After two weeks of ice and winter break, things were back kicking today! We had a very good service and it was great to see everyone back and things clicking.

Things were going rough preservice and I loved seeing our people trouble shoot and get things working.

My ear is a little better too.

The people often joke that our staff is on a full time vacation because we have so much fun together. They are right. I love the dudes I work with. Outside of church we are all friends. Matter of fact we are small enough staff-wise where I would say we are family. We fight like family and we have fun together like family.

Working at RSC is a blast and I try as the leader to keep that atmosphere in the office. I like to say the RSC office is like a 24/7 frat party minus the booze.

However I have learned that when yo so something you are passionate about like starting a church and when you work with guys you love, it is real easy to not stop and realize you need a break. We have been going non-stop for 18 months. There have been a few breaks in between but for the most part it has been non-stop.

Since the start of the year I have been trying my best to do something outside of Ridge Stone and take a day off. People not in ministry will never understand that ministry is 24/7. When I am not at work, I am thinking of work. People’s lives are on the line here and that is hard to turn off. But I have been trying to do it and it is amazing.

I have been going concerts, seeing a few movies, and most of all, I have been turning the phone off, not checking e-mail, and taking a day off here and there. I feel so refreshed. I have been slumbing around today counting the seconds until Monday.

500 is in sight and it is time to get there. I’m looking foward to brainstorming with the team Monday about going to the next level.

It appears that FINALLY GNR is going to have a new CD this year!!!! I can’t wait! I am the biggest Guns N Roses fan in the world and I am looking forward to the new CD. This week a couple of rough cuts of the songs leaked out, you can listen to them here.

Axl’s voice sounds very good though the style of music is a little different.

Before you go be warned that some of the language is the comments section is not that great.

So, what do you think?

Thanks Michael for my free copy…
I hope you reach the target you are looking for.

After a massive ear infection for the last week and three concerts in the last 9 days I think the ear is dead. I woke up this morning with a little blood on the pillow.
Not good.

Doc doesn’t think it is fully ruptured but it is close. Nothing to do now but to let it heal. It actually feels like a lot of the pressure has been released so that is good.

BTW, it was worth it.

WOW!
INCREDIBLE!
AWESOME!

I have a disease. I am a concert junkie. I have been to a lot of concerts in my life and I am here to tell you that last night Scott Stapp put on one of the best shows I have ever seen in my life!

I was worried when we first got there and I was actually feeling really sad for the dude. There probably wasn’t 350 people there and I figured he was not going to be motivated at all. I was wrong!

This was the second date on his tour. He said it was only the second time he had been on stage in five years. I know the dude has some demons and has made some bad decisions but you literally could tell the dude was so humbled and grateful to be getting a second chance. He smiled ear to ear the entire concert.

He played like there were 15,000 people there. He talked alot about his struggles and the “voices” in his head that every day pull him in the direction of good or evil and how he has many times went the wrong way with decisions. He talked about not worrying about the critics and playing to the only one who matters which is God.

The band was incredible and he played every song on the new CD and ALL of the Creed hits. You could tell he was having a blast!

For the encore he came out unplugged and talked about his love for just playing again and how he wasn’t touring to make money and that in fact he was flipping the bill for the entire tour and all the money made from every concert was going to local children who didn’t have food. He said the money that came last night would feed 8,000 meals to kids in Atlanta. That was cool. They then did Arms Wide Open unplugged. WOW. We did this song two weeks ago to start our parenting series and I think we will end the series doing it unplugged. It was powerful.

This guy is a master frontman. He kept the crowd the entire night.

I would like to see him at the end of the tour to see if his passion is still this high.

For $25 bucks it was money well spent.

Listen, if Scott Stapp is coming to your area, do yourself a favor and go check him out.

5 years ago you couldn’t have gotten a ticket to see Creed they were so big. Last night I got to see them with about 350 other people.

Very cool.

