My Worship Revolution

Fun day yesterday taking the day off and celebrating the fourth with friends and family.  In the morning we went to the Matulich home in Long Beach where Sarah and Bob have hosted a parade for the past 21 years.  All the neighborhood kids decorate their bikes, families sit on their lawns and wait for the parade to come by, and usually it’s led by a fire truck.  Unfortunately the truck wasn’t able to make it this year.

Rachel and I drove the Revolution Scion in the parade, which also provided the music for the occasion.  We did this last year, too.   At the end, we all end up at the Matulich home with lots of food to eat!  I just love the feel of all the neighbors hanging together and celebrating.  It’s like a little taste of old school Americana.  Here’s a few pics:

After relaxing at home for about an hour we went by the Platt home to hang and take a dip.  We finally ended up at the home of Stephanie Corns’ parents.  They live in the unincorporated part of Whittier so it isn’t really monitored very well.  So every year people pitch in from the neighborhood and a guy goes to Vegas and get a bunch of fireworks, and I’m talking like the kind you see in the big professional shows.  These things were going off all over the place!  We weren’t the only ones.  It was insane…like a freakin warzone or something!

I took some video of it on my cell phone.  So this video is just some bad quality 5-8 second clips strung together to give you an idea of what the neighborhood was like. The end clip shows some of the fireworks we set off on a ladder in front of the house.  Good times.

That’s right friends. The phone call that has been a long time coming finally came today. I received a call from the powers that be at “The Happiest Place on Earth” because it was time for me to come off the sub list at Playhouse Disney: Live On Stage. That being the last show left that I was on the books for, it means I no longer work for the Rat.

Really it just came down to the fact that I never could fill in cause I’m just too busy. Between being in full time ministry, going to school, and having a wife and a kid on the way, not to mention another side project or two, it just wasn’t working out anymore.

Through the ups and the downs of working at the park, it really was a good three and a half years there. It paid the bills quite well for a while and definitely had it’s perks. It was also a great outlet to perform and even hang with some great people I worked with. Anyway, while it will be missed, it’s a good thing overall. It will give me one less thing to divert focus, and it’s always nice to leave a place on good terms, which I did. I’ll miss you Bear. And Luna too.

Goodbye, goodbye, good friends goodbye
Cause now it’s time to go
But hey, I say, well that’s OK
Cause we’ll see you very soon I know

The lie we talked about this past Sunday at church was , "I am not a minister."  We are all called to use our gifts to be ministers of God’s grace in whatever context we live in every day.

As part of this Sunday’s service, we decided we wanted to get an idea what people outside of church think a minister is, or what they think of when they hear the word minister.  So Nader Twal and I went out to Pine Ave. in downtown Long Beach to ask some people.  Check out the video below.  Some of the answers we got were really funny.

I remember being on tour in Indiana with Young Americans and visiting the pickle factory with my homestay in Dekalb, Indiana. It was the exciting claim to fame of that town…we are talking about the midwest here friends.  Did you know they have flavored pickles?  The brown sugar cinnamon was actually really good.

Anyway, I bring that up because I thought about it when I saw this video.  I’ve always wondered if some of those daytime talk shows were actually actors up there pretending to be crazy people.  As of today, I’m almost sure they are.  Afraid of pickles?  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Check out the video below from Maury.  I think it’s kinda hilarious.  If this is a real person, that rocks.  Talk about issues!

Several months ago, Dave Trotter teamed up with his good friend Keith Page, founding pastor of ROCKharbor church in Costa Mesa to start up KeithAndDave.com.  The idea being to provide resources and relationship for multiple church planters.  Check out the site to learn more.

Part of the plan is monthly events for planters and those desiring to plant.  The event is called R&R (resources and relationships) with Keith and Dave, and they switch between Orange and L.A. County each month with the same material at each.  Today I hung with them for the first L.A. County R&R.  It was great meeting some other guys with similar passions, hearing some great stuff from Keith and Dave, and reflecting on the God-sized vision that God has given me both for now in Long Beach, and someday in church planting, wherever that ends up being.  Here’s a few notes.

This first topic was Understanding Your Unique "DNA". 

• Destiny – vision that inspires you

Vision = Mental picture of a preferable future that God uniquely calls you to

• Navigational Chart – values that guide you

It is important to be aware of the values you have in different aspects of ministry.  They gave ten specific areas to think about: evangelism, spiritual formation, assimilation, preaching/teaching, worship/programming, social justice/compassion, global impact, leadership development, church government, and hot buttons.

• Approach – strategy that propels you

There are lots of strategies out there, and there is often not one that is better than the other.  It is really ultimately about how God has wired you to do ministry.

For me there were lots of great reminders and some new stuff there.  The greatest thing for me was realizing that discovering your unique DNA is a process that takes time.  There are areas of minstry and spirituality that I know just who i am in Christ and others that I’m still discoveing how he made me.  There are areas of ministry that God has given me great vision and others that I’m not so sure about.  Of course most of the stuff I don’t know about I know aren’t really pertinent to where I am now, I just really want to see the end a lot of the time.  Perhaps that’s why God doesn’t let me – I don’t need to and it would probably just distract me more for who He’s called me to be today.

Rachel and I were just talking last night about getting over to the hospital next week for the tour of the baby area.  Little did we know we would be getting a private tour in no time!  Last night we ended up heading to the emergency room with a concern, thinking they’d just check her out and send her home.  Better safe than sorry we figured.

They sent us to Labor and Delivery where they hooked her up on some montiors.  We found out that unbeknownst to her, she was actually having contractions like every 2-4 minutes.  They ended up giving her a shot to relax her, and then wanted to keep her monitored.  So we spent the night here last night.  She’s been a lot better since the shot, so we’re still here waiting for some check ups and they’re keeping an eye on her.

It seems like it won’t be too major, but your prayers for Rachel would be greatly appreciated.  Luckily, I was able to get hooked up with wifi in here, so I’m able to be a little productive.  Right now we’re really just doing a whole lot of "hurry up and wait. " So hopefully we’ll find something more out soon.  Thanks for the prayers!

***UPDATE***

We’re out of there now and things are all good.  Rachel just needs to stay hydrated and be aware of what her body’s doing. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers.

As a side note, it actually was kinda nice to get an idea what the place is like though.  The nurses and doctors were great.  It was a bit awkward listening to our neighbor have a baby.  It was almost ike being at a live taping of a TLC show or something.

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.