Proud Daddy

My 9 year old daughter, Brianna, decided (on her own) to ask for money instead of gifts for her birthday this year, so she could buy essential baby items for single moms at the Piedmont Women's Center.

Last week, we took her to Target so she could could spend her $85 on items for a boy and girl baby. The lady who was checking us out, asked us if we were buying all of that for a baby shower. When Jenny told her what Brianna was doing, she started to tear up and told Brianna that people like her make a big difference. She then revealed that she is a single mom with another one on the way. She had no idea that the Piedmont Women's Center helped out single moms.

Yeah...I'm a proud daddy. :)

Sunday Download

• About all I can say about this morning is, "WOW!"
• Unbelievable worship and energy in both services
• We set a new attendance record - ok...we shattered our attendance record today!
• Thank you for everyone that came to the 9:30 this morning. The 11:00 was actually full again, but I don't know what we would have done if some people had not switched to the early service.
• It was really cool having Chris back on the mic. It's still a little weird though to watch your worship leader sign autographs after the services. Where's the love for the pastor, people?!?
• Next week the 11:00 service moves to 11:15. And the parking guys rejoiced!
• I made a pretty big announcement this morning: We have secured a lease on some additional 24/7 space! We now have offices and a 2200 sf. venue. It was built out as a Christian coffeehouse/performance room, but never opened. We now have a really cool room for youth, college, Alpha, and anything else we can think of - a 1/2 mile from the church! I will try to post pictures later.
• I just downloaded the latest albums from the Foo Fighters and Rascal Flatts. How's that for musical diversity!
• Our small group last week had 20 adults and 10 kids. That's almost insane.
• I can't wait for Catalyst this week. I REALLY do no have the time to go, but I know that I will be glad that I did.
  
• I am depressed that the Cubs are in playoffs, but giddy about the Mets historically choking it up end the end! :)
  

Some Thoughts

• Great Sunday at Seacoast Greenville. Tons of energy in the room today.
• We are out of room in our 11am service. It's probably time for a few of our peeps to move to the 9:30. When that fills up...
• I will have a very big announcement next Sunday.
  
• My boy Chris Sligh will be back with us next Sunday. The AI tour wraps up tonight after approximately 565 dates! :)
• Our people are starting to really step it up with our "Simply Serve" campaign. It's exciting to see people plug in to use their gifts.
• Jenny and I are going to see Rascal Flatts in a couple of weeks. I don't care what you think! :)
• I am taking our staff to the Catalyst Conference this year. This will be my first time. Is it any good? :)
• I got one of the weirdest emails ever this afternoon. I may have to share it in a future post when I finally decipher what it means.
• I am flying out to Dallas for the week tomorrow. I may have to hit Pappasitos one night. It has to be done. If anyone wants to hang, shoot me an email.

Virtual Bible Reading

Recently, I have been doing my daily Bible reading online at Biblegateway.com. I don't know if I like it yet. It almost feels like I'm not really reading God's Word. I know that the words are the same, but there's something about holding leather. Also, it's really hard to highlight my screen. :) Anybody else do their reading online now?

Junky Car Club

I absolutely LOVE this idea. I am so close to being able to enjoy a full membership. Just a couple more years on my cars!

http://junkycarclub.com/

I'm Exhausted

I am not sure that you can pack more into one week than we managed to do in the past seven days. Here are some of the highlights and some random thoughts on a Sunday night:

• On Wednesday night, we had our first annual Seacoast Chili Cook-Off. (h.t. Jeff Kinney) All of our small group leaders prepared what they thought was their best chili and the battle was on. There were prizes for: hottest, tastiest, best fixin's and so on. My small group managed to land the hottest award. Nice job Maria! It was a HUGE success with a lot of people getting connected to our small groups.
• I am now officially officeless. In order to make room for more children's space on Sundays, Ross and I moved out of our office on Saturday. We will be officeing out of our homes for the next few weeks until we have something else in place. You may see me very soon in a coffeehouse near you!
• We spent most of the day on Saturday setting up for our 3 year anniversary and building a new classroom in the former office.
  
• We partied hard today! I think this has to be the coolest Sunday that we have ever had. We had stuff happening everywhere! The owners of Brick House Coffee are Seacoasters, and they basically set-up a Brick House Coffee in our cafe. They gave away a ton of iced coffees. The line before the second service wrapped half way around the auditorium. Those guys ROCK!!!
  
• We also had huge chocolate cookie cakes from The Chocolate Shoppe. Mmmmm...... :)
  
• We rented a huge jump castle for the kiddies to jump in after the services. It looked fun.
  
