Twitch!

I found this crazy video with a guy with too much time on his hands and too many brain cells to fry...
I feel for him as he takes a slight sigh of fearfulness...ENJOY!

A Birthday Surprise!!!

This is an old video but it is hilarious. This video was shot by my uncles employees. They played a practical joke on him on birthday. They filled is entire truck with thousands of ping pong balls. PRICELESS!

12 Ways to Reduce Stress in Ministry

12. Get Organized.
Ministry workers can tend to be a little messy and disorganized. File, organize, schedule, and clean. Trust me. Things will run smoother and you will feel less pressure when looking for a certain message you preached last year and when things are organized future planning becomes a breeze. Life just seems easier when it's in order. Take a look at our Heavenly father and His creation. Everything has it's place and order and it works amazingly.

11. Take regular breaks.
Ministry workers are usually workaholics. There are appropriate times when you need to settle down and crunch through some work, but when it’s done, leave your workplace a couple minutes. Go outside, walk around, and get some sun. You’ll be amazed how refreshed you feel coming back. A 10-15 minute break outside can really energize you to finish the rest of your work in much better time and in higher quality, too.

10. Work when you focus best.
It seems like most people I know in ministry are early-morning people. They love waking up before the sun and hitting the office early. If that’s what works best for you, then do it! However, some people, like me, think mornings are nonexistent and can’t function until lunch time. I honestly work best between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM. I stay focused and tend to crank out my best work during that time. Find out what works best for you and capitalize on it.

9. Address the work at home.
Stacks of bills, car maintenance, yard work, and home repairs can really stress you out, especially if it seems like everything else going on in life is always a higher priority. If tasks start piling up at home, take an extra day off to get it all done and set your mind free.

8. Eat healthy.
Give your body food that will keep it well nourished. Balance your carbs, fruits, vegetables, and grains. Junk food will drain your system, making you tired and unfocused. A sugar rush may give you small bursts of energy, but the crash at the end will keep you going back for more sugar all day long. I'm still working on this one.

7. Stay in shape.
It’s clinically proven that regular exercise reduces stress, gives you more energy, improves your sleep at night, and helps you stay more alert during the day. There’s really no excuse not to stay in shape, especially for people in ministry. For me it's a little tennis and racquetball here and there. And if you have tight muscles and achy joints, see a massage therapist or a chiropractor. The bill will bite you in the end, though.

6. Use your vacation days.
Many of us may be happy with our jobs, our ministries, and the work we do, but there are always small things about each job that we hate. That’s just a part of life. Over time, those annoyances can build until they become frustrating. Make sure you take a break, time to rest, time to get away, and leave it all behind. If your ministry can’t function without you for a couple days to a week on a regular basis, the ministry is way too focused on you and is unhealthy.

5. Keep ministry simple.
Lots of activity and responsibilities may make you feel more important than you really are, but it’s a guaranteed formula for stress and burnout. Know your limits and be realistic. If you have too much on your plate, delegate some of it to others or simply cut it out of your life. In my ministry, if no one steps up to help or take over something I don’t have time to do or shouldn’t be a priority for my limited time, it simply doesn’t get done. It’s really that easy. Just because your ministry is busy and active doesn't mean it's moving forward. Activity doesn't mean progress.

4. Listen to worship music.
I don’t mean just have it playing in the background, although that might help. Sit down and really listen to it. Let the Holy Spirit work in your life as you spend personal time in worship, thinking, reflecting, and meditating on Him. All the other stressful things in your life pale in comparison to a healthy reminder of who God is.

3. Say “No!”
I don’t know why ministry workers feel like they have to say yes to so many things. Maintain boundaries on your life! If the ministry is focused around you, you’re doing something wrong. You shouldn’t be out more than 3 nights a week maximum! Be at home with your family.

