Sermon Prep

I'm supposed to be writing next Sunday's message right now, but here I am in front of my computer doing everything but. It seems like for every six hours I spend writing my messages I manage to produce one hour of work. The other five are usually spent browsing the Internet, listening to music, day dreaming, and playing dumb computer games I find on Yahoo or Vnes.

My wife can't handle the way I write sermons, I think it stresses her out, but every Sunday I have something to bring to the table (so far). I think this is just the way my mind works, in order to create anything I need to have time to process my thoughts while at the same time I need to allow my mind to run through everything it needs to so I can focus on the message completely when it's time.

It would be nice to get things done in one-sixth the time, but you gotta do what works. Anyway back to day dreaming...

I'm So Hot

Church went pretty well today. The only thing I think that needs fixing right now is how hot it is. No, I'm not talking about how sexy I am, we all know about that. I'm talking about how it was 97 degrees in Vegas today and how we were beginning to feel it near the end of service.

We pay for AC in the school but it doesn't come on until 8AM and two hours isn't enough time to cool down that large of a room. I think we are going to have to bite the bullet and pay for the AC to come on a few hours before we get there for set-up so that the place will be comfortable by time service starts at 10AM. It's not that bad right now, but come late July when we start hitting 115+ degrees we'll be in sad shape if we don't do something.

What made today really nice is after church I got to do my favorite thing on a hot day, lay around with a friend in a quiet and climate controlled living room doing absolutely nothing. Man, I love being done working by 2PM.

A Story In The Darkness

I was thinking about the great stories today. You know, the kind you loved as a kid. The ones that now as adults still make us feel something inside that we can't place our fingers on. The stories in which the most unlikely of heroes find themselves facing impossible odds and willingly go into the most dangerous of places, not because they were unafraid of losing their lives, but rather because they were terrified of losing something that made life have value. Sometimes it was the love of a woman, other times it was the protection of their home or loyalty to their friends, but whatever the valuable thing was the idea of losing it was enough to make them face their worse fears head on.

When I first began the process of planting The Venue the people above me asked that I write down the things I valued the most. Looking back, I think it was a silly assignment, not because it isn't important to know your values, but rather because how can you know what you value until those things have been tested?

Since planting this church just a few short months ago I have questioned many things about my world view and what I find to be of importance. At the same time I have found myself faced with fears and challenges that I have never known before. I have come to the conclusion that a lot of things I used to think were important are not and many of the things I never paid attention to before mean a lot to God. It has been an unsettling process and I'm sure that it has only just begun, but I'm already starting to discover the things and people for which I'm willing to face and fight the darkness for.

Life isn't the same as a fairy tale (at least not like the ones we know) and failure is a real possibility. In fact I will probably fail many times before my part in the story is done and for the first time in my life I can handle that, as long as I fail while attempting to protect the things that truly have value and not the things that matter nothing to God.

One Less Responsibility

This is Wednesday which means that usually I be getting ready to drive over to our mother church to facilitate a bible college class for a group of people. I found out last week that they no longer need me to do this. Although I liked the people I taught and I enjoyed doing it I couldn't be happier about being let off the hook.

I have so much stuff going on right now that one less thing to do makes a real difference. I'm starting to see that the things I commit to need to few and in direct relation to the mission I've been given right now. I don't have the time or energy to focus on too many little things even if they are good little things.

So instead of going to lead a class tonight, I'm going to go listen to our worship team practice. It is still something to do, but it doesn't require any work on my part and it helps me focus on the task at hand. With any luck maybe I'll get to drop a couple more responsibilities before the year is over.

Mailer Revisted

We've decided to get another mailer put together to go out in June. We want to continue to get our name out in the community and in my mind advertisement is money well spent.

Sometime this week we'll sit down and start playing with designs. This is always the scary part for me, I want us to stand out without being cheesy. I especially don't want to look like every other church out there, our mantra has always been, "be yourselves." The question is what does being ourselves look like when you put it on a postcard and send it through the mail to everyone in your neighborhood?

