Man, what a weekend. The devil is trying to rock the boat, things are crazy in a good way, and The Church Media Guru is in town!

Anthony met with some of our set-up people, tech people, and he was rocking some worlds. The guys knows his stuff and will make you question why you do a lot of things you do. It was awesome.

Anthony about got to see me break redneck on a situation also. I think it freaked him a little and that was a little funny. I am so stoked to see what he says about our service in the morning. I look forward to hearing his feedback.

If you are a church planter you need to bring this guy in. It will cost you some money but you get what you pay for. I promise your church will be better for it in the end.

Pray for us in the morning, it is going to be crazy. We got some new people stepping in to fill some holes, we are setting up at 3 am, all that has gone on in the last two days as made me not focus on my message, we got a big day planned and I’m running on empty but so jacked I can’t sleep.l

Not sure I have ever mentioned this before but I love church planting! I love that God has put me here and I get to lead this awesome bunch who get “it.”

It is March Madness time which means there is a lot people doing a lot of betting right now. Everyone is learning there are very few sure things in life. However I am learning that when you have a big weekend planned, you can bet that the devil will use someone to try and disrupt things. That is a sure bet.

We have a big weekend planned in regards to improving some things in our worship space. Sure enough the devil has tried to sow a little discord.

I love it when the devil tries that….It means we are doing something right.

It is going to be a fun weekend….:)

I’ve been getting some constructive criticism the last week or so from some pastors I really respect about our Easter series. We are launching a series on The Apostle’s Creed. Our thought process was we can talk about a topic that will connect with a large portion of dechurched in our area. Our area is one of the fastest growing areas in America and as such we have a lot of northerners moving to the area who grew up Lutheran, Catholics, Methodists, etc. who have been out of church for years but growing up in church would connect with this topic. We are going to show how understanding what you believe affects the way you live. In our minds, it is going to be a very practical series.

However, we also understand that no one is coming to our Easter series because we advertise a series on The Creed. So we chose to push in our advertising Easter 06 and push the uniqueness of Ridge Stone as opposed to the series. This has been our approach for the most part since we started The Stone. We have 9 times out of 10 pushed the church over the series.

I never thought much about it until talking to Tony today. In our conversation we made the exact opposite statement. He said, “We (Granger) have always pushed the series over the church.”

I have been thinking about this a lot today and I actually went back and reviewed our monthly marketing. We have the inside back cover of a large magazine every month in which we market the church. 5 times we have done our entire ad focused on a sermon series. I pulled up the number of responses on the communication cards for every month since we started. I wanted to see how many people say they found out about us from the ad. We keep up with this so it was easy. Our 1st 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th lowest months in regards to response to the ad were the months we pushed a series instead of the church. That is 5 of the 6 lowest!

We have MUCH better results when we push the church or a big day instead of pushing a series. I don’t know why this is but I think some of it has to do with the fact that in ALL our ads where we push the church we use a lot of pictures of the church and that connects with people. Most churches use a lot of stock photos, they push their series with some cheesy graphic, etc. I think people enjoy seeing the photos. I think it answers a lot of questions about our church. They see that people are dressed casual, they see our kids laughing, they see we have a full band, etc.

Maybe we don’t know how to market a series. I don’t know…

What is your thoughts?
Do you market series or church more?

When I was pastoring the church from hell in Iowa, God sent a pretty cool dude to help me out. Most of you will never have heard of him but Tony Liston is without a doubt the reason I am in ministry today. He showed me church could be what it is today.

Anyway, I just noticed he got published on Pastors.com today. He wrote about a subject that stirs a lot of debate among pastors and churches. He talked about using other people’s sermons. You can check out the article here.

Let me say up front that if it wasn’t for other people’s sermons in the early days of planting Ridge Stone then we wouldn’t have been around. Have I ever used one word for word? Nope. But I have sure nuff’ used and abused some thoughts from others. I had a man one day chew me out because we did a series called Forgiveness: The Real F Word and he had seen Ed Young do that on TV. It is funny, if you listen to Ed’s sermon it is all almost about him seeing this wild adventure with a dog and a park bench. Unless you are a liar you can’t use that thought so even though we used our own stuff and just used their title and graphics this guy was fired up. I asked him he wrote the any of the songs we sung that day and he said no. So I asked him why it was okay to sing somone elses songs but not learn from someone elses sermons? He got mad and walked away.

I find it funny we can pull Spurgeon off the shelve to glean from but not modern day preachers. That is odd.

