I can't wait for tomorrow.  We will be wrapping up our One Prayer series with Steven Furtick from Elevation. Steven is a great speaker and the Elevation story is an amazing one.  Don't miss tomorrow and make sure to stay till the end of the last worship song or you might miss something, you won't be disappointed.

Some pictures from the lake.  It's been an awesome trip, enjoy.

I used to have a boat, it must have been long enough ago to forget everything I knew about them. After fighting to crank the jet skis here I called the owner to find out if there were any tricks I should know. After he suggested I turn the gas on, it cranked, imagine that. Then I'm sitting here a few minutes ago and notice one of the jet skis is low in the water, that's never a good sign. After investigation I found I forgot to put the drain plugs in. Glad I found it now instead of finding a missing (sunken) ski in the morning. I think I've got my act together now and look forward to a great week here.
- Sent from my Blackberry Wireless Device

I got the chance to sit down with Shea Ferguson from the reveal church this afternoon.  Shea is the Executive Pastor of the reveal and like me, looking to network with others in the area and learn from other accomplishments and mistakes.  The guys at the reveal are doing the hard work of planting a church and are on fire with the vision of reaching Flowery Branch and the surrounding area.  Shea has some really cool ideas on how to do marketing (I might have to borrow) so keep your eyes open in the FB area for them to start stirring things up.  They hope to launch in the fall and plan on being portable in a local area school.  I'll be praying for them to have easy access to facilities and raising support in the local community as they get closer to launch.

- Finally done with painting.  Brennan's room is done, check it out here if you missed it.  We finished re-painting Ethan's room yesterday and got his new bunkbed setup today.  Steph put up pics here.

- Service today rocked.  The worship was incredible, I had goosebumps on my arms through of the set, amazing!  Craig Groeschel was great today and really connected with the crowd.  It's cool seeing people get into to the video by laughing and talking back to the screen.

- Fusion appears to be a baby factory to visitors.  There are pregnant women and newborns all over the place.  I heard a visitor commenting about not drinking the water a couple weeks ago.

- I've been doing the closing comments after the video messages from the stage during One Prayer.  This week I had to do the closing prayer as well.  Definitely outside my comfort zone but I enjoy being stretched.  I've always said, I'll try anything once, if it doesn't kill me I'll do it again.

- I'm glad to be done traveling for a while.  I've been out of town at least one night a week for the past 6 weeks.  I got the new locations opened in Jacksonville and I don't have anything lined up in the near future.  I am going to spend most the week next week at the lake with my family, I can't wait for that.

- I saw some footage from the set of Transformers 2 online last week, I can't wait for that to come out.

- I joined Facebook last week, still trying to figure out what's going on there.  I'll give it a try for a while, Amy wrote welcome to time waster central on my wall.  Should I be concerned?

- We need to have a garage sale/dumpster party bad.  We've got so much accumulated junk and our storage in the house is full, it's crazy.

- I got Windows Home Server running on an old server here at the house, it's very cool.  I'll post more info on it in a separate post for the techies.

- Looking forward to the July 6th Cook-in at church.  I'm bringing the big grill to cook hamburgers and hot dogs.  We've got some cool things planned for that day.  I'm just excited we'll be chillin in the AC instead of having a sweatin in the sun event.

- Filled up my Yukon today, freakin $98.  So glad I got my mazda3 for a daily driver.

I drove up to Charlotte, NC last night and spent today hanging out with Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor of Elevation Church.  The guy is amazing and has a great handle on what is needed to keep the Church in tune with the Pastors vision and ahead of the curve.  Elevation has experienced phenomenal growth since they launched in 2006 and are currently running around 4000 people per week in their services.  I can't imagine trying to manage that much growth in that period of time but they are rocking along with big plans for continued growth.  I got so much information and learned so much it's going to take me a while to process it.  I also got to spend some time with Larry Brey who built their assimilation and guest services programs.  Man is that guy passionate about about what he does.  I got so many good ideas just talking to him for an hour or so I don't know where to start.  I had a great time and got some great information that can definitely help us as we move forward. 

Thanks to Chunks and the Elevation team for for being so gracious and giving of your time!

New Blackberry in my pocket. The Blackberry Curve came out a month or so ago on Sprint and I couldn't wait to get my hands on one. I waited long enough for the initial demand to die and the price to come down and pulled the trigger on a new in box phone on eBay on Monday. I came in the office today to find the shiny new box here and spent little time getting everything switched over. I love it, it is smaller than my 8830 and has more features, including a camera. I am so happy to have a camera back in my phone, that was the only thing keeping me from giving my 8830 a 10 of 10 when I got it. Yes, I have PHCD, anyone know of any support groups out there?

I've been using my Zune to listen to podcasts a lot lately.  I found this cool podcast of bible reading and am really enjoying it.  The guy reads a chapter a day from each book and it's a great way to "read" the bible while driving.  He has a great voice and does a great job conveying the feeling of the passages.  It's actually pretty cool because I use Jott to dictate notes from my cellphone as I hear passages that speak to me so I can follow up with deeper study later.  My spoken notes show up in my email box as text and I file them accordingly.  So far it's working pretty well and I'm able to get in some extra Bible study time without taking my eyes off the road.  I love technology!

Well we decided on a color and got it hammered out yesterday afternoon.  I never thought I say this but the pink looks good.  We ended up using the color someone found on a website and forwarded to Steph from a California design company.  She called them and they sent us a paint chip to have matched and it was perfect.  Ethan even got to help do some painting as we were finishing up.  He is just as excited as we are about Brennan's arrival.  Scope out the finished product below.