Either way it'll be fun to play around with the thing and see what we come up with. Hopefully whatever we come up with will be inviting to the people who need us and a warning to those who don't.

Moving

I helped Tyson and Bekah move into their new house yesterday. I thought it was going to be really tough since we were doing it after we did set-up, tear-down, and then unload the truck, but it wasn't that bad. When me and Autumn move in August it's going to be a slightly different story.

There is something that feels good about a move. Maybe it's the idea of change or the completion of something expected. Either way it makes things feel new (maybe that's why I seem to do it every two years on average).

The future is more of a mystery to me now than it's every been and I have more on my plate now than ever before, but life looks good. I'm happier than I've ever been and I'll take the challenges as they come. They never told me that the uncertainty of what's to come mixed with the possibility of failure can actually be an exciting thing. Maybe that sounds as crazy to you as it does to me, but being a little crazy never hurts when you are planting churches.

Dr. No!

Being with Autumn in the hospital when she was having Ethan made me think about how long it's been since I've been to the doctor for anything. My last check-up was ten years ago, I was forced to get one for a job I was applying for or else I wouldn't have even done that one. I have nothing against doctors, it's just I don't get sick very often and the idea of regular check ups kinda freaks me out. I'll probably go some day soon, but I was thinking about worse case scenarios and this is what I came up with:

Here are the ten things I never want to hear the doctor say to me while I'm being examined:

1. "You look like someone I knew in community college."
2. "That's not suppose to look like that."
3. "Hmmm..."
4. "I'll be back, I need to get the lubrication."
5. "Could you look at this for me and tell me if you think it looks normal?"
6. "Here's a number to a nice funeral home."
7. "After you fill up that one could you fill this one for me? I have a court ordered drug test in an hour."
8. "That's not suppose to be that color."
9. "I'm not going to lie to you, things are going to get a little weird for a few minutes."
10. "Bad news, we're out of lubrication."

A Question

I'm working on a message about temptation and I came across a question that I've been trying to answer. Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus was tempted in every way just as we are but remained with out sin. So this means temptation itself isn't sin. The problem is that coveting is a sin. Temptation is a desire and coveting is to desire yet one is sin and the other is not.

I know there are some clear cut areas where something is coveting and others where there may be temptation but no coveting, but where is the line drawn?

It's funny how when you are in a position to teach people something you find out everything that you are yet to learn.

Oh The Things You'll Do

I've read a lot of blogs from church planters who are still in the pre-launch phase and it seems what most of them talk about most is raising money. I can understand this as money was a big worry for me when we first began, but if planting a church has taught me anything this far, it has taught me that it is possible to make it on very little start-up cash as long as you can manage three things:

1. Having a volunteer church staff in the beginning. This includes the lead pastor!
2. Having a small core group committed to tithing faithfully to the plant.
3. Having the above mentioned people be naturally resourceful and flexible.

In regards to being flexible, as far as my own life goes I've found myself doing a lot of things in the planting of this church that no one ever told me I'd be doing when I was in Bible College. I knew a lot of different jobs go into the title of Pastor, but these are somethings that I've had to do that isn't found in many church planting manuals:

Truck Driver - Somehow I've found myself driving a 14 foot truck loaded with sound gear once a week. This is especially disturbing when you think about all the things I've destroyed through the years with just a compact car. Thank God for good insurance.

Website Designer - We could either afford to to do advertising or to have a website built. Since website isn't much good unless people know about it. So, we paid for advertising and I taught myself HTML. Our site may not be the greatest out there and I'm sure there are mistakes in the coding in places, but it's doing it's job right now and it'll work until we get some more cash flow coming in.

