Long before Paris Hilton was around and…well…I guess not quite as long ago as Paris, France, there was Twila Paris.  If you listened to Christian music in the early 1990′s you know of Twila Paris.  If fact more than just know of her, you know and can sing her hit song God Is In Control.  Even more, you know it so well that anytime someone says something along the lines of God is in control, you can no longer pay attention to what is being said because all you can see is that awesome 90′s music video and have the song stuck in your head.  But beyond that, the words are true.  God is in control.  Try as we might, we just aren’t in control.  We want desperately to be in control of our lives, but if you are like me, time and time again, I prove to myself that I shouldn’t be the one in charge.  If only I would listen to my past.  (Here is the video just in case you haven’t seen it in many years and want to reminisce.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJisKhPrI9Y]

Well, Sunday was one of those days that just reinforces this point and again drives it home.  Sunday mornings are usually pretty crazy, but this one was worse.  Of course I told everyone to be there 30 minutes later than normal because we didn’t have as much to go over.  Yeah, that helped.  Everything seemed to start ok, but then we started to realize that things were messed with during the week and were completely jacked and it seemed that nothing was working correctly.  We had issues with the cameras.  We had issues with the audio.  We had issues with the projectors.  We had issues with Pro Presenter.  Then to top it off one of the volunteer’s had car problems.  Needless to say, and to make a long story short (which I’m not good at…just ask my wife) we had problems today.

I tried and tried to fix stuff.  I tried finding others that might be able to fix it.  But when it came down to it, it didn’t matter at that moment.  God was in control.  He knew we were having technical difficulties.  He knew my mind was all over the place.  But more importantly, He knew that He had a plan for the day regardless of what I wanted that to be.  And He showed up!  He took over.  Life was madness while I was trying to run it by myself.  Then I finally got to the point that I just couldn’t do it and I couldn’t take it anymore.  And then of course my last option (which of course is the best and should be my first and only option) is to just give it all up and let Him do His thing knowing that I am not the boss.

When it really comes down to it, I love it when I can get my stupid butt out of the way and realize that He is completely in control.  That is when He uses me.  That is when He really does great things.  Now I just need to do that more often.

Now that the baby is out of the bag we finally get to include everyone in all of this craziness that is pregnancy!  No, ladies, I am not claiming that I have a clue what being pregnant is like, but I can tell that it is definitely crazy.

On July 6 at 6:49 AM I was informed that we had a little one growing and that I should plan on cleaning the house for the visit that the stork would be paying us in early spring of ’10.  (Is that just 10?  010 just doesn’t seem to work.  Is it then 2010?  That will get pretty wordy for the next decade.)  As you all know, we are very excited, but that’s enough of the pregnancy test story.  I wanna skip ahead to that night.  For some reason I (or God) decided it was time to open up my paper Bible (which has been sidelined for quite some time with the entrance of YouVersion on the computer and iPhone) and read where I had left off last time.  I really think this was all God because I hadn’t done that in a really long time and just felt like it was a good night to read from the paper Bible instead of the iPhone.  Well, God gave me this Scripture to read.

Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift? The fruit of the womb his generous legacy? Like a warrior’s fistful of arrows are the children of a vigorous youth. Oh, how blessed are you parents, with your quivers full of children! Your enemies don’t stand a chance against you; you’ll sweep them right off your doorstep.

~ Psalm 127:3-5

I love it.  To me it is God’s confirmation.  This is a gift.  This child growing (that at the moment is a little bigger than a lime) is a little birthday present from heaven.  It’s pretty easy to get caught up in the midst of pregnancy and completely forget or ignore the fact that He alone gives breath.  We didn’t create this baby (well, in that way…yes we did).  We are not the ones forming it.  God is doing all that.  He is building this gift.  I’m not questioning timing.  I’m not questioning if I’m ready.  I’m not saying I know what I’m doing, but I do know that this little citrus sized being is a gift.  Now we just have to raise it well and pray that it really does become a weapon for God.

