My Worship Revolution

I kinda try to keep my politics fairly close to the vest around here.
I’m too opinionated.
I always end up ticking someone off.
And I learned years ago that it wasn’t worth it for me.
I still can’t help it sometimes.
But now I figure, it can’t hurt since the voting is over, right?  (Famous last words?)
Besides, I’m sure everyone else is blogging about it, too.
Might as well join the pack!

I doubt I keep it close enough to the vest for you not to know that my guy didn’t win.
Then again, both of them had some major weaknesses I wasn’t excited about.
But I’ve been saying for weeks that whoever wins will do fine.
I’ve been saying that I don’t believe one president can single handedly ruin us.
I’ve been saying God is in control.
Then Obama won.

Mixed feelings.
Huge day for us. First African-American president.  That truly is awesome and historic.
Although I was also disappointed earlier in the day reading about people who outright said they voted for Obama only cause they were excited to see an African-American president.  Is that really a sign that we have become color-blind?
But again, the fact that he is leader of the free world is very exciting only a generation away from the civil rights movement.
In that respect, I’m stoked.

But then the fear started to get in.
I let Facebook statuses and people’s opinions/fear tactics get in my head for an hour or two.
What will happen to our country?
What sort of massive mistake have we made?

Honestly, I know I’m in the minority, but I feel like W. has gotten a pretty unfair bad wrap.
And I’ve been irritated for several years now with the way people have attacked him.
That it has become OK to attack him personally completely outside of the issues.
Even cool to do so.

Now it’s my turn to practice what I preach and be on the other side.
I don’t believe any candidate can destroy what this country has built.
I will choose to be optimistic and hope for the best.
I will pray for our leader and do my best to get behind him.  That doesn’t mean I’ll agree always, but I’ll recognize him as the leader we have chosen.
And I’ll pray that he really can do some of the good things hes said he can.
Unity.
Momentum.
Progress.

And above all, whether it’s someone I voted for or not in office, I’ll keep in mind that I’m a citizen of the Kingdom of God before the kingdom of America.
I am optimistic, and excited for the future.

Of course you do have to admit, this is a pretty heavy blow for SNL.

Dude, this is awesome!

HT: JR Woodward

Enjoy your voting today y'all. 
Vote, then take the day off going around town getting all your free food!

Starbucks
Krispy Kreme
Ben & Jerry's
Dairy Queen
Woodstocks!!

So this year, Christmas is going to look a little different.
Our church will be talking about and participating in the Advent Conspiracy.
In addition to our church doing this, Rachel and I have been talking about it since last year and are pretty excited about what this means for us. 
Check out this embedded video:

So yeah, we want to take that pretty seriously this year.
That means a couple things for us.
Obviously, it means our gift giving is going to look a lot different this year.  So consider this fair warning to family and friends.
While we may not hit the bulls eye on every gift, we are trying to be more creative with our gift giving this year.  Giving gifts that will hopefully cost little and mean much.
And then redistributing our giving to people who need it world wide.
I can't wait to see how God is gonna bless it.

It also means this years Christmas wish list looks different.
I'll save that for part 2.
Look for that post later this week.

So, all of you, especially close friends and family…
Who else is in?

Let's take the story back.

I was quickly perusing a couple of blogs between tasks when I saw this video at Vicky Beeching's blog.

I hate hay.

Most of my SoCal friends and readers know Charlie Garrison.  Several Santa Cruz friends met him this year, too.  If you don’t know Charlie and his wife, Bridget…you need to.  They are one of the coolest couples, some of my best friends in the world, and God is all over their life with big things in store.

But there is one thing in particular that Charlie has sucked at in the past.  It’s called blogging.  This was his first attempt.  But he’s giving it another go.

So if you don’t know Charlie, get over to his new blog and get to know him.
If you do know him, and even followed his last attempt at a blog, go weigh in on this poll and encourage him to keep it up!

I can’t wait for Nov. 5th anymore!  Just with the props alone I am so tired of the ridiculous, non-stop commercials, YouTube videos, Facebook groups/status pleas, bumper stickers, signs, and clothing lines.  And I’m talking about from both sides of the big ones.  Half the time, the commercials and videos themselves make me want to vote for the other side because they’re just so irritating!

And welcome to my mailbox today…

Looking forward to November 5th!
What irritates you the most about politics today?

After my last triathlon, I ended up taking 3 or 4 (or maybe 5) weeks off from training.  After signing up to race again on Nov. 8th.  Big mistake!!  Last week I went for a couple of very painful runs and was realizing how much ground I have really lost.  It hit me that if there were the opportunity to jump in on a killer race immediately, I probably couldn’t hang.  Even worse considering I’m out again 2 weeks from today.  Today was a little better.  I shared with a friend that I recorded my new best mile today.  Apparently 8:22 is pretty lame to a former runner.  Good thing I was wrong.  My fastest mile is actually 8:15.

