is supposed to look like.  It’s widescreen, has a touchpad screen, shows movies like the picture above shows and then flips upright like the old ones for music.

I already have to live with my free shuffle that has no screen at all and lust after video iPod’s that I want.  Maybe the reason I haven’t gotten one yet is Rachel heard about this one, so she’s waiting for it to come out to bust out hundreds of dollars I didn’t even know we had and tell me to go get one and enjoy it!  Or probably not.

Read more about it here.

Here it is.  My first official Typepad post.  If you’re here, you probably got here from the blogger design to check it out.  Let me know what you think.  Still haven’t decided if it would be worthwhile or not, and the top of this page I’m looking at tells me I have 14 days to decide.

Just let me know some of your general thoughts and/or answer any of these questions that mght be helpful:

1. Is the overall appearance any better or worse?
2. Is there a difference in ease or ability to navigate the page?
3. Is the extra info (pictures/books/music – some of which isn’t up yet) worthwhile/interesting?
4. If you are a blogger, what do you use/recomend and why?
5. Would you rather see a Wham, New Kids On The Block, or Wilson Phillips reunion concert?

I’m not sure what the last question had to do with anything at all.  Thanks for stopping by!  Leave a comment here or back at the other page.

OK, so I haven’t had many posts lately, and this time it’s not because I haven’t had anything to say.  In wanting to improve my blog more, I’ve been thinking about switching over to Typepad because I’ve seen a lot of other blog designs I really like that use them.

So this site has been down as I had to switch over all my posts.  The only bummer about Typepad is it does cost money, but I have some birthday cash to put toward it if I decide it’s worth it.

So that’s where you come in.  Go check out the beginnings of it (I still have more to do and want to try and have it more hashed out this week being that I only have 2 weeks left on the free trial) and let me know if you think it’s worth it.  I would love to hear from some people who just read my blog with an opinion on designs as well as some Typepad users who I know are out there.  Here’s the things I like about Typepad so far that make me consider changing:

1. Three column design – something I don’t think that Blogger offers.
2. Photo albums – kinda fun to make those available on the sidebar
3. "Books I’m Reading"/"Music I’m Listening To" area on sidebar – this is one I’ve seen on lots of Typepad users blogs, but I haven’t actually figured out how to do it yet.  If you’re one of them, I’d love some input!
4. Categories – may be useful for people interested in a specific topic or looking for an old post for me to be able to categorize posts, even though not being an organization person, the idea of figuring out all the categories that should be there stresses me out already!
   
5. Ability to preplan posts to automatically post at a certain date and time – just seems like kind of a cool tool I guess.
   

I guess those are the major ones for now.  So check it out by clicking here (keeping in mind it’s still under construction and I don’t have much time to work on it right now), then leave a comment there or come back here to let me know what you think.  You know, that’s just like me…start bloggin or doing whatever just for fun – for free – but then I get into it a little more and I gotta try and do it just a little bit better.  Anyway, thanks for the feedback.  Hope you have fun!

Well, I guess this is kinda older news, but it is just pretty necessary that it receives a post of it’s own.  After years of trying to fight the trend, I’ve pretty much turned to the dark side.  Yesterday was the one week anniversary of Dave and I getting our refurbished 15" Macbook Pro‘s to replace the old Dell laptops.

I grew up on PC’s.  My friend Brian has tried to convince me for years that Macs were the way to go, but i just wouldn’t listen.  Over time, though, I slowly began to realize that espescially for the type of stuff I like to spend my time doing – music, video editing, pictures – Macs really were the way to go.  Just a few weeks ago, I was talking computers with some friends and out of my mouth slipped the phrase, "Apple has definitely cornered the market on the ‘cool factor.’"  Rachel looked at me in disbelief and commented on how far I had come since she first met me.

And so now, I guess I’m officially a Mac user.  And it’s hard to admit it, but I have to say, I love my new Macbook Pro.  I’ve now moved out of the denial phase.  The only thing left to complete the conversion would be to actually spend my own money on a Mac and get one for our home.  It will be a while before we can afford that, so in the mean time, I guess I’ll just have to tolerate our home Dell as we consistently restart it in hopes that it might actually do what it’s suposed to.  Sorry for the long post to say I got a new laptop.  I’m done now.