I am really digging the One Prayer series.  I don't think you can have too many spiritual leaders speaking into your life and this is a great opportunity to experience that.  Perry Noble was great and I can't wait for Ed Young's message this Sunday.  I've been listening to his podcasts for a while and he is a great communicator.  Don't miss it!

I've been doing a fair amount of highway driving over the past few weeks as I make my seemingly never ending weekly trek to Jacksonville.  I don't mind the drive, I actually enjoy it.  It's great quite time and I have been blowing through some great podcasts I wouldn't normally have time to listen to.  While I do have my share of driving infractions, it amazes me what I see other people doing, or not doing,  on the highway.  Here is a little quick guide of Do's and Don'ts for the highway.

Don't drive for 20 miles with your blinker on.  When I see people doing this I stay as far away as possible, it generally points to larger issues.  My train of thought is, if you don't notice the blinking light on the dash, there are probably a large number of other things around you going unnoticed as well.
Do accelerate to merge.  Here's a simple guide for accelerator pedal usage.  On ramp - On accelerator.  Off ramp - Off accelerator.  It's really hard to merge with 70 mph traffic with your foot on the brake pedal doing 40 mph.
Don't read while driving.  This one kills me.  I'm behind a guy in the left lane that is driving like he's had a few too many to drink.  When I finally pass him, he's got a freaking novel on the steering wheel.  Things happen fast when your traveling at 70-80 mph, you need all your attention on the road.  Besides, it's 2008, with books on CD, audible.com, and podcasting there is no excuse for this.
Do use the cruise control.  This always happens, I'm driving down the highway in light traffic with the cruise set at... cruising speed.  Guy behind me has been slowly creeping up my tail so when I have a chance I get over and let him by.  2 minutes later I'm crawling up his tail and have to go around him, I'm still set at cruising speed.  This will repeat many times over until I lose it and either hammer the gas to get away from the guy or slow way down to let him get away from me.  Almost every time I pass the guy when he's slowed down he's on the phone, I guess he feels the need to catch up after hanging up.  I think cruise control was invented in the 50's or something, it's not new fangled technology.  Not only does it keep your speed in check, it saves fuel, consider this my Green Initiative.
Don't go slow in the left lane.  Getting passed on the right is an indication you are in the wrong lane even though everyone going by is telling you you are number 1.
Do buckle up your kids.  I am astounded, baffled and pissed off every time I see this happening.
Don't text message or type emails on your phone while driving.  I have been guilty of this in the past, now I use Jott.  Problem solved, it's free.

You may see this post as a rant, I view it as a Public Service Announcement or highway etiquette training.  Spread the word, just think of the impact if everybody followed these simple rules.  Anybody else have some rules that should be added?

I spent part of the day hanging out with the Executive Pastor at Revolution Church, Tim May. I had a great time and enjoyed talking with him. One of the best ways I know to get better at your job is to hang around other guys that do the same thing as you as much as possible. It was interesting talking to him because his background is almost the complete opposite of mine but our job descriptions are almost identical. This is someone I will definitely be talking to going forward and I hope to connect with more of these guys from churches as well.

Sometimes we run into problems we can't solve not because there isn't a solution, but because we can only look at the issue from the perspective of our experience. Having another peer, with a different perspective to bounce problems off of when you are stuck is invaluable. You would think that this would be a "no duh" type of statement but it still amazes me how many times I see someone continually banging their head against the wall, trying to solve a problem because they are too prideful to ask for help.

So I've been hearing the buzz and seeing a lot of other people doing it and have finally signed up for twitter. I keep hearing how cool this application is but I mostly hear about people competing to see who has the most followers. I read this blog post tonight and thought this was the coolest use of twitter I'd seen yet. WE ARE NOT CONSIDERING DOING THIS, I just thought it was a cool use of the product and it drove me over the edge to complete the signup process. I do not like the "I just ate a potato chip" posting aspect of twitter, don't expect that kind of crap from me. I do like the aspect of linking groups of people together for information sharing and keeping communities in touch. I am still a doubter, prove me wrong. Any fellow twitterers out there? What's the slang for your twitter ID? handle, address, username, screen name, twitname? I'm a twitter n00b but you can find me @slowethinking on twitter.

I just posted last night asking for prayer as we head into June. This morning as I'm reading through my blog reader I came across a post from Perry Noble that goes over 5 key things you should be praying about for your Pastor. Please take a look at this and keep it in your thoughts as you pray.

Praying for your Pastor

This is the start of a pretty crazy month. Pastor Tony is out on his study break this month and I'm in charge of keeping everything running smoothly. This shouldn't come as a shock or unexpected request, it's my job, I signed up for it. It's just a bit intimidating to do it solo, a month and a half in. On top of that I've got some things going on at my other gig that have me traveling a bit during June. Thankfully our staff is awesome and probably feel like they are keeping me in line most of the time anyway. I know I'm up to the task but would appreciate your prayers for the church and myself. Please be praying as well for Pastor Tony as he takes this much needed break and spends time seeking God's vision in extended study and prayer.

No, I'm not talking about the show where guys race each other for the title on their cars. I'm talking about the number of different shades of pink available to paint a room with. We have 5 different shades on the wall right now and we are getting more samples in daily. Who knew that there are that many different kinds of pink and it would be this hard to pick the right one. Hopefully we can resolve this issue soon and move on to rearranging the house and getting the room setup.