My Worship Revolution

This past Sunday I had the week off at Revolution, so instead I ran sound for my sisters church in San Diego. My brother-in-law was leading worship that morning, filling in for their worship leader. By the way, he did an awesome job! It’s been so fun to see him be used by God in such an awesome way.
Anyway, it was fun to volunteer at church with them. The church is pastored by John Rose who was my youth pastor and a large factor in me first coming to Christ. One of the best parts about going was that they are a portable church, setting up and tearing down at an elementary school. It’s so fun seeing a room go from this…

to this…

…in less than an hour.  It was a great experience for me as we get ready to start setting up and tearing down weekly.  It gave some great ideas on how I want to do things as we get started.  This Saturday I plan to visit Life Church in Temecula to experience their set up process as well.  I look forward to getting some learning from them as well.  I’ll be sure to take some pictures in the process to put up.

I had what I thought was an interesting e mail when I returned home from vacation.  Actually, I guess it was 2 e mails from one person.  This person e mailed me as a Christian wanting some info about our church, finding out when we had some events that they could visit.  If you e-mailed me while I was gone, you know that you received an auto response to inform you that I was out of town and would be unable to check e mail.  Well, this person then responded to that e mail…here’s what it said:

That’s okay. 2 Mormon missionaires are at the door and they seem sort of nice. I’ll talk to them and get back to you .
Enjoy your time off as the flock wanders.

I guess I had better not take any more vacations, eh?  I’m actually still not sure whether this was a joke, or someone who really thinks that anyone in ministry shouldn’t get a vacation.  I always hope though that my ministry is not dependant on me.  I want to trust more that God is ultimately in charge…and at times that’s easier to remember than it sounds.  I still have a lot of room to do better, but I also hope that a majority of my ministry can be focused on empowering others to serve God effectively…working myself out of a job I guess you could say.  That should give me some good goals to aim for in 2006.  Hopefully this person will still visit our community or find another one where they feel comfortable.

Awhile back, Rachel and I went to the Aquarium where we saw a SCUBA diver feeding the fish. Rachel commented that it would be cool to do, so at that point I decided that we had to hit up Catalina and try it sometime. So this morning was spent underwater.
Now I have a bad habit of wanting to pick up every hobby I try, but it really was amazing. We did an introductory dive on the coast of Catalina at a dive park. At first it was a bit odd. It’s hard to breathe and my body was telling me that it’s not supposed to be submerged completely for prolonged amounts of time. But as time went on, I got used to it. Then we were able to let go of the buoy rope and the instructor led us through forests of kelp with tons of fish and sea life swimming all around us. This site is the dive shop we went with and gives you a small idea what it’s like.

WOW! It was such an amazing experience. Rachel commented that it really is like being in a whole different world. God’s creation is so amazing. For me it was so peaceful and everything around seemed so majectic. We saw an octopus hiding in a hole, I touched a cool looking bottom fish (kinda like a halibut), and the color and size of some of the other fish was amazing.

I came away with two thoughts:
1) God is an amazing creator. The diversity and amount of life in that small area at the depth of 40 feet was unbelievable. I can’t even imagine the expanse of the rest of the ocean that covers a majority of the Earth.
2) I gotta get certified and do this more often! Somehow, I don’t think Rachel will be a big fan of that one. Maybe someday. I guess I’ll just put it on the list along with rock climbing and skydiving. Hey, if I ever win the lottery (if I ever start playing the lottery) I’ll have plenty of hobbies and certifications to use the money on!

Haven’t done much blogging at all this month. To be honest, it’s been a pretty rough month, but I’m looking forward to the new year. Immediately after Christmas Eve service Rachel and I left for San Diego to spend Christmas day with my family. We had a great time having our traditional Christmas breakfast and then opening gifts with my family.

That evening we went up to Big Bear to spend the next day or so with Rachel’s family. The day after Christmas served as the first day of snowboarding for the season. Unfortunately, there has been NO snow, so it was all man made. Not as bad as I was afraid it might be, though. Also, unfortunately, my body pretty much shut down after Christmas Eve and I was feeling pretty sick, so snow probably wasn’t the wisest remedy. It was a great time though and again enjoyed opening gifts again.

Finally we left Big Bear for Long Beach on Tuesday so that Rachel and I could leave for Catalina to get away on our own for a few days. That’s when I got a nice welcome home surprise. Some of you may remember when I first started blogging, I posted about my Jeep getting hit while parked on the street in front of our place. Well, in the hour I had before we left, I went to move my truck from the same spot my Jeep had been parked 8 months before, and you guessed it… hit again. The damage isn’t quite as bad, but then again, it’s a bigger truck. The car that hit me was apparently totaled. It crunched the back left side of the truck and pushed me ino the car ahead to add some nice front end damage.

I couldn’t help but laugh a little with the irony of the whole situation. So I moved the truck and took off for Catalina. I’ll deal with it when I get home.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are ready for a Happy New Year. Hopefully as I get myself back together, I can start blogging a little more regularly again.

I’ve been pretty slim on the blogging time lately. Truth be told, been pretty low on time, period. It’s that time of year again and we have our Christmas Outreach – $1 Christmas – coming up this Friday and Saturday night at Revolution church. There’s so much to do this week to see it all come together! Really don’t have the time to be doing this, but I figured I should throw up a quick explanation of the lack of activity here.

I am looking forward to getting this thing up and running, though. It’s a lot of work and stress at times, but overall it is so much more fun than just doing the same old thing and i can’t wait to see how God uses us to reach people this year. There are lots of other people working hard on it too and I am so thankful for all of you who are helping to make this happen!

Anyway, this will probably be a pretty idle site for another week or two. Hopefully you can all come join us on Friday and Saturday at 6 & 8 pm both nights. See ya there!!

This morning Rachel and I are heading out to Yorba Linda for day 2 on the 2nd annual Multiplying Church Summit with Multiplying Church Network. Yesterday was a great day of participating in two round table discussions:

1) Issues in Daughtering Churches

2) Assesing Church Planters and Teams

I’ll throw up some of my notes and thoughts when I find some time.

It was a fun day of hanging whith a bunch of men and women with a similar passion and learning from all of their experiences together. Afterward, I went out to dinner with a group of staff from Life Church in Temecula. I’m looking forward to todays session on Developing Leaders. Rachel will be checking out the session on Planting a Praying Church.

In between working on some papers for school this morning, I was on the web and found this interview with Dave Gibbons. If you don’t know who he is, he is the founding pastor of a church in the Irvine area called Newsong. He is a great leader and a pretty amazing visionary. This interview is pretty short, but you gotta check it out. [link]

My favorite part is his answer to the question, “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” It’s just so refreshing to hear about guys who are dreaming God-sized dreams. It really encourages me to think bigger, listen to God more, and trust God more in the places he guides me. I’m reminded again that if my dreams are able to be accomplshed on my own, if they aren’t dreams that seem impossible outside of God’s intervention, then they aren’t big enough!

In the past I’ve always considered how cool it would be to live on a boat, but now I found something better.  I gotta get me one of these.  Anybody got 78 million dollars I can borrow?  [link]

As Promised, here’s a few photos from Will and 1 from Rick Bambrick (I’m sure you’ll never guess which one!) from Bug-a-Boo. Enjoy!

The main stage where we showed Monsters Inc.

The Dickson life group Carvival Belly Button Super Soaker game booth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…the winning life group.

Our life groups Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

C’mon Darrenn! Shoot those marshmallows through his hands for a free t shirt. You can do it!!

Our life group! (Except for a few people who either couldn’t make it or couldn’t stay til the end.)