My Worship Revolution

Just a reminder to everyone (especially those helping out tomorrow). We lose an hour of sleep tonight. So get some extra sleep and set those clocks ahead! See y’all later!

That’s right friends, it’s time for the first ever Friday Giveaway. Don’t get your hopes up, though. Unless someone wants to find me a sponsor or start donating things to give away, this won’t happen often.
the Toyota Long Beach Grand Prix is coming up next weekend, and I happen to have a bunch of vouchers for a Free Friday Pass ticket for Friday, April 7th. This isn’t the day of the race, but there should be bands, qualifying races, and access to all the exhibits and garages in the area.
There’s 30 tickets available, so it’s first come first serve. Leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail. Depending on who you are, we’ll figure out the best way to get it to you. I can probably just meet most of you downtown that morning. Or for Revolution attenders, I can bring yours on Sunday. And I won’t even make you answer 2 random questions to win.

Download PDF circuit map (437 kb)

Anybody out there at Revolution or in the Long Beach area interested in taking some voice lessons? Christina Walker is the Pastor of Belong/Grow ministries here at the church, and she teaches voice on the side.
Christina is a well trained vocalist with a Bachelor’s Degree in Performing Arts Ministry from University of Hartford. She started down the professional opera road, then God called her into ministry. She has sung and given lessons for many years.
This is a great opportunity to grow and work on your instrument if that is something you want to continue doing, whether you are on the worship team, in your high school choir, or just want the person in front you at church to stop cringing during worship (don’t worry, it sounds great to God as long as your heart is in it – the rest of us can suffer cause it’s really about Him anyway).
E-mail Christina for availabilty and rates, or any other questions you might have.

So I saw this article over at the xxxchurch blog. It’s a pretty interesting write up from an integrity online e mail. Check it out:

At Integrity Online we received many customer requests to block Xanga and MySpace, as well as some customer requests to keep them open. We have researched, at great length, the pros and cons of free, unmonitored, Web Logs ("Blogs") such as these. It has become clear to us that in order to provide the best filter protection to our customers, we must block xanga.com and myspace.com.

Blog hosts like these do not monitor, filter, or block the content of the Blogs they publish for all to view. Children can easily access these Blogs, and millions of these Blogs have proven themselves to be obscene and even dangerous.

As part of our research, we chose some words that might be used by ministries or businesses and searched for them on myspace.com. The “hits” are how many times these words are found on MySpace Blogs.

Bible Study 246,000 hits

Salvation 238,000 hits

Ministry 711,000 hits

Investment 82,400 hits

Medicine 571,000 hits

Architecture 164,000 hits

Antiques 25,700 hits

Now compare these words above with some obscene words below, that we searched on MySpace Blogs. These figures are beyond belief but sadly true.

Sex 9,960,000 hits

F*** 13,900,000 hits

Porn 2,300,000 hits

Sh** 17,700,000 hits

Nude 5,380,000 hits

More threatening to our customers are the dangers to children. National headlines have been made with tragic stories of sex crimes carried out against teenagers, and even younger children, through contact on these Blog sites.

My Space is an interesting animal. I have to admit I do have a My Space myself, and I’ve found it to be a useful tool to make contact with some old friends I haven’t talked to in years. Some of them are even doing ministry in other parts of the country and it’s been a great resource and opportunity for us. I’m able to here about the lives of people who are in my ministries. Some of you may have even found my blog through My Space.

On the same note, you don’t have to be on there long to see all the negative uses for it. Obviously, based on my own use of it, I won’t completely condemn the use of My Space altogether. But if you’re a teenager reading this, hopefully you can at least understand why your parents don’t let you use it, and I can’t say I blame them.

Ok, so no, I’m not still fasting from the internet.  Unfortunately, the posts have been a little bit sparse due to some internet issues both at home as well as at work.  The office is working now, but it looks like I won’t have any web access from home til we move, which hopefully be in a month or so.  (Another bedroom for the new family member would be nice)  Speaking of the fast, though, I never did get a chance to share much about my experience yet.  I won’t share a ton, but there were definitely a few learnings worth sharing.

