mourning elliot's departure

this is my daughter tori after watching elliot get dropped from idol. i felt the same way but i'm not agile enough to get back up from a position like that, so i just mourned standing up.

i think the final four in idol are actually going out in reverse order from what i wanted. i bet katherine wins - that'd wrap up a complete reversal of my pick for the final four.

i really loved the piece they ran on elliot's trip home. i love that he de-hatted himself as he passed the flag and thanked the soldiers holding them.

he deserves to do well in his career in music.

waiting for a cd to burn and a double-overtime game to finally end

i need to go to bed, but i'm waiting for a cd to burn and i'm glued to the now double-overtime game 5 between the suns and the clippers. (pulling for the suns.)

while i've been sitting here i've been thinking about some of the less important things i tend to never really write about in my blog. like this:

why did chris get voted off american idol last week?

why do i even care, really?

i love the new gatorade ad with the star athletes with tiny little bodies but big heads.

i also like the new identity theft ad with the weightlifter dude talking with a weird girl voice.

why can't shaquille shoot free throws?

why does watching shawn marion roll his ankle make my legs hurt - not my ankle, but my leg?

i also love the ad where the basketball court is a swimming pool and the guy hangs from the rim and drops into the water.

how did i ever make it without a cell phone before?

why did i spend so many years hating macs?

why don't they have microsoft access for macs?

where's the walmart for people who live in washington d.c. and walk everywhere they go?

why am i sitting here at 1am asking these questions?

why are you still reading this post, whatever time it is that you're reading?

ok - i promise not to post like this much. but sometimes, you've just gotta clear the shelf of all those probably-unanswerable questions.

thanks for enduring my ramble.

what it's all about

check out this post my mom just put up about their trip to the hope rwanda deal with joyce meyer, delirious and a bunch of great folks from hillsong (among others):


dad and mom in rwanda

p.s. i was pretty excited when mom told me they actually liked delirious' music. they're pretty much die-hard gaither trio people, so that's saying something good if delirious can pull them in. not that the gaithers are evil or anything. i grew up on them. "i am a promise, i am a possibility, i am a promise, with a capital p, i am a great big bundle of potentiality..." yeah, you know it. sing it with me....

ok don't.

one more thing: if you want to get a copy of the new children's cup magazine coming out in a couple weeks, lemme know - i'll make sure you get added to the list. this issue will include their report from rwanda.

ever had one of those meetings?

i took this picture in a meeting i was in today with dino rizzo, marc cleary and johnny green. about five minutes into it i had this overwhelming sense that what we were about to experience was something terribly significant. i even said as much (although at that point, it seemed a little awkward).

i've been mulling (that's a legal thing to do) some thoughts on mission/outreach lately, and i'm planning on sorting out some of those thoughts and writing about it later. i don't want to write it now and only get the thought half-developed and end up blowing it. suffice for now to say that a host of thought has been running through my heart and mind lately about it.

so dino starts talking about mission/outreach and who we are at hpc and why we do what we do. now he does that a lot, that's certain. but this time he was talking about it with the same sort of twist that has been stirring in me the last few weeks. i got on IM during the meeting and told vicki how i was in this "moment" where i knew God was starting a significant something or other. i couldn't see through the tears to type for a few minutes. not like i always go into meetings with dino and cry through them, but man, i'm telling you this one got me.

i know this day will be a day i'll look back on for the rest of my life as the day that some of the way we do things in the future began. this was huge.

i'll write about it soon. got some work to do now. there's a great report from rwanda that my dad just wrote that i get to lay out for the next children's cup magazine.

glad to be home, photography, and buffer-duels

i loved the trip to d.c. i think my last three posts will bear that out. but man, it's good to me home.

one more thing about the buzz conf. my fuzzy pic of brad abare made the church marketing sucks website (take that, all you great photo-artists out there).

this morning i'm doing an interesting experiment - at 10am i joined into the lifechurch.tv internet campus, and at 10:30 i rolled into the hpc live webcast in another window. i'm pioneering a more-than-new trend. the new things are live church on the web, and multi-site church. well, today i'm doing multi-site in a way i doubt many have been goofy enough to really try. actually it's not working so well. i'm finding that i'll hear craig speak for a little bit then dino will take over and the lifechurch.tv window buffers a little while. then dino freezes and the hpc window starts buffering and craig starts coming through. i'm guessing dual live church online isn't something my bandwidth here is gonna support. sigh.

i've got a lot to say about the potential for internet campus as a tool for churches to reach out. but i'll save it for when i can say it and not just ramble about it. suffice for now to say i love it.



so for now - i'm heading back to the live buffer-duelling dual webcasts....

buzz day two

another FULL day today in D.C. at the buzz conference at ncc. here's a brief rundown from my day.