Last night in life Group, as we have been going through Ephesians in our current series "Identity Theft," we talked about the truth that you are not what you do.  Your job, your actions, your past do not identify you.  You are who you are in Christ.  It hit me that when we come to that place, we can be who we’ve been called to be even when everything else gets taken away from us suddenly.

At the end of the night, Hector asked us to pray for Ruben.  Ruben has been coming to Revolution for a couple weeks now.  Ruben rides the bus to church.  Ruben is homeless.  Hector has had the chance to get to know Ruben because he lives in the parking lot near Sturdy Furniture, our churches ministry where Hector works.  I found out that Ruben used to be a major league pitcher.  He busted his shoulder, I figure losing his "identity", and life went sideways.

But lately, he has been coming to our church.  He even dumped out a whole bottle of beer because he couldn’t bring it on the bus.  But he wanted to come to church.  Rachel and her mom were at Sturdy on Sunday, and he was so excited to invite them to ride the bus and come to church.  I truly believe, as does Hector, that God is doing something huge in Ruben’s life.  I am so thankful that we have a church community that has allowed him to come and be with us.

I found out last night that Ruben had a stroke yesterday morning.  I don’t know how he’s doing.  I don’t know where he is.  If I find out, I’ll update you.  Please pray for him.  Pray for his health.  Pray that he would continue to draw closer to God.  I thanks Jesus in advance for the work He has began that I believe He will finish.

How many more Reuben’s are there out there?  How many people have lost so much because of their loss of identity?  How many people just don’t know who they are created to be as children of the king of the universe?  How many of them never find out because we are scared to talk to them?  I thank God for our bus ministry and the work they are doing.  I thank God for a place that Reuben can feel safe to be and to seek.

UPDATE: Got this e-mail from the folks at Sturdy today:

Ruben is doing better, He did fall on his face and broke his nose during his seizure.It looks like he will be getting out of the Hospital By the end of the week..If any one would like to visit or call him , he is @ Lakewood Regional medical center…Under Ruben Alvarez…. Let’s Keep praying for him and encourage him, him when we do see him on sunday !!!!

A good start, however, is the e-mail I found in my inbox when I got online this evening.  That’s right friends, after quite a dry spell, I’m back in the game with win #5 at inBubbleWrap.  Check out the book below.  Catch y’all again soon!

[more info]

So I really haven’t posted anything on my blog in the past about my TV addictions. Luckily, all my shows just ended so hopefully I’ll have more time for real life. I do believe though, that the greatest TV show ever to grace the screen of homes across America is 24. During the season I spend my whole week looking forward to getting home from class Monday night to find out what wonders Jack will perform next.

I have seen many great posts concerning Jack Bauer (including a recent post by Jamie). Just today, though, I read a post by Mark Driscoll depicting Jack as a type of Christ. This is something I’ve always known, but never put my finger on it quite the way Mark did. You gotta check out the post: 

With the fifth and arguably best season of the hit television show 24 now concluded, Jack Bauer can take a much needed shower, get something to eat, and power up his cell phone battery which magically lasts forever. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I would like to offer the suggestion that perhaps 24 is incredibly popular because Jack Bauer is a lot like Jesus, as the following correlations indicate: [read more]

Man…I can’t wait for next season to start!!!

Today was a great day:

6:30 am – Surfing at Bolsa Chica State Beach

11:00 am – Spork (church picnic): Fried chicken, flag football, and volleyball at Heartwell Park on a gorgeous summer day with a couple hundred great friends.

5:00 PM – A quick dip in the Platt’s pool to beat the heat (what was left of it anyway).

8:30 pm (now) – Having pizza with some friends at the pad. 
We’ll probably pop in Pirates of the Carribean tonight, during which I’ll get in a little cat nap (seen it MANY times…and love it!) 

After that I’ll finish up some stuff for tomorrow morning, spend a little time with Jesus, and get some sleep for tomorrow.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a fun, active day with lots of friends.  I think it’s been a pretty refreshing day for an extrovert like me, even if it has been slightly tiring and I have a sunburn.  Life is good.  I’m gonna go join the friends for some pizza now.