Chair Tester - We wanted to test our church chairs to see how much weight they could handle the other night, so some how I found myself sitting in a chair with two men on my lap. It wasn't a pretty picture and unfortunately it is now a picture (I won't be posting it here though, so don't ask). It wasn't my proudest moment, but we proved that the chairs could take a lot of weight and it made Bekah happier than I've seen her in quite awhile so I guess it was worth it.

Set Designer - This is actually more Jason than me, but I've found myself helping him (and by helping I mean holding his tools) build things that I don't think most pastors have had to make. Partitions are a must have for a portable church when you find yourself in a bigger space than what you need, but they are incredibly expensive. We were donated partitions early on, but before we could pick them up the deal fell through. Jason decided to make his own and I personally like them better than the professional ones. Sometime in the near future I'll post pictures and talk about these a little more, but for the purpose of this posting let's just say that you can think your way out of a lot of problems if you have some time and a guy who is handy with a chop saw.

My Heart's Desire

I really want to slack off. I know, isn't that what I always do? But seriously, with the weddings every single weekend and church on Sunday on top of the whole Monday through Friday thing, it would be nice to have a few days with nothing to do, but hang out and not have to think about tomorrow. If all goes to plan I'll be taking a vacation in about two months. I'm looking forward to it!

Where the Heart Is

I forgot to mention that my house is being framed right now.

Tyson and Bekah will be moving in right around the corner in about a week and Jason and Maylene's house will be on the other end of our street.

Remember when you were a kid and you used to talk about how one day when you grew up you and your friends would all live next to each other? We were serious.

Emotional Logic

I talked this Sunday about how our brains are there to keep our emotions in check and keep us from doing stupid things. I talked about of emotions are good things, but when left unchecked by logic, they can get us into trouble. I know this to be true in most cases , but today I've been thinking about how there are exceptions to this rule.

When I decided to plant a church, it was logic that was screaming at me to do anything else. When I went to college my logic told me it was impossible financially, but in my heart I knew it was where I was supposed to be. Marrying my wife, excepting Jesus, having children, none of these where logical decisions when I first made them even if they did turn out to be smart moves after all.

I think there is a definite balance, but it seems like God uses our emotions just as much as our minds to reach us at times. Maybe this is what happens when we read something or hear something that moves us but we don't know why. At times I think God uses our hearts to communicate with us when our heads won't listen.

We need both I think. Our emotions to teach us what our heads can never understand, and our logic to keep our emotions from running to far with the things that take wisdom.

I Knew a Guy Like This Once

The Future

Last week was a week I'd been waiting for for a long time. Our first Easter as a church and the birth of my son was two things that I've been looking forward to, the latter for nine months the former for four years. I always saw the week of Easter 2007 as a speed bump in my future. I knew that it was coming and although I didn't know what was going to happen, I knew it would change everything. I had trouble imaging anything past this date because the way everything else in life was going to look depended on where I was on that fateful date.

I never had any idea what this highly anticipated week was going to look like, but I always knew it was going to signal the start of new things and now that I'm standing on the other side of it, I can see I was right. This was our first week after Easter, a week I could never imagine before, and I feel fine. A lot of big things happened these last few weeks that are going to shape the days ahead and although I still have no idea what the future is going to look like for our church, I have hope and a renewed sense of anticipation for the things to come in the weeks and months ahead.

I have a sense of purpose, great friends and a little bit of hope. It isn't much but it's enough to keep me happy through any chaos life has to offer. Here's to next Easter.

The Things That Concern Us

In getting my message ready for tomorrow I've been thinking about the Pharisees. On paper they believed most of the same things that Jesus taught, yet they clashed with Jesus time after time. It was as if there was a large gap between what they claimed to believe and how they lived it out. Or maybe, it was a problem of the order of their priorities. They seemed obsessed with their rules and themselves while Jesus was obsessed with the lost and God.

