Posts

Showing posts from January, 2008

Google Hits on Pastor's Birthday Ideas

Pretty amazing! By far the way that most people are finding this blog is by googling for information on having a birthday party for their pastor. I'm getting around 50 hits a week on this! So... all you people out there that might be using that post to plan your Pastor's party come back here and post some of your feedback on how my suggestions went :-) I'd love to hear from some of you about it. Here's the link again to that post in case you're curious or would like to put a comment about your party.

Dress Rehearsal Tonight

Tonight is the dress rehearsal for Ten Times Two, the play I'm working the lighting board. The show is great. The cast is great. The sets are great. The props and costumes are great. Everything is great. I'm looking forward to being a part of this. Boy I'm glad I signed up to do this. Tomorrow is the gala show and this Friday is opening night.

Free Music

Image
A while back I stumbled onto a website called FreeCCM.com which, as the address would suggest, offers FREE contemporary Christian music to download. They highlight Christian artists and offer different songs and videos free for downloading. I've really been enjoying this music and getting to know some different new artists this way. They also have contest from time to time... and I actually just won one of them! I just received in the mail yesterday two albums from Todd Agnew and a t-shirt. VERY COOL! I'm a BIG fan of his music. His music is great and a bunch of his songs really have that message of it's time for us to stop playing church and allow Jesus to bring love and joy into the world through us. I could listen to that message every day! The t-shirt is the same one that Todd wears on the cover of the album Better Questions (which is the picture on this post). One day I'd like to do a sermon or two on the balance between a place that draws people here and

Up Too Late

This past month has been nuts! Every week in January I've been putting in around 55-58 hours a week for work. Boy, I really need to be on my knees more praying for those workers since the harvest is so great :-) From a workload point of view, volunteering at the local theater company probably wasn't the best idea... but from a keeping-my-sanity point of view I'm SOOOOO glad I did! The show is awesome! The cast is only 3 and they are FANTASTIC! Very talented and really putting on a great show! And everyone else there that I've been meeting are great too. It feels so great to get back into it, even with just a small job of being the lighting operator. It's great just to get out of the church building and into the community! With all the work and responsibilities that seem to keep growing at the church it so great to get out and serve in a completely different area. The show opens this Thursday. You can check out their site HERE . Now I wish I could just be getting a l

New Small Group Leader Lifter

The newest Small Group Leader Lifter podcast is now available. You can access the blog and download the MP3 at this link . This is still in BETA mode... which means I'll be making an new episode every 2 weeks for the months of Jan, Feb, and March. So if you're enjoying them you've got to let me know.

A New Captain America and Bye-Bye Spidey

Image
I gotta get to the comic book store today since yesterday the newest issue of Captain America came out. In this issue we see the return of Captain America since Cap died last year. I've been a big fan of this Captain America series. I'm really looking forward to seeing where they're going to be going with this storyline. In other comic stuff, I've decided to stop reading The Amazing Spider-Man. I'm sure all you comic geeks out there are all totally aware with the One More Day and Brand New Day fiasco that has been plaguing Spider-Man the last few months. Since I just loved the direction that Peter Parker's life has been going since the Civil War, I decided to stick it out and give it a fair chance... but with these changes I just can't stomach it. The main reason I'm dropping Spider-Man is what I'm calling the Friends-dilemma. I got back into reading comics because I LOVED the Civil War series and what it meant to many of my favorite characters.

Gossip = Dead People?

My baby sister Kimberly (who isn't really all that much of a baby... but that's still the way I think of her) wrote this incredible letter and sent me a copy of it. I asked for her permission to put a copy of it here on my blog since I find it incredibly challenging and insightful for our media obsessed culture. Heath Did I Help Kill You? I, as most Canadians do every morning, get up at 6am, get the kids dressed, make sure they brush their teeth, get them out the door, drop them off at day care - all while balancing a coffee mug. Once at work I turn on my computer, heave a sigh of relief now that the morning insanity is over and head right to Perez Hilton, TMZ and X17 for all the gossip I missed while in bed last night. However, even before arriving at work this morning I heard the news: Heath Ledger passed away of a possible overdose. I immediately thought, OMG, did I do this!?!? I know some may think that that’s a weird reaction, because obviously I’ve never known

Monday Madness!

