My Worship Revolution

So this year, Christmas is going to look a little different.
Our church will be talking about and participating in the Advent Conspiracy.
In addition to our church doing this, Rachel and I have been talking about it since last year and are pretty excited about what this means for us. 
Check out this embedded video:

So yeah, we want to take that pretty seriously this year.
That means a couple things for us.
Obviously, it means our gift giving is going to look a lot different this year.  So consider this fair warning to family and friends.
While we may not hit the bulls eye on every gift, we are trying to be more creative with our gift giving this year.  Giving gifts that will hopefully cost little and mean much.
And then redistributing our giving to people who need it world wide.
I can't wait to see how God is gonna bless it.

It also means this years Christmas wish list looks different.
I'll save that for part 2.
Look for that post later this week.

So, all of you, especially close friends and family…
Who else is in?

Let's take the story back.

I was quickly perusing a couple of blogs between tasks when I saw this video at Vicky Beeching's blog.

I hate hay.

Most of my SoCal friends and readers know Charlie Garrison.  Several Santa Cruz friends met him this year, too.  If you don’t know Charlie and his wife, Bridget…you need to.  They are one of the coolest couples, some of my best friends in the world, and God is all over their life with big things in store.

But there is one thing in particular that Charlie has sucked at in the past.  It’s called blogging.  This was his first attempt.  But he’s giving it another go.

So if you don’t know Charlie, get over to his new blog and get to know him.
If you do know him, and even followed his last attempt at a blog, go weigh in on this poll and encourage him to keep it up!

I can’t wait for Nov. 5th anymore!  Just with the props alone I am so tired of the ridiculous, non-stop commercials, YouTube videos, Facebook groups/status pleas, bumper stickers, signs, and clothing lines.  And I’m talking about from both sides of the big ones.  Half the time, the commercials and videos themselves make me want to vote for the other side because they’re just so irritating!

And welcome to my mailbox today…

Looking forward to November 5th!
What irritates you the most about politics today?

After my last triathlon, I ended up taking 3 or 4 (or maybe 5) weeks off from training.  After signing up to race again on Nov. 8th.  Big mistake!!  Last week I went for a couple of very painful runs and was realizing how much ground I have really lost.  It hit me that if there were the opportunity to jump in on a killer race immediately, I probably couldn’t hang.  Even worse considering I’m out again 2 weeks from today.  Today was a little better.  I shared with a friend that I recorded my new best mile today.  Apparently 8:22 is pretty lame to a former runner.  Good thing I was wrong.  My fastest mile is actually 8:15.

Now time for a triathlon spiritual analogy.  As I was running, it got me thinking about 1 Timothy 4:2, when Paul says “preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season”.  I can do the same thing at times in my spiritual life.  I dig into the word because I’m gonna be teaching on that passage soon.  I spend some extra time with Jesus cause I’ll be leading worship.  But sometimes I forget to just stay sharp and hang with Jesus because He is.  Because I’m meant to be.

In the same way that I won’t be ready to race a triathlon if I don’t continue to train, even out of season, and definitely won’t get better, I won’t be ready to meet the increasing challenges that God has for me if I don’t work to say spiritually fit as well.
So what are you doing to “be prepare?”  In season and out?

That being said, I need to get lots of Tri training in during the next couple weeks.  And just for fun, here’s another pic from Pacific Grove that I thought was kinda funny!

This year we will be having our Harvest Festival on Halloween night instead of the Sunday before.  Now we are a little behind this year since the Children’s Director usually gets it rollin, which we are without right now.  But there is a volunteer in our church named Pam who has stepped up big time to pull off an awesome event with a corn maze, a horse drawn hay ride, petting zoo, games, trunk or treating, raffles and more!

Now here husband, Bill, got the entrance to the event set up this week which also serves as a great publicity tool on the busiest street in Santa Cruz.  Check out the picture of where people will enter the event:

About a 16 foot tall pumpkin, as you can see, and people will enter from the mouth into a corn maze to get to the event in the back.  There are orange christmas lights around the outside of the pumpkin and around the eyes that light up at night.  And there will soon be banners hanging near it with info on the event.

October 31st.
6pm-8pm.
Be there.

Man…I still haven’t posted this?  My bad.  Really busy week.  Here’s the rest of it!

Andy Crouch

Just picked up his new book Culture Making a few months ago.  He had some good stuff to share on the topic of culture.

• We tend to condemn, critique, copy, or consume culture
• We need to be cultivating and creating culture
• The only time culture changes is when human beings decide to create more culture
• Culture is always created together
• All cultural good begins with small groups, usually 3.  Then moves up to 40, then 120.
• When you get home, don’t just tell people about your time at Catalyst with your 3…ask them what they have created this week, cause they have been.
• What have you cultivated?  What have you created?  Who is in your inner creative circle?

Matt Chandler

I had never heard of this guy before, but I am telling you, he brought it!!  Awesome speaker.  I thought it was interesting when I read on Ben Arment’s blog that their only regret was not giving Matt Chandler more time.  Great Bible teacher with some great insights and I now am subscribed to his podcast.  Wasn’t a fan of his following on twitter who seem to be a bit arrogant and kept posting about not knowing why he would be at this conference and they’re glad somebody was there to bring the Bible to all those evangelicals, but whatever.  Felt like I had stepped back into my C.C. Bible College days for a moment.