It makes me wonder sometimes if we don't get carried away with things that aren't as important as we think they are. I know that times and cultures have changed, but I see many churches focusing on things that I don't think Jesus and the early Church gave a whole lot of thought to. I'm not saying that these things aren't covered at all and God knows I might be missing something, but these are somethings I've picked up from my readings of the life of Jesus and the early Church:

They weren't overly concerned with leadership development - No twelve step principles, no annual leadership development retreats, not even quarterly leadership training classes. I'm not saying these things are bad, it's just that it seems that Jesus thought that the best way to train a leader was to put them in a situation bigger than themselves and give them opportunity to succeed or to fail.

I don't think they ever took spiritual gift assessment tests - These might not be that familiar to all of you, but if you ever spend any time in a charismatic church chances are you've seen classes offered on "discovering your gifts" or something similar. Paul tells the church to pray for the greater gifts, but other than that it doesn't seem to be something that he was worried about. People discovered their gifts by serving God in the way he called them. Just like Moses at the burning bush, if God calls you to speak He'll give you the gift of speaking. If He's called you teach you'll have the gift of teaching, etc. If we believe that "spiritual gifts" are tools to accomplish God's purposes then we should focus on the purpose and have faith that God will provide the tools needed to do the job.

They didn't care about buildings, stage design, or production - These are all nice things, but I think we give them to high of a priority in our minds. The early Church got things done outside, in public squares, and in borrowed houses and locations with nothing but themselves and the message. We can too.

They weren't afraid of sin - Jesus was a friend of sinners and tax collectors, He was accused of being a drunk and a glutton and guess what. He didn't care. You don't find the lost sheep inside the sheep pen and a shepherd that can't keep himself from being eaten by the wolves isn't much help to the sheep he's to protect.

No Man's Land

I went grocery shopping for Autumn this morning and I got to say I really don't like grocery stores. Maybe it's because my first job was in a grocery store and I still have flash backs, or maybe it's because shopping is one more thing that I'm not that good at. Either way, here are some of the things I don't like about the grocery store:

1. Selecting Produce/Meat - I go to buy a couple onions and the woman next to me is giving a tomato the 31 point Toyota Used Car Inspection. She's smelling it, squeezing it, rotating it, thumping it, etc. Why is produce the only thing that you can buy in a store that comes with the risk of getting a bad item? I've never had to squeeze a Twinkie to see if it was good, there are people that go through and get rid of the bad ones before I get there. As for good meat over bad meat, it's a dead animal. How good can it really look? In my book meat looks good if it looks dead and looks bad if it looks alive.

2. Club Cards - I hate these things. The grocery stores save millions of dollars in research and they pretend that you are befitting by saving big bucks by using these cards, but in reality you're just getting the sales prices that everyone got before the cards came along, just now you have to be signed up with the store to get them. I used to intentionally only shop at the store that didn't have rewards cards, but now everyone in Vegas uses them with the exception of Wal-Mart. Too bad shopping at that place feels like shopping at an outdoor swap meet.

3. The Time Spent - I know that there are a thousand rants about the layout of the stores, I used to hear them all the time when I worked there, but they're true. Why is the bread and the mustard on the same aisle but the peanut butter and jelly five aisles down? Why is chocolate syrup next to the cereal but marshmallows are next to the pancake mix? Asking somebody really isn't an option for me. I usually work around the store five times until I give up and go home, where I will try to convince my wife that the store was all out of soup.

4. It Hurts My Back - It's not the lugging the groceries, it's all the women that keep asking me if I'll bend down and get something off the bottom shelf for them. It seems like no matter how many times I bend over I always come up with the wrong item and they ask me to do it again. The funny thing is when I finally do get what they want they never seem that interested in the item, but they always seem to have a smile on their faces so I guess they appreciate the help. Funny how this never happens when Autumn is around.

Change

I went back to work today, but I'm going to take the next two days off to help with Ethan while Autumn recovers from the wonders of birth. I only have three more weeks left with the first graders and this is a wonderful thing. They aren't a bad class and I like the kids, I just feel bored with it now. I'm ready for something different even if it's not that great.