2. Maintain healthy relationships with your spouse.
Remember, your primary ministry is to your family, especially your spouse. Don’t wait until the relationship starts feeling dry to do something about it. Maintain the relationship so you never get to that point in the first place. Spend alone time together, go on dates, read the Word together, do random romantic acts, be sexually active. Celebrate what you have.

1. Focus on the Lord.
Regular time with the Lord is critical, but it often seems like it’s the first thing we set aside. Spend time with God on a personal level and also make it a priority for your family. You can’t serve the Lord and follow Him without knowing where He’s leading you. Otherwise, you fall into a stale rut of just “doing” ministry, rather than leading a movement of God’s people.

Entering the Digital Age

I found this gem of a video while doing some late night surfing. I think all of us can relate to this video when it comes to explaining technology to our parents and grandparents. I love you, Mom but you are not far from this....lol

BECOME A BETTER DESIGNER: RULE #1: Limit Your Fonts

Part One of Seven Easy Principles to Becoming a Master Designer.

Ok, “master designer” might be a bit of a stretch – but you can at least become a “proficient designer” by following 7 easy principles. This will be the shortest, most informative series of blog posts you’ve ever read on how to become a better designer. Please note: these principles CAN be broken… these are not laws, they’re just general guides that I typically follow when putting together a design. Follow these simple design principles and you’ll be on your way to artistic excellence.

Principle One: Limit Your fonts. A big part of putting together a good design, as you’ll see, is making sure the over-all look is consistent. The best way to accomplish a consistent look to your design is limiting the number of artistic motifs (themes) that you use. The fonts you select are the first variable you want to limit. It;a good to just pick 2 fonts per design.

The first font can be fancy or artistic. This font will be used to give your design some flair, character and personality. It’s this font that sets the mood for the piece. Is it a fun font with swirls for a girl’s party, or is it a grungy evil font for a rock band? I would use this fancy font for the header copy – anywhere it’s big, I’ll use this font. The fancy font will be the focal point of the piece. You will usually have less copy in this fancy font, but it will be much bigger – so that’s what people will see and focus on.

The second font should be very basic. The audience shouldn’t take notice of this secondary font at all. This secondary font needs to be very easily legible. It’s this basic font that will be used for large bodies of copy. Obviously, it’s very hard to read large bodies of copy that are in some extravagantly artistic font. So, this second font is all about functionality. Here is an example of proper use of fonts in a design. As you can see, there is only two fonts used here. The fancy font is used as the headers and the basic font is used for the copy. It looks clean and consistent.

Here is a Bad use of fonts. In this case I used too many fancy fonts. It just makes the piece look inconsistent. The sub sections don’t seem like they match with the main header.

Having too many fonts in a design is the biggest mistake. Nothing looks worse than someone who has used 8 different fonts on their flyer. Even worse than that is using a very fancy font for your body copy. Here is a sample of font use at it’s worst:

That’s it for this quick post. Thanks for reading. Keep an eye out, 6 more posts coming in this series!

I.D. Check

Just wanted to get on the blog and talk about how amazing God is. This week's Identity youth service was just stellar. The kids were great, the morale was great, the worship was amazing, and God was able to use someone like me to deliver His word. I love my job. Granted, it's not easy at times and there are days you just want to quit but I can't help to think that there is nothing else I would rather be doing. This weekend is going to be one of the chances that I get to enjoy the perks of my job; planning fun events with our youth. This weekend we have created an AMAZING RACE of our own and the kids will be on a sprint around the Orlando area uncovering clues that lead them to the next one and at each stop they must complete certain tasks. It cost them a little to play but the winning team gets a BIG pay day if they have completely everything first. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Rock The Vote!

Now that I am about to be a parent pretty soon, voting becomes an entirely different thing for me. I have always taken pride in my freedom to vote but after watching this video you will understand what I am talking about. Take a look...

That Hurt...

You have got to see this. Patience is a virtue. Wait for it...Wait for it...Wait for it...


YUP! That just happened...

Nostalgically Blessed

This past weekend me and Jules visited where I grew up because an old friend of mine was getting married. It was so cool to see all of the friends I grew up with and to finally see all of us married and successful with kids on the way. There comes a point in your life where you look around and you realize how far you all have come and much you all have been through together. Not only to we have an awesome time visiting the past but as we returned to Orlando (the present reality), we had another amazing surprise from the past. Our old friends from the Campus Choir days, Larry and Kristin Kusic stopped in to visit our church on their way home from a family vacation. It's so good to have friends that you can just pick right back up where you left off and still keep connected.

This weekend, God was so good to me. He showed me how blessed we are and on top of that he showed me how faithful He is to give us life and to the fullest. Let me explain. Not only did He give us an opportunity to revisit the past He also blessed us in the now. As you all know, the economy is tight but we have always been faithful in our giving regardless. I will admit that it has been hard at time but we have stood on God's promise that "if we put the Kingdom of God firs that all else will be added." So Sunday morning I wrote out my tithe check as usual and trust that God would supply all our needs. Just as the first service ended, a new member of the church, that I don't know all that well, shook my hand and handed me some money. As the crowd began to disperse out the exits I looked down in my hand and I saw the same amount of money I had just paid in tithes. THANK YOU, JESUS! But I'm not done...Second service rolls around and I feel that if God blessed first service then I have give back to the God who supplied. So I gave again in the offering. I kid you not...later that night at a prayer and worship service someone handed me a card with the same amount of money I paid in the second service. WOW! GOD IS SO GOOD!

When the world is trembling in fear because they rely on their own resources to financially stabilize their own economy, know that we can trust in God that is faithful to follow through with His promises. THANK YOU, JESUS!

The Future of Worship Media

Now this is trippy...It's a visual worship loop that you control the speed, direction, and motion of with the slight movements of your mouse. Check it out and fun by clicking here.

SHHHH... ACTion!

I was reading in my devotions this morning and as I was reading in Luke I had one of those "AAHA Moments." You know what I mean? It's when you've read something so many times before but God decides to bring His word to you in a-whole-nother light. I just began to read about the ministry of Jesus and how He went from town to down preaching the news and doing the works and miracles of God. All of a sudden, as I was reading, I began to just realized that Jesus, in the beginning, didn't want people to tell others about Him. He didn't even want the demons he cast out of people to shout, "You're the Son of God!" I kept asking myself, "Why wouldn't He want people to know who He was?" That's when the "AAHA Moment" came. Jesus wanted to show God and not just proclaim that He was God.

I began to think about us as Christians and how we would love to tell everyone that we are Christians at times, but on the flip side, our works are not seen. I think if we are going to be Christians (CHRIST-like) then we should probably take a lesson from Jesus and let our works tell of His Grace and Mercy and Love before our mouths proclaim "OUR" position in all of this. What a powerful tool of evangelism. Jesus knew this. If we just allow our works to do the miraculous then eventually the doors of the people's heart will be unlocked to share the Christianity. Jesus knew the importance of reaching people's "world" before He showed them His own.

Judah's 2nd Sonogram

Well, today we went to the Doctor for our 2nd sonogram. Everything seems to running perfectly. He is right on target for all of his measurements and the heart beat is steady and strong. We cannot wait to see him and hold. As we sat and watched Judah move around as we probed his momma's belly the sonogram wand, we couldn't help to think that God's creation of life is so spectacular. How can someone witness the formation of a human life and see it's complexity and perfect and think that there is no GOD? GOD truly is amazing and I thank Him everyday for blessing me with all that is in my life. My wife, my baby, my home, my job, my health, my home, my family, and list goes on and on. THANK YOU GOD for just being GOD!

