Tonight I’m going back to Ocala, FL my home town for a concert at a church there. I’m meet my friend Chris to see the concert and talk Macs, he got a 12in Powerbook yesterday. Welcome to the Mac world Chris! Were going to see Thousand Foot Krutch, Hawk Nelson, Dizmas, and 4th Avenue Jones. I think is going to be a great concert I’ll write tomorrow with the low down about this concert.

My wife spent her time in high school attending a a cappella church in Holly Hill, FL so our first weekend in Daytona we went there for church. It was also the church we were married in 5 years ago. It was great to see all the people we know and hear some great preaching of forgiveness from Ephesians 4:31-32.

It is different to attend a church after working to build a high quality worship experience for our student ministry to a a cappella service. I like a cappella. I can attend services and worship without instruments. I can’t stand when they bring up how you don’t find instruments mentioned in the New Testament. It is really funny that we use the same verse they do to prove the use of instrument in the New Testament

Eph. 5: 19 “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord”.

Things people in the church take for granted like know what is going on, I was lost during communion, at Islands we got the emblems and then took them in unison and this church you got the bread first and took it then they passed the grape juice and you took it. No where in the bulletin did it explain they did it that way, no one explained it for the visitors from the stage. At Islands we printed in the bulletin and on the screen so that no guest was left trying to figure it out themselves. It is odd being a guest and not knowing what is going on but a guest that has never been in your church or the church ever can get so lost and we need to do a better job and analyzing what experiences a first time guest is going to go through at our church.

Me being quiet is a feet in its self but blogging I try to go to many days without writing something. We closed on our house this past Friday morning and packed up and moved everything to Daytona Beach where we will live till God directs us some more.

I have a lot of time to think about God’s direction in a persons life. Christians sometimes tend to be as bad as non-believers when it comes to understanding God working in a person’s life. I had a phone interview and those a tough as it is but to have to tell a whole search committee that you are no longer at your youth ministry position because God moved and made clear to us that it was time to leave (not on bad terms, just that God was ready for us to move on) and that we are going to live with family to God shows us where in ministry He would have us serve. I as much as I have questioned the decision to leave before we had a place to serve I know that we are where God wants us and I am comfortable till He shows us the next move.

I should be able to post something most days and keep up with the blogs I read till we move again.

I read a post over at Greg Surratt’s blog offering people to ask questions about the multi-site church movement. He and a few other guys are speaking at a church in Naperville, IL for the Multi-Site Church Conference. I think there are questions to be asked on the movement and I want you guys to offer you thoughts and questions either here on my blog or over at his.

My comments over on his blog.

“The thoughts that have gone through my head about multi-site churches are why not plant a church instead and use the same resource you would use to use the site as a multi-site? You are still impacting the kingdom but in a few years could move those financial resources to a new site and start all over again. Are multi-site churches this generation’s denominations? Growing a church in a city is one thing, offering different types of services (gen-x, emerging, traditional, Spanish or Koren) but are multi-site churches that are offering services in cities other than the original just doing it to grow?

I think that Seacoast is doing a great job reaching people and building a community and I enjoyed the service I attended in Savannah but think there questions that need to be asked about the multi-site movement.”

My friend Chris got me a gift certificate for my birthday to Amazon.com. You can use it on all Amazon purchases including Used products from marketplace sellers. I have been wanting to finish my collection of all the U2 albums and got my hands on 5 more today.

War October The Joshua Tree Rattle and Hum [LIVE] Achtung Baby

I can’t wait to get them and put them on my iPod!

This morning my daughter and I attended Seacoast Church Savannah Campus. It was my first experience at a multi-site church but also a video venue. I want to share about what I saw.

First off they it started in the parking lot, not a parking lot team just really friendly people engaging people in the parking lot. Lots of signage showing you where to go which is nice for a first time guest. Come in and there was a door greeter (really friendly), nicely done bulletin, you walk up the stairs and there is resource table with books for sale (I love resources and books, big plus for me) and free good coffee which you can take into the service with you (big plus).

I took my daughter back to the Children’s Ministry area. The nice lady I met in the parking lot walked me back and introduced me to the ladies who worked with children in a partitioned off area of the hall way. Nice decorations, toys to play with, a video on that grabs the children’s attention while you drop them off. The only thing being a guest and a little worried about my daughter I wish they would had some kind of check in system or call system.

I enjoyed worship. I felt we were being led in worship which is what I know they are reaching for. The Campus Pastor, Doug, was friendly and warm with every person that came through the door and funny on the stage. Gerg Surratt the Senior Minister is great communicator and uses a great mix of engaging conversation, humor and story telling to communicate the gospel message, this weeks message was about community. It is very evident why they are a growing church and are using a method like multi-site video venue to reach people for God which is what it is all about.

I hope this doesn’t help the Googlebombers out there but enough people have tied the word failure with President Bush’s bio on the White House website and Micheal Moore’s that they are the first two hits on Google’s web page when the word is searched. I read about this first on Fox New Site and then on Google’s Blog, kinda funny that this can be done.

We were able to go to Savannah Christian Church tonight and heard a great speaker and Missionary from Kerala, India named Rajan Ipe. I think the most prolific thing he said as he was preaching about evangelism from Matt. 28:18-20 was, “Either you are a mission field or a missionary.” Think about that. We are quick to say that I don’t know enough, isn’t that the ministers job, I didn’t attend Seminary but Jesus’ first missionaries were uneducated fishermen. I know I’m not doing my part to talk with people about knowing Christ as their Savor and this post is mostly a finger pointing at me.

Brian Bailey wrote a post, “10 Favorite Albums of All-Timeâ€? and then Chris Marsden wrote about his “Top 5 U2 Albums”. Now I have never been able to gauge albums like that. I can’t make a Top 5 favorite songs, albums or artists because my mind doesn’t work like that. But I can tell you artists have influenced me in my life.

In no particular order… 1) Rich Mullins 2) P.O.D. 3) U2 4) Mars Ill 5) John Reuben 6) dc Talk

I didn’t get into music till Jr High and then it was negative rap music that probably influenced me in the wrong way. In High School I started listening to Christian music to get a way from Secular music like all good Christians do. Now that I don’t think that way anymore and can listen to some Secular music, I still don’t listen to a lot because, let’s be honest, it’s garbage.

I miss when more of the posts we all were writing were ministry ideas. Sharing life is great and life is interesting, especially because of ministry. But we minister in so many different and unique churches across this great land we try so many things, succeed at things, don’t succeed at things and learn from them. We should make an effort to share those ideas with each other.

I started writing this post this morning and couldn’t finish it because I promised to take my little girl to the playground. But this afternoon I was talking with my “Partner in Crime” and we were talking about this very idea without mentioning it. Weird, uh. Anyways, we were talking and we both are going to start sites or off branches of our blogs that deal with ministry ideas. We want in put from all kinds of ministers all over world about what works and why and what doesn’t but could be tweaked and be worth trying. So don’t be shy over the next couple of weeks be on the look out for posts about the new sites and contribute to the worthy cause.