betterthanblank

Yup, I have a real hard time making it all the way through books, but I figure I read about 1 books worth or more a week through magazines. Maybe it’s because of a short attention span, or maybe because I just don’t carve out a lot of time for reading, or maybe it’s the pictures, I don’t know. What I do know is that I love my magazines. Here’s a list of what I read consistently:

- Outreach Magazine
- REV Magazine
- Photoshop User
- Photoshop Creative (comes with a CD loaded with free stuff!)
- DV Magazine
- Technologies for Worship Magazine
- Church Production
- Newsweek (extremely slanted, a gift from my Grandpa)
- Sound & Video Contractor
- FOH (Front of House)
- Worship Leader
- Live Sound
- Layers Magazine

And then whenever I am:
- at the Dr’s Office
- at the car repair shop
- at the airport
- pretty much anywhere I’m waiting around

…I’m reading a magazine. I think the reason that I don’t read more books is because I need to complete the thought process in one sitting; so at least one chapter, and I rarely do that - usually I only get through 2-3 pages before I’m onto the next thing. Now don’t get me wrong, I can read through a book, sometimes I just blaze through one in a day or two - but that is rare. Usually it’s a discipline for me. And we’re not even talking about all the blogs I read on a daily basis.

Anyone else out there love their magazines? Which ones?

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(Naming this Creative Chaos to join in with Carlos’ idea, but I haven’t taken the time to figure it all out yet)

Maybe y’all thought that I spent the week before Easter strategizing and scheduling our “Big House” worship programming; not so my friends. I am proud to say that I switched my focus to our Youth Ministry this week. If you’ve been following me for the past year you’ll know that we recently completed tenant improvements on a brand new 13,000 square foot tilt-up (basically it’s a big concrete box, four walls). We were able to carve out about 8-900 square feet for a youth room when all was said and done - not bad; I would have killed for a room like this when I was a youth pastor!

So back to the story. Our youth pastors are great guys, but let’s just say they have been technically/creatively challenged in the area of setting up a room. And as you know, if you’ve ever been involved in youth ministry, you get all the left overs, junk, stuff that no one wants to deal with. So their room for the past couple months has literally looked like a giant storage closet; couches, golf carts, BBQ’s, chairs, staging, trash, ping-pong tables, storage boxes - looked awful. So last week I did some brain storming and sketching - came up with this:

Not too detailed, mostly just a design that takes advantage of what we have right now. Here’s what we’ve got going on technically:
- 2) 32″ flat screen TV’s
- 1) Older 50-60″ TV
- 2) 10′ x 12″ box truss
- 2) EV non-powered mid-highs
- 4) Community non-powered 18″ subs (YES!)
- 1) Older iMac (doesn’t do dual screen, only mirroring; which stinks!)
- 1) Yamaha O1V 16 channel digital mixer
- 1) Behrringer crossover (yuck!)
- 1) Crest Audio power amp
- Miscellaneous microphones, stands, monitors, etc.
- VGA Splitter
- Scan Converter
- RF Converter
- Mistubishi x500 3500 lumen projector (awesome!)
- 3) 10′ sticks of flat truss
- Miscellaneous lamps
- Miscellaneous custom built wood staging

So what we did first was clear the room of all the junk that wasn’t youth ministry related. Then we tossed about 90% of the staging - it just took up too much area for such a small room. We saved 2 4′ x 4′ risers, one for teaching, one for leading worship. We set the subs vertically on their ends and then set the sticks of truss on top, so the truss now are about 13′ high. Then we set up 2 matching TV’s on some stage boxes and put them in front of the sub/truss configuration. We pushed these back as far as we could to make more room for chairs in the room - so the stage area is about 8′ x 20′, not much room, but they’ll be able to squeeze a band up there.
We also put the big beast TV in the center of the stage area - and there’s a 10′ x 14′ screen on the wall behind the stage. So when it is all running, we’ll have 4 areas of graphics/colors (3 TV’s and a giant screen). We also setup a couple lamps in the back corners of the stage area to give some ambient light - looks pretty good actually.
The way I ran the video configuration is a little wacky, but it works. We run out of the iMac into a VGA splitter. From the splitter we go out to the projector and to a scan converter. The scan converter converts to S-video, from that S-video we go into the RF converter. From the RF converter we go Coax out to the stage area, where we use simple coax splitters to send the signal to all the TV’s. The end product looks really cool.

