My Worship Revolution

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.

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.