Okay where do I start? As I stated in my previous post we were getting at the theater last night at midnight for some winter cleaning. We had this worked out with the theatre and we were good to go. I get there and about 10-12 of our men are standing outside not working. The movie was still going on so I walk inside to find out when it was over and it was King Kong and it didn’t start until 11:30. It is three hours long. There had been a miscommunication. I tell our guys and after laughing we all went to the Waffle House and planned on just coming back like normal at 5. No big deal.

So after going home and getting about 2 hours of sleep. I head back to the church. I walk in and everyone is there and things are going great. Suddenly during our dry run there is an awful noise from Tim’s guitar. The electric stuff in his guitar started going out. No big deal he pulls out the back up. Everything is good.

Then about a hour before service I notice none of the words are on the screen while the band is doing their run through. I walk over and they tell me the computer has crashed and they are switching to the back up. That is cool, I am glad we bought a back up. The back up gets plugged in and we are in business for about 5 minutes before the back up crashes! We call in the computer geeks and about 3 mintues before service they get it right and that lasted for about 20 minutes before while I was teaching I just tell them to shut them down as they were going haywire.

Now it gets good…

We get out of servie about 11:10 like normal. We are hanging around and tearing down and suddenly I notice there are a buttload of people in the theatre waiting for the movie that I think starts at 1. I start talking with one of the people and they mention that the movie starts at 11:30. What?????????????? There is NO way we are getting out of the theatre in that time. I go and tell the lead manager who tells me there has been a mix-up and it is not our fault and that they are moving the people to another theatre. She sends in one of the other managers in to do this. He gets up and and tells the people and I quote, “Folks, the church has lied to us and didn’t get out of here in time. We have to move you to another theatre.”

People went livid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m standing there shocked and my people are looking at me and these people are literally screaming at us. Several called us A-Hole’s and one screams out “F#*@ the church.” I mean people were livid. At about this time I notice my rednecks are bowing up BUT still doing their job. I then hear one of our guys who is a doctor start saying something about a fat something or nother and how he (the guy from our church) is talking about what a crazy beeping Cuban he is and blah, blah, blah. I love that guy.

At this time I am simply trying to lighten the mood. I then follow the crowd out with the manager wanting to explain the situation to him. I hear someone in front of me talking about what a bunch of beeping aholes we were and then I hear the manager AGAIN say something about us lying. Now, I am freaking livid. I speak up and let the crowd know how sorry we are and that we would be glad to refund his ticket but that the manager is lying to him. The manager is scard to death because I am fit to be tied. He sneaks away and this guy gets up in my face nose to nose. NOW I am really livid. I push the guy back and let him know that getting in my face will do nothing and that I am sorry BUT if he chooses to get in my face again I won’t be sorry very long. He walks away mumbling and I am so mad that I can’t let him walk away. I let him know what I think of him and his stinking attitude. He then just changes and is completely different. I think I have done something good and I turn around and notice one of my huge guys is behing me letting him know to agree with me or face the consequences of not agreeing with me. That made me smile.

I then find the manager and lose it. I was wrong but it was crazy. I later apologized and it is now cool. But as I walk back in more of my guys and more of the customers are going at in verbal spats. I get all that settled down and suddenly we hear a crash. One of our HUGE pieces of staging has fallen on one of our guys and it is a panic to see if he was alright. This was a very scary moment and just added to the tension.

In the end I found most of the customers and explanined to them. They were so mad that this was hard but I speak redneck very well, so I was able to get the message across and for the most part everything was all good in the end.

I have to admit though it scared me for a brief moment as I looked around and knew that I could not handle all my guys if they decided to break bad. EVERY ONE on our set-up team was unchurched when they started attending. We have some big bad dudes. One was a bull rider, one looks like he should have been in the WWE, and the rest just look like they will cut you. I love them.

Do I need to teach on being slow to wrath? Yeah, probably soon. And I need to hear it myself.

BUT I loved the passion they had for the church and even for me. They were not happy knowing these people were attacking me. That is cool.

I think this is just the start of what is going to be a long spiritual warfare week as we get ready for Christmas Eve.

I LOVE CHURCH PLANTING!

I am exhausted. I will be back later to post about our service today. TRUST ME you don’t want to miss it. We had a good service (crowd was a little low but not bad) but there were things that happened that I never thought I would see in a church plant.

Let me just say this: Reaching unchurched rednecks is what we are all about. 99% of that time that is awesome. When things there is about to be a brawl between the theatre, the customers, and the church, it is only a good thing if you are the church.
What a day!!!!!!!

Not sure I mentioned this before but I LOVE CHURCH PLANTING!

It is going to be a long night. We have been in the theatre for about 3 months and we have already had our storage areas turn into junkyards. We have broken stuff, stuff that needs tweaking, things that need to be thrown out, new toys to put together, and things that need fixing. It is hard to do those things on Sunday morning when your set-up crews start at 5 and you are killing yourself to put things together for the service. So tonight the team is getting there to set up at midnight and then we will start cleaning, fixing, puttting together, etc. all that stuff we have.

Call it Winter Cleaning.

Storage is too valuable for us and we need to clean up. On one hand it stinks. On the other it will be fun and I will miss these days once they are gone. I made a Atlanta run just now to pick up fesh Krispy Kreme’s so we are good to go.

Oh yeah…instead of our normal tear down, we will be loading all of our worship stuff into a semi after the service and taking it to the City Hall where we can start setting up for Christmas Eve this week. I always wanted to be a rock star, for the next 24 hours I get to be a roadie.
I love church planting!

DeAnna and I took Ashlyn and Avery to see Santa tonight. The line was huge and as is my custom I started people watching. Suddenly as I looked around the line I started getting a lump in my throat and the salty discharge formed in my eyes (not sure what that was). My wife asked me what was wrong and I couldn’t speak.

I literally was heartbroken.

As I stood in that line I counted 13 girls that were no older then 18 all alone with their young kids going to see Santa. I have been pastoring since I was 22. I never really worked with teens and I am pretty clueless what is going on with them. I knew girls were having babies young and this was a huge problem BUT as I stood there watching these young girls it broke my heart.

Not one was smiling
They were all overwhelmed
They were all by themselves

The church needs to step in this area. We need to start teaching this girls that all most guys want to do is get down their pants and have sex. We need to give out a reality check.

We also need to beat the hell out of some boys that aren’t men enough to be men and respect girls and wait until they are married to have sex.

I am heartbroken and angry.
Anyone that knows me knows that isn’t a good combination.

I went to get my hair highlighted yesterday. The whole clan from the big salon in town goes to our church. It is the most awesome place you ever seen. It doesn’t fit Canton but they are awesome and they keep RSC in style. Anyway, the owner does all the staff’s hair so I went to get highlights and told her to do whatever she thought would look good….

Instead of highlights I left there totally blonde and with a fo-hawk.

I actually dig it.

Our first Christmas eve service is next Saturday and the spritual warfare has started!!!! Man there are headaches happening everywhere!!!!!

I thrive on that! I love the attacks but crude, I like to fight. It reminds me we are doing something right.

Our mother church and the church I served on staf at before planting The Stone is all grown up. After 8 years of meeting in a school gym and growing to close to 3500 people, West Ridge moves into their new building this week.

I saw the new building last week and all I can say is “WOW.” It is 98,000 square feet of awesomeness. As I walked through the building it made me nervous thinking we will have to do this one day. I can’t imagine the pressure to do something like that.

Anyway, mommy is grown up.
I wish I was going to be at the service this week, it is going to be incredible.

I have to admit I am really taken back by all the fuss about churches not having worship services on Christmas. It has been on the local news the last two nights, it has been in the papers, and it is on everyone’s blog.

This was not even a discussion at The Stone. To us it was a no-brainer. We just didn’t feel we could ask our people to show up at 5 in the morning to set-up and be there until 1 tearing down. We haven’t heard one thought period on it from our people about it.

Of course this is something we started last year. Last year we cancelled the service between Christmas and New Year to give our people a break. We recorded a DVD sermon and worship and told our people to worship at home with their families.

I have to be honest I was actually shocked at all the churches in our community who WERE having church. I guess I dumb but I thought everyone would cancel.

Oh well, we are doing two Christmas Eve services at 5 and 7 and that will have to hold everyone over.

(Yeah I know I am not supposed to be posting and that I shouldn’t post this because it might hurt someone’s feelings but I got some things I’ve been thinking and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t post them)

There are several church plants in our area and believe it or not I am for all of them. In the early days I will admit to being over competitive and that is something God really worked on me about. I now feel I have a very good relationship most of the church plants in the area. The ones I don’t have a good relationship with is simply because I don’t really know the guys so I have no relationship. I have learned that there is enough lost people for all of us.

I think (could be wrong) that there are unwritten rules in church planting and what you do in regards to getting the word out. For instance in regards to our church signs that we put out. When a church plant before us was meeting at the movie theatre we never put our signs close to them even though the theatre was in a prime area where you would want signs. It happened one time and I put a stop to it as soon as I found out. Another example is we use to put out signs at an intersection very close to the high school. Another church plant moved in and we stopped. They didn’t ask us to stop and the guy who is there pastor is so kingdom minded he would have never asked us to stop. However I feel there is a unwritten code about respecting their “area.” There is a church plant south of us and I remember meeting with the pastor before we launched because we were both looking at launching next to each other and we both agreed to separte a little in distance. It was a great move by both of us.

The simple fact is God called me to plant RSC and not the other churches in town so what we do is always in the best interest of RSC but call me Earl but I believe in Karma. I truly believe what goes around comes around so we have tried to live by some unwritten codes.

Some of those include:

Never bashing other churches in our marketing
Trying our best to not overly market in their areas
Not bashing them to our people

Yesterday a smaller church plant finally decided to do some outreach. That was good and I was excited to see them finally do something. However I found funny that they decided to hand out Narnia tickets for free at our theatre. That is TOTALLY their right. We don’t own the theatre. I will admit though that I thought it was odd and to be honest it kind of bugged me knowing that we on purpose never put signs out in their area out of respect. Matter of fact we were going to launch our church in this area and didn’t out of respect to the “unwritten rule.” But like I said, “what goes around comes around.” This church gave out tickets and simply said the church they were from. I guess after the movie that people had forgotten which church it was and simply saw our banner and assumed it was us. This morning I had three e-mails thanking us for the tickets and two visitors who came to church thanking us for the tickets.

So to this church plant I say “thank you” for helping us spread the word about Ridge Stone.

What goes around, comes around.

I have to say things are going awesome at RSC. Our financial series went over great. That isn’t the most exciting type of series but our people really grew during that time and it is amazing the number of people committed to getting out of debt. Our offerings are up 120%. Those that say you can’t teach on giving in a new church are simply wrong. Our people loved the teaching and loved see what the Bible had to say about it. Most had never been taught those things. That series was the first series we have ever done that we didn’t increase in number but we stayed even and it grew our people.

Last week we stared a series called ONE. It is on worship and after all the bling-bling stuff we did this series is a breath of fresh air. Last week we had nothing on stage and Tim led sitting on a stool with a guitar. No band at all. We are a very worship driven church so that was a huge step for us. It was awesome!!!!!

Today the band was back but instead of leading worship at the start, they lead througout my message. We knew going in it would either be very cool or a total flop. It was GREAT.

We got this new toy last week. I can’t remember what it is called but the guys wanted (okay me too) and we bought it. It wasn’t cheap but is cool. They used it last year on the Tomlin tour and our sound guys used on the Soul Survivor tour. Anyway it doesn iMag and all this insane video stuff behind the lyrics. You do it all live with this touch screen thingy and it is very cool. Anyway I amazed at what it has added to our services. Not only are we a worship driven church, we are a toy driven church. My guys love toys.

Today the kids area launched a Narnia thing and the set-up was very impressive. We bought this huge lion outfit and had Leo the Lion teach the kids about his cousin Aslan. Leo was a klutz and a big nerd but he did a great job teaching the kids about his cuz. Our kids loved it.

December is a big non-growth time for most churches but we are rocking and rolling and our attendance was off the hook today.

I think the first of the year is going to be big time for us.