(I think I like that.  Maybe the kid needs a weapon for a name.  Shotgun.  Dagger.  Nun-chuck.  Missle.  Silencer.  Yeah.  That would be a manly gift from God!  Of course if it is a girl, it would be like Butterfly Knife or Throwing Stars.  Oh!  And if there were twins they could be Bo and Arrow!  Wow that would be awesome.)

Yup.  It’s my birthday!  Good times.  If only it was filled with Transformers, M.A.S.K., G.I. Joe, and LEGOs like it used to be.  That would be great wouldn’t it?  We could sit around and have wars.  Then once your team was all dead you could play War, the card game, work on the Rubix Cube, or go build a fort out of anything and everything.  But I guess times change and people expect us to grow up.  Ha.  Yeah right!  You all can do your growing up thing and I’ll go build a fort out of LEGOs or my Transformers and Micro Machines to live in!

But I guess part of us does grow up.  This is my last birthday before I turn 30.  Wow.  I’m really glad I don’t feel old enough to be 30.  I hope I don’t next year either.  This also marks my last birthday prior to children.  Not really sure how that’s gonna affect my birthday, but I would be stupid to assume that it wouldn’t.  Wait!  Maybe that means I get an extra gift from the kid too!  Of course then they will start making macaroni pictures in Sunday School and that will be my birthday gift.  Those are super sweet and cute and all those other girl words that tend to follow super.  It just will be different.

So here’s to 28 completed years of life.  Bring on the next one!  I have a feeling it will be a very eventful one.

PS – Comments on the blog are a great birthday present for those of you that weren’t gonna buy me something!

Well, we are almost through my first week of full time work at Kingsfield Church.  There is so much going on that I have been worried that once I became full time I wouldn’t get to blog as often.  Now here we are and I haven’t blogged in 2 or 3 days!  No more days just sitting around the house, playing with the dog, enjoying the weather, going to the beach, and blogging.  Bummer.  That’s ok though.  I’m really looking forward to what I’m getting to learn and do here.

As the Music & Media Pastor, I am not only getting to lead worship like normal (podcasts and audio CDs soon to come hopefully), but I have been working on moving to a portable church package as well as learning to use Dreamweaver and Photoshop to update the website and create graphics.  They are both quite…well…I don’t know that addicting is the right word, but once I get going, I don’t want to stop!  Wait…that does sound like addicting would fit.  Hmmm.  Guess I’ll just have to be careful then.  Anyway, we have so much going on right now and we are just about to turn the corner to a whole new world.  Kingsfield Church is about to be located in a new town with so much traffic around it that I can’t imagine not reaching more people!  I know I can speak for the rest of the staff and their families because we are really excited about the changed lives that we are about to see!  So we are moving forward expecting just that!

So for those of you out there, please pray for us at Kingsfield Church.  There are so many working parts and pieces that we want to trust God to do His thing and not get in the way!  I will update you more as we get closer to it!

Yesterday I received a comment question about my post Revolutionary Thinking.  It was a great question and I thought I would take the time to answer it!  Stacy asked…

I heard somewhere that only 1 in 4 college students who went to church with there parents choose to go to church on there own… why do you think that is? Do you not feel that all of this technology has made the apparent need for relationships decrease?

I can’t say that I have actually heard that statistic before, but it really doesn’t surprise me.  Many times kids go to church just because that’s what their parents do and a lot of the time it doesn’t ever really make it from something that they do to becoming their own faith and something that they are.   Then enter college and the freedom that comes along with it and no one is there to make you.   It happened to me (not quite the same reasoning, but still).  I think it comes down to whether or not they are able to make the beliefs their own instead of just what their parents told them.

