My Worship Revolution

6 am meeting at Coffee Cat this morning.
With teaching team.
Working on next month worth of messages.
It’s early.
Really early.  For me.
But I think my brain is awake enough to be worth something.
In fact, the lights on each side of my head aren’t on the wall.
They are incredible God given ideas manifesting their presence in my picture.
Creative meeting on Sunday.
That’s all for now.
I’m tired already.

This is Diego:

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now he is not from Uganda.  Diego lives in Peru.  Diego is the child that Rachel and I sponsor for $32 month.  You see Rachel actually brought a child into our marriage.  When we got married she was sponsoring a child through Compassion.  That child left the Compassion program eventually, and we just recently started sponsoring Diego.

So I’m not gonna lie.  Somewhere along the line I learned to be very cynical at times.  I didn’t trust organizations like Compassion.  I wondered if the money really went where they said it did.  I guess I just never trusted Sally Struthers.  But somewhere along the line, my wife helped me to see the value in an organization like Compassion, and we have always sponsored a child.

Now there are 16 bloggers in Uganda with Compassion.  And I know that they aren’t internet hoaxes.  Five of them I know personally.  I’ve met them.  I iChat with them.  I sat down for drinks with some of them last week.  And the things they are sharing are amazing me.  It is making me so much more thankful still that we have and continue to be a part of this.  It makes me so much more a believer of what Compassion is doing.  You think our $32 a month doesn’t make a difference?  Check out these pics I got from Whittaker Woman of a child not able to be in the program and a small group that are:

What a difference $32 can make.  Try to tell me there isn’t dramatic life change in those kids.

Point is, I’m not encouraging you to do anything we haven’t done/don’t do.  I’m in full-time ministry.  My wife is a stay at home mom.  Can we really afford it?  Most people would say no.  Does it come out of our tithe?  No.  We figure we can’t afford not to.  They need it more than us.  No argument.

Fast one meal out a week if you need to.  Get rid of cable and DVR. (Oh man!! Did he just suggest that?)  Find $32 a month in your budget.  And change someone’s life more than you could possibly imagine with that amount where you live.

Go here to sponsor a child.
In fact…what the heck?!  Let’s see if we can get at least 10 NEW people to sponsor a kid from this blog this month (Compassion International blog month).  Come on CLC community.  I’m startin with you.  Step up now! 

How many of you already sponsor or are going to as a result of the "Ugandaliers?"  (Fancy schmancy name credit to JVo.)

It’s Valentines Day.  My wife and kid are down in San Diego with my fam today.  Whether it’s Valentines Day or any other day today, I’m missing them like crazy.  Enjoying filling time hanging with friends, but not nearly as good as having them here!

Come home soon!  I’m not so good on my own.

Saw this cartoon at Cries of the Heart today.  Kinda made me laugh.  I’d love to hug my wife and kid today.  Enjoy.

So I’m sitting in a planning meeting working on teaching series that we will be doing for the rest of the year.  Later this summer, we are doing a family series and looking to have a weekend seminar on parenting.

So here’s where you help us out in the brainstorming process.  I know there are those of you who read this blog that also read some Christian parenting books that you’ve loved and stuff like that.  So who are some great names of people in this area?  If you could hear from anyone on the issue of parenting, and money or whatever weren’t an issue, who would you want to hear from?  Who’s out there?

Come through for me here community.  Speak.

And by the way, please don’t say Dobson.  Thanks.

Lots of talk about love with Valentines Day.  A day we celebrate the people who love us back.  But what about the other people Jesus told us to love…our enemies?  That’s a whole lot harder to do.  I used to think of my enemy as the punk at school who picked on me, or the loved one who hurt me deeply.  But after 9/11 that concept took on a whole new meaning.  Could I really love someone who literally murdered people that I knew and loved in cold blood?  Ouch.  (Not that I actually knew anyone from that day, but you get my point.)  What about a person who were to harm my wife or child?

These posters from The Plow are pretty profiund and really force you to think about that in an "in your face" sort of way.  Check em out:

So what do you think?  how do you really love you enemies?  I know Christ commands it, but let’s be rea.  When you see those images, how many of you are unable to muster up the love you know you’re supposed to?  How do we tangibly love our enemies?  And how do we get past the "churchy" answer of loving them even when we don’t like what they do, because Jesus loved them?  Easy to say when it’s so hypothetical, but what do you think you would ACTUALLY do if Mr. Bin Laden were sitting right in front of you?

Sorry.  Lots of questions there.  Any thought?

HT: Chris from Canada

Thursday afternoon at Recreate.  Perhaps the most inspiring and challenging afternoon in as long as I can remember.  Something about it just hit me.  Grabbed me.  Moved me.