What’s left?
- mount the mid-high speakers on the top of the truss.
- hang the flat truss which will house the center screen projector.
- secure cables that are all over the place right now
- run cables that are on order for subs
- get/hang sound abatement/decorative elements on the walls/ceilings
- get a better computer?
- hang some lights on the truss (front & back)
- build a mezzanine in the back of the room, for games & hang out area.

So, the point is, we made do with what we had. Most times there’s a lot more to work with if just look around and think creatively. Vision is being able to envision something before it exists. Excuses like not enough money, gear, people, etc. will always work against you - sometimes you just have to make something happen with little resources. We’ve still got lot’s to do, and I’ve still got tons to learn, which is why I love being able to share and learn from what is happening in other situations! I’ll post some more pictures once this project is closer to being complete.

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Today our staff and some volunteers handed out Coffee near our church for a couple hours. It was pretty cool to just hand out coffee and hear all the strange responses, watch people lock their doors, or pretend to be on an important phone call. Check out the pictures:

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Here’s a little video of my dad doing his thing. He’s on the saxophone, kind of closest the conductor’s arm.

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We did a little video this year:

And then I found this one today randomly, thought it was funny enough to share:

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On Friday we “found” a map that led us to “Adventure Mountain”, a large hill about a 1/2 mile from our house. So after mama packed us some snacks, me and Miles were on our way. It was a blast walking and talking, hearing all the crazy ideas Miles had on where we were headed and what we would find when we got there. One really cool conversation we had was on the real meaning of Easter - that was a great talk.

When we got to the top of the mountain, we took a break & had some string cheese, granola bars & water. Then we started exploring all the rocks & stuff up there…

As we were heading down, Miles & I were singing “Story of My Life” by Social Distortion (only because we get it stuck in our head from Guitar Hero). Anyway, Miles says “Daddy, you want to know what the story of my life is? It’s that I’m having the funnest time ever with Daddy!”. So, that’s pretty much priceless.

And the story as dictated by Miles: Miles had a hard time walking up the hill. We climbed on lot’s of rocks and ate our snack. Mama honked at us from the street and we waved at her. I loved it! I wish I could go there again! The end, goodbye.

And here’s a little video when we got to the top of Adventure Mountain.

I’m amazed at what little effort you have to put forward to make your kids day - something as simple as a map and a 2 hour walk! I’m immediately convicted of (a) not doing this more with our kids, and (b) not being grateful for all the simple & amazing things that my heavenly Father does for me on a daily basis…

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Eric wrote a way better post than I will write, but I just wanted to share about this event. I’m not really into events where pastors hang out and talk about how big their churches are, or what great new thing they are doing - the speaker from this event painted a wonderful picture of how this works. He said it’s like when dogs meet and the run around sniffing each other to find out which is the bigger dog, and whoever’s the bigger dog gets to pee on the smaller dogs… if we could only see how pathetic we are sometimes.

I really enjoyed seeing everyone and NOT sniffing their junk. Dave from Chorus, Jeff and his gang from Impact, Bryan and his crew from Tides. Bill Mallick, Don Brust, John & Sue Capellen, Richard and Vickie Oberlee (from our church), and a host of other people that I can’t recall. What I do recall though are the notes I took from our speaker, Matt Hannon. He seemed like the real deal. No bragging about how big his church was, or how successful they were, or how many campuses they have. He just shared some real heavy leadership issues from his heart & experience. I thought I’d share it here and maybe we’ll grow a bit from it (I’ll try and share it as linearly as possible).