As far as the technology goes I think that the technological world that we live in is what is causing the isolation, if you will. The more texting and chatting and emailing grow the less we feel the need to interact with humans all the time. I believe we were made to interact and those things were intended to be tools to help that, but in many cases they seem to be making it worse. I mean look at junior high girls with unlimited texting plans. They now are closer to each other and know more details about each other than they ever could before and its immediate!

Now add church to the technology mix. For sure online church isn’t perfect. No church is.  There are definitely some difficulties.  With some great timing considering I wrote yesterday’s post a couple days ago, on the LifeChurch.tv blog, Swerve, yesterday they talked about some of the limitations of having church online.  Their big things were baptisms, communion, accountability, and personal physical needs.  I am not sure that church online is the end all.  LifeChurch.tv (the one I know the most about) really pushes people to get into LifeGroups or start them.  They also encourage “watch parties”.  Church online could be just the start of your relationship with Christ.  Maybe after a while of going to church online you start going to a LifeGroup or find a church home.  I think that is the next step.  It’s just like joining the church isn’t the end.  There are still more steps to take.

So I guess my answer would be yes, technology in many ways does seem to be pushing people farther away, but I don’t think that our need for relationships could ever be gone.  And then when you add church online, BabelWith.Me, Twitter, Facebook, and more to it the world can seem to get farther away.  But I think BabelWith.Me, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all tools to help people get connected.  If all we do is sit on those all day long then we are missing the point.  Same with church online.  It is a reaching tool but not the finish line.  Maybe one day we will figure out better ways to reach people, but I am just glad we are thinking outside the box to try to do so.

To reach people no one is reaching, you must do things no one is doing. ~ Craig Groeschel

I know that this may smudge some people’s Pumas, but  I’m gonna talk about it anyway.  I think my biggest beef with church in general is that we don’t adapt very well.  For too long we have been spending so much time trying to figure out what the culture of the times is doing and trying to be relevant.  For too long we have been trying to play a game of catch up and not understanding why we always feel behind.

I have been so guilty of this myself.  When facebook and MySpace exploded, I dodged!  I didn’t wanna be “that guy”.  Then one day when I was trying to figure out how to be relevant to the students in the youth ministry I was pastoring it hit me.  I have to be willing to try things and look to those newfangled gadgets the young whippersnappers were into.  Ok, so maybe I wasn’t your grandmother, but still I didn’t see it until that day.  Without a facebook or MySpace page I was not going to be able to really get into these kids’ world.  Ever since then I have been trying to at least give things a shot and now Twitter and blogs are a big part of my daily connecting, stretching and growing.

Unfortunately, it seems that many churches act like I did when I was trying so desperately to keep my world the same and not change it.  We aren’t willing to lead and end up waiting for someone else to do it and then try to catch up.  On the flip side, there are a great number of churches that are willing to trying anything and everything to reach the world.  There are some incredible things happening in many of these churches across America that I desperately pray catch on with the rest.  Cutting edge Biblical tools and systems that maximize efficiency and data are revolutionizing how many ministries work, learn and grow.  Churches are mastering the internet as it is undoubtably the medium of the future.

There are two things that I have experienced and think will play a HUGE part in creating culture and I’m seriously excited about!  One is an amazing chat tool called BabelWith.Me.  Now people from all over the world can speak their language and it be immediately translated into the language that you speak!  I have had conversations with people speaking Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew!  The other is Church Online.  I have spoken with many skeptics, but I have seen these online communities effects.  I have been to church with people from 25+ different countries while sitting at home in my underwear!

We as Christ followers need to step up and create the world’s culture.  God created us to be creative people.  We need to stop being the followers or worse yet just sitting still.  Let’s stop doing things because it is the way we have always done it and do things because that is the way people today are hearing and responding.  Let’s stop trying to be relevant and set culture.  The message of Christ is always the same, but the methods are what have to change.  I pray that I will have an open mind to trying new things and doing old things in new ways to reach out to the world.  I pray that I will be able to help my community think outside the box and reach out in a new way.  I pray that we as Christ followers will stop getting caught up in religion and start using the love of God to lead the world!

