My Worship Revolution

I’m finally about to install OSX Leopard on my Macbook Pro.  Grrrrr.
2007 is over, the new year is here, it’s time to get with the times.
Tiger is so 2007.

So, those of you who are already using Leopard, please fill me in…what upgraded features do I have to look forward to.  Please tell me this upgrade wasn’t a waste of budget.  At least it can’t ever be as bad a that train wreck called Vista!  Here’s the ones I’ve heard about that I’m looking forward to:

• Quick preview of documents from Finder
• Stacking docs and folders in dock
• Spaces
• Backgrounds in photobooth and iChat (useless, but fun)

So like I said, fill me in on what else I have to look forward.  Do tell!

Back when all our family was here for Thanksgiving, Joel needed to take some portrait shots for his art/photography class.  He wanted to take pics of Caleb, but was encouraged to not take the "typical" cute baby photos.  Instead he wanted to get Caleb out of his element, where he wouldn’t be comfortable.  Bonus if he could cry.

He succeeded.  Thus I drove home from a trip to the store to find Caleb and his cousin Ryan half naked in the middle of the street for a photo shoot.  We got some of the shots of Caleb framed from Joel for Christmas.  Here’s what he turned in for his project…enjoy!

Caleb the supermodel.  Nice.
Thanks for the shots Joel!

Last night we were back at Life Group after 3 weeks.  It was great to be together again.  To catch up with each others holidays.  And to think about what 2008 can bring for us individually and as a group.

This past Sunday we started a series called "Revolution: Dare To Change The World."  A 5 week series on how each of us can contribute to making a significant difference in the world.  The first week was all about the foundational truth that Christ was God himself, incarnate.  And now it is our job to live out an incarnational life…being Jesus to the people around us.  Being Christ’s ambassadors.  Not bringing people to God, rather taking God to people.

It was a great time last night of discussing what that looks like and recognizing that it’s really not our job, but God does all the work when we’re obedient.  Here’s the thing about being Jesus to the world, though…it means you actually have to be in the world.

There is one thing I hate more than anything else when it comes to full time ministry.  Before you know it, you’re in Life Group with Christians, you lead worship with Christians, you hang out in your free time with Christians, and although you got involved in ministry because you love seeing people who don’t follow Jesus experience radical life change, you no longer know any of them yourself.  It’s something that Rachel and I have been chattin about for a while now.  And I’m talking about more than just going out of your way to say hi to a neighbor every so often.  I mean really doing life together.  Being a part of a "tribe" that is outside the Christ follower bubble

It’s what I miss most about a "normal" job.  And in the church world people sometimes act like we should do this cause we have something to give but nothing to gain in the process.  The truth is, some of my greatest relationships have been with those that didn’t know Christ.  People who stretched my own ways of thinking cause they were different from me.  People who had huge hearts with so much to give and so many amazing experiences for me to learn from.

So that is my personal challenge this year.  I’m trying to figure out exactly where that is that I can make those relationships.  I’ve had a few ideas, but they haven’t quite panned out cause of time commitments, so I’ll let you know what I figure out.  It’s even tougher when you consider I already work at balancing ministry and family, but this is a priority and something I need to be willing to sacrifice for.

I know there are a number of readers here who do ministry occupationally.  How about you?  What are you doing in your life to stay connected to people in "the world."  How are you being incarnational and acting as Jesus to the people around you?

Shortly after moving to Santa Cruz, my wife and I went for a hardcore health kick.
South Beach was the diet of choice.
Over a year ago I tried the Blogger Big Butt Weight Loss Challenge.
I started at 179 lbs.
Then we started Tri To Lose.
I started that around 172 lbs.
I finished at around 155lbs.
Then I slacked, not to mention the holidays hit and people brought by all sorts of goodies to the office everyday.
So Rachel and I have talked about going back to the first phase of the South Beach diet.
This morning I weighed myself.
It was depressing.
The outcome?
It hurts to type it.
I don’t know if I can do it.
Fine…
168.4 lbs.

Ouch.

Back to phase one.
This time I’m racing all the way down to 150!
It was nice knowing you Carbs.
Anyone else add some pounds over the holidays?

*Disclaimer: While I will go back to hardcore dieting with some exercise mixed in, I am going here in a month and will be exempt for one week.  You can’t visit the south and not enjoy the food!

These were the signs on the doors downtown yesterday.
Our church lost power.  So we went to have staff meeting at Coffee Cat.
It was packed.
So we went to Starbucks.
Figured I’d go to San Jose to buy Leopard since I couldn’t do much at the office.
Checked Highway Patrol…17 was closed cause of downed power lines from the 60mph winds.
So I went to Coffeec Cat to work.
Not a single seat in the building, plus a line at the counter.
Starbucks…no free wi-fi.
Home…won’t get much done.
Decided to check Lulu’s downtown.
Every business in all of downtown was closed due to power outages.
So I ended up at home and the day was shot.
So we finished watching Alias last night.
Now I gotta work a little longer today.

Back to work!

It’s REALLY wet and REALLY ugly here today.

I guess the Santa Cruz mountains are supposed to get around ten inches of rain this weekend?
Ten inches?
Did we ever get that much in a year in SoCal?
Today there are wind gusts up to 60mph.
Our lights keep flickering on and off.

Guess we’re still being welcomed to NorCal!

I helped her set it up while we were down there on vacation.
Now she can do this:

Good way to see your grandson more often.
Welcome to Macworld Mom.

My Aunt gets hers this week.  Then it’s 3 way chat time.
I think my father in law is next.
My pastor‘s getting one in the next week or two.
Cmon people…everybody’s doing it!

There we go.  Email inbox is finally down to ZERO.  Now the challenge will be to keep it there.  Call it a New Years Resolution or somethin.  It will make me reply to people quicker too.

Of course I do have over 100 emails still saved, but at least they aren’t in my inbox.

And I did have some issues with Entourage though.  There were a couple hundred emails or so that would not delete from my inbox and my trash.  Biggest bummer is there were some emails that I had saved from a long time ago, a few from family that I don’t really have contact with and don’t have email addresses for, and at some point they must have been deleted.  That’s the second time I’ve lost email files using Entourage with our email server.

Anyway, I finally figured out that I could rebuild the database and that got rid of all the emails that were showing up in Entourage that wouldn’t delete from there but were gone from the server.  Thus I’m down to zero.

And some of you thought I couldn’t get it there.  Ha.

As we were driving home last night, we thought we’d throw my iPod on shuffle and just see what came up.  I was reminded of some posts at Phil‘s tumblelog where he would share the last 5 songs played on his iPod.  With no clue what would come, i thought I’d give you a peek into my music by posting the first five to show up on shuffle.  I was hoping nothing too embarrassing would come up (like Rachel’s Amy Grant).  So here’s what we got:

James Taylor – Copperline
Mike Barnett – Beautiful Woman
Planetshakers – How I Love You
Bob Marley – One Love/People Get Ready
Kurt Hunter – You’re The One

All good stuff.  One "Christian" artist.  Two "local" (to O.C.) artists.
You’re turn.
What comes up when you put your iPod (or MP3 player) on shuffle?
First five.  Go.

I am way done with them for a long time!!
8 hours today door to door, with one long 1 hour stop.
It’s good to be home.