Practical Joke

I thought I would share the small practical joke we played on Jules. She was supposed to go with us to Catalyst in Atlanta but she couldn't get off work and she was a little bitter about it. Well the first day we were in Georgia we spent the entire day at the Atlanta Aquarium (the worlds largest aquarium) and me and my co-worker Erin (the Wednesday night director at our church) took a photo and Photoshoped Julie into the shot and sent it to her that night, via e-mail. She felt sad that she really wasn't there but also felt very much loved that we thought of her the whole week. If you haven't been to the Atlanta Aquarium, do yourself a favor and go. It really is spectacular. Why we were there they were actually working on the new expansion for dolphins. It should be done within the next year. Click here to check it out.

CATALYST DAY 2

Well, day two is done and I made it back home to Orlando. Man, the days are long at Catalyst but filled with so much good stuff. Today's worship was lead by Steve Fee again as well as Kristian Stanfill, and another kid named Aaron Keyes. The day started off with an African choir leading us into worship and then later Lanny Donoho bringing an elephant into the room and then soon after that bringing in a donkey. I'm sure there was some symbolism trying be conveyed. The speakers were mucho better today...I thought. Tim Sanders gave a compelling talk on contagious compassion and how it has an amazing ripple effect when we step outside of ourselves in deliver an act of compassion that it is contagious to those around that witness. After Sanders was through, Dave Ramsey took the stage and blew everyone away. Not doing the typical and obvious talk on finances, Dave gave an authoritative talk on building unity within your ministry and not apogozing for holding a standard of excellence in all that we do. Here is just a taste of his closing talk. These are the 5 enemies of unity he says everyone must fight against: 1) Poor Communication, 2) Gossip, 3) Unresolved Disagreements, 4) Lack of Shared Purpose, 5) Sanctioned Incompetence. Another great talk was from a guy named Matt Chandler. He gave a talk on authentic living and ministering. He said that too many people use God just to grow their ministry or church and don't use God to grow themselves. How can we challenge people to live fully committed to God and live by faith when we ourselves can't. Live the Life. Overall, Catalyst was good and I can't wait to see what it has in store for the future 10th year anniversary. Next year they have already revealed to us that there will be 2 Catalysts. One on the east coast in Atlanta and another in Orange County, California. Hope to see you there!

CATALYST DAY 1

Well, today was the first day of Catalyst and once again they have pushed the envelope of creativity, stage design, leadership training. As you can see to the left, the stage was in the center of the arena and massive wall of LED screens surrounded the drummer in the center of the stage. The only thing that stinks about this stage set up is that you can't always see everything that is going. But all in all the lighting, sound, and design was stellar.

After the opening worship set, led by Steve Fee, was over and the circular LED Screen lowered back down...Andy Stanley took the stage first as usual and spoke to the leaders about our moral authority. He challenges us to understand that moral authority is so much more powerful than positional authority. He said, "As soon as you lose your morals you've lost your influence and if you don't have influence then you no longer have authority, regardless if you have positional authority or not." Later on we had the an awesome opportunity to hear Jon Foreman (the lead singer of Switchfoot) do an acoustic set while he played guitar and another band member played the cello.
We also had the chance to make the biggest floam art piece in the world. If you have no idea what floam is and I have totally confused you then you can either look the photo provided or you click here for more info. They also interviewed this 14 year old kid that started a basketball fund-raiser when he was 9 years old that raised $2,000 the 1st year, $30,000 the 2nd, $120K the 3rd and $210K the 5th year running. He felt called to raise money to build schools in Africa at the age of 9 and with one thought created a non-profit fund-raising ministry, partnered with world vision ministries. WOW! What an inspiration to all of us leaders. Afterwards they raised $1,000 for every slam dunk the extreme team made. THEY RAISED $10K in about 2 minutes. WOW! I need them to come to our youth ministry....lol
Not only were we entertained during intermissions with floam, basketball, and bands but we also got to see a semi-celebrity from one of my favorite shows, So You Think You Can Dance. This kid is amazing. He didn't make it through the competition on TV because he dropped out but he came back on the season finale to battle another pop and locker. This is a photo of his performance today but you can see a video of him here. Although all of us this was quite fun and inspiring I would say that I was most inspired by a guy that took the stage at the age of 28 (the same age I am).
It's a guy by the name of Steven Furtick who after 2 years of leading his church, Elevation Church, it now runs 3,500 people in weekly attendance. His humility and appreciation for where God has brought him moved and inspired me and challenged me to live and minister with the same passion and vigor. I even continued to watch him as he left the stage and approached his wife. They embraced and hugged for quite a long time and you could just see the amazement between the both of them, that God had done, what they thought, was the unthinkable. For a guy that was in the nose bleed section of Catalyst just 2 years ago, he now found himself as one of the very speakers/leaders he aspired to live like. Day 2 of Catalyst is ahead and I feel like so much has been experienced. Stay posted for tomorrows update. Until then...Lead the people around you like it's the last chance you 'll get!

