My Worship Revolution

Early in the morning, before we hit the train bridge for family shots, Joel and Kenny took some studio shots of the boys, especially Micah.  That was really the primary reason they came.

Here’s a few of my faves of Micah.

A few weeks ago, Joel and his business partner and friend Kenny came up to visit and take some shots of the boys and the fam.  There are so many killer shots, it’s hard to even decide which one’s to post.

I’ll share some of my favorite shots of the family he took that afternoon out at the trestles by the boardwalk late that morning.  Then I’ll have a few more posts later this week with shots of the boys.
And eventually I’ll get em all on Facebook, too.

Photos by TenEleven photo.  Hire them.  Wedding.  Engagement.  Barmitsfa. Quinceneta.  Whatever.  They’re money, baby.

Click on pictures to enlarge em.

This past weeks message focused on the topics of heaven and hell.
In addition to last week's video, we also asked those people what they thought about heaven, hell, and life after death.  Here's what they had to say:

One of the biggest impacts of my faith early on were some books I read by Randy Alcorn, primarily Deadline.  The book presents some amazing thoughts on heaven and possibilities of what it could be like.

I tend to think that because of our lack of understanding in our theology of heaven, there are a lot of followers of Jesus that actually still fear death because they are afraid heaven might be "boring."  This is one reason I think it can be important to spend some time studying scripture in regard to a theology of heaven.

I know all sorts of different backgrounds swing by here, so it's time to anonymously share your opinions.  3 polls below.  I'm curious how many of you believe there really is a literal heaven and a literal hell.  And for those of you who do think there's a heaven, especially Christ followers, are you looking forward to it?
Or do you tend to agree with the classic Billy Joel lyrics:

The list of podcasts (in order) I listened to on the way back to Santa Cruz the other day:

Man.  That's a whole lot of challenge for one drive!

So, what have you listened to or read that has really challenged you lately?

Yesterday I left Temecula to head toward Santa Cruz at approximately 1:00 p.m.
I finally arrived at my home at approximately 3:15 a.m.
How did a drive that can be accomplished in 7 hours end up taking 14 hours?
Simple.  I grew up in Southern California.  I worked in Southern California.  I have lots of relationships in California.  So I can't drive through cities without stopping to spend time with people.
So I stopped to hang with a portion of the staff from my Long Beach church family.
I stopped to hang with an old friend who's a college pastor in Downey.
I stopped to literally meet my half-sister in Thousand Oaks.  Well, I met her once when I was 14, so this qualifies as meeting in my book.

I realized on the drive home (which left lots of time for thinking) that this is a microcosm of how I view and approach life.
1.  It's more about the journey than the destination.
2.  The journey is all about the relationships.

So my encouragement…slow down today.  Take a moment to stop sprinting to the finish line without much regard for the people or the process.
Don't get me wrong.  The finish line is important.  But the reality is, in real life, it is either moving or just leads to a new finish line.
You'll spend a lot more time on the journey.  So put a little extra investment in a relationship along the way today.  In the end, it will probably be worth the time.

Started a 3 week series at church yesterday called The Other Side.  Talking about stuff beyond this world.  Spiritual warfare, angels, demons, heaven, hell, etc.

Yesterday was on the "parallel war."  The battle between God and Satan for our souls.
To kick off the series, thought it could be really interesting in a place like Santa Cruz to go downtown and get some opinions on the existence of another dimension.  The interactions didn't disappoint.

Check out the video we used to open the series:

Next week we'll hear what those people had to say about heaven and hell.

And in week 3, we doing a panel discussion of the pastoral staff on common questions about the topics.  We've encouraged our church to submit their questions over here.
Should be a fun series!

Wow.  Week 2 and I already almost forgot about this weeks flava.
But I didn’t disappoint.  Better late than never.

As I said, one of the goals here is to uncover some hidden gems to segments of people that read this blog that may not read the other segments.
A huge contingent of bloggers out there right now are all you crazy mom bloggers.  It’s insane to me the amount of traffic that some of those mom blogs get.

Well, I have a friend who has a blog, and she’s a mom, so I think that qualifies.
If you are another friend from the Revolution days, you probably already read Liana’s blog.
For the rest of you though, allow me to introduce you.

I might get in trouble for using that picture.  But hey, she posted it on her blog today.  Maybe if enough of you go over there and visit her, she’ll forgive me?

She lives in Long Beach, works as Starbucks, is married to worship leader and graphic designer who is also pretty awesome (sometimes awesome people marry awesome people, and that’s cool), and is the mom of a 2 year old little girl (she is 2 now, right?).  Whether you know her personally or not, she has a hilarious and pithy (am I using that word right?  Pithy…yeah) way of writing about life with her family and being a mom.

So go and enjoy the life of Liana at her blog, Look @ Me, Look @ Me.
And make sure you scroll down far enough to see her husband, Keith, singing Material Girl at the church.  Well worth the watch.

See ya again next week with some more link love.

Today we celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick.  An opportunity to celebrate a great man of our faith by toasting him with a Guiness sounds good to me, but how many of us actually know who St. Patrick was or what he contributed? 

Wikipedia never disappoints.  Check out this article with lots of great info.  Here's a few excerpts that point out the importance of who he was:

In other words, Patrick contextualized the Gospel to the people he was with.  He lived misionally.  Now that's something worth toasting!

Also found this article with 10 facts/legends about St. Patrick.
And for those of you with a much shorter attention span or who don't wanna read anymore, check out this entertaining look at the life of St. Patrick.

Happy St. Patricks Day!!

My Monday morning with the boys.

So for my first week of sharing the love, I introduce any of you who don’t know him to my friend, John Voelz.

I met John over 2 years ago when I went to Recreate for the first time.  He’s one of those guys who you can be in a crowded room with and he has that personality that draws you to him and you really want to get to know him.  He pastor’s a church as a team with 2 other guys out in Michigan.  Great heart, incredibly creative, innovative thinker.  Be ready to put your thinking cap on for some of his posts.

And the reason I thought I’d start with him…he made me laugh last night with a post he put up about the similarities between LOST (he’s an avid fan) and doing his taxes.
Here were a few of my favorites:

John, thanks for making me laugh.
The rest of you, go visit John,  And tell him I sent you.
You won’t get anything out of telling him that.  It just sounded good.