24 Predictions

I have watched the first the first four seasons of 24 all the way through, half of season five, and am now current with season six. I'm starting to notice some reoccurring themes and whereas I might not go as far to say the show is predictable, I feel confident that I can make some educated guesses about what is going to happen next season. So here's what I think will happen in season seven of 24 ( we'll have to check this list next year to see how close I come):

Jack will yell at a lot of people - Jack seems to have only two volume levels: scary whisper and drill sergeant.

Any CTU agents that we don't know by name will be killed - How many times has a entire team of CTU field agents been wiped out while guarding something? These guys have a shorter life expectancy than the red shirt away team guys on the original Star Trek.

Jack will disobey an order from CTU - You'd figure by now they'd just let him do what he wants anyway. The guy is more insubordinate than a detective in an 80's cop movie.

The president will be manipulated by a member of his inner circle - Who are these people that the presidents in this show keep appointing to their cabinet? If I was president I would let Jack chose my cabinet, or better yet , just let Jack be president. That way he could torture anyone who he thought was going behind his back.

There will be a mole inside CTU - This place has got to have the worst hiring department in the world. How is it that Vegas casinos can watch their employees enough that it's impossible to steal a quarter without ending up in a back room being beat half to death but the Counter Terrorist Unit has someone stealing info from it every season.

Jack will physically hurt and/or kill someone that works at CTU - This man has shot one boss in the head, cut off his partner's hand, drugged another boss, shot another partner in the throat, killed a mole or two, and punched out half the office while trying to escape at one time or another, yet he still gets asked back to work. Now that's proof that it's hard to get fired from a government job.

Someone at CTU will lie to protect Jack - This amazes me, seeing how they will probably be his next victim.

Jack will kill someone in an unconventional way - It's kinda hard to top ripping out someones throat with your teeth, so it's probably going to have to be something like killing someone with a spoon.

A terrorist organisation will threaten the lives of thousands of people in L.A. - Why don't these people move already?

Someone will be kidnapped - Go back and look at the past five seasons.

Someone will be blackmailed - Again, the past five seasons.

No one will sleep or go to the bathroom - CTU better be paying some serious overtime.

Jack will kill an insane amount of terrorists - It's incredible how many people these terror cells have on their payroll. It's got to be expensive replacing all the people that Jack kills, I'd just wait till he retired or took a vacation before I plotted world domination.

Wyatt Earp is My Friend...

There's this group of guys I meet with for breakfast when I can about every other week. It's kinda a networking type thing, we all perform weddings here in town so we give each other work and share ideas about how we do things. I'm the youngest there by far, so I usually do a lot more listening than talking, but I enjoy being there when I can.

As we were about to leave someone made a comment about how it was nice to get together because it's very lonely being a pastor and that most the pastors they know don't have anyone to talk to on a regular basis. I'd heard that from many pastors I've known, but something hit me about that today. I started thinking about the pastors I've known and tried to name two close friends for each one. I couldn't do it...not for even one...and I've been in ministry for almost ten years. It seems odd to me that the men who spend so much time trying to get people in their churches to have positive relationships with each other don't seem to have any themselves.

I began to wonder if this is one of the reasons why so many pastors fail. Maybe if there was someone there to listen to their problems the way they listen to everybody else they would be less stressed out. Maybe if there was someone there that actually knew what was going on in their lives on a regular basis there would be less moral failures. Maybe if they had people that cared enough to tell them when they were smoking crack then there would be less crappy decisions made. Maybe if they just had more people they could hang out with the lone purpose of having fun there would be less burn out.

Now, some people might be saying, "My spouse is my best friend." That's good, they should be, but they don't count. Autumn knows me better than anyone, she is my favorite person to be with, and we regularly laugh and have a great time together, but she is only one person. To place all your needs onto one person is unfair and dangerous.

I'm not trying to say that I know how to get friends and I know pastoring can feel lonely even when you are surrounded by friends. I just feel that this is a part of ministry that gets overlooked because we are so busy and we forget how important it is until it's too late.

I'm starting The Venue with a half dozen of my best friends. It is one of my goals that in five years from now if anyone asks one of our people who my closest friends are they won't have to stop and think about the question.

