Thanks for the prayers. I found out today that almost all of my family reads my blog so I have to be careful what I say.

Other then it pouring down rain right when we were about to eat, it was a fun day. To me the highlight of the day was picking on my uncle who recently had both of his legs cut off due to some sickness. I basically picked on him all day and he really couldn’t do anything about it because I would have just left him and his wheel chair in the rain.
Seriously it was a decent day and I am blessed by the family I have, even if they do drive me nuts!

We have a family reunion today so I could really use some prayers. While I love my family, I HATE doing things on Saturday especially ones that are 2 hours away.

With the exception of my parents and brothers and sisters, the rest of the family is all part of VERY traditional churches so that topic will be brought up, along with whoever the latest family drama everyone will gossip about, along with whatever family fight is going on at the time.

Typical family reunion I am sure, but not the highlight of a Saturday for me.

Pray that I don’t kill anyone is basically how I need you to pray.
BTW, I can’t wait until tomorrow!!!! I am so excited to be preaching on Heaven that I can’t stand it!!!!

I am a pretty hard hearted person. I’m not sure why that is, but I am. We were talking as a staff this week about men crying and I said I had never cried in front of my wife. After calling her, she said I had once in 10 years. It isn’t that I don’t want to, but that salty discharge in the eyes just doesn’t happen for me.

Anyway, I am sitting here listening to iTunes shuffle and Faithfully by Journey comes on and what happens but I get a little lump in my throat…just for a second.

No we aren’t rockers (but that would be cool), but man there are times when we as church planters put in so many hours that the song fits perfect.

Like I said, I have issues.

This has been a GREAT summer for us at RSC. Matter of fact, it has been a blast and as much fun as I have had since planting. I am loving the summer series we have going on, the vibe in the church has been buzzing, the attendance has been very good, and we are paying the bills (always a good thing in a church plant).

We have spent the summer gearing up for the fall. You can seriously feel the buzz about the upcoming fall.

To shore up some weak points and to gear us up for the upcoming growth, we have added two new people to our full-time staff here at The Stone.

Malcolm Young (no blog yet) - If you are a Stoner, you will know Malcolm as the bass player in the band. Malcolm and his wife Amy, have been attending the stone since day one. Over the last two years God had built a a bond between the two of us and I consider him one of my best friends in the world. Malcolm has served as a trustee here since the start and has moved from that role to being on staff as our Connections Pastor. He will be over Small Groups and Assimiliation. He has a heart for getting people plugged in, which is good because I have a heart for getting people in the front door. He started with us June 15th and already we are seeing the results.

John Ventry - Yep, everything has been worked out where I can finally reveal that John will be coming on staff as our Adminstrative Pastor. I actually met John in the bloggin world and over the last year, we have become very good friends. Through joking around about him moving here, God began to move in his heart and we brought him up for a visit and we clicked instantly. I knew we were going to bring John on staff from the start, but I didn’t tell him until he decided to actually move to the area and just be part of the church. John is going to take over the business side of the church. This is a mess here and it will be nice to have someone who actually knows about budgets, systems, IT junk, salary stuff, PO’s, etc. This is such a mess here that our staff is literally counting the days until John gets here. He moves next Wednesday and will be coming in and out of the office all month before starting full-time on Septemeber 1. Go check his family out on his blog and tell him to get his church information changed. John will be in the service starting next week. I’m not going to tell anyone who he is so the first Ridge Stoner who figures it out will get some kind of surprise.
This two hires were both hires of faith. We could not afford them. But we knew God wanted them here and we stepped out on faith to make it happen and it is and will continue to work.

Two weeks until school starts and we are blasting off!!!!

Do you ever get those emails from people who in the area who are interested in your church and then they send you a list of 20 questions? It is odd.

On one hand I am glad they ask questions and don’t just jump into something without finding out about it.
On the other hand, I know that I can probably not make these people happy. I am going to have to take all the time to answer and I know by the questions they ask that they aren’t going to come and dig what we are doing.

Oh well, I guess it is part of the job……

It looks like in the next 7-10 days the new Ridge Stone Church will launch. We are rushing to simply get it up and running by August 1st, but in the next month or two we will be adding a bunch of features including possibly podcasting, but I am still not sure if we will do that or not.

Keep checking, it should be up soon!!!!!!!!!!

Supernova is killing me so far. There is some talented people on there but they do not fit Supernova. Dilana and Lukas are the only heavy metal singers on the show. This would have been a good show to find the new lead singer of Fuel, but not Supernova.

The sad thing is the best lead singer of Supernova is JD Fortune, the winner of last year’s show. He would have been great with them!!!

I wonder what is going through these people’s minds when they are picking their songs?

Since before we started we have had a GREAT relationship with Around Canton magazine. They started the month before we started and put us on their cover the month we launched. Then last August they put us back on the cover. This August we are back on again. The great thing is it gets direct mailed to EVERY home in Canton and is laid out all over town. We actually have the inside back cover every month and it is huge for us. I also write a monthly column in the magazine that is a lot of fun.

Anyway, here is the first draft of the article. Give me your feedback and tell me what you think.

You will notice we change our logo (again and with this cover we are changing our colors. When we first started I told our designer to do our staff as “starbucks with a edge.” He nailed it but two years later that isn’t who we are. Orange was to calm and earthy and though we will still use it a little, we are switching to red and black as I just think it rocks!

Anyway here is the article and I will post the cover soon.

RSC, can you believe it has been two years? On August 13th we are turning two. We are launching a great series that will help your marriage become stronger and give you the principles needed to avoid falling into the affair trap that happens to so many! Start inviting your friends now!

On August 6th, we are celebrating!!!!! You DO NOT want to miss this service. We are going to look back at where God has brought us, where we are going, the band is going to do your favorite worship songs, we have some awesome videos from some pastors who have impacted my life, and I will be simply sharing my heart with a simple message on the things I have learned in the last two years being your pastor! Mark your calendar NOW and plan on being at church on the 6th!!!!