Kalein – A Greek word used in the New Testament (I believe only once).  It’s meaning: calling.  It’s underlying nuance: beauty.  The beauty of your calling.  Thus – Kalein: Beauty Is Calling.

Kalein is the brainchild/dream of Randy Elrod.  He has purchased around 150 acres outside Nashville, TN to serve as a retreat center.  A place where artists from all over can come to develop and discipline their crafts under the teaching of master teachers.  A place where artists can be prepared to go out into the world and create the culture.  5 star accommodations.  In really cool tree houses.  Gourmet food.  A beautiful setting.

This year at Recreate we became the first group Randy had brought out to see this land outside of his board and a couple close friends.  He said you had to be on the property to really catch the vision.  On a certain level, he was right.  But hopefully you can get a piece of it from the pictures and video below:

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We arrived and all received hay rides up over a ridge to get onto the actual property.

After arriving, we all had the opportunity to take a tour on the hay, which is where the video above came from.  As we were out, we managed to have a friend meet us along the path.  Check it out:

Oh, the captions I’m sure we could come up with for that photo!  We definitely weren’t in Cali anymore!

We all met back at the bonfire…the biggest bonfire I’ve ever seen, where Randy shared with us the heart and motivation behind this dream that God had put in his heart.  We finished that time with a very special ceremony of sorts.  Randy has a good friend with Native American heritage who he says he has learned a lot from regarding the way their people view and respect the land.  This friend came out to bless the land where so much will be taking place.  I threw together a video with some snippets of this special time.  Check it out below.

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So…cool thing happening there, but why so encouraging for you Bobby?  Here’s the deal.  Randy is a dreamer and an inspiration to be around.  He is a regular, down home guy who received a vision from God, and now he is taking huge leaps of faith to see it happen.  The road has been extremely difficult, but God has seen him through it…and still is.  He shared about the million dollars that it will take to get the first buildings up and running, power run and everything.  He has none of that.  But already there are possible, interested donors stepping forward to make it happen.

There are certain people in my past who have been big dreamers.  These people are so encouraging and inspired me to dream as well.  As I saw the fruition of what Randy is already doing, I was so extremely challenged to dream so much bigger than I do.  But even as I type this, I am reminded of something that I just wrote.  This ultimately isn’t Randy’s dream, it’s God’s vision given to him.  Yes, I need to dream big.  But even more than that, I need to be asking God to give me a vision, a BIG vision, for what He wants.  And when those things become clear, be obedient in following through and watch God work.

And so, more than anything, I need to ask, and also surround myself with dreamers.  Surround myself with creatives.  Surround myself with people who are too naive to think any dream is too big to accomplish.  Time to seek those people out relentlessly.

Thanks for the inspiration Randy.  Thanks for the example.  And I encourage the rest of you to be praying for this project in the meantime.
Can’t wait till I get to visit it someday further along in the process.

How about you?  How big are your dreams?  Are they so big that without God, there’s no way they’ll ever happen?  If not, why not?

So I said I’d try and post stories that touch me throughout the week from the Ugandaliers, but there’s no way I can share all the stories that hit home.  It’s only been a day and there’s already a bunch.  But here’s one.

It comes from a guy I’ve gotten to know a little there and consider a friend, Carlos Whittaker.  Many of read his blog, but some do not.  If not, be sure to swing by his site after you read this here and give him some love as he is a bit of a stat ho.  Of course maybe I should be too, since that helped get him to Uganda.  Hehe…anyway. 

Before you read, you should know that last year he and his wife adopted a child from Korea.  His name is Losiah.  From his blog:

Butewas is in the Houston Rockets jersey to my right.

Me – “This is my son Losiah.”
Him – “That is your son?”
Me – “Yes”

I could see his confusion.

Me – “Do you know what it means to adopt?”

His eyes lit up.

Him – “YES”
Me – “I adopted Losiah because his mother could not care for him”
long pause…
Him – “Do you think you can adopt me?”

Wow!  Not gonna lie.  The first time I read that my eyes totally teared up.  Someday, Rachel and I look forward to adopting a child.  Maybe from the U.S.  Maybe from overseas.  Who knows.  But what a vivid reminder of the things so many of us have that we take for granted, while there are children across the world that are starving for love and affection from a parental figure.

You may not be able to bring em over right now, but you sure can sponsor em and make a huge difference in their lives with a small amount of money per month.

There’s a lot more coming I think.  Go follow this crew.  And link to them.  Tell others.  Let’s help em get these kids sponsored!

Allow me to bang out a couple posts to finish with my Recreate updates.