• There were a lot of people there today. We had so many college students in the second service that a visitor asked me after the service if that was our youth service! :)
• We had pizza for all of our college students after the 11:00 service. I can't wait to get our college ministry kicked off next week!
• I shared my vision of being a church that leaves a legacy of serving this morning. Jesus gave us the model of picking up the towel, and that is what we are going to do in our church, in our community, and in our world. We gave everyone a small towel to be a reminder of what we are called to do. Our slogan this year is: Simply Serve.
• I had 4 people ask me to mention their school's football team during the welcome this morning. Apparently - there were some big games this weekend? :)
• Next week kicks off our new series "Get Smart" and our new "Get Smart" small groups. All of our groups are doing the same study for the next 6 weeks. We have over 20 groups ready to go!
  
• Our staff is AMAZING. If everyone knew all that happened behind the scenes this week, you would just weep for them. Those guys took it all in stride and kept going.
  
• I can't wait for a slightly slower week...we'll see what happens. :)
  

Location, Location, Location

Seacoast Greenville is turning 3 this Sunday. It was actually a couple of weeks ago, but we are choosing to celebrate it on the 9th...because we can. :)

We have learned A LOT in the past 3 years. I think I now know what the hardest part of planting a church is. It's not people leaving. It's not hiring staff. It's not finding musicians. It's real estate. Finding a place for a growing new church to meet in a town like Greenville is extremely frustrating. We have been doing some searching over the past 6 months, looking for our next step. Our current building has been great, but we do not own it. That means that we do not have complete control of our future, and that future has looked tenuous at best over the past year as the main lease has changed hands.

Things look good right now, but when we first got word that our building was up for sale, we started an all out search for possible buildings. Here is what I've found:

• Retail space is expensive! A Bi-Lo grocery store that is 1/2 mile from us recently moved to a new location. They still have 9 years left on their lease, so they are looking to sub-lease 60,000 sf. to anyone but another grocery store. I made a call on it because it's literally down the street from us. It would only cost us - $510,000 a year!!!
• They do not want to lease or sell retail space to churches. I have had good conversations with realators until they found out it was a church. That usually ends it.
• We have grown to the point where we need enough space and parking that we also cannot afford. Ah...the other side of growing with unchurched, young people. The part they don't tell you about in the books! :)
• Warehouse space looks affordable, until you factor in the upfit. Most do not have air conditioning and/or enough parking. You also have to build a lot of walls.
• Greenville County schools will not let churches in them. We also have 2, count them, 2 movie theaters.
  

It may not be a bad idea for church planters to get their real estate license first. It will probably come in handy. :)

Latest Reads

I am a pretty big reader, but not always the most disciplined. I usually have at least 5 books going at the same time, and it is rare that I actually totally finish a book. It seems like most books repeat everything over and over! Anywho...here are a few that are grabbing my attention right now:

• 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team - I am going back through this with my staff. Great discussion starter!
• Choosing To Cheat - I know that I am late on this one, but Andy really nailed it! An instant addition to my counseling recommendations.
• The Big Idea - Dave and the guys at CCC continue to raise the bar on church innovation. I am actually re-reading it to digest some more.
• The Prodigal Comes Home - I couldn't actually bring myself to buy this one, so I read it in about 3 trips to Barnes & Noble. :) I was a HUGE fan of Michael English in the early 90's. I had no idea that he fell so far.

I have 2 new books that should be arriving by Friday. I love the smell of an Amazon box!

Catch Up

OK, I know that it's been awhile, but don't be playa' hatin'!! Here are some quick hits of what's going on in my little world:

• It was a fun Sunday with a lot of the college students back! There's definitely more energy in the room with those guys. Love ya NGU!!! Can't wait for Furman in a few weeks.
• Had lunch on Tuesday with the South Carolina District Superintendent of the Assembly Of God, Steve Brown. I grew up in the Assembly Of God, but have been out of it for 14 years. I really liked him...especially since he picked up the check! :)
• I am tired of thinking about buildings!!! I am ready to get back to thinking about ANYTHING but buildings.
• The public charter school that now controls the building that we are in (that's another VERY long post), started on Monday. We now have to remove anything that remotely looks religious from the auditorium every Sunday. At least we don't have to tear down everything! :)
• Our auditorium in now the gym class during the week. :(
• The church that owns our building (again...another long post...) took about 100 auditorium chairs to sell in a yard sale. This will probably be a major problem for us in a couple of weeks. We may start BYOC services soon!
• Chris posted some new tunes on his myspace. Check 'em out...
  
• I can't wait for our 3 year anniversary on September 9th! God has done SO much in our church over the past year. We're putting it together now, and there will be some surprises... :)
  
• Don't look now, but here come my Cardinals! 2 1/2 back baby!!!
• It can not be football season when it's 101 degrees outside. It just can't...
  

Favorite Websites

As a follow up to my last post, I thought that it would be fun to list my top 10 websites. These are sites that I visit on an almost daily basis.

1. www.usatoday.com - my national news fix every morning
2. www.greenvilleonline.com - local news fix
3. www.weather.com - you gotta know...
4. www.bloglines.com - my blog reading fix
5. www.cnet.com - my gadget fix
6. www.biblegateway.com - my reading Bible
7. www.planningcenteronline.com - see previous post
8. www.igoogle.com - my home page for the moment
9. www.facebook.com - see previous post
10. www.apple.com - I just need to!!!
    