Edit: Crude, I just checked bloglines and Ben wrote about this from a different view. I didn’t see this before I wrote mine so don’t think I am trying to argue with Ben. He is my taxi for the Buzz Conference so I have to stay in his good graces.

At the conference today I got to hang out with Mitch Moyer and Paul Richardson of West Ridge Church. We ate at Ted’s so that was cool. I always enjoy hanging out with the crew from West Ridge. DeAnna and I always say our time at West Ridge was on of the best times of our life. It was awesome to be part of an awesome church and see what God was doing there. I feel very lucky to have been there.

It is weird to be so happy at a place like I was at West Ridge but also be glad to be gone. I feel Ridge Stone is the greatest place in the world but, without West Ridge there would be no Ridge Stone. I became healthy spiritually at West Ridge, I fell back in love with my wife at West Ridge, and I learned what a HUGE vision was at West Ridge. I was able to take those things, add a little redneck to it, and start Ridge Stone.
Thanks for lunch guys!!!

Went to the Wired Churches Workshop in Atlanta today and had a good time. They were offering the Simply Strategic Volunteers Workship and the First Impression Workshop. I of course went to the SSV so I could see my boy Tony Morgan. I have known Tony through E-mail for about two years and over the last year we have connected more and more and developed a friendship. Today was the first day I met him face to face so that was cool.

I got to stay for about 75% of the workshop before having to come home and do “sick family” duty. My family has been sick all week and I got a text message saying if I could to come home. I have been in ministry for 9 years now and that was the first time my wife has ever done that so I knew it was serious. I often say DeAnna is superwomen with all she does, well today she was hurting. I got him and cooked…ur…ordered pizza, gave the kids a bath, put them to bed, and I am wore out!!!! How do women do that everyday!!!

Back to the workshop. It was good. Tony does a good job presenting and the information is good stuff. I find myself often very bored at conferences. I watch a lot of conference sessions, look at a lot of church growth stuff, meet with a lot of preachers and listen to a lot of preaching, so a lot of times I go to the conferences and a lot of the stuff is stuff I have heard before or have read before. I had read the SSV book so to be honest there was not a lot that was new to me but they still held my attention. They were funny, straight to the point, and they speak as someone who has been there, done that. The coolest thing was as I began to watch other people and it was obvious that these people don’t do the things I do in regards to studying other churches and they were just soaking it in. I could see light bulbs going off over people’s heads. I saw laypeople finally getting what their pastor talks about and that was VERY cool. I take for granted that God has put pastors in my life that enable me to hear a lot of what was being taught. Many of these people were getting for the first time and it was very very cool.

We had a couple in the First Impression session and they were blown away as well.

If these workshops are in your area, do yourself a favor and go. If I go to a conference I want to go hear someone who is ACTUALLY doing church, not someone who has a bunch of theories on how to do church. These dudes are doing it.

Thanks Tony for the invite…I had a great time and it was cool meeting you.

BTW, I will posting a little discussion about Easter that Tony and I have been having probably later. I want to hear your thoughts on it.

I always like to hear what others think of the Stone. I see it every week and it is easy to forget what God is doing. Well, Travis wrote about his experience this last week and I thought it was pretty cool. Check it out here.

For all of you from church who read this, you guys rock!

It doesn’t take knowing me long to know that I am just a big redneck who is sold out to God. I dig country music. I dig classic rock. I dig Panama City Beach. I dig the Waffle House….And I dig NASCAR.

Today Preston sent me this link to the new Will Ferrell movie and I can honestly say this might end up being the greatest movie EVER!!!!!!!!

Check it out here and email your thoughts.

A lot of people say I am a little low in the compassion area. I would probably agree but something happend tonight. I was watching 24 and when that security guard was calling his little girl to tell her goodbye knowing he was about to die to save other people, I had some type of salty discharge start coming out of my eye. Man that was heartbreaking. 24 IS the show! My other show, Prison Break starts next week and it comes on BEFORE 24. Can it get any better then that?????

Man, that was so good I won’t be able to sleep for a while.

I forgot to mention that yesterday Travis Holmes, pastor of Hope Creek Church crashed our morning service. I didn’t know he was showing up so it was cool to meet him. He probably couldn’t have picked a worse service to attend but I have one goal when planters visit us: I want them to see that if WE can do this, anyone can.
Normally planters leave our place feeling a lot better about their place.
Travis, it was good to meet you and I hope you enjoyed your visit!