Over the past several years the blogging world has exploded.  It seems that just a few years ago the only people that blogged were those that were really into writing, wrote books, or worked for the media in some way.  That has all changed.  Now it is super easy to get a blog started and it costs you nothing to let the world know what you think about ANYTHING!

A few years ago the last thing on my mind was writing a blog.  I have been given journals over the years and tried and tried to start journaling, but it just never felt right.  I always felt like I was forcing my male self to do something that only junior high girls were supposed to do (not that I am faulting any guys that have been successful at doing that).  It just wasn’t for me.  Then for some reason, one day just over a year ago, I felt the need to start writing.  And with that, I was caught up in the world of blogging and it hasn’t let up yet.  So why blog?  Here are my top 10 reasons for having a blog.

1. Bandwagon – Everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t I.  This is where you insert comments about facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and mom’s saying something about jumping off a bridge (which never really made me feel bad about my decisions, but always made me want to find a bridge with deep enough water to jump off).
2. Journaling – Despite my best efforts, if you look back through the 200+ posts that I have written there are, no doubt, several that are just me journaling.  Blogging is a great way for me to get my thoughts out of my head and deal with them.
3. Innovation/Conversations – We don’t all live in the same place and don’t have party lines on the phones anymore.  If you don’t know what a party line is go text your grandparents.  Having large discussions isn’t always doable.  Blogging let’s you get your thoughts out there and allows others to share their thoughts and opinions.  When you have an idea, blogging helps you get it out there and share it with others to help mold your ideas.
4. Creativity – Blogging lets you be as creative as you want to be!  You can be as boring as only linking other people’s work or as creative as coming up with everything on your own.  You can express yourself in the style and content of your blog.
5. Freedom – With a blog you are not restrained at all.  You can write about anything you want.  You can write for as long as you want.  Now of course this could affect your readership, but still.  You are free to have it your way.
6. Platform – Blogging can be your platform.  It can be your voice.  Maybe you don’t have a key role in your community or society, but blogging gives you another chance to express your ideas and concerns.  Of course you could always go stand on the street corner with a box and a mega phone, but who has the energy for that!
7. Memory – Just like journaling in many ways, blogging is like internet Ginkgo Biloba!  It has been posted on the internet.  That means as long as you don’t cancel you can go back to it many years later and see the pictures you took of your newborn.
8. Contribution – Do you have a thought that could revolutionize everything around you?  Maybe it changes the way church happens.  Maybe it changes the focus of government.  I don’t know what that would be for you, but blogging could be the key to getting this new thought out to the world.
9. Connection – Writing and reading blogs allows you to stay connected to those that you love.  Maybe it’s friends that lives on the other side of the world.  If they blog, you don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to converse with them.  Read about their week.  Check out pictures of their kids.  Leave them comments!
10. Change – As the world changes, many media styles are becoming more and more ancient.  For now there are still some uses for magazines and newspapers, but I would argue that their usefulness is quickly being burnt up.  The internet is becoming more effective, instantaneous and less expensive.  Now without having to wait until the morning news, images and ideas spread the winds of change immediately.  Iran is a massive example of this.  As the government banned all reporting, the internet and cell phones took their place.

So what about you?  Why do you blog?

As you may assume from the title of this post, I am struggling with my patience at the moment.  Unfortunately, I am not waiting on just one thing so I think that is making it worse.  But on the fortuitous side, the things I am waiting on are all great things!  One of the main things is a huge step that our new church is taking (I say new even though we have been there for several months now because I was a part of our last church for around 7 years) in the next couple months.