7 1/2 Years Ago

Yesterday my friend Mike found an old video tape of a couple of my sermons from right before I left to college. I always hate watching my sermons afterwards because I'm so critical of myself when it comes to preaching, but this was different because now I was watching a sermon from when I was 20. The thing that made it so strange is I'm watching a message where I talk about how God is calling me to leave town in order to follow what He wants to do with my life and here I am almost eight years later on the other side of that call. I just felt like telling myself, "If you only knew where you were being led you'd never believe it."

For those of you that don't know, back then I was at Grapevine Fellowship acting as one of the assistant preachers to Dave Pinzon at our Saturday night services. The Saturday night services were started by a bunch of us twenty year olds to give Grapevine a "Gen-X" service. It was a full service with a younger edge and a really cool coffee house afterwards that people would hangout at for hours after service. We grew to something like 70 or 80 in attendance, we saw the unchurched saved and changed, and we had a great time. The funny thing is even though we called ourselves a "Gen-X" service, we had people of all ages and backgrounds showing up and a lot of them had never been to the morning services at all. Looking back, I don't think any of us realized that we were one step away from having a great church plant, we were just doing what we loved to do.

Leaving there was a hard thing to do. I knew that God had called me to preach, but I also knew I needed to leave to California. I remember that last message I spoke there being hard because I knew I was saying goodbye to a lot of those people.

Not too long after I was gone Grapevine ran into some hard times. A decision was made that the Saturday night service should be shut down because it was taking attendance from the main services. Not many people were happy with this. Some did fold into the morning services, some found other churches, some left church altogether.

Many people mourn the Saturday night service as something that almost was, but I think you have to look at it from a different angle. Both Dave and myself are church planters today, I have two members of my staff came from the Sat. service and Dave has a few with him as well. People were saved, lives were changed, God was worshiped. Lastly, I think I learned just as much about church planting there as I did in college. So now when people tell me that you can't start a church with all young people, I just smile because I've seen it happen before.

Hard to Answer

It seems that every job I've ever had involved people asking me a lot of questions that I just didn't have good answers for. When I worked in pharmacy it was, "Does this look like herpes to you?" As a substitute teacher it's questions like, "Mr. Bell, how do you spell rhinoceros ?" Now as a pastor it's things like, "What abilities do you have that you feel would make you a successful church planter?"

I've often wondered why people keep asking me things I have no idea about, I guess I've always looked like I've known more than I really do. Fortunately, I've been pretty good with making up stuff on the spot, but through my whole life there have been some questions that I keep getting asked that I never have a good answer to. These are those questions:

1. "What were you thinking?"
2. "Why would you say something like that?"
3. "What's wrong with you?"
4. "Why did you put that in your mouth?"
5. "What does this go to?"
6. "Where are your pants?"
7. "Who do you think you are?"
8. "Isn't that one of your friends?"
9. "What did you think was going to happen?"
10. "What's so funny?"
11. "Are these your pants?"
12. "Who told you that you could do that?"
13. "Why would you laugh at that?"
14. "Where's my cat?"
15. "Well, what did you think?"
16. "Where should we eat?"
17. "Where did you get that?"
18. "Where did you learn that?"
19. "Why do I even bother?"
20. "Why can't more men be like you?"
    

Paperwork

I hate paperwork. I swear three trees have given their lives so The Venue can start and we haven't even had our official launch yet. I just thought you should know.

Battlestar is Back

Battlestar Galactica is back on tonight and that makes me very happy. The only problem is that we are having night services right now, so I have to record it and wait until Friday when everyone is free so we can watch it together. It's going to be tough holding out for five more days but it'll be comforting just knowing it's there on my DVR waiting for me.

Night Services and the Super Bowl

We decided to do eight evening "preview" services before we officially launch in March. The first one went great last week but something came to my attention last week that I can't believed I missed. Super Bowl Sunday occurs right in the middle of these preview services. I guess I wasn't thinking about it because its been years since I've been involved with a night service and the Super Bowl starts late enough that it's never been an issue for Sunday mornings.