• I noticed I do a lot of work related stuff.  It helped that it was a busy week at work, but some things were less difficult due to the amount of usage because of work (ie. phone and internet)
• I can go a whole week without checking blogs.  And I didn’t even feel cut off from the world completely.  However, I did have quite the blog roll to catch up on!  A bit overwhelming!  And I will continue to blog and read.
• It was really nice not watching TV for a week.  I think this is the one that had the most impact on me.  I’ve been spending quite a bit of time weekly watching various shows, and that is gonna change.  I waste a lot of time there.  The only shows I’m really gonna stick to are LOST and 24. (Even at that, though, I still haven’t watched this weeks 24…that’s huge for me!)  It looks like we will probably say goodbye to the dish and DVR when we move, too.  Another big step, taken both for time reasons and money.
• Finally, I need to spend more time reading!  It was so great to bury myself in some books outside of school work during the fast.  I read through 2 books of the Bible, plus a full book I got after seeing it advertised on inBubbleWrap.

So those were some great observations and learnings for me.  In addition to those things, I have to admit that I really did feel more connected to God.  I felt at the end like I was really getting some good vision from God in regards to the future of ministry here, and I’m excited to see things happen.  I look forward to staying just as connected to God after the fast as I was during it, with a little discipline.

How about others in my Life Group?  Others who randomly joined us?  Others from our church who fasted from other things that week?  I’d love to hear how it went for you.  Leave a comment.  Share a quick story of how God worked or what you learned.

After 6 long days of no "non-work internet" usage (which meant no inbubblewrap entries) God honors the faithfulness and sacrifice of his servant quite clearly. On my first day back from the fast I became a four time winner. That’s right folks, no ground lost. Here’s the book I look forward to receiving in the mail:

Of course there is more to share about the fast than just this.  I’ll share some more in the next couple of days.  Until then, it’s good to be back!

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been talking about the discipline of fasting in our life groups.  So last night was the time for us to pray about it and find something to fast from for the next week.
A few weeks ago I found the blogs of a few friends of mine and Rachels that she knows from college.  One of them, who attends Sandals Church in Riverside, posted about a progressive fast that their pastor challenged the whole church to in order to make more time and space for God.  You can see more about it on this post if you want.  And the message that explains this from their pastor is here (if you dont wanna hear the whole thing, it’s kinda worth it to skip to the end where he explains the fast).
I really liked the idea of this fast, so several of us in our life group are gonna do it over this next week.  Here’s what it will look like for us (we have life group on Tuesday nights):

Wednesday (today): No radio/movies (worship CD’s ok)

Thursday: Add no TV/non-work internet (no more bubblewrap this week!!  NO!)

Friday: Add no sweets/chocolate

Saturday: Add no soda/alcohol/coffee

Sunday: Add no meat/non-work phone

Monday: Add no bread/rice/pasta (carbs) (The Philipino’s in my group complained about this one)

Tuesday: Only juice and water

Wednesday: Fast ends that morning

Now some people might think I shouldn’t post this cause it should be all private or something.  It can be that way, but I kinda look forward to sharing how this goes and what it’s like to have that extra time with God.  Also, if anyone else wants to join us, jump on in and come back and tell us how it went in the comments.  I guess this is a little different for me than some food fasts when you’re more private about it and seeking direction or something.  For me, this is more about getting some distractions out of my life so I can really focus on God.
Also, I wanted to let you know that you may not see anymore posts for a while.  If I could figure out how to pre-program my blog to post daily I would, but I don’t think I’ll figure that out in the next few hours.  I thought about justifying my blog as "work related", but I guess that’s a bit of a stretch, so I’m out til next week…unless I can get one more post up before I go to sleep.  Lates.

I almost ordered my copy of the new Passion CD that’s coming out on April 4th today.  Unfortunately, I had some technical difficulties, but I’ll pre-order it later.  You can get a copy here, or just check out the 30 second soundclips of all the songs.  I can’t wait to check out the whole CD.

We’ve been spending the last couple of weeks in a new series called JACK’D.  It’s a study through Job, and we’ve been emphasizing keeping our trust and faith in God when He allows things to go sideways in life.  I read this quote online this morning, and I thought it was really worth sharing considering our series.
"The disasters that God ordains are not aimed at paralyzing his people with indifference, but mobilizing them with compassion."
- John Piper

Seriously, though, this video is sweet.  I totally want this at our church, and I’m not even kidding.  Who’s in?
[via thevoiz]