I must confess that this post is written in anger so forgive me. I just read on Perry’s blog that they just had a Moe’s open up in Anderson, S.C. I just don’t get it!!! Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a Moe’s addict. I love the place and could literally eat there every day. I actually make our staff drive south to Woodstock a couple of times a month to go eat there. I love Moe’s so much I have actually e-mailed their corporate offices about opening on in Canton. Has it worked? NO.

There is a rumor that one is about to open but it hasn’t yet. How does a stinking town so close to an awful place like Clemson get one before we do? Does God love Perry more then me? Does Perry have a secret way he prays? What is the deal? These are questions I am asking….

If you haven’t eaten at Moe’s, you don’t know what you are misssing. It is like a Subway but with mexican!!!! I personally like the the homewrecker. It is da bomb!

It just isn’t fair…..

My heartbeat is church planting. I love Ridge Stone and I pray that God allows me to stay here the rest of my life and see this thing impacts lives in Cherokee County. But…I love church planting. When we started Ridge Stone I knew we would have to be very active in church planting for me to stay focused. You could call church planting my hobby.
Obviously at our size we are still limited in what we can do in regards to planting but I have been praying about my long term vision for our church in regards to church planting and God has really been giving me a vision in regards to that. I have also been praying about what we can do now.

1.) Starting in May, we are will start holding bi-monthly get togethers for church planters. God has given us an awesome building in which to host these and we feel the timing is right. We are going to cater in lunch, set a topic (marketing, portable church, etc.), invite whoever wants to come, and just hang out in a round table forum style and hang out and share ideas.

2.) We are starting a “Behind the Scenes” blog here at RSC. We literally have 4 or 5 church planters call the office a week wanting to talk to us. That is awesome but I do find that our time is getting busier and busier and we aren’t able to give the time we should. We have also discovered that many of the questions we get asked are the same questions. So we are going to start a blog where our entire staff talks about different topics and how we do things. West Ridge is sort of doing this but it is more focused on what they did and I want to focus on what we are doing now. I think we do Sunday as good as anyone our size and I think our size still makes what we are doing, doable for other churches. I’m not saying what we do is the only way or that we are the best, but we get a lot of calls and this will be easier. I think Preston (children), Tim (worship), Erick (youth), Amy (programming and stage design), Cheri (running an office and cleaning up after us), and myself offer a lot in regards to planting a church with scratch, being portable, and messing a lot of things up. It should be fun.

3.) We are partnering with our first plant this fall. Danny Echols is planting Crossview Church in Rockmart, Ga. and we will be partnering with him. Danny is da bomb and I love the dude.

I have a lot of other things I want to do as we grow but that time is not now. We are also involved in a planting network that is about to start up with West Ridge Church (our mommy church) that has a planting school. I’m sure we will do our own thing one day, but until then I am very excited about the West Ridge thing. It could be a very cool thing, I hope.

Before anyone e-mails me about foreign missions, I understand the Great Commission. Just this month we formed a financial partnership with Haiti Cheri Missions. Dan, the founder of Haiti Cheri is a member at the Stone and is THE real deal. They got it going on in Haiti and I am glad we are partnering with them. Right now it is on a financial level but that will change over the next few months as we teach our people about missions. I want our people to get a heart of this place and see that flow over into us really partnering with them beyond a financial level.

Not sure I have ever mentioned this before but….I LOVE CHURCH PLANTING!

YEAH Baby, Easter is coming in a little over two weeks!!!!! I can already feel the buzz in the air. We nailed down the final creative details on Tuesday and they are going to be off the hook!!!!!

Easter Sunday is the Super Bowl for churches and I can’t wait!

We have some pretty cool ideas and it is going to rock!

I watched Idol for the first time this season and I am shocked! That has to be the WORST group of singers I have EVER seen on that show. Literally, I am speechless at how bad they were. Man those guys were awful!

