We finished up our 3 week women's series, Beautiful yesterday and I believe it was a huge success.  We had record numbers all 3 weeks and I think the women were really blessed by the message.  If you missed any of the messages from Pastor Tony or just want to hear them all, click here to visit our site to download them as a podcast.  Here is a quick re-cap of the things we did specifically to make this a memorable series for the ladies.

Week 1 - Message Title "From the Inside Out"

Pre-Service - Cappuccino and Custom Coffee Bar, this was staffed by the company and they served a ton of awesome looking and tasting drinks to the ladies before the service.  Pastries, we had gourmet style pastries and breakfast items to compliment the cappuccino in addition to the regular donuts and coffee.  We had live piano being played by Jaxon in the lobby as well to add a classy feel.

During Service - Piano, we remodeled an old piano to be transportable week to week to create a more cozy, keyed down worship experience, coldplay style.  Seth rocked it and we had an amazing guest female vocalist in house. 

After Service - T-shirts, we gave out custom Beautiful t-shirts to all the ladies on the way out of the service.

Week 2 - Message Title "Views of True Beauty"

Pre-Service - Crepe bar, we had a service that caters crepes come in and cook to order breakfast or desert style crepes in the lobby, is was fantastic!  They wore big poofy chef hats and everything.  Carved Fruit display, we had a huge table of custom carved fruit in the center of the lobby as well, it looked like it belonged on a cruise ship.  We even had the Beautiful logo and fusion logo carved into a couple of the watermelons.  Jason, Shannon and Sheryl did an amazing job on this.  Jaxon played in the lobby again as well.

During Service - Piano, Seth rocked the piano again and we had another guest female vocalist. 

After Service - Bracelets, we made silicone Beautiful embossed bracelets in pink to give to all of the ladies and made smaller sized ones to give to all of the little girls in the children's area.

Week 3 - Message Title "Restoring Broken Beauty"

Pre-Service - Edible arrangements, we brought in a number of edible arrangements as the centerpiece of the lobby, chocolate dipped fruit on a stick, beautifully arranged is always a hit.  We also had large Hershey bars with custom Beautiful wrappers handed out at the door on the way in.

During Service - Piano rocking and guest female singer.  We purchased 2 Coach purses for Tony to use as an illustration.  To the shock and horror of all the ladies in the crowd, he destroyed one of them onstage with scissors and a permanent marker and then produced the other one unscathed to finish the point.  I don't think the ladies will soon forget that.  Mirrors, we had custom engraved compacts to hand out to all the ladies.  They had the word Beautiful engraved in the metal on the back and the tops were pink and chrome and the design actually matched the series graphics.  These were a huge hit and really upped the wow factor.

We had a great time planning all the stuff and definitely had some interesting challenges to overcome to pull it all off.  The staging and set design looked amazing and was very elegant.  Everything fit together nicely and the theme seemed to flow smoothly through all parts of the series from the time you entered the lobby until you left.  This was probably our best execution of a theme, ever.

I came across a story today that made me laugh hysterically.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14859827/

Apparently, this guy was in the wrong line of work.  Every time I've interviewed hitmen, I make sure they have the right tools for the job.  Seriously, what were these guys smoking?  Just thinking about the thought process leading up to the decision to hire a hitman, and then settling on the guy who uses a hammer, not the brightest decision making process over all.  This entire story is riddled with tragedy and so much keystone cop type humor it's almost unbelievable, almost.

Got this from DeWeb. Very cool, enjoy.



UPDATE: Original vid went dead, I found it on YouTube, enjoy!

Fusion Net is bouncing. What is Fusion Net? It's the Fusion Social network for our volunteers. There is all kinds of cool discussion going on as well as never before seen videos and pictures, including behind the scenes footage. If you are a volunteer at Fusion make sure in there!

Also, check out our public videos at vimeo here. We've been uploading a lot of the old stuff we've come across. I'd forgotten how funny these are.

We have been planning the Beautiful series for a while and we kept talking about having a piano on stage for worship during the series. The more we looked into it, the more problematic and expensive it seemed. In a portable setting, how do you get a full sized piano in and out every week. First, pianos are heavy, really heavy. Second, after pianos are moved, they have to be tuned. Third, pianos, whether rented or bought are expensive. So we decided to look at digital pianos, they arent as heavy and don't require tuning when moved but they are still expensive. We came across a company that was converting old pianos to digital and selling them and thought, we could do that on the cheap and it might look good too. We found an old piano that needed restoration on craigslist, called around and found a good price on a good sounding keyboard, add some sweat and somebody who knows how to paint and bingo bango, we have a sweet looking baby grand piano that is easily transportable. Check out the picture timeline of the transformation. I'm sure this Baby will be popping up from time to time in future worship sets, Seth rocked it today and it was definitely a different vibe, very cool.



Thanks to Chad and Seth for the sweet find, transport and guidance, J. Lowe for shooting the paint, and especially Jason, he just rules. All of these guys worked really hard to make this happen this week on top of all of the other stuff going on getting ready for the Beautiful series.

I got some great pictures while Tony was making the video for "Stronger".  Chad worked the lyrics and audio and Seth did a great job with the video editing.  We came up with the idea, wrote the lyrics, and recorded the audio on a Tuesday.  Shot the video on Wednesday and had a finished video on Thursday.  It was all I could do to get any work done during the audio and video recording, I was laughing hysterically the whole time. 

Enjoy.

"Sure, I can learn to rap in one day"

A greenscreen, extra large lyrics and a pair of shutter shades.  Instant comedy.

Word.

Don't miss the end, it's the best part.