Thursday was by far the most amazing day on a personal level at Recreate.  Nathan had a great recap where he referred to it as the best morning in Recreate history. 
It began with a visit from Mark Stuart, lead singer from Audio Adrenaline.  Wow.  It was incredible hearing him share so authentically from the struggles of his life.  His vocal chords giving out.  The end of AA.  His marriage falling apart.  Hearing how God spoke to him and carried him through it all was inspirational.  And I said it once, but it’s worth repeating, I’ve never heard someone share so openly and honestly and it made all the difference in the world.

Mark also shared about the ministry he is currently heading up, the Hands and Feet project.  It is a ministry to orphans in Haiti.  Please go by their site and find out what you can do to get involved.  Seeing his video and hearing about it gave Rachel and I a hunger to go over there and help out.  Who knows, maybe one of these days we’ll make it happen.  I loved the answer Mark gave when asked if they facilitate overseas adoptions for the kids into families over here.  He responded that while they would not get in the way of that, it is not their mission or goal by any means.  Rather, they want to raise up a generation of devoted Christ followers who can significantly impact their nation of Haiti.  Pretty cool I thought.

Then we entered into a rich time of worship and communion.  During that time, Mike Lewis, the Jesus Painter did three paintings.  Look him up on YouTube and you can see some incredible work from his One Way project.  Music was played and worship led by Mark Roach and Mark Lee, songwriter and member of Third Day.  If you haven’t watched the video of this time in my earlier post, go check it out.

To finish off our morning, we listened to Ken Davis share with us.  WOW.  By the time he was done, there seriously was not a dry eye in the room.  He was absolutely hilarious as he shared stories from his own life.  yet the truths he shared were profound and went deep.  He encouraged us mainly to not miss some windows of opportunity to love our families and to be satisfied in Christ where He has placed us right now.  Wish I could share some notes or more detail with you, but I couldn’t do it justice.

So that was an incredible morning.  The afternoon was the most peaceful/inspiring/challenging of the week for me.  But I’ll share that in another post or two.  It’s deserving of it’s own.

Finally, we finished the night with Word music, where we worshiped with Jeremy Riddle, Mark Roach, and others.  Again, great food, great music.  Enjoy a few snippets of Jeremy and Mark:

Yesterday, a group of 16 bloggers left together to spend a week in Uganda, Africa.  Most of you reading already know about this, but several don’t and you need to know.

Compassion International has consistently used the platform of musicians and artist on tours to get the word out about what the need for sponsors of kids in other countries.  Now, seeing the huge base of people bloggers have access to everyday, they have put together a trip of 16 influential bloggers who will be traveling to Uganda and sharing their entire experience to encourage people to sponsor a child.

So, first of all, check out the list of bloggers here in order to keep up with all that is going on over there.  The list is a bit daunting, the idea of jumping on that many blogs this week, so here are four that are on my daily blogroll that I highly recommend:

Randy Elrod
Carlos Whittaker
Heather Whittaker
Anne Jackson

Also, I will be sure to post some stuff here throughout the week as it grabs my attention.

Please be praying for this crew as well.  Safety.  Influence.  Opportunity.  Life change.

Finally, step up and sponsor a kid if you don’t already.  It’s a great way to make a difference in the life of a child living in poverty.  Notice the new link on the Left sidebar as well.

To the crew on the other side of the globe…good luck!  Can’t wait to take the trip with you via technology!

So…who else will be following this trip with me?

Lane Motor Museum

On Wednesday afternoon we all visited Lane Motor Museum in Nashville for an exercise in creativity.  As we showed up we had some time to look around and enjoy looking at some very interesting vehicles like these:

Or this one that burned coal above the front tires for fuel:

Randy’s daughter had been here on a trip with a class from her design college, and her teacher gave us a handout and walked us through the same exercise they had been through.  After sharing this story with us (seriously, go read it) he encouraged us to walk around and really take in the design elements of each vehicle and think about how and why things were created.  It was a great reminder of all the creativity and design that goes into so many of the mundane things we take for granted everyday.  There are so many things to pull inspiration from that I consistently walk right by.

On a few side notes, there were some other fun vehicles that grabbed me.  Like I’ve said before, everyone in Santa Cruz has gotta have a gimmick.  I found mine.  I want to roll around Pac Ave in this car!

Of course, I figured I’m already more likely to see this car in Santa Cruz, sticker and all:

Rachel wouldn’t mind something amphibious though:

And of course, a special wing with some perfect rides for our bike ridin pastor:

Anchor Fellowship With 15 EMI Songwriters

EMI hosted a night at Anchor Fellowship where we had another amazing meal and a night of tons of music and worship from 15 songwriters who were there on a songwriters retreat.  Some of the writers included Vicky Beeching, Matt Maher, Michael Gungor, Mark Byrd, Steve Fee, and several others.  Just check out the pics and see if you recognize a couple:

Here’s some fun worship with a great new song I really enjoyed from Matt Maher: