Today was our first service at the movie theatre, and I absolutley love and prefer being there verses the school. 

Pros:

• Easy to find, prime location
• In place amenities: chairs, screen, and wicked awesome acoustical treatment that makes me fall in love with our subs.
• Its right smack dab in the middle of the freaking “world”

So saying that, today was the most stressful yet.

Here’s what went wrong:

- trailer was late

- storage key got jacked, and had to get the spare to get our tables out

- the projector remote went on strike and decided not to work. Yes we changed the batteries. Our attorneys will be forced to work with the “Dumb Electronics Labor Union” to come to an agreement to continue work. I’m not holding my breathe.

- I forgot the order of services and manuscript at my house. My wife is the best gopher.

- one of the speaker cables died. Josh Marhofer worked on it and brought it back to life.

- we threw a breaker right before practice.

- we threw another breaker 7 min before service. Once again Josh pulled a generator out of his back pocket and got us going with 00:30 left on the timer. I’m not kidding about the back pocket.

- we had a skeleton practice, in which we only practiced one song, did not practice one song, and only hit on a few parts of the others. Amazingly, everything was perfect. Our band is a great team of musicians who love Jesus with the best hearts.

- we had no pre-service production meeting.

- some of the channels on the sound board are dying, so we had some bad noise on the computer audio.

With all that said, I heard so many people say, “that was the most organized first run I’ve ever seen” or “there were technical difficulties?”

I’m proud of our team, and we have the best volunteers. This was a crisis day, but everyone worked as a team and no one freaked out. Everyone had a great atitude.

Josh Marhofer is an amazing worship leader who pulled of a great worship time in the midst of a slim practice, while being the man’s man that he is and fixed everything that was breaking. Our whole band is nuts.

Johnny Hauck…..need I say more? The man to have anytime anywhere. He strait up built a projector stand to solve a height problem behind the theatre.

Jered Lyndsey stepped in big to help us with sound today. He’s awesome. Enough said.

Justin Quintana saved my tail. He’s a great example of creativity meets administration meets the opposite of lazy. There’s no way we could have pulled off today without his help the whole morning. Tiffany & Co. doesn’t deserve him.

A ton of people spontaneously pitched in after service to help us get out in time. Makes my heart happy to see people eager to serve Christ.

I shouldn’t have named names, cause I can’t name everyone, but if you were there this morning before 10:30, and you had a pulse, chances are you helped us out huge. Thanks.

And all of this turned out great because we have a sweet pastor who’s attitude and courage rubs off on everybody.

I’ve been paying attention to this urge inside of me. I have noticed that I’m in a constant search for happiness. Not the happiness you may be thinking of, but the joy that you get in the moment of now. Whenever I find those moments that aren’t filled with stress, when I’m not worrying about tomorrow’s deadline, I want to soak in them and never leave. I’m addicted to work and have a hard time taking consistent time off, but lately God has been teaching me how to just shut up and enjoy Him.

Today I had the privilege of playing golf with one of my best friends, in the most beautiful part of Austin, on greens that I’ll never be able to afford. It was unreal the beauty that I was allowed to play in. Infant deer were as close as 15 yards from me as I chipped. One of the holes on this course made the list of “The Top 18 Most Beautiful Holes of Golf in Texas”. This is where millionaires play. 

If you don’t know, I’m very far from being accused of being a millionaire.

We walked through this resort that I estimate to cost around $100 million to build. I was dressed as nice as I usually dress, and I felt like a poor man. Nothing profound here, but, I’ve caught myself paying attention to the different smells in this environment - weird I know. This whole day was filled with smells, textures, tastes, service, and sights that I normally never encounter.

It was refreshing and nice break from the routine of work. We work so much, and enjoy so little of what God has given us. 

Now, you don’t have to drop a ton of coin to experience this truth, but I was reminded today that one day I won’t work and toil, but will just marvel and worship my Creator. Can it please happen tomorrow?

I read this quote today, “There are people who don’t mind if you fail…but it really bothers them if you succeed.”

Do you know people like this? If not, are you THAT person?

Let’s be honest. We all have that tiny voice inside of us that gets excited when we see someone goof. What is it that makes us okay when someone fails? Oh, how selfish our core is!

Now that truth sucks, but here’s another one that’s worse: sometimes we get ticked when someone succeeds! Instead of cheering them on, we throw a fit. Selfishness!

My prayer is that I’ll be humble enough to slaughter that voice and have compassion and mercy on everyone. Even those I admire and look up to. Even those I’m jealous of, which is code for admiring them and looking up to them - I just haven’t admited that to myself yet.

I will fail at trying to describe the feelings I’m experiencing. But if I don’t try, I won’t feel good about myself.

Yesterday
I saw a close friend I haven’t seen in almost two years. He represents the good I experienced in one of the darkest times of my life so far. Without him and his wife, I’d be hopelessly lost. I felt so much warmth and love being around him. It was a surprise to run into him since he lives a couple of states away. I can’t describe the feelings I had when he finally had to walk away to finish work at the hotel. I had to watch him as he walked away. I struggled and didn’t want to, but I had to see him with my eyes as much as I could. I don’t know if you’ve been blessed with a friend like that, but some of us only get one in a life time. Besides my wife and outside of family, I’ve been blessed with about 4 or 5 people I feel that strong about. I love friends.

