Just got back this afternoon from the first annual, (maybe bi-annual) deep sea fishing trip with the guys yesterday.  We drove down Wednesday evening and went out at 7am Thursday for what was supposed to be a 8 hour trip.  We cruised out into the deeper water and caught barracuda and king mackerel for most of the morning and afternoon. 

About the time our 8 hours was up the boat captain asked if we wanted to go catch some sharks.  Of course we did, so we headed back in (we were about 30 miles out), to find a shrimp boat.  Apparently sharks like shrimp boats because we were catching sharks about as fast as we could bait hooks and drag them in.  Those suckers put up a good fight too!  We hooked 5 or 6 sharks, we had 2 hooked at the same time at one point, and by them we were all dead tired anyway so we headed back to the dock.  While we were reeling in sharks, the boat captain cut all the fish into filets.  We didn't get back to the dock until after 5pm, 10 hours of fishing and being on the water, it was an awesome day. 

When we got back to the house we cooked up about 8 pounds of fish on the grill, it was amazing, we devoured every bit of it.  Check out all the pictures from the trip here.

We are in the middle of our Beyond the Game series in which we are talking about what our mission is and what the vision for our church is. This post from Elevation's Pastor Furtick is a great example of how we should view each and every Sunday. While it is mainly targeted at lead pastors, it is a must read if you are involved in any church, whether you are serving or not. This is why we do what we do.

So I broke out all my old game consoles a couple of weeks ago (see here) and started playing some of the old stuff. I decided to let Ethan play super mario on NES to see if he liked it. Well he loved it but it took him a bit to figure out what the buttons did. Within a few days he made it all the way through the first level by himself, I was impressed! So we tried Grand Tourismo and while he liked it, he struggled with the car control. He really enjoyed the racing based games so I dug around to see what else I had we could race. I found Twisted Metal Black and popped that in and within minutes he had figured out how to drive all over. After a night or two of driving around and chasing each other I showed how to shoot the gun, now it's his favorite game and he has taken me out a number of times. It's cool to see him playing and being entertained by the games. I grew up playing games and can remember being 6 or 7 playing atari 2600 and I vividly remember getting my NES for my 13th birthday. It's crazy to think that Ethan is playing the same games on NES I played 20 years ago and enjoying them just as much and he is 3!. I think it's time for a wii.

As soon as I can get my hands on one of these.

Sunday rocked at Fusion, Tony was on fire and we got to debut his new rap video.  I cannot tell you how funny it was at the office last week while we made this thing, it was hard to work.  The podcast from the service is up here so go get it now!  I cannot wait for this weekend, we will be starting a new series called Beyond the Game, I am having a blast getting ready for this series and wearing the large format plotter at the office out.  We have a lot of cool stuff planned for Sunday, come early and play Guitar Hero on one of the largest HD screens in Suwanee!  Want a teaser? Check out the graphics for the series on the website.

- Sent from my Blackberry Wireless Device

We wrapped up our one prayer series last week and it was interesting to see how people reacted on a number of levels. There was the aspect of the teaching being video based vs. live, most people didn’t have an issue with this but it was cool to see people getting into the message and forgetting they were watching a video. Then there was the aspect of having a different person doing the teaching each week, definitely some differences in teaching styles. The last aspect was the content of the message itself. While we had different teachers with different styles teaching different messages, the underlying theme was the same. It was about unifying Churches across the globe with one vision to reach those far from Christ.

I’m a huge NASCAR fan and a Tony Stewart freak (start the hate mail now) and this really struck home with me this weekend while I was watching the race Saturday night. Almost midway through the race Stewart had to get out of the car due to severe dehydration from battling with flu like symptoms prior to the race. He had been doing a great job, all things considered, and was running in the top ten when he came out and J. J. Yeley climbed in to finish the race. I was thinking to myself, do I still root for the 20? Am I a Stewart fan or a JGR fan? The thing that spoke to me was thinking about this from the pit crews’ perspective. I didn’t see the pit crew leaving because the driver was gone; they are committed to the vision of the race team which is, to win races. They were not concerned with who was driving, who was on top of the pit box as crew chief or even who the sponsor was. There goal is to do whatever it takes to get their teams car to the front of the pack and across the finish line first.

We have to make sure we are committed to the vision. Not the location, the music, the children’s programs, a team or even the pastor. Over time these things will change to help fulfill the vision but the vision itself never changes.

I'm introducing Ethan to video games and thought I'd start him the same way I did.  After digging through my storage stuff I unearthed my old consoles.  A PS2 is the newest thing I currently have (anybody know where I can find a wii?).  It's been fun to play super mario with Ethan and and we have been playing some other cool stuff on some older consoles.  He is getting a feel for using the controller, I figure I have about a year before he starts kicking my butt at everything so I better enjoy it now.

Bonus points - Are you a gamer?  Name all 5 consoles in the picture and win a cookie.

We are starting a new series at Fusion this weekend called Under Construction. I can't wait, Pastor Tony is back and raring to go so this should be a great series. I had forgotten how busy it was around the office the week before a series. The set design and theming for this series is going to be very cool, don't miss it! We are also having our 1st ever Fusion cook in immediately following the service in the school cafeteria. I'm towing in the big grill and we have some cool stuff to keep the kids entertained, all in the comfort of AC. It's going to be a blast.

I'm still new at the Facebook and Twitter thing but I've been playing around with Flock for the last few weeks.  It's a web browser built on the Firefox engine but has integrated social networking features directly in it.  You can view your facebook friend feeds directly in a side bar, tweet on twitter directly from the browser and it even has a blog publishing engine in it (I'm using it now).  If you are a heavy social network user I highly suggest it.  The only thing keeping me from going fully over to Flock is the number of add-ins I have in Firefox and Firefox 3 rocks.  There is a beta of Flock built on Firefox 3 instead of 2 but it is a little buggy.