We've decided to tackle this problem (sorry, I know it's a cheesy pun, but I couldn't help myself) by canceling service that night and having a Super Bowl party at my house instead. I know this won't work in the future, but we go to mornings after we launch and unless we double in size in the next couple weeks we should be fine as far as space goes. I know most people will chose to spend this night at home with their families or drinking buddies, but it might give us a chance to spend some time with those who don't have any plans and want to get to know us better.

Why Las Vegas?

When I left Las Vegas to go to college I was ready for God to use me for anything as long as it didn't involve church planting or ever returning to Vegas, and here I am almost eight years later leading a church plant in Vegas. Figures, doesn't it? I needed the time away to realize that this place is my home and it's where I belong. If God needs people planting churches here then why not someone who grew up playing in its deserts and walking its streets?

The one thing that does amaze me though is the number of people I talk to at out of town conventions or meetings that are taken back by the fact that I'm ministering in Las Vegas and want to know why I chose this city. It's as if the majority of the Christian community has decided that God is going to reign down fire on this place much like the wicked cities of old and any respectable man of God should pitch his tent elsewhere lest he be consumed with it. What they fail to realize is I'm not that respectable.

For everybody that doesn't get it here are a few of the reasons why I love pastoring in Vegas:

1. Fastest growing metro area in the country - 4,000 to 6,000 people move here every month. Think about that, we would need to start one mega church every month to keep up with the growth in this city if we wanted to reach everyone. Think about all the new residents that are in a new place without any people to connect to or a place where they can have a sense of community.

2. $1.99 midnight breakfast at Red Rock Casino - Now that's how I like to end a team meeting! I used to hate when in California I would get hungry late at night and have nowhere to go sit down and eat other than Denny's. Here I can go wherever I want, but it's hard to beat a whole meal for less then two bucks. Some of you might feel it's unethical to eat in a gambling establishment, but where else am I going to get food? They have slot machines in the grocery stores here!

3. These people need Jesus - We have 10% more atheists and agnostics than the national average. We have every kind of vice you can think of on easy access here. We have tons of young people moving here every month for the high paying jobs just to find out that money doesn't solve their problems. We have major problems in this city and Jesus is the only one who can fix them. So to anyone who thinks this place is beyond saving or has made some comment about how the judgement of God is going to fall on this city without taking the time to pray for it, I would refer you to Luke 19:10 or possibly Jonah 4:11.

4. Weddings - We do over 100,000 weddings a year in Vegas. In the almost four years I've been back I've done about 300 myself. These have allowed me to plant The Venue without needing to take a salary until the church is more financially stable. I know some of you might have a problem about marring an unbelieving couple and I can respect that, but think about this, it's the first time an unbeliever asks the church for anything. I can't see how telling them no and sending them to a justice of the peace or some guy who got his minister's license off the Internet is what Jesus would want. I can't tell you how many times I've had brides and grooms meet with me before their weddings and ask me questions about God just because it was their first time ever talking to a minister.

5. I like my weather hot like my women - I hate cold, 30 degrees is about as cold as it gets here and that's still too cold. Snow is nice to visit but I don't need it laying about waiting to be shoveled. Humidity of any sort is awful. I once lived in Northern Missouri, I still have nightmares. I'll take the 120 degree summers thank you very much.

That's enough for now, maybe I'll do reasons six through ten later.

A Good Day Off

It's been a good day off after all the stuff that went on yesterday for our first service. I went to breakfast with some other pastors that I do weddings with, updated the website, and mainly lounged around doing nothing. Right now I think I'm going to go to worship practice and watch everyone else work for a little while before I have to get ready for next week.

Our First Service

We survived our first preview service and it was great! We wanted to have these preview services to give us a chance to get used to the flow of service and to give a few people from our mother church a chance to check out what we are going to be doing. We had 31 people show up and most weren't even from our mother church. This amazed me because I was only expecting about 15 since it was a word of mouth type thing but it was really cool to have people you've never seen before show up.

I've been thinking about everything that happened last night and here are a few reflections going through my head:

The worship team is great - Everyone I talked to kept going on about how good the band sounded and how everyone looked like they loved what they were doing.

Set up hurts - I spent all day at the church and foolishly thought I'd have an hour or two of down time before service to go back over my message and touch it up, but needless to say that didn't happen. We need to start having as much done before Sunday as possible because I have a feeling it's not going to get easier.