As he walked out of the bowling alley we met in, I was reminded what life was like 24 months ago. It took everything within me not to cry.

Today
My aunt was in town on military business, ironcially, just as my friend was yesterday. Its been a few months since I’ve seen her. I was reminded of my family in Dallas, and wanted to jump in the car and go see them. For whatever reason, I was very aware of most of my senses as we ate dinner. We ate in a part of town I had not yet explored. It was my first time to this restaurant. I smelt four different colognes and perfumes I had never smelled before. Some of the textures and flavor of the food I ate was new. I was immersed in this sensational experience of both very old and traditional elements (my relative and family memories), my common elements (me, my wife, my clothes, my car, my smell), and these new elements (restaurant, atmosphere smell, food, location). It was just crazy. 

Not sure what to do with it all, but thought I’d share it with the two people who read my blog - hi mom.

One of my greatest struggles is taking a real day off. I get bored. I start to work. I sin by not taking a real sabbath (Sunday is a work day for us in the ministry).

My blessing is a curse. I get paid to do what I love to do. My work, for the most part, is my pleasure. I’m an artist and I love technology. I literally slid into the job of getting paid for making art in the form of electronic media. So it is challenging to take 24 hours off from doing that.

Today I did. I took my wife to Sea World. As I rode the ‘Great White’ roller coaster for the first time, the morning Texas air cleaned my mind.

My head ach stopped. My blood pressure dropped. My heart pumped faster.

For a short time I wasn’t thinking about deadlines, clients, bugs to fix, sermons, videos, or budgets. I was just looking into the foothills of the Hill Country on the top of a coaster, flying fast, and getting jerked into the opposite direction headed for an inverted cork screw.

I wish I could have seen my smile. I wish those moments could last forever.

Is that what Heaven will be like?

I made this in a program called After Effects. There is no video. Just still images that I’m animating and moving the 3D camera around on. Looks similar to what Dreamworks does.

Today I taught a message I’ve been actively working on for 15 months. The best part of the service was when a grandmother came up to me.

She had waited patiently until after I was done answering some questions after service. I can only describe her as glowing.

She expressed how the Lord used me, and just went on and on, complementing my delivery and how proud she was to see a young man deliver the truth of God. More so, she was just so impressed and taken captive by the Truth in God’s Word.

While receiving compliments is a very weird thing for me (I struggle with what I’m supposed to say other than thank you), I couldn’t get past this picture of the young and old, gathering together, admiring the beauty and rightness of God and His Word.

That’s a beautiful picture of church. People from all walks, backgrounds, and ages, not bickering about our stylistic preferences, but giving God our undivided attention.

So this post isn’t about spirituality. But it is about common sense.

I’m a creative professional, and I eat through hard drive space like Skittles. I also don’t have an effective back up solution. My livelihood is on the line, and I need more space. If a hard drive failed, I’d be *insert bad words here*.

I found a 1Terabyte External Hardrive on TigerDirect.com for $250 + S&H + Tax. I printed the page, took it to “Best Buy” (the crowd boos…). I found the same product, on sale for $320. I went to the front and asked the manager if they would price match,

and he said

no (the crowd gasps…).

I looked him in the eyes, waited for him to smile and admit that he was joking. He didn’t. I asked him, “So you’re going to lose local in store business over a $70 over priced margin?”

He said, “Yes.”

I nodded and walked away, letting him know that I wouldn’t stand for that and put the hard drive back on it’s dusty shelf.

I thought to myself, “Does this guy realize he is living in the year 2008. And that there is this thing called the Internet?” Good luck with that business model. I have to ask, what will Best Buy give me if I spend $70 more? A high school student that doesn’t even want to be there?

The happy ending is this: I went home and pulled up Amazon.com. There the exact drive was, for $10 cheaper than Tigerdirect. I paid no sales tax, and I got overnight shipping for $3.99. 

$243.98.

Best Buy would have been $346.38 - a difference of $102.40!

That was a best buy.

Church planting is officially hard. But it’s officially worth it.

I’ve made the mistake at saying yes to a lot of things, instead of saying no to a lot of things. It’s so hard to say no. I’ve said yes to so many things and people, that the one yes that really matters sometimes slips into second place.

I’m facing a grueling couple of weeks, and once I get my head above water, I hope to stay there.

Why do we pride ourselves in being so busy? It’s so dumb.

I’m actually finding myself looking for ways to slack off so I can rest. It’s hard with our schedules to have a constant 24 hours where we don’t work on a dang thing. I have to have a full day where I don’t touch the macbook pro.

I’m trying to find this proper balance between working hard and getting things done, and resting and relaxing.

God says it’s a sin if we don’t rest once a week.

I’m a dirty sinner.

I’ve said yes to too much stuff. 

You’d have to be in a coma to not see the tension between churches and money. Granted, we (as the whole Body of Christ) have had it coming to us because of historical stupidity and greed. The problem is Jesus talked more about money than anything.

When we started Gateway, one of our highest priorities was to handle God’s Cash with the utmost honesty, integrity, and accountability. None of the pastors at our church touch, count, or deposit the money that comes in. We want to take the high road and remove any question or doubt.

God gave John a great message on money today. It deals not only in how we handle money with God, but how we manage our money on this earth.

He knocked it out of the park for a grand slam. Listen to it here.