Now time for a triathlon spiritual analogy.  As I was running, it got me thinking about 1 Timothy 4:2, when Paul says “preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season”.  I can do the same thing at times in my spiritual life.  I dig into the word because I’m gonna be teaching on that passage soon.  I spend some extra time with Jesus cause I’ll be leading worship.  But sometimes I forget to just stay sharp and hang with Jesus because He is.  Because I’m meant to be.

In the same way that I won’t be ready to race a triathlon if I don’t continue to train, even out of season, and definitely won’t get better, I won’t be ready to meet the increasing challenges that God has for me if I don’t work to say spiritually fit as well.
So what are you doing to “be prepare?”  In season and out?

That being said, I need to get lots of Tri training in during the next couple weeks.  And just for fun, here’s another pic from Pacific Grove that I thought was kinda funny!

This year we will be having our Harvest Festival on Halloween night instead of the Sunday before.  Now we are a little behind this year since the Children’s Director usually gets it rollin, which we are without right now.  But there is a volunteer in our church named Pam who has stepped up big time to pull off an awesome event with a corn maze, a horse drawn hay ride, petting zoo, games, trunk or treating, raffles and more!

Now here husband, Bill, got the entrance to the event set up this week which also serves as a great publicity tool on the busiest street in Santa Cruz.  Check out the picture of where people will enter the event:

About a 16 foot tall pumpkin, as you can see, and people will enter from the mouth into a corn maze to get to the event in the back.  There are orange christmas lights around the outside of the pumpkin and around the eyes that light up at night.  And there will soon be banners hanging near it with info on the event.

October 31st.
6pm-8pm.
Be there.

Man…I still haven’t posted this?  My bad.  Really busy week.  Here’s the rest of it!

Andy Crouch

Just picked up his new book Culture Making a few months ago.  He had some good stuff to share on the topic of culture.

• We tend to condemn, critique, copy, or consume culture
• We need to be cultivating and creating culture
• The only time culture changes is when human beings decide to create more culture
• Culture is always created together
• All cultural good begins with small groups, usually 3.  Then moves up to 40, then 120.
• When you get home, don’t just tell people about your time at Catalyst with your 3…ask them what they have created this week, cause they have been.
• What have you cultivated?  What have you created?  Who is in your inner creative circle?

Matt Chandler

I had never heard of this guy before, but I am telling you, he brought it!!  Awesome speaker.  I thought it was interesting when I read on Ben Arment’s blog that their only regret was not giving Matt Chandler more time.  Great Bible teacher with some great insights and I now am subscribed to his podcast.  Wasn’t a fan of his following on twitter who seem to be a bit arrogant and kept posting about not knowing why he would be at this conference and they’re glad somebody was there to bring the Bible to all those evangelicals, but whatever.  Felt like I had stepped back into my C.C. Bible College days for a moment.

He taught from 1 Tim. 4.  He opened by sharing about baptizing some people with dramatic life change stories at their church, a witch, a drug addict, and then also baptizing a baptist kid who had grown up in the church.  The baptist kid hit him the hardest.  The idea that this kid could grow up all his life in church, go to Sunday School, VBS, etc., but just now understand Jesus because religion had gotten in the way of understanding a true relationship with Christ.  And so his point was, we need to and can even reach the kid growing up in our church.  Here are some good snippets from his sharing.

• Somehow doctrine has become synonymous with historical fundamentalism.
• If you’re after Jesus because he’ll gove you a better marriage or a happier life, you are after those things.  You are not after Jesus.
• Truth and depth is what young people want today.
• The greatest revealer of our heart is how we spend our money and how we treat people.

Andy Stanley
Andy Stanley of course came out to close out the conference.  In doing so, he shared the five quotes/leadership principles that are hanging in his office and have been bothering him lately.  Here they are:

• “To reach people no one else is reaching, we must do things no one else is doin.” -Craig Groeschel
• “The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.” -Al Reis
• “What do I believe is impossible to do in my field…but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business?” -Joel Barker
• “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do?  Why shouldn’t we walk out the door, come back in, and do it ourselves?” -Andy Grove
• “When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.” -Michael Hammer

So many great things and quotes that Andy had to add to all those, but that really is plenty to chew on right there.  I do love the idea of hanging some quotes/thoughts that really hit home in the office.  I am the type of person who is very inspired by them.

So it was a great several days at Catalyst.  There were tons of little things, interviews, games, meals, etc. that I can’t post all of here.  However, I will say the best part, as is always the case with conferences I go to, was the relationship building and networking.  It was fun to not only hang with Ed and Brandon, but also to see a bunch of friends and family from SoCal and learn together with good friends I don’t really see very often.  Here is a pic of all of us in the preferred seating section before the last session.  And yeah, I was behind the camera, so I decided to do a real quick and horrible Photoshop job to be there with the crew!  Different resolution, different lighting, but hey, whatever!