He taught from 1 Tim. 4.  He opened by sharing about baptizing some people with dramatic life change stories at their church, a witch, a drug addict, and then also baptizing a baptist kid who had grown up in the church.  The baptist kid hit him the hardest.  The idea that this kid could grow up all his life in church, go to Sunday School, VBS, etc., but just now understand Jesus because religion had gotten in the way of understanding a true relationship with Christ.  And so his point was, we need to and can even reach the kid growing up in our church.  Here are some good snippets from his sharing.

• Somehow doctrine has become synonymous with historical fundamentalism.
• If you’re after Jesus because he’ll gove you a better marriage or a happier life, you are after those things.  You are not after Jesus.
• Truth and depth is what young people want today.
• The greatest revealer of our heart is how we spend our money and how we treat people.

Andy Stanley
Andy Stanley of course came out to close out the conference.  In doing so, he shared the five quotes/leadership principles that are hanging in his office and have been bothering him lately.  Here they are:

• “To reach people no one else is reaching, we must do things no one else is doin.” -Craig Groeschel
• “The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.” -Al Reis
• “What do I believe is impossible to do in my field…but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business?” -Joel Barker
• “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do?  Why shouldn’t we walk out the door, come back in, and do it ourselves?” -Andy Grove
• “When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.” -Michael Hammer

So many great things and quotes that Andy had to add to all those, but that really is plenty to chew on right there.  I do love the idea of hanging some quotes/thoughts that really hit home in the office.  I am the type of person who is very inspired by them.

So it was a great several days at Catalyst.  There were tons of little things, interviews, games, meals, etc. that I can’t post all of here.  However, I will say the best part, as is always the case with conferences I go to, was the relationship building and networking.  It was fun to not only hang with Ed and Brandon, but also to see a bunch of friends and family from SoCal and learn together with good friends I don’t really see very often.  Here is a pic of all of us in the preferred seating section before the last session.  And yeah, I was behind the camera, so I decided to do a real quick and horrible Photoshop job to be there with the crew!  Different resolution, different lighting, but hey, whatever!

Tim Sanders

Day 2 of speakers at Catalyst started with a guy named Tim Sanders.  He’s the author of a book called Saving The World At Work.  He had some great thoughts about making a difference every day, being incarnational wherever we are at.  Here are a few quotes from him.

• You create abundance by giving, not by consuming.
• Good is the new great. (Which made me question if I should really try to be great like Jim Collins suggested.  Very confusing.  Just kidding by the way.)
• Tell your people to take their values to work.
• What you learn on Sunday makes you a rock star on Monday.
• If not you, who?  If not now, when?

Dave Ramsey

Man, this dude is fiery.  For some reason I was expecting some chill quiet guy, but I think Anne Jackson’s twitter said it best when she said he sounded like an angry Dr. Phil.  It was actually pretty awesome.  Rachel and I started reading his book Total Money Makeover right after we got married.  When I saw him on the list I assumed he’d be talking about money, but this year he shared some leadership principles from his organization.  Specifically the five enemies to unity.  Those being:

• Poor communication
• Gossip
  • Gossip is complaining to anyone about anything they can’t change.
  • Some of the biggest gossips I’ve ever met do it in the name of a prayer request.
• Unresolved disagreements
  • Happen when a leader doesn’t know they exist or avoids confrontation.
  • An indecisive leader is by definition, not a leader.
  • Nobody ever killed anything by saying, “Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim…”
• Lack of shared purpose
  • Caused when a leader doesn’t restate the goal, the vision and mission early and often.
  • Start by having a shared purpose in your family.
• Sanctioned incompetence
  • Team members eventually become demotivated when someone else on the team can’t or won’t do their job and a leader will not take action.

Of course after his talk on leadership there was a quick interview regarding the current economic situation.  Some great insights there as well of course.

• There is a spirit of fear being cast by media and politicians that is resulting in bad decisions, including the most recent legislation that was passed.
• The world should be able to look at us for hope and security but we’re just as scared.
• If you had been handling your money by God’s principles as we talked about last year, you wouldn’t have anything to worry about.
• Don’t buy gold!!!  The last time a fallen economy turned to the gold system after collapse was the Roman Empire.
• Keep putting money in your 401K.  If you take it out now, you will feel pretty stupid in a few years.

Great stuff from both these guys.  Notes from the last 3 speakers coming soon so we can move on with blog life.

So, Rachel recently had the toddler Sunday School class at church start doing curriculum as opposed to just playing.  We realized with Caleb that he actually can start learning and interacting, so we should start teaching the kids some at that age.  Currently they are learning about who made the world.

So as I was changing Caleb's diaper today and asking him who made the world.  Here's how the conversation went:

Quick interjection here.  They haven't learned that one yet.  But I thought maybe if he kept with the same answer he'd get the point.  Continue story…

That's freaking awesome.