Blog Vacation

Tomorrow afternoon my family and I leave on a much anticipated vacation. Although I will miss my blogging friends, I decided to “unplug” this week and take a vacation from blogging as well. Time to get lost in in a world of magic and make believe. You guessed it, a week at Disney. I can’t wait to enjoy this experience with the girls.

Also, If you’re a local reader, remember that “Celebration Sunday” is tomorrow. That’s when all three of our services meet at one time at Seabreeze High School. I’m telling you, don’t miss it! It starts at 10:00 but get there early to get a seat.

See you next week!!!!

 

Creative Chaos - pt 10

Last fall, we decided to rent out a facility where all three of our worship gatherings could come together at one time. It was so powerful, we decided to do this at least twice a year. We call it “Celebration Sunday” and it’s coming up this week. It definetely is one of the highlights of our year. The energy and excitement is amazing.

Robbie saw a great clip on Sportscenter that we’ll use in our programming this week. In addition, we filmed 30 second clip of different testimonies from the people of the church. Nothing tells of God’s faithfulness more than a personal story of His grace.

 

Leaders that influence

Here’s a short list of some leaders who currently have influence on me.

Robbie O’Brien - Lead Pastor of The Beachside Church. Robbie is an incredible visionary. God has used him over the past several years to help jump start an incredible movement in the Daytona Beach area. His vision for the future is massive and will have great impact.

Michael Neale - Worship Arts Pastor of The Peoples Church in Franklin, TN. Michael has been a friend, mentor, coach, etc for me for some time now. He’s one of the wisest guys I’ve ever met especially when it pertains to church life. I’m thankful for his willingness to take young guys under his wing and teach.

Gary Powell (my dad) - Pastor of Oasis Christ Fellowship in Ormond Beach. I’ve never known anyone with so much patience. He truly loves people and embodies the term “Pastor”. He’s devoted himself to pray and serve people. I aspire to have his kind of patience (something I have a deficiency of)

Carlos Whittaker - Programming director for Buckhead Church/ Blogger. I get a lot of creative ideas from Carlos. If there not from Carlos, they’re from a link or connection I’ve made through his blog. I appreciate his influence in the blog world.

They’re are many more like Craig Groeschel, Perry Noble, Tony Morgan, Rob Bell, etc. These are just a few….

 

The Blogfather

Brewster showed me mad love on his blog so let the lovefest begin.

Not too long ago I was completely ignorant to the world of blogging. I knew it was going on out there but I didn’t know the benefit or purpose of blogging. So I called up my buddy Brewster (he already had a slammin blog) to fill me in and get me started. He endured my stupid questions. He literally sat down with me and walked me through the ins and outs of wordpress, why to blog, why not to blog, and launched me into the blogosphere. Since then I’ve been introduced to a whole new world (like aladdin) of creativity, friendship, and influence through blogging.

Do yourself a favor and read his blog daily. Not only is he ahead of the curve of what’s coming up in the music world (too bad you missed it on that Leona Lewis chick, wonder what happened to her?) but he is also proactive in shaping our culture and how we present and represent our faith as Christ followers.

Click here to check it out! Thanks for your influence bro!!!

 

My look alike

It’s time to put this matter to rest once and for all. Everywhere I go I hear that I look like David Cook from American Idol. Like not just a little bit but all the time. I think my cousins daughter Sophia actually thinks I’m on the show. I’m not seeing it at all. So let’s settle this. What do you think? Here’s me, here’s David.

not even close. He could only dream of these rugged good looks…..

 

Creative Chaos - pt 9

This week to open worship we played this video by Brian Mclaren. I’ve posted it on here before but I think it’s a great reminder. We stripped everything down this week and did an acoustic set; simple, authentic. Our church loves to worship loud and I think it’s good from time to time to stretch them. Here’s the video:

 

Watch your back

enjoy.

 

Messy Carpet

Robbie said something in his message Sunday that got me thinking. He talked about how our carpets at Beachside are stained and messy and it will always be that way. It marks the difference between a club and a mission station. A club is well manicure and caters to the “members”. A mission station is not worried about how the facility looks over the people that are in need of rescue. Although, a mission station still has to be organized to be sure that it can effectively accomplish the mission, the whole mindset is different.

Here are some other fundamental differences;

Mission Station

• shows wear and tear of past rescue missions
• people have battle scars, leaders carry the weight of failed missions and future mission
• they don’t try to clean people up before the enter the station.
• interested in turning people into future rescuers based on their experience of being rescued.
• willingness and patience to rehabilitate people that have been hurt

Clubs

• for members only/ caters to members
• have to meet the criteria to join/ jump through the hoops
• Once your “in” you can feel good about yourself
• great benefits for members/ VIP treatment
• your proud of your club facility, not because of it’s history of helping people but because it’s well kept and hangs the trophies of the clubs successes.
• focus internally, working hard to stay exclusive. members feel that if more people are included it will change and ruin the way things have always been done and they’ll lose their personal benefits.

I hope well always have coffee stains on the carpet and surf/skate boards laying around and wetsuits hanging up and so on.

which category do you lean towards and why? what are some other differences between a mission station and club?

 

Weekend Recap

sorry I’ve been missing from blogworld for a while. It’s been a crazy week. We had our missions concert on Friday night plus our normal weekend stuff. Here’s some highlights….

• The worship/mission concert was amazing. packed house, crowd was electric, Tomoka played great. I believe we raised a good chunk of money for missions. I haven’t got the total yet. It’s a worship leaders dream to stand before an excited crowd, ready to worship.
• Sunday was our second week in the “Blessed” series and it went real well.
• It was one of those weeks where a lot of things were going wrong with the tech stuff all at once. Gus handled it well though and we made it through.
• We did an acoustic set and intentionally brought it down a bit. I tried to teach a little about worship. I’m not sure how effective is was but it was a nice change of pace and fit the morning well.
• I love the song “I need You” written by Josh Bales, covered by The Swift. Go check it out, you won’t be disappointed. We did that in the middle of the sermon which broke it up nicely.
• I don’t know why I’m still surprised by the crowds but I am. I have faith that God is working and every time a bunch of people show up in need of Him, I’m amazed at His power to change lives. I wonder where it takes us. It’s not like when we set out we decided we wanted to reach a numerical goal. We just wanted to be authentic.
• I was telling some people this week, I don’t know where I could go and be completely who I am. Sure they’re are bigger churches, salaries, etc. But no where that fits me as well as Beachside (except for the fact that I don’t surf). I’m excited to grow as a person and leader here.

 

Creative Chaos - pt 8

Check out the new stage set. Props go out to Missy and the rest of the worship team for making this happen.