Have a lot of junk running through my mind so I thought I would dump it here:

1.) If I took a hammer and just smashed my ear to pieces would it eventually get so numb that it wouldn’t hurt?
2.) Is Scott Stapp going to be sober tonight?
3.) I can’t wait for Sunday!
4.) How are we going to do 2 services due to time problems in the theatre?
5.) How can I talk the kids out of wanting McDonalds for lunch?
6.) I wonder if any of the teenagers have broke their legs or anything else on the ski trip?
7.) I can’t believe my sermon has been done all week!
8.) I think I am going to let Preston teach one Sunday in our next series.
9.) Our next series is called Revolution but I thought of another name for it that I have now forgotten. bummer.
10.) I took yesterday off and it was awesome!
11.) I think I am more creative and ready to study after lunch.
12.) I am excited about Easter coming up.
13.) I need to start reading the DaVinci Code for a two week series we are doing the week before and after it comes out.
14.) I hate reading.
15.) I am currently reading Revolution by Bob Franquiz and The Creative Leader by Ed.
16.) What is Perry’s book going to be about?
17.) I need to get the back of our warehouse built out.
18.) My ear hurts bad.
19.) I love what I do.
20.) I love the people I get to pastor.
21.) We are going to need a bigger location soon.
22.) I got to eat breakfast with DeAnna. I should do that more.
23.) We are redoing our logo and I am frustrated with the results so far.
24.) What am I going to eat for dinner?
25.) This parenting series is fun.
26.) I need to go take a shower.

I had lunch with a leader in our denom I respect greatly yesterday. He has been behind our church since the day we started and has been nothing but cool since we started. He gets IT. The meeting consisted of me, him and another sharp young leader here in the state.

I post very little about the SBC here. I leave that to other people who care a WHOLE lot more about it then I do. But the conversation was very interesting. We talked about the fact that either the SBC will change or 20 years from now it will be about as relevant as the Amish are today.

We talked about the fact that young leaders ARE going to form relationships outside of the denom but in order for change to happen we must be willing to still be active in the denom and “pay the rent” until change happens.

I agree with that but….

My struggle is this: I feel I have the GREATEST calling the world to pastor a local New Testament Church. I don’t think it gets any better then that. I am not sure I am called to try and change a denomination, matter of fact, I know I am not called to do that. What I think young leaders have to decide is where the time, energy, and need for fighting for their denom (whichever one you are part of) comes in balanced with the GREATEST thing which is the church God called us too. Changing a denom COULD be a good thing but the greatest thing is the local church. Remember: Good is the enemy of Great.

I can’t help but wonder if these people got as excited and as passionate and spent as much time trying to reach their communities and allowing God to use them to build their churches instead of trying to change the denom, how much more of an impact would they have?

Do I want to see changes in the SBC? Sure, it would be nice.
Am I willing to take time away from something I am already doing and devote the time and energy to playing the game in hope that change happens one day? I’m not sure.

Just something I have been thinking about…

Okay, that is enough talk about the SBC.

I’m injured, injured bad… I have the worst ear infection I have ever had. My ear literally hurts so bad that I want to chop it off. I think going to the concert last night did not help at all but I need it to hang in there for one more night. Tomorrow night, I complete the concert run that started last week. Tim and I are heading to see Scott Stapp tomorrow night with some dudes from church and it should be good. Scott seems to be struggling a little lately. Last week he was locked up hours after getting married for being drunk. Not good. Then a sex video he and Kid Rock made 6 years ago has been made public. Not good again. This dude has got demons but he has written some powerful songs with spiritual themes. Depending on which Scott shows up this could be a great show or it could be very very bad.

Kid Rock is in town Saturday night so let’s hope they don’t cross paths again.
Oh yeah, pray for my ear, it hurts like crap!

I’m not sure what to say about the INXS show last night. It was a mixed bag. The Atlanta Civic Center is the WORST place in the ATL to see a show and I had forgot about that until last night. Marty and the Lovehammers opened up and all I can say is the TV show made him look a lot better then they are. I thought they stunk up the joint. Marty needed to take INXS’s advice and quit screaming all the time. His band was not very good.

On the INXS side: JD is a superstart, plain and simple. He is going to be a great frontman and showed signs of it last night. He has got to learn two things: 1.) How to interact with the crowd. 2.) How to stay sober. By the end of the show he was flying high and was getting vulger. You could tell it was early in the tour and that they haven’t played together much. The transitions were rough. They did a good mix of old and new and JD carried the show. I was taken back by how rough the show was. The music was good, the show needed some work. We are doing a better job with lighting and video then they are. Their video was awful.

I might be being to hard. After seeing Bon Jovi last week, this was a let down. It was less of an event and more about just a band playing. That isn’t bad if you like that type of stuff.

Bon Jovi is like the modern church - They do a great job getting the message out in an event format and they draw huge crowds.

INXS was more like the postmodern church - Everything was scaled way back and the crowd was fractions of the Bon Jovi crowd.

Neither is better, just different.

Give INXS a little time to get use to JD and I think you might start seeing big things from them again.