Tyson can do a hundred things at once - We all were doing a lot of things at once yesterday, but between running sound, lights, Power Point, overseeing ushers, counting offering and still taking time to stop and talk with everybody who walked in I was starting to think he had cloned himself. We need to get him an assistant.

We are going to be fine - God has been there for us in everything and I believe He will continue to be. We have a great team that loves what they do, the money that we need has showed up so far, we have people that are excited about what we are doing, and we get to learn as we go and get better every week.

Final Countdown

In just a few hours we will be having our last core team meeting before The Venue starts. We're going to talk about what we're doing for Super Bowl Sunday, go over some last minute details, double check to make sure we have everything for tomorrow, and pray that God blesses The Venue despite ourselves.

Tomorrow, I have to be at our mother church right as service ends to make sure they leave everything that we are borrowing so I'm not running all over Vegas looking for various equipment before service. Then, Jason is going to take the band through the worship set one last time while we get our slides lined up.

Also, sometime between now and then I need to pick up a tote, a tablecloth, two serving trays, a deadbolt, sixty feet of rope, and some beef jerky if it's on sale.

If all goes well we should be ready for tomorrow night with an hour to spare. Needless to say pray for us.

It's Official

I just got our approval letter today, The Venue is now a registered church and we should be receiving our EIN number from the IRS very soon. Then comes the fun of turning on the phone and getting a mailing address.

Four Days Left

Our first service is only four days a way and I think we are just about ready. The band is set, my message is done (sorta) and the technical stuff is sorted out as much as technical stuff ever is. We are only offering childcare from six months to five years right now but that's fully taken care of.

The question everyone has been asking me lately is if I'm ready. I can now honestly answer that with a big "yes." I know there are probably a lot of church planters more experienced than me who would tell me that you're never ready, but it's time to do this now. The things I used to worry about no longer bother me, God has met so many of our needs as a church so far that I'm convinced He will continue to do so. I don't know what the next few months have in store for us but I know I'm doing what I'm suppose to be doing and that is a great feeling.

24 is Almost Here

I just finished season four of 24 and I'm on the fourth episode of season five but I don't think I'm going to make it all the way through before season six starts this Sunday. I could probably belt it out in a few days if it wasn't for me being so busy right now with all the work for church, but there is no way with the way things stand right now. I'm thinking I might just start season six when it begins no matter if I'm finished or not but we'll see. Ah, my life is so rough.

Back From Utah!

I just got back from Cedar City and it feels great to be home. Our team went to pick up a cargo trailer that was donated to us by True Life Center (TLC) Church and decided to make it into a weekend staff retreat type thing. With the exception of the whole getting the trailer back to Vegas it was a really good weekend.

At every church I've been to retreats were suppose to be about learning and reflection first and then if you had time you might be able to fit some time for fun in between a couple of the sessions. But I just realized that we spent the whole retreat having fun and didn't do any learning/reflection sessions, so I thought I'd spend sometime thinking about somethings I've learned this weekend and reflect on them here so that The Venue's first staff retreat will not have been a total failure. Here are the pearls of wisdom from The Venue's first staff retreat:

1. Trash can lids make pretty good sleds if you can get enough momentum.
2. The Chiefs would rather watch the Superbowl than be in one.
3. Some very interesting people ride the bus in North Las Vegas.
4. Never hit Maylene's chair with a tambourine.
5. Snow is pretty but I'm glad I live in a desert.
6. Tyson can run up a snowy hill faster than I can fall down it.
7. Utah has birds that are bigger than I am.
8. Even though TLC's services last two and a half hours they are still okay in my book because they have some very cool people who love Jesus .
9. You shouldn't have to leave the city you're in to get to Starbucks.
10. Staff retreats are a lot better when you're best friends with your staff.
    

Tonight's Practice

I went to listen to our band practice tonight. They went through the set list that they'll be playing for our first preview service and it sounded great. There's something in their style that reminds me of when I first became a Christian, although I can't place exactly how. Maybe it has something to do with just sitting in an empty and dimly lit church and listening to songs about the God that has brought you so far. It's times like those that I find myself letting go of thoughts about the future and the past and just taking comfort in the fact that in this moment I'm right where I need to be.