Chris Reeder has a pretty cool thing going on over at this blog.  He has asked a bunch of different church planters for advice on planting a church when you basically don’t know what you are doing.  I have enjoyed reading the posts.  I’ve never been to his blog before but after going there I am pretty sure I met him at ChurchPlanters.com.  Plus he is calling his church Revolution so he has to be decent.

Check out the posts from different church planters here.

We just realized that our contact form was going to a VERY old email address that isn’t valid anymore so if you have emailed me through my blog in like the last 3-4 months, they have not went through.

I apologize that we didn’t catch that, but it is fixed now.

I thought our critics had just given up on us from the lack of e-mails, but I guess I was wrong.

I am in a creative mood right now in regards to writing, so I am going to tackle a couple of things in the next few weeks that should be good, helpful, or worthless depending where you are in life.

Some of the things I am going to talk about:

• Church Consultants - I get asked questions about this a lot.  We have used several consultants since we started and I think we have learned what to look for when looking for a consultant.
• Worship Prostitutes  - I’ve been brewing on this one for a while.  This has NOTHING to do with paying muscians or not.  It has everything to do with THE musicians we are paying.  I am convinced most of of them are simply prostitutes who go wherever the money is.  They don’t belong to a local church, serve in a local church or give to a local church yet we bring these guys in to lead our people in worship.  I’m looking forward to this one.
• How we handle criticism - I actually have this one written and was going to post it this week, but we have been criticized this week pretty good and I didn’t want people to think I was posting it due to that.  I get asked about this one a lot from other planters.
• Random Thoughts On Starting A Church - Just some quick points I have been thinking about.
• What I Look For In Staff - Another question I got asked a lot about.  Trust me, I am NOT an expert in this but I have a great team and I think that is because we have learned a lot about putting the right people on the bus.

I met Mark Bjorlo a few years ago online and we have talked a couple of times on the phone and many times through e-mail. The dude is sharp and has a growing church in the middle of nowhere Minnesota. He’s got a great blog with some great church planting and leadership stuff. Right now he is posting some notes from a pastor’s roundtable he is at and it is GOOD stuff.

Check it out here.

EDIT:  He actually has better and more notes on his facebook site located here.

Had a very good day today.  We had our all-staff meeting this morning, creative meeting after that and than I hung out with Daryl Strickland and Jeff Kapusta all day.  I honestly want to be Jeff.  He dresses cool, knows all about coffee (I guess that is cool), and he surfs!!!

I had a blast hanging out.

Tomorrow I head over to Alpharetta to hang out with a bunch of church planters for a couple of days.  Should be fun.

Dang, I just mentioned that I heard a rumor they were having a GuitarHero Tournament at the ChurchPlanters.com conference and already people are talking smack.  Tadd called me at 9:00 a.m. this morning to talk smack.  Dave is talking smack.  Chris is talking smack.

It is actually sad that in one short day that the blogging world is abuzz about a tournament that none of them have a chance of winning.  I am THE Guitar Hero so go ahead and give me my trophy and spare the beat down that will happen at the tournament.

Seriously, I am willing to let you guys give up right now where you don’t have to be killed in front of 700 church planters.  The choice is yours.

Cherokee Tribune wrote a pretty cool article about me blogging in today’s paper.  You can read it here.  I think it is funny we have been around 3 years and have seen a lot of growth, have done a lot of crazy things, and have created a lot of buzz and when they finally write about us, it is about my blog.  Oh well, I appreciate the article.

They also wrote about my boy Charlie.  Love that dude.

The Cherokee Tribune is doing a article on “Blogging Pastors” and I got interviewed last week about it.  Today they sent Amber out to do a photo shoot.  I am the worst person in the world to take a picture of.  I never take good photos, so it was kind of funny that I got chosen for the picture.  Also, how do you take a picture of someone blogging?  I also forgot I was taking the picture so I was rocking a shirt with skulls on it.  Not very pastor-like at all.

Anyway, Amber just started blogging so we got to talk about that for a minute.  I think the article is going to run this Saturday.  Too funny.

I love blogs. I am so ADD that short snippets are cool to me. I would rather read a blog than a book any day. I also think Blogs have given a voice to some GREAT leaders that before blogs, many of us would have never heard of. As much as I love them, I have to monitor how many I read. I allow myself to keep up with 30 blogs at a time. I do this through bloglines, so I only have to go to one site to read them and not all of them do updates every day.

To start 2008 off right, I deleted about 15 of the blogs I have tracked with for a while and added some new ones. I still have about 7 spots open for some new ones, so if you have any “must read” blogs, send them to me.

Here are some of the new blogs I have added:

Carey Nieuwhof - From what I gather, this cat was pastoring a pretty large church that was a little more traditional in nature. Wanting to do something a little more relevant, he decided to start a church. They launched with two locations from the first day. The church he was pastoring was supportive of this and it seems like they are rocking and rolling. I am probably butchering that story, but the guy has some great stuff on this blog.

Patrick Gillen - Pat is just one of those guys that I like. He was on staff at a church close to us and the pastor decided to move on and Pat became the pastor. They are getting ready to relaunch in the next few weeks. Pat is one of those guys that I could see on our staff one day. I just like him and he gets “it.”

John Bishop - I have watched this guy for a while and I LOVE him. He is the pastor of Living Hope Church in Washington and they are getting it done. He is one of the guys in ministry I would really like to meet (I need to talk Perry into inviting him to the next roundtable so I can meet him without flying to Washington). If this dude wasn’t all the way in Washington, I believe we would hear a lot more from him. GREAT blog.

Buckhead Church Blog - I know it is weird to add a church blog, but Buckhead is one of the GREAT churches in America and I just feel like I get an inside look at this great church from their blog. Really dig this blog.

Potential Blog - I dig Troy Gramling. I met him the first time when he visited our church one Sunday. Think about that? The pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in America, visited our church? That is amazing to me. Got to talk a little more to him at a pastor’s roundtable. He became over the top cool to me this christmas when he sent me the most insane energy drink I have ever had. The thing actually had a warning on it that said you should only drink half of it the first time. I was actually afraid to drink it.  It made you three of everything.  It scares me to think he drinks these.  Love his new leadership blog.

Okay, you guys are always emailing us telling that only one or two sentances from my blog show up in your feedreader so you have to click to the webpage to finish reading. I hate blogs that do that as well. BUT, I have no idea how to change it.

So if you do, let me know and we will get it fixed.

EDIT:  I just subscribed through bloglines and google and I get the entire feed.  Talked to several others who get the whole feed.  So it must be something in your settings if you only get a few lines of a post.