HEROES CONFUSION

Just a small post today...Is anyone else confused about what the heck is going on in the world of Heroes. When this show first came on I was addicted but it has really taken some crazy turns and I am just getting more and more confused about what is going on. I understand the element of mystery that the producers are probably trying to implement but I think they are just shooting for too far left field. If you anyone can sum up in a small synopsis of what is going on this season...That would be GREAT! Until then....go and try to save the world one cheerleader at a time. It's starts with ONE!

CATALYST BOUND!!!

Well, I am gearing up to go to Catalyst this week. For those of you that don't know what Catalyst is, it is one of the best conferences around for young ministers around the globe. It's an amazing place to get fresh and new ideas and it also helps give perspective of what else is going on in the world as far as Christian Culture is concerned. Past speakers have consisted of: John Maxwell, Andy Stanley, Dave Ramsey, Rick Warren, Erwin McManus, Francis Chan, Craig Groeschel, George Barna, Louie Giglio, and many more. Not only have the speakers been amazing in the past but the music has also been top notch.

Every year I leave Catalyst with tons of teaching resources as well as new media and video ideas for the upcoming year. Catalyst seems to always push the envelope when it comes to music, stage design, marketing ideas, and thinking. If you have never been you owe it to yourself to either talk to someone that has been or just get a ticket for yourself and go. This might be my last year to go due to the fact that one of Catalyst's biggest supporters and guest speakers Andy Stanley has started his own conference called DRIVE and focused more on the administrative side of church. He answers the question, "What's the best way to run church business?" It's sad that it might be my last year to go to Catalyst but I am excited to see what else is out there. I never want to get stagnant in regards to where I glean all my ideas and resources. I want to always keep pushing myself outside my comfort zones and see what else God has to reveal. We try to do the same thing within our youth ministry by always going to new places and conferences and never doing the same-ole same-ole! So CATALYST BOUND, I am!

He's a BIG GOD!

Identity Youth was AWESOME last night! We just had a great spirit of camaraderie and worship and attentiveness and flow and receptiveness to God's word and presence. Our church as a whole has been in unity about focusing on God's word lately. With my pastor's series "TXT" and the youth series "LOST" God has really been challenging us as a church body to read, study, and dissect His word with hopes of further revelation about the text He has sent us. MAN!!!! I have seen the fruits of this focus! Our youth are hungrier about God's word and they are sticking to their commitment and it is paying off. I have heard story after story about our youth not comprehending something they read in their devotionals and as they begin to ask God, "What does that mean?" and they begin to further study and research the deeper meaning or the point God is making the in text that they are reading, He has shown and given them BETTER understanding and because of that understanding they are becoming more like Christ. GOD IS GOOD!

This past Wednesday night we talked a lot about facing struggles head on and not fearing the unknown of the future and just truly relying on God to pull us through our difficult times and trusting God to be more than faithful to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all we could have ever hoped for. I was reading a friend's Blog today and he was reflecting the economy and it's struggles right now and it is so good to hear that even though the world may worry in fear of the stability of our economic structure, we trust in a God that is bigger than money. We trust in a God that spoke the world into existence with the utterance of a few words and He has all of our lives in His control.