Monday is usually one of my busiest days of the week. I usually have a number of voice mails and emails sent over the weekend... and I never get through all of them on Sunday since I'm busy with other responsibilities during the services... This Monday, since I'm starting the new men's study on Man in the Mirror tonight, was surprisingly a lot quieter then I was expecting. Sure... I'm still plugging away on my laptop, trying to finish putting my notes together for tonight while my AWESOME wife is setting the kitchen table for supper... and sure I still have a bunch of notes and the discussion questions written all over different post-it notes and scrap pieces of paper... but thankfully I'm trusting God big time on this one to put it all together :-) Here's a bit of a mind dump before supper: We did a HUGE purge of junk in our garage and storage areas in the house this weekend. You can actually now walk through these areas without stepping and climbing over bo

Men's Group on Mondays

Image
Starting this Monday, January 21st, I'm going to be leading/teaching our men's group here at the church. My plan is to go through the 24 chapters of the book The Man in the Mirror . This book has been one of the biggest influence in my life. When I first received a copy of it years ago I must have read the entire thing in 2 days. Each chapter really spoke to me and showed me the type of man that I wanted to be. So today I'm going through exactly how I want to teach this... I REALLY don't want this just to be a boring sermon-type style of teaching where the men are stuck there simply listening to me babble on for 30-45 minutes. I want to find a way to make this interactive and fun. I'd like to incorporate movie clips and stories to help bring each chapter alive. Originally I had thought that I would simply use the free Bible study videos that Man in the Mirror put out on their website. This videos are AWESOME and I've been using them for my own personal st

Dragonlance DVD

Image
One of my all time favorite books is the Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman. The original six books were by far my favorite, especially the 3 books of the Chronicles series which highlighted the twin brothers Caramon, the warrior, and Raistlin, the mage. I must have read these books a dozen times throughout college (which could explain why my college grades were so low!) and even wrote some stories on how to continue the story in a Dungeons & Dragons gaming campaign (yup... I had a lot of spare time in college!). I just learned today that an animated movie based on the first book has been released on DVD ! How did I not know about this sooner??? Since I'm in DIRE need of some geek out time so I think I'll be hitting Best Buy this weekend to pick it up. Even if it stinks it will be great to see these characters on the TV screen! I hope they keep the main elements and plot line of the book. And hopefully they're not planning on stopping with jus

Seminary Update

YES! YES! YES!! I went for a drive up to my school to see if the grades were in from last semester. Even though I'm starting up again on Tuesday I've been dying to know by how much I just skimmed through this class. The grade was in my mailbox... and I was shocked and awed to see a B- as my final grade! That REALLY surprised me! I thought for sure that I had blown the final exam. Considering that last course was the prerequisite for every other Bible class I need to take I'm sure I passed it :-)

The Beauty of Community

Last January was a little tough on me... Around this same time last year I was really having a hard time sleeping, and was feeling quite anxious about whether making the switch from being a computer consultant to a pastor was a smart move. I loved working as a Lotus Notes consultant. I had a great team and enjoyed it a lot. I knew God was all over everything, working out all the details to make the move a reality, and I really REALLY loved the new work... but last January, for a period of a couple of weeks, I was panicking... Well, today that same feeling hit me again as I was going over my blog reader, getting caught up on all the entries from people's blogs I haven't had the time to read over the last few weeks. It was a odd feeling and it caught me completely off guard. My first reaction was "What the heck?!?!? Where did that come from?!?!?" After a quiet cup of tea and some prayer time with God, the answer hit me. All my former colleagues and friends are

Small Group Leader Lifter

Image
Over the past few months I've been playing with the idea of starting a new podcast for the leaders of the small group ministry here at Woodside. Since it's so difficult to get together with the leaders regularly I thought this may be a good way of staying a bit more connected and to share resources or ideas with everyone each and every week. So today I put together the first episode. You can find it over that the small group blog I started in the summer (and having touched since!). Here is the link to that site HERE . Each week the Lifter should only be about 5-10. I would love everybody's feedback on whether or not this could be useful or not.

New Indiana Jones Photos in Vanity Fair

Image
I'm soooo pumped for a new Indiana Jones movie! Even though the tile of "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" still isn't really sitting well with my stomach, I'm sure the movie will be great... despite the fact that in the article they mention that "critics and fans will be upset". It can't be nearly as bad as Star Wars: Episode 1. Unless of course they are introducing a goofy Russian character named Czar Czar Binks. I may walk out of the theater if that happens :-) The new issue of Vanity Fair magazine has a great story and photos from the set of the new movie. You can follow this LINK and read the entire article there. Enjoy!

Yesterday's Sermon

It's pretty easy to tell when I'm preaching... because my blogging goes down to nearly zero as I spend all my time working on the sermon. Since I don't preach only every few months I haven't developed a way to work that into my regular work week and end up doing a lot of extra work to get the sermon completed... which sucks up pretty much all my other time for those few weeks while I work on it. Anyways, yesterday was my sermon called " One Another Sunday ". You can click the link and give it a listen. Be sure to let me know what you think of it. I always love getting some good criticism :-)