I am as excited about this Sunday’s message as I have ever been.  I am going to be preaching from some things I have been dealing with lately and I think it is going to hit home with a lot of people Sunday.

I was looking over my sermon today and I thought to myself, “Do I really want to share THIS?”  Then I was reminded that I have hid nothing from our church for 2 1/2 years so why stop now.

I wasn’t going to podcast the sermon because I felt it was a personal thing between me and the church BUT I think Sundays message might help a lot pastors out who deal with some of the things I have dealt with over the last month.

If you are part of Ridge Stone Church, you DO NOT want to miss church this Sunday!!!!

We have been trying for months to get some portable cases from Portable Church Industries. They are THE group when it comes to portable church stuff but to be honest, they have simply been out of our price range. Meeting in a movie theater means we need to tear down QUICK and not having everything in one case has meant multiple trips to the pod and has big time slowed down our tear down.

I have been talking all day with a guy that had some but to be honest we don’t have the money. I was going to step out on faith and try to get them if I could get the price right, but I didn’t even know if that was going to be an option.

Now rewind a little bit. A few weeks ago another pastor I have been connecting with latel e-mails me and tells me they have a storage shed with a bunch of equipment in it and we can have it if we will go and get it. He mentioned a couple of cases but I assumed he meant sound cases. So Tim goes over there today to get the stuff and IT IS 6 CASES FROM PORTABLE CHURCH!!!! Along with that was some drum shield things (I don’t know what they are) that Tim has had a PO in for forever. There were also a TON of curtain poles that we need. I kid you not, everything in there was stuff we had been praying for by name and God provided it through this awesome dude for free.

That is incredible to me! God is awesome and I am on freaking cloud nine right now. I love it when God does His thing!!!!

Tadd has been emailing me the last few weeks talking about all the open doors God has been opening and it has reminded me so much of when we launched.  I actually told him yesterday, “remember when we launched and God did all that for us?”  Well, I guess God wanted to remind that He is still God and is still in the business of doing awesome things.

I was sharing with the guys the other day what qualities to look for in leaders and future staff.  We never go after “pros” because we want guys who already attend here and are already sold out to the vision.  There are a lot of things I can teach someone but two things that can NEVER be taught are ETHICS AND HARD WORK.

Either you have character and are willing to be a hard worker or not.  If a person lacks character and is lazy there is not hope for them.  I honestly believe you can not teach these two things.

Either they have it or they don’t.

Got a iTunes gift card the other day which is the BEST gift you can give me.  I love music and DeAnna has grown to love music since we have been married so I have been dowloading some new music and enjoying jamming to it today.  Here is a quick shot of what I have downloaded this week.

Better Then Me - Hinder

Lost In This Moment - Big and Rich

What I’ve Done - Linkin Park

Under Pressure - My Chemical Romance

Don’t Matter - Akon

Wait For You - Elliot Yamin

I don’t want to stop - Ozzy

Snow (hey oh) - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Pain - Three Days Grace

Animal I have become - Three Days Grace

First Time - Lifehouse

My assistant, Taylor got married on Saturday and for some reason felt the need to take this week off for a honeymoon.

So I have been checking her email which is actually my email and I got to say I get A LOT of junk emails.   Here is what I have found out from emails I assume I get every week but most of the time never see:

• I get a lot of church planters emailing me.  That is cool and I enjoy that but I didn’t realize I got that many emails from planters.  Taylor must forward most of them onto staff people that know the answers better then me.
• I lot of people think I am this Gary Lamb.  It seems he has touched a lot of lives through his music and a lot of people have been impacted him.  Sorry that is not me.
• A LOT of our church people read my blog.  Very cool.  That really is the purpose of it.
• I have a few people who REALLY hate me and have some major issues with me.  Wow, do they have issues.  Of course none of them have the guts to leave their real name or real email.
• A lot of people want me to endorse their book, software, etc. on my blog.
• A lot of people pray for me on a regular basis.  Very cool.

Anyway, I sort of forgot how distracting email is until this week.  I need Taylor back so she can filter away all of them.

Man pastors want the scoop and want it fast. :)  Here is the deal, our big change probably won’t seem that big to you but it is a huge change for us and it is going to change everything we do especially for me and it is going to make me a better leader.

I probably should tell our church first so I’ll fill you all in on Monday AFTER they find out.

After 2 1/2 years, I moved all my books from my house to the office.  I guess I am here to stay.

Just found out we actually baptized 85 people on Sunday!  Awesome!

I am so messed up!  I keep thinking it is Monday and that I am actually ahead of schedule but it is Tuesday!

We had a GREAT Lead Team meeting this morning.  Because we do creative junk all day on Tuesdays, we had to meet at 7:30 and I shared my heart with out team about some things I have been going through and what those thoughts were taking me.  It felt like a thousand pound weight off my chest and it is awesome to do life with friends!  I also announced a major change to our staff structure that is going to change our church in the long term.

Our guys are so awesome that they were 100% supportive.  I think we are going to look back on today and know we made a key decision that will lead to massive change at The Stone.

This Sunday I am starting the service in one of the most transparent and real ways I know.  I am going to share a very hard decision I made three weeks ago and show you how God has rocked my world through it!!!

You do NOT want to miss Church this Sunday I promise!!!!!

Today was a great day of doing NOTHING!  Got to hang out with the family, grilled some ribs, cleaned out the garage, took the tent down (that is harder then putting it up!), and just chilled out big time!

Tim and I are heading out at 5 in the morning so I’ll be back in the grind EARLY tomorrow but I can’t wait to get the week started.  We are launching our new series called Ridge Stone Rocks and I’m going to open up in this service like never before.  I have been batttling a little the last month and I am going to share why that was this week and how God has gotten me through it.  I’m going to share with our church this week what almost every pastor has felt at one time or another but would never open themselves up enough to share with their people.

I’ve always been very open and upfront with our people and I am excited to see how the message connects this week!