As a staff we have been talking, planning, praying, and dreaming for the past several months as we have been dealing with the sale of the current facilities and then the inevitable move to somewhere new.  I believe that we have been faithful to do our part and God, who is always faithful to do His, has come through and set before us a great situation that we are very excited about.  So after all that _____ing that we did as a staff, we finally made the announcement to the church this past weekend.  It went great!  True, we are going from a permanent facility to setup and teardown portability, but we are also gaining so many things that we believe will be huge for the vision of the church!  We will finally be right smack in the middle of the community!  We will financially be able to do things to reach out to those we are literally surrounded by!  We are gonna crank it up and rock out in a theater!

Coming in October we will be moving from Irvine, CA to Aliso Viejo, CA.  It is only a few miles down the road, but I believe it will make a huge difference and God has some great things planned!  I can’t wait to get this going!  Although, I do have TONS to do.  Not only are we in the middle of nailing down our portable package, I am working on revamping the website, and really dialing in my band and team.  Watch out for Kingsfield Church, Aliso Viejo…or Orange County for that matter.  I’m just the Music & Media Pastor, but we are on our way in many different ways!

As for those other things I am not so patiently waiting on, I will get into those some other time.

So I haven’t been married that long and so I am not really up on what anniversaries you are supposed to celebrate and which ones you just remember and say, “oh by the way, _____ happened today ______ ago.”  I’m just not sure.  But today falls into one of those categories and since I don’t know which category it is, I’m gonna split the difference and write a blog about it.  How does that sound, people?

Two years ago this past weekend I talked my then girlfriend into coming on family vacation with us.  This was a big deal because our family vacations consist of 3-4 families with several kids and so we are already packed into whatever it is we are vacationing in trying to make the trip as cheap as possible.  So they parents decided on a rule that no girl/boyfriends are allowed to come for anyone.  They must be at least engaged if not married.  That was hurdle number one.  Hurdle number two was actually getting her to the vacationing spot.  So long story short, I convinced the family it was ok to do so because we were planning on being married and just didn’t have a ring yet and she got the privilege of riding around 16 hours in the cars with my family!  (Ha.  I flew.)

So hurdles were jumped and we were both on my family vacation in Cuchara Valley, Colorado.  One of the things we had planned for the trip was getting some cool backgrounds (that just fill my mom up) for taking some engagement pictures…even though we were not technically engaged.  So a couple days in we started wandering around the mountains and taking pictures.  In the midst of that I decided not to go with the scoreboard at the next OU/OSU game or baking it into a cake and whip out the ring that I actually did already have and pop the question!  And of course I was super smooth.  I rambled of some stuff about love and the price of the ring and she “got something in her eye” and her eyes watered and then she took the ring from me.  I’m pretty sure she said yes in there somewhere too, but it was all a whirlwind.

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t quite like that, but still.  Two years ago today, the love of my life was tricked into saying she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me!  I’m so glad she did and I can’t believe we waited seven more months to get married!  That was insane!  But I love her so much and she puts up with all my crap.  I couldn’t ask for anything more!  The is everything I ever wanted and so much more!  I can’t imagine how awesome the rest of our lives will be together!  Love you, baby!

Ok.  No more sappy love stuff.

Back in January I started leading worship at a church called Kingsfield Church in Irvine, Ca.  It has been quite a learning experience moving from one church to another, one denomination to another and one style to another.  I don’t know exactly what I expected but it has for sure been something that we have learned a lot through and I think will give us even more experience and knowledge to be able to help others in the future.

Over the last couple months God has really been working through Kingsfield and the staff to really nail down our vision, hearts and plans for the future of Kingsfield.  It has been a very exciting time…and a very crazy time.  Last night we spent several hours with the rest of the staff going over details of what we are planning for the few months to come and let me tell you.  It is going to be exciting!  I wish I could tell you more now, but for the time being you are just gonna have to bear with me and wait.  Make sure you are at Kingsfield this Sunday to hear the plans so you can catch the vision and excitement too!

For those of you that are not in the Orange County area, please pray for us as we are taking some huge steps in the direction that God is leading us!  We firmly believe that these steps will lead to reaching the people around us and sharing Christ with them!