Attributes of Leaders (CASH):

Character: who you are when you think no one is looking.
Character = purpose + practice
Purpose is Clarity - be clear on who you are and what you achieve
Practice is Consistency - be consistent on who you are and what you achieve
The biggest issue with Character is: CONTROL

Attitude: how you respond when the unexpected happens
As a leader you are an “attitude manager” - we can add either GAS or WATER on a hot spot with our attitude
- be optimistic (Christians have the license on optimism)
- be objective (be honest)
- be deliberate (critical / intentional)
- be determined (tough minded)

Skill: what you do with what you’ve been given
Skill is the most over-rated quality - Satan is the most skilled!
Most important skills: People Skills
- team building
- conflict resolution
- leadership development
(you don’t learn these skills in seminary/Bible School)

Habits: what you fall back on when the hard time comes
Holy Habits / Harmful Habits
Learn, Model & Teach Holy Habits*
Don’t be a hypocrite - “The stream does not rise higher than the source”

Other random things I wrote down:

- “God’s agenda is not a church plant, it’s YOU”
- “I am not helping God”
- 4 steps (not sure of the title)
1. Dump: let go
2. Delegate: turn loose
3. Delay: listen more
4. Do: get going

*and of course this are was what hit me the hardest. Habits that should be in my life are not, and habits that are probably shouldn’t be! I’m going to be working on this one.

What Holy Habits do you have?

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Change Up. That’s the word for this past weekend.

I was planning on playing drums for the band & then spending some time in our Youth Ministries to kind of catch up on their programming, instead I ended up leading worship, which turned out fine.
Karl, our music director called me on Friday night to tell me that he had been in a head on collision going 55mph & wanted to know if he could call me the next day to let me know if he could be there this weekend. I was like, uhhhh you’re probably going to want to take the weekend off after something like that. Anywho - he called on Saturday and was still in a lot of pain, so it was on. By the way, Karl is ok, to my knowledge, just some bruised ribs, and the emotional/adrenaline drain of being in a serious accident.

So I started making some calls to add a drummer at the last minute with no luck. So we kind of redesigned the set to be an acoustic vibe (which always seems to happen with me). We had 2 acoustics, bass, keys, and a bvg. And we changed up the songs a little to: All We Need is You, Blessed Be Your Name, Everlasting God, & Closer. The band really filled the spaces amazingly, and Gwen our vocalist really supported well - I did my best and it turned out not too shabby. I think it fit well with the message of the day from our guest speaker: Pastor Rick Bundschuh of Kauai Christian Fellowship.

Rick was great, very real, with a relaxed and fun message. I really valued what he had to say. Some points that I remember were:
- look for blessings where you don’t expect them, that’s usually where God puts them
- look for/expect the best in people instead of the worst
- don’t be so worried that you keep people out of ministry, give them a chance
- look for ways to bring the church to people instead of always trying to get people to church
(of course, that’s what I heard)

We had a ton of new people this weekend, our 3rd week of Grand Opening. Our services ran a little long - which is standard. My only fear with that is the turn around time in between worship experiences. With limited parking, KidsLife Check-in, and turn-over, it can be a little stressful to actually start the next service on time, and it has a ripple effect through the day.
Another fun element that we are adding during our grand opening is an after church BBQ for new people put on by our deacons. It’s a fun time to just connect with new families, and people who may have never connected before.
Next week is Easter, so I’m sure this week will be crazy. How was your weekend?

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Peter bought me lunch. Rich showed up. We talked church. All was good.

I love connecting with new & old friends. If you are in Socal and want to hang sometime, shoot me a comment. (James & Victor, we shall meet soon!)

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We joined/started a new LifeGroup about a month or so ago. We’ve been a little apprehensive to start one again, just because we’ve been so busy over the past months because of staffing changes & moving into the building. But we knew it was important for us to be involved at that level, plus we’d made some new friends that we really felt a desire to get to know better. So we kicked it off and from the beginning it has been amazing! It’s 5 couples, 3 with kids, 2 without and we all just gel so well. It’s encouraging to be able to share openly and honestly, hold eachother accountable, pray and study God’s word together. Plus we always find something to laugh about - which I love.

Last week, we took a break from our normal schedule and did a Wii Fiesta! That’s right, mexican food, mexican music, and some serious Wii action. Wii all had a total blast (get it?) - and I am happy to report, there were no TV casualties.

There’s some fun pictures of the night over at Peter’s blog.

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