My Worship Revolution

The alarm on my phone buzzed me out of bed at 6:30 a.m.  I noticed briefly that I had no cell service. 
I have T-Mobile.
Didn’t think much of it.

Shortly thereafter, the bedroom door swings open.
Pitter patter of little 2 and a half year old feet enters the room.
I get up.  Toast is made and cartoons are on.
I go to check my email.  Can’t connect to the internet.
We regularly have issues with our web at home, too.  Although slightly frustrated, I get my stuff together and head out to meet Ryan at Bad Ass Coffee.
At least I can get my emails when I get there.

I groggily walk in to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Ryan’s at the counter and I tell him I’ve got it covered this morning.
The credit card machine isn’t working.
She (the barista) informs me that their connection for cards is down, as is the internet, and both the barista’s phones have not had service, at home or there.
Now I’m trippin out.
Ryan and I don’t have service either.

She has some random cell provider.
The other guy has Verizon.
Ryan has AT&T.
I have T-Mobile.
And they’re all out?
How does this happen?!?

I must watch too much 24.  My first response…
I tell our barista this must be a terrorist attack.  They’ve hit us where they knew it would hurt.
She hears on the radio it’s a communication breakdown in Santa Cruz County.
I imagine some ominous voice on the phone with Barack,
“See what’s happening in Santa Cruz?  If you don’t give in to our demands, we’ll hit a bigger area.  Mass hysteria will break loose.  You have 45 minutes.”
(Of course this was at 7:15 because big events always happen on the hour on 24.)

OK.  Perhaps a bit of an overstatement.  But it made me think.
We rarely even leave the ringer on for our home phone.  We have all become pretty reliant on technology.  In a way, it was a bit scary to me that I had no way to really contact Rachel.
If you’re reading this, all is right again in Santa Cruz.
But it kinda made me think.

And one of the first thoughts that went through my head at the coffee counter…
“Oh man…I can’t even Twitter this!”

A few weeks ago I went on a group ride in Santa Cruz.  A guy was asking what I was training for and we started talking Triathlon.  He asked what my strength is.  I told him at this point I'm just mediocre at all three.  I wasn't trying to lie, but I realized later that I did.  I actually kinda suck at all three.

I tend to be slightly perfectionist…in an odd way.  I think I should be really good at whatever I do.  Even if I rarely do it, or have just started.  Tritahlon is no exception.  I'm not exactly good at everything I do, but there is very little I have committed myself to that I wasn't at least decent at to begin with.

This past weekend I participated in my second Olympic Triathlon.  I primarily did it as part of training for the long course at Wildflower. 
It was a tough race.

My race report will come later, but the point is this…at a few points along the run, there was a part of me that seriously wanted to throw in the towel.  It wasn't cause I was hurting (although I was).  It wasn't even cause I couldn't finish, cause I knew I could.  It was cause I was embarrassed by how long it was going to take me this time.  If it were anyone else I'd be the first one to tell em to keep going and be proud of doing it.  But that doesn't seem to be enough for me.

It got me thinking.  Everything I do is ultimately to the glory of Christ.  This scripture came to mind as I was running:

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
-1 Corinthians 2:1-5

So yeah, I know I'm not exactly out there preaching Christ.  But there was still some truth to that passage as it rang in my head.  Christ is made strong in our weakness.  It's the things we don't do well that force us to lean on Jesus and trust Him to get us through.

When I love something, I wanna share it with others.  I've encouraged multiple people to give a triathlon a shot.  It's fun.  It promotes health.  But what encouragement could I be to people if I was good at it from the beginning?  Instead, I can say, "Hey, I did it.  And got better over time.  You can do it, too." 
It's the same way as each of us work out our salvation in fear and trembling.  I'll keep on pressing on, as Paul encouraged, and in the difficult times is when God will be most glorified.

And in the meantime, I guess I'll work on being OK with not being as good as I want.  Such is life.  I'll commit to pushing to get better.  And I'll let God use teach me in the process, and use my weaknesses to point to Him.

Thank you Jesus for using a Triathlon to teach me a small lesson in humility.

This past Sunday was the last week of, The Other Side.
Throughout the series, we invited people to submit their questions about the heaven, hell, angels, demons, etc.  Then for the final week, we had a casual panel discussion sort of atmosphere with the pastoral staff to answer the questions.