I've become one of those people that longs for Friday, when I can do the things I really want to do and be with the people I really want to be with. I want to get to the place where everyday is like that and maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but I don't think that day is so far off.

I know I should be content where I am at the moment and I am content in the sense that I'm right where I'm suppose to be, but there is another part of me that isn't content because I know more is coming and, for better or worse, I want it. I guess this is kind of a confusion I struggle with.

Sometimes I come off like I think I have everything figured out and the truth is I'm a long way off. There are a lot of things that have came into my life with this church plant that confuse me, but I'm thinking and talking through them and each day I feel like more things are becoming clearer. It really feels like God is reforming me in ways I'm not fully grasping yet. I'm not the person I was five years ago and I don't know what I'm going to look like five years from now (other than even more incredibly hot) but I think God is getting me ready for something big. This is scary to me, but here I am.

Baby Pictures

Here are a few of the pictures from the Hospital. If you want to see a lot more go to my Myspace page and look at the rest of the pictures there. The link is in my links list.

Babies and Catchy Songs

I took Autumn to the hospital at 4am this morning and at 1:45 Ethan was born weighing 7 pounds 4 ounces. He's healthy and Autumn is doing just fine. They are both going to stay the night at the hospital and Me and my little girl Hannah will go pick them up tomorrow. I should be posting pictures sometime tomorrow afternoon.

I don't think it's all quite sunken in yet, I'm still kinda in a daze, but once we bring him home tomorrow the reality of it all should hit me.

In other news, I've got this song stuck in my head that I heard on the way to the hospital this morning. It's "Hey Delilah" by The Plain White Tees. The problem with a song getting stuck in my head is three fold:

1) I want to sing it all day.

2) I can't sing at all, not even a little bit. It's really kinda sad.

3) I never know the right lyrics, so I make them up as I go.

Add this all together and you get me singing something totally wrong, both musically and lyrically all day. This wouldn't be so bad if people didn't catch me doing this every once and awhile.

Oh well, maybe Ethan will like my songs.

Easter Lessons

We had our first Easter service today and it went great! I'm amazed by how many people get blown away by what we are doing here. We didn't blow up big like some churches but every Sunday the people who check us out tell me how impressed they are with us. People that I would've never guessed would want to be a part of this church keep coming back every week. At the rate we've been retaining, we are well on our way to making an impact in our area.

We had a couple bumps this morning, nothing major that we couldn't handle, but it's made for a few good Easter lessons.

Lesson #1 - When moving equipment in a truck tie down everything - Jason usually oversees the loading of the truck, but he was with his in-laws last night, so Mike, Tyson, (not Mike Tyson) and myself were on our own. When we got to the school this morning we discovered that one of our five foot tall powered speakers had fell over on top one of the candelabras. Our concern was for the speaker and not the candelabra, drop them too much and the amps inside powered speakers will disconnect causing you to have to send it back to the manufacturer for repair. You have to pay for the shipping by the pound and those things weigh more than a compact car. Thankfully the speaker was fine, I can't say the same for the candelabra though.

Lesson #2 - Don't settle for cheap chairs - We bought cheap folding chairs because we were just about out of money and needed something other than the benches the school provides for seating. This morning during the last song before we dismissed one of our chairs collapsed out from under someone. The dude wasn't even that big of a guy, I just think the chair wasn't meant for the stress of a mobile church. Anyway It happen to a guy that is really cool, it wasn't a large problem, but there are and will be people at our church that need a sturdier chair if you know what I mean. We will be ordering stackable chairs sometime this week.

Lesson #3 - People want something real - This wasn't inspired by a problem we had this morning, but its something that God reinforced in us today. The number of people that told one of us that we are not what they expected from a church is amazing. They told us when we started that we were going to be a nice church for young people, but what we are seeing is that we are attracting all ages and backgrounds. It turns out we're a nice church for anyone that needs something different in their lives.

So that was Easter. It will be incredible to see what the next one looks like. Now I'm going to get some rest I'm tired and my wife is being induced at 4am tomorrow, looks like next week there will be at least one more new face at The Venue.

The Joy of Nothing

I feel awake again, I basically was a zombie yesterday but its amazing what 7 hours of sleep can do. We didn't do much yesterday but we did go catch a movie.

I have to tell you I'm really getting tired of paying a lot of money to sit through two hours of something that is just okay. To be honest I'm getting tired of spending two hours of my time on mediocre movies even when they are free to watch. There are a few exceptions, but honestly the majority of what I watch isn't worthy of the time it takes to see it.

More and more I find myself just happier to sit around and talk with my friends rather than to sit quietly and watch the same rehashed plot acted out by the overpaid and under talented. Just talking might seem terribly boring to most of you, but I guess it depends on your friends. We end up talking about the same things over and over again and most of what we talk about could be called nothing, but every once and awhile something profound comes out and surprises us. Through the talking about nothing and the willingness to be real and honest my core team of friends has became closer and continues to draw closer than any I have ever seen in ministry before.

I think that one of the problems that the church has in connecting with people is that they don't know how to talk about nothing. Everything has to serve a purpose and everything we do, with the exception of a short break here and there, must somehow meet that purpose. This is how businesses are run, but the church is to be a family and families do everything and nothing with each other and talk about everything and nothing with each other because this is how you learn to love one another.

If you are willing to give opportunities for the people in your church to just be together without an agenda or an expectation of it being a bible study or prayer meeting, but just let it be people together, bonds will form and people will start to find a sense of family. Do this and people will be more willing to study the bible and pray because the people they care about do these things and can testify to their benefit not because the business man in the pulpit told them they should.

The Venue starts its connection groups next week. Here goes nothing.

Brand New

I went to the Brand New concert last night at The House of Blues. They were a lot better than I thought they were going to be, I need to check out more of their stuff. They came off with so much energy and so much passion for what they do that it really challenged me to have the same for what I'm called to do. I don't mean a fake passion like a bad televangelist, but something real that comes from the heart of who I am.

The problem is I'm a pretty reserved person. I've never made it a habit to let what I'm thinking or feeling to show on the outside. Even last night when I was having a great time I don't think it showed outwardly at all.

The funny thing is that among our small group at The Venue people seem to be getting excited about what we are doing. The fire is catching despite me. Now all we have to do is keep it going so that it can spread to others and we can start getting the work done.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've only had 3 hours of sleep and I need to finish my Easter message.

Easter Productions

This Sunday is Easter and I have to say that I've always had one problem with the church at Easter and that's the productions. Now you may be saying, "Shaun I love the Easter productions at our church, they are such a great way to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord." I understand that and I'm not saying that I hate all Easter productions or that they are what's wrong with the church today. I'm just saying we need to think about what we are doing.

The problem I have with them is that many of the Easter productions I have seen do not represent the church they are held at very well. Churches that don't have choirs bring one in, churches that never use elaborate stage decorations have stages that look like a Hollywood set, churches that never do drama have people dressed up like angels and Romans. The goal seems to be to make everything in the church look and sound as different from a regular Sunday as we can get it.

So what's so wrong with wanting to do something different to celebrate the Sunday that Jesus rose from the dead? Nothing except for this, Easter is one of the two Sundays of the year that people who would never think of going to church any other time will come to visit. Many of us will have a little over an hour this week to show these people Jesus and what His followers really look like. There are people who would really love our churches if they could see who we really are but take one look at our productions and decide this isn't the place for them. There are people who really love our productions but are disappointed when they come back next week and see a different church. The only people that we are safe to impress with our productions are our regular members because they just like the change every once and awhile. We put on a once a year production and then wonder why people only come once a year.

