Ollie Crawling

So a few days ago Oliver began his long journey of travelling under his own power. That's right . . . he learned how to crawl! It's still a little bit more of a scoot than a crawl, but he is still on his way to becoming fully mobile!

I captured a short video of his second day of crawling on my iphone you can check it out:

I'm still amazed at how much growth I see in him every single day. It seems like there is something new he is doing everyday that makes him seem older and less like a little infant. Karyss and I are just trying to soak these moments in as much as we can.

New Adventure

This last week marked the beginning of a new adventure for Karyss and I. It is both scary and exciting! As most of you know, I have been on staff at Central Christian Church since June 2007 in the high school ministries. We love being a part of a ministry that is reaching a city that desperately needs Christ!!

Two weeks ago, Central launched a new service on Wednesday nights called Weekends on Wednesdays. It's really geared towards those people who work on the weekends (which is a lot of people in Las Vegas!)

What's really cool is that they asked me to lead worship for that service! So starting last week I began to lead and work with the team on Wednesday nights to really make that a great experience for anyone who is able to be there. My prayer is that this would not just be another service option for people, but that it would reach a whole new group of people that were not able to be a part of the weekend experience at Central.

The turnout and energy has been great so far, and I know God has big plans for this service and I'm so excited to be able to participate in it!

I will continue to be a part of the high school team at Central during the week as well as the weekends working with student teams to make that experience a great one for students in Las Vegas.

It's really an exciting time for Karyss, Ollie, and I!! We just wanted to give everyone a quick update!

Forgotten God

Just read the introduction to Francis Chan's new book "Forgotten God" and I'm already nervous. The tag line of the book is "reversing our tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit." I'm nervous because I know that my intellectual understanding of the Holy Spirit as well as my experiencing Him is ... Hmmmm....lacking. Just from the intro I know Francis will be bold and clear and that pumps me up.

I know this isn't quite as easy a conversation as church production, but I know there are a lot of very different and very STRONG opinions and beliefs about the Holy Spirit out there and I would love to hear your thoughts/interpretations/experiences.

Interesting Conversation

So, last week I wrote just a little note on facebook that sparked a great discussion about production in churches and the line between magnifying the "message" or the "vehicle of the message." My friend Sam and I went back and forth a little bit, and I would love to see if anyone else would like to chime their opinion into the conversation.

The particular production we were talking about was the Hillsong song "With Everything." You can watch the youtube video here.



So . . . I would love to hear your thoughts. This production (lights, video, live video stuff) is obviously VERY involved, but I would love to know where you stand.

Organizing for Control vs. Growth

The Senior Leader at my church said this a few months ago, "You can organize for control or you can organize for growth. You can't organize for both!"

How true and difficult that statement is. I find that organizing for control is much easier than organizing for growth. In fact, that statement "organize for growth" is a little bit vague.

Control is easy. You run it, you call the shots, you are responsible for failures and successes, you do everything. It requires no leadership because you are DOING everything.

Growth is difficult. What does it look like to organize for growth? Is it a lack of control? Is it the opposite of organizing for control? Does it mean things are OUT of control? To be honest with you, I still don't really know. I believe that one of the elements of organizing for growth is trust. To release control, I must trust others to control. I must trust that other people will have the ability to carry out whatever I would normally do on my own. Organizing for growth requires an infinite amount of leadership. I will never be a good enough leader for my "organization" to cease growing and improving. If I stop growing as a leader, I believe whatever I am leading will also stop growing.

These are merely random thoughts that I am dealing with today. Anyone else have thoughts on how to organize for growth vs. control?

long leave

it's been a long time all ye who read my blog . . . and I'm back. I got to connect with Rich from RKWeblog this weekend at Central and it was awesome! He is the one who convinced me to start blogging when we were at Re:create a few years ago and hanging for a bit has re-inspired me. Here is a quick update on my life:

karyss had a baby
he is amazing
his name is Oliver
we call him Ollie
got to take 2 wks off
it was amazing
he is now 5 wks old and the best thing that has ever happened to us
family/friends have been in town for 4 of 5 wks
it's been amazing
it's also been exhausting
We appreciate our parents now more than ever
I took a trip to LA to serve the homeless with Resonate
missed my family like crazy
but it was an amazing week!
we're still in Vegas
it's hot!
power bill is expensive . . . REALLY expensive

And now we are to today
caught back up
good friends again
it's like we never left each other

YouVersion 2.0

Just discovered my new favorite Bible study website! I've heard people talking about it, but I never checked it out until this morning. I saw it on Chris' blog . . . thanks Chris!

YouVersion 2.0 was released on Friday. This great resource from LifeChurch.tv just continues to get better and better. Here are several links for more information.

• YouVersion Website
• YouVersion Blog
• ChurchCrunch
• Iphone App
  
• YouVersion Mobile