I’m not sure who the bald dude singing Creed was but he was decent. I am a Creed freak so I thought it was cool to see someone doing that and “What If” is the jam, so he gets my vote.

I had a friend who told me that 24 was close to jumping the shark. Tonight, it came very close….

Not a good episode at all in my opinion.

Perry posted this story on his blog. It is about a church that kept getting broken into so the men of the church hid out and when the guys broked in, they beat the crap out of them, even sending them to the hospital!!!!!

Perry said he thought of me when he read the story. I can honestly say that I could see our men hiding out and doing this.

Matter of fact if our signs we keep putting out on the weekend keep getting stolen (by another church in town, I think) we will be beating some people down. That you can be sure.

I have shared with you that we brought in Anthony Coppedge a few weeks ago to evalute what we are doing and help us get better. I stand by what I said: Every church plant should find the money to bring him in. It was awesome and we learned a lot.

Anthony gives his thoughts on The Stone today on his blog and I was very proud for our people after seeing what he said. Check it out here.

I’m up at the office as our guys get ready for their first Youth Worship service. They have been meeting with as a small group but tonight they venture into a full service once a month. It was cool seeing all the teens stealing all of our equipment after the service today to use tonight.

It literally reminds me of our first service at The Stone. I can tell the band, Erick and the workers are nervous. I love that!!!!

We have not redone the warehouse yet so it was cool to see what they did to it for the service. It has a big time garage band feel to it. I like it.

I just disovered that Life Church is making ALL their service resources available FREE to pastors. This includes Sermons, Sermon Outlines, Videos, and Graphics to ALL their teaching series. Check it out here.

Personally I am surprised by this and think it is VERY cool. Early on in the planting of Ridge Stone we could not pull off what we needed to in regards to graphics and videos. We would purchase videos from many of the online video companies. We outsourced to Ken and Stephen at times as well. We know have a video gal on staff but we STILL outsource all of our graphics. We have bought series branding from various churches as well. We always put our own spin on them and do it in a Ridge Stone way but there have been times we changed the name of a series (not the topic) because we could purchase quality graphics and video from another source.

I have NEVER had a problem purchasing something and I have never had a problem with churches selling their resources. However with Life Church now GIVING things away it will be interesting to see how this affects some of the places that sale their stuff. I mean if a church plant can get the same quality (in many times better with Life Church) videos and graphics for free, why buy them?

Anyway, check it out and email your thoughts.

Way to go Life Church!

I have always been a fan of Life Church and now they have even went up more in my book.

Very cool….

1.) I put together a mind map this week while studying. Wow! I think I finally have gotten it and I feel very prepared.
2.) I talked with a pastor yesterday who is getting feeling some heat from some of his people and he is dodging some “friendly” fire from within. I can honestly say I have never had to deal with inside bullets here at RSC. It is always those on the outside who get upset. I think that is better…
3.) I am very excited about teaching Sunday.
4.) I am very excited about Easter
5.) We have a series coming up called Drive: Life In The Fast Lane. It will be built around a NASCAR theme. That will be a blast!
6.) I love that I get to do this for a living.
7.) Tadd named his church. It is going to be called Pine Ridge Church. I like the “ridge” part so we might support him. 8.) Where is the warm weather?
9.) We are working on two new blogs. 1.) for the our church 2.) for church planters and pastors to see how we do things. It will be sort of a behind the scene at RSC blog. We get a lot of calls on how we do stuff at The Stone. I think it is because we are still small enough that most plants can do what we are doing.
10.) The band is doing a song this week called “Rooftops.” I love it.
11.) Anthony’s report should come today. I wonder what it will say?
12.) I’m looking forward to hanging out with Bob Franquiz, Tally Wilgis, and Ben Arment and everyone else who is going to Buzz.
13.) I am actually taking a full day off tomorrow. I can’t wait.
14.) I’ve got a Sunday off real soon. I need it to let my brain rest.
15.) My name is Earl was so freaking funny last night I about died.