What if we were just ourselves when the visitors come? What if when we choose to do productions we chose things that represent our own style and talents instead of trying to stay on par with the mega church across town? What if this Sunday we show people who we are every other day of the week rough spots and all in hopes that maybe this is what people need?

This Sunday at The Venue won't be a whole lot different than most. We'll sing songs of praise to God, Bekah will announce the start of our connection groups, and I'll preach about when it feels like God doesn't care. Besides the new faces and the egg hunt after, I don't plan on it looking much different than any other service. Maybe this is a mistake and maybe there will be people who will leave disappointed because they were expecting something else and that's fine with me. I'd rather disappoint you by being who I am than empress you by being who I'm not.

Must Read Blog For Church Planters

My favorite blogger just moved her blog here to Blogger. Alright, I'm a little bias because she is one of my best friends and our Connection Pastor here at The Venue, but I think that anyone that wants more insight into church planting should check her page out.

Most of the church planting blogs out there are written by male lead pastors. When you do find a female church planter blog it is usually written by a pastor's wife. These are both good things and I enjoy reading them, but they only represent a very small portion of the church planting experience.

Bekah is a young woman, an associate pastor, and a church planter called to Las Vegas all rolled into one (Any one of these could be considered scandalous in some denominations). I enjoy reading her blogs because no matter if she's talking about church or just everyday life you get a different perspective from a genuine person who remains real although God has placed her in an unreal situation.

Go see what I'm talking about. Her link is in my links section or just click here.

Ode to Tyson

Today, two of the other pastors of The Venue (Jason and Tyson) and myself went out to have lunch and fix somethings on our account at the bank. On the way back Jason and I began making statements about how manly Tyson was. Those of you who are familiar with the facts about Chuck Norris will have probably recognise most of them, but they made us laugh so here is a sample:

1. Tyson doesn't sleep, he waits.
2. Tyson doesn't do push-ups, he pushes the Earth down.
3. Tyson once got into a knife fight and the knife lost.
4. Tyson's tears cure cancer, too bad he's never cried.
5. Tyson's calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd, nobody fools Tyson.
6. Tyson once did a wheelie on a unicycle.
7. Superman owns a pair of Tyson pajamas.
8. Tyson doesn't read books, he stares them down until he gets the info he wants from them.
9. Tyson can build a snowman out of rain.
10. Tyson once had a heart attack, the heart lost.
11. The quickest way to a man's heart is with Tyson's fist.
12. Tyson doesn't play hide-and-seek, he plays hide-and-pray-I-don't-find-you.
13. When the Bogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Tyson.
14. Tyson isn't afraid of the dark, the dark is afraid of Tyson.
15. Tyson can speak braille.
16. Lysol can kill 99.9% of germs, Tyson can kill 100% of whatever he wants.
17. Tyson has been to Mars , that's why there are no signs of life there.
18. Tyson ordered a Big Mac at Taco Bell and got one.
19. Tyson often donates blood to the Red Cross , but it's never his own.
20. There's no such thing as global warming, Tyson was cold and turned the sun up.

Today Was a Good Day

It's been a rough week, but today made up for it. We got set up in no time this morning, worship was great, our transitions were smooth, and I think my sermon went over pretty well. After church we unloaded the truck and went out to eat and we spent the rest of the day just hanging out with each other and doing nothing.

I love what I do and who I get to do it with. There isn't any other place on Earth I'd rather be right now and there isn't a minister alive that I would rather have than any member of our team. I can say that this is where God has placed me and these are the people He has put with me.

There was once a time when I swore that I would never return to Vegas. There were people here that i didn't want to deal with and too many memories of the naive person I was before I left. Now, however, I would be perfectly happy to die here doing what I've been called to do. This place is filled with false facades and shallow pleasures and it needs churches that are real and offer true purpose for life. I'm not anyone special and the task is so much bigger than us it's unreal, but God will be with us and that's enough for me.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. Nelson Mandela