Tech Toys

I am an admitted techphile (nerd), so I thought I would list 10 of my favorite gadgets, websites and software that help me in ministry and just plain make me smile. :)

1. ProPresenter - worship presentation software. I have demoed almost every presentation software on the market, and while they all have their good and bad, none of them rival ProPresenter in my humble opinion. It's flat out the easiest to use and it runs on a Mac! We have not had a single crash since we started using it 3 years ago. The most recent upgrade took it over the top!
2. Planning Center Online - scheduling software. I cannot imagine trying to manage my worship and tech teams without it now! It saves me hours of tedious work every week. The best part - it's totally web based. I can log in and work with all of my resources anywhere that I am. As much as I travel now, that's a good thing!
3. PWarchive.com - chord charts. The first site I check before I start charting a new song. They're not always 100% correct, but they're usually pretty close. Another MAJOR time saver in my week.
4. Bloglines - rss aggregator. I rarely ever actually go to a blog. Bloglines tracks around 100 different blogs for new posts for me, and I can scan through them all in about 15 minutes. I wish I could do that with books (or people).
5. Backpackit.com - organizational software. I am new to this site, but it's growing on me really quickly.
6. iPod - mp3 player. We use iPods for all of our pre and post service music. I just set-up different playlists and it's always fresh. Do you remember when you had to burn cd's every week?!?
7. AT&T 8525 - PDA/Phone. I have had a Treo 650 for the past 3 years and I just made the jump to the 8525. It's a beautiful thing. Working on the road is breeze with everything this thing can do.
   
8. iMac - computer. There is not a better designed desktop computer out there. I have one on my desk and we use a 20" Intel version for running ProPresenter. We even used one when we were mobile. They are very compact and easy to move.
9. Pandora.com - internet radio. I never got into internet radio until I tried Pandora. Pick your favorite artist and let it build a custom playlist for you. How cool is that?!? It also helps my research for new music. :)
   
10. Facebook - social networking. I am really digging the networking possibilities of Facebook. MySpace what? :)
    

Facebook

I am now officially addicted to Facebook. If you're on Facebook, look me up and be my friend!

Kid Friendly

Apparently, according to this site, my blog is ok for the whole family to read. I...uh...think that is a good thing? Hopefully it's not like a boring cartoon movie that you have to take your kids to see every once in awhile. :)

Random Thoughts From The Concert

Now that I have slept for a few hours, these are some thoughts that I had last night:

• I am still amazed at the whole concept of the American Idol tour. Thousands of people pack out arenas to watch people sing other people's songs? Whatever - it works.
• It was very surreal to see our worship leader, and my friend, singing on stage in front of 9000 screaming people.
• Jordin & Melinda can saaang.
• Phil Stacey had the pipes to pull off the win. I think his nerves on tv got to him. Watch his career very closely.
• I can now see some of the appeal of Sanjaya. He is definitely interesting to watch. In a bizarre, freakish kind of way...but interesting.
  
• Blake is a master showman. Not a great voice, but has major charisma. He was my 3 year old's favorite (besides Chris!)
• The drummer rocked! I think he tours with Usher as well.
  
• It was fascinating to see how each of the idols interact with people. A few standouts:
  
• Jordin is unbelievably nice. She had the biggest crowd around her the whole time, and she even got down on the floor with my girls. Very cool.
• Melinda is the real deal. Very, very humble and kind.
• Gina was really cool as well. Very funny.
• Chris R. surprised me a bit with how nice he was with the girls. He took the time to talk to them before signing their book. His sister was there and remembered us from Hollywood. She's traveling some with the tour.
• Sanjaya smiles - a lot. Seemed like a nice kid though.

• It was cool that a few of them included scripture references under their signature. Brianna got her Bible out as soon as we got home to look them up. They can be a witness in that profession.
• We are going through a little bit of American Idol withdrawal right now. Last night was the final big event. It has been fun, but I am not losing another worship leader to American Idol! :)
  

The AI Concert

We had a REALLY fun night tonight. We went out and caught my boy Chris Sligh and the other idols in concert at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville. Our seats were unbelievable - 5th row dead center! When we first got in the arena, we kept slowly walking towards the front thinking that we must have missed our row. I kept looking for security all night to usher us to our real seats. :)

After the show, we got to go back stage and hang out with Chris and the other idols for a little meet & greet. The girls got autographs from everyone except Lakeesha, who was not around. I have some thoughts about the concert, but I will save those for tomorrow. For now, here are a few pics of the excitement:

Pre-show amazement


Chris & Gina duet


The Idol boy band (not pictured: Phil & Chris R.)




Chris & the girls backstage


THE American Idol, Jordan


Hailey & the fam


Gina signing for Brianna


Melinda signing


Phil adding to the Idol book