So to open up, we taped a little intro out at a local cemetary.
Here’s how it turned out:

Kinda fun to have something a little different to open up the message.
Here’s the message if you’re interested as well:

Here we go, last installment of photos.
Now I’ll get the rest up on Facebook.
And this is the last time…for now…I’ll pimp the photographers.
TenEleven photo.
Get some family portraits.
Have them take them.
They’re good.
Thanks a ton for coming up and sharing your talents guys.

Yup.  Definitely the two cutest little boys on the planet.
And they’re mine.
Sorry.  You can’t have em.

So last night I rolled down to The Catalyst for the first time along with Ryan.  An old friend from Revolution has this band called The Autumn Film.  They were supposed to play at 9pm.  We got there and found out the show was pushed back to 10:30.
Sorry.  I gotta sleep.

Got to say hi to Tifah though.  It was good to catch up.
Promise…there is more of a point to this post.

She is playing an acoustic set by herself at Asana Tea House tonight at 8pm.
I highly recommend it.
Do yourself a favor and head downtown tonight and enjoy some good music.
Enjoy.

A friend pointed out to me this week that I totally missed this last week.
Of course, I knew that.  But I guess it’s good to know someone else noticed to.  I guess I’ll keep it up then. 
I was thinking it’s kinda like high school.  Trying to get the jocks to have lunch with the band geeks, or the waterpolo players to talk to the football player, introducing the worship blogger to a mom blogger, or the leadership blog to the random rants blog, the “mega-blogger” to the friend who has great thoughts about life and faith.

Anyway, time to share some link love again this Friday.

Meet Ben Arment.  I started reading Ben’s blog, History In The Making, after he planted a church in Reston, Virginia.  He is now one of the organizers for the Catalyst Conference, and hard at work on Catalyst West Coast (which I’m looking forward to attending with our staff).

Of course I started reading because of my passion for church multiplication and I wanted to follow his experiences.  But I keep reading now because of his great leadership insights.  Truth is, I have other friends who have great, deep, insightful…and long posts.  I like to read them, but have to wait til I can set aside time to get through the whole post.  The thing I like about Ben’s blog is they are usually bite sized leadership learnings and principles that pack a lot of punch and really make you think.  So go by and check him out today.

What good blogs are you reading that challenge you as leader?

Here’s some pics of Caleb to go with the rest.
One more installment after this of Caleb and Micah together.
After that, back to more than just photo blogs.
Starting with my personal favorite…

What can I say, except…
Man!  My kids are cute!  Good thing I married a good looking woman!
He even looks pretty darn good with daddy’s haircut:

Early in the morning, before we hit the train bridge for family shots, Joel and Kenny took some studio shots of the boys, especially Micah.  That was really the primary reason they came.

Here’s a few of my faves of Micah.

A few weeks ago, Joel and his business partner and friend Kenny came up to visit and take some shots of the boys and the fam.  There are so many killer shots, it’s hard to even decide which one’s to post.

I’ll share some of my favorite shots of the family he took that afternoon out at the trestles by the boardwalk late that morning.  Then I’ll have a few more posts later this week with shots of the boys.
And eventually I’ll get em all on Facebook, too.

Photos by TenEleven photo.  Hire them.  Wedding.  Engagement.  Barmitsfa. Quinceneta.  Whatever.  They’re money, baby.

Click on pictures to enlarge em.

This past weeks message focused on the topics of heaven and hell.
In addition to last week's video, we also asked those people what they thought about heaven, hell, and life after death.  Here's what they had to say:

One of the biggest impacts of my faith early on were some books I read by Randy Alcorn, primarily Deadline.  The book presents some amazing thoughts on heaven and possibilities of what it could be like.

I tend to think that because of our lack of understanding in our theology of heaven, there are a lot of followers of Jesus that actually still fear death because they are afraid heaven might be "boring."  This is one reason I think it can be important to spend some time studying scripture in regard to a theology of heaven.

I know all sorts of different backgrounds swing by here, so it's time to anonymously share your opinions.  3 polls below.  I'm curious how many of you believe there really is a literal heaven and a literal hell.  And for those of you who do think there's a heaven, especially Christ followers, are you looking forward to it?
Or do you tend to agree with the classic Billy Joel lyrics: