Hey guys, share with me who you personally have heard teach the best message you have ever heard on the responsibility of believers in the area of evangelism.

I would love to hear some different guys teach on this subject.

if you got a link you will get extra points.

Okay, those of you going to the Buzz Conference, where are you staying? I would assume stay as close to the rest of you as I can that way we can stay up all night solving all the church problems in the world. If you have decided, let me know…

Okay, not really but after a week I finally got my Treo to sync with my Mac!!!! Actually Tadd got it to work and he did it without me having to spend any money!!!

NOW, I love my new phone.

Tony Morgan has put The Stone on his top 100 coolest churches. That is cool.

What can I say? It just fit my mindset for the night.

When the alarm went off this morning at 4:30 a.m. I could hear the rain coming down in sheets. I moaned and got out of bed dreading how many of our set-up team wouldn’t show up. I left the house and it was literally pouring down. I went to the office and picked up some things expecting to some unhappy guys. I showed up at 5:30 a.m. and the parking lot was packed. The trailer was unloaded and the staging was up and there wasn’t a frown to be found. Our guys didn’t give it a second thought that the weather was awful. I often get asked how we get our people to set-up and tear-down ALL the stuff that we do every week. It is simple: 99% of our set-up team was unchurched when the started attending the Stone. I often joke that they don’t know any better. They think every church in America has to do that every week! Today was cool to see their dedication and passion.

Due to the weather I was expecting to be very low attendance and was dreading losing the big mo we have had lately. When it was all said and done we were a little lower then the last two weeks but still above our average. We started today actually running step by step through the service today meaning we do a run through we every thing including transitions and prayers. We have never done it to that extreme and man you could tell the difference today. The service was tight and things were so comfortable.

Next week we are doing a celebration/party type service as we gear up for our parenting series that starts on the 12th.

It should be fun.

Went to the Apple store today and got my Mac woked on. Tadd was to blame. Nuff said.

Saturday until about 7 p.m. is 100% for the family. Nothing changes this. I get to spend the entire day with them and I love it. At about 7 DeAnna quiets the house down, puts Avery to bed, and spends some one on one time with Ashlyn. At that time I go into the bedroom and just reflect on what is going to happen on Sunday. I review the service order, start picturing it in my mind and look at my sermon for the first time since Thursday morning. It is so nice to look at it with fresh eyes and be able to make last second changes.

Every Saturday we all go eat at the Waffle House. What can I say? I told you were are rednecks. The kids love it for some reason so we always go there. It is their choice and they ALWAYS choose Waffle House. I think it is the healthy meal of waffles, choclate milk, and getting to play the jukebox. We found a “hidden” Waffle House that is brand new that we go and eat at. Due to it’s location, we don’t have to worry about running into people we know and my family get’s all my attention. That is a rare thing already for us. We can’t go anywhere in town without running into people we know from pastoring The Stone and we love that! But Saturday is time for the family. So we go to our secret Waffle House.
I am now sitting here in the room now thinking about how awesome God is. I literally get so excited about Sunday mornings that it is hard for me to sleep on Saturday night. I love our church, it’s people, and everything we stand for. It is awesome that I get to do this for a living. One of my favorite things to do on Sunday mornings is get there about 6:00 a.m. after the set-up team has started and just walk around and think about how each of the people I see have had their lives changed through God using Ridge Stone. That is awesome.

I have worked for churches where I literally hated Sundays. That is a bad feeling. To think that God allows us to do this full-time blows my mind.

I truly stand surprised every Sunday that people would actually show up to hear a redneck from Dacula, Georgia try and teach God’s Word. Not only do they come but they dig it. That is cool.

Pastoring the greatest church in the world is an awesome feeling….

This is very hard for me but right is right and I have to do it. Tadd was right. I blamed him for destroying my computer but as sad as I am to say, it was not him.

He had it working, he had my Treo syncing, and everything seemed fine. Yet everytime I close out a programe whether iTunes, Entourage, etc. when I open it back up it is like I just installed it. Everything is gone. 7 out of 10 times I restart my computer it loses all my settings including screensavers, widgets, bookmarks, etc.

People love Macs. I actually have spent more time working and learning it the last two days and I am learning things that I LOVE about it that I never knew existed but this will be the second time in 10 months it has had major problems. It has already had the hard drive replaced and it looks like something is screwing up again.

So Mac’s are just like PC’s.
They are junk.

Okay a person I love that at one time worked with me and now is making a large decision in his life and who shall remain nameless came over to help me with my Treo today.

For the record I have used my computer all day. Yes, it might of got had a corner of it smased this morning BUT it worked all day. This person came and downloaded some conduits and other stuff I don’t understand.

It didn’t work.

So I went home and tried to launch onto Entourage to check my e-mail. When I did something stranged happened. It was acting like I was using Entourage for the first time and was asking me to set up my email and POP and other stuff I didn’t understand. I didn’t really understand that when suddenly I noticed that ALL my E-mail folders and ALL my E-mails were 100% gone.

I called said person and promised to kill him tomorrow.

I thought it was strange but surely we can fix it.

Then I thought to myself, “Self, maybe if you restart your computer it will be back to normal.” So I restarted it and when it came back on their was NOTHING on my desktop. I started to panic. I went to my little finder thingy and there was NOTHING. I looked at my toolbar thingy at the bottom and Word, Excel, Entourage, PowerPoint, and all the Adobe Suite stuff was GONE. I looked for my documents (ALL my sermons including this weeks) they were gone. I looked at iTunes and all my songs are gone, EVERYTHING is gone.

I called said person back and told him to kiss his wife goodbye in the morning because I will be killing him.
I finally went to users and find a folder called “gary lamb.” I clicked on it and EVERYTHING is in this folder!!!!!! So thank God that it is there but I have no idea how to get it back to where it should be. I started importing the songs back into iTunes and the only way I have figured out how to do it is one song at a time!!!

Said person has promised to help me tomorrow. It is a shame, I truly believe he would have planted a awesome church but now he will be killed.