8am - blogger's breakfast - got to meet a bunch of great bloggers. some of my favorite blogs were represented there. i did think it was kinda weak not to see gary lamb there. he said he slept in. psh. weak. but whoever had the idea of doing that breakfast had a stroke of genius. very cool laid-back opportunity to connect.

then it was off to the regular sessions - great teaching from mark batterson, and some way incredible guitaring from babyface russell. got to run into a friend of mine from WAY back - richard green - from my bible college days - he's planting a church in iowa city. got to spend a good bit of time talking with john hasler, who volunteers at ncc - great guy - really great guy. he runs a bunch of outreach to the many homeless people in the union station area. his heart and his passion for social justice and caring for hurting people just pours from him when you hear him talk. and what i love so much about this dude is how he's the one that stood out to me when i first got here - he was working like crazy getting chairs set out for everyone who was coming in late to the theater church forum deal. may not sound like much, but if you had seen the energy and the heart he put into trying to take care of people, you'd know that it was much deeper than just getting a chair out. i love that guy.

then i went to lunch with mark kerner, who is at a church in my old hometown springfield missouri. wild to meet him and get caught up on the old stomping grounds. he's also quite a food critic aparently (wish i'd realized that before i offered to buy him a mcD's lunch. oh well, just being myself. authenticity.)


brad abare

then it was over to the afternoon sessions - brad abare was there - from church marketing sucks - talking about marketing, etc. this dude's resume of what he's currently doing is like what most people list for what they've done through their whole adult life. communications director for the foursquare denomination, cheif honcho for a company called personality, as well as the top dawg for church marketing sucks. amazing individual. spent some time talking with him later in the day - he's chock full of great ideas that i think as he's able to put flesh on them will be instrumental in the continuation of the revolution of how we do church today making use of advances in communication technology. simply put, he's smart and has a touch of God on his life.


david russell and me

then i got to spend some time with david russell and a friend of his from 'bama, byron berry. it was really cool to spend some "live" time with them - i've known david only via blogging and a couple phone calls until yesterday. he gave me the "insider's" tour of the d.c. sites i hadn't been to yet. the metro - my first non-airport subway ride inside the united states. and to the declaration of independence (yeah, i was reliving nicolas cage national treasure). pretty cool. then it was over to 1600 pennsylvania. walked like 47 miles today. plus, david bought my kids some d.c. t-shirts - what a guy. thanks david. you are incredible.


mark and me

then we went to the batterson home (great place, mark and laura - thanks for opening it up to us) for a little cinco de mayo dinner with a few of the buzzers. the dudes from granger were there - got to talk with tony morgan and moby (tim stevens) a little bit. bunch of cool people. we kicked off the dinner by singing the doxology together as a prayer for the food (i thought it was pretty cool). lance did his george w. impersonation - actually did really well with what had to be a really rough crowd for that kind of an off-the-hip entertainment gig. most cinqo de mayo party entertainers have audiences that are buzzed in a different way. proud of ya lance.

i'm so impressed with how ncc pulled this conference off. i'm impressed with how they've shattered any concern about whether northerners can show hospitality. i think they're all closet southerners really. incredible. i was encouraged and challenged by the teaching sessions. i was refreshed from the connections i made with others here. and i was inspired to never ever settle but instead to continue to dream, to learn from others, and to go for it like there's no tomorrow.


joel schmidgall and me

a quote that sums it all up for me was one that went something like this: "God doesn't regard the magnitude of our acts but the magnitude of the love with which they are done."

thanks mark, joel, david, dave, heather, tim, john, and the tons of other ncc'ers that helped swing the bat on this home run. you guys are awesome.

buzz day one is almost over

buzz day 1 probably will be over by the time i get this posted. okay, so it was over closer to 9pm. we started at 9am and went pretty much non-stop to 9pm. long day, but full of good stuff. union station is really cool (imagine you church being in a mall/train station/borders/food court/theater) but ebenezer's is cool in a whole different way (a starbucks-has-nothing-on-this coffee shop with a downstairs church venue and offices upstairs and football on the roof).

today started off with a forum on doing church in theaters. i came out ready to start doing everything we do in the future in a theater. makes a lot of sense. i'm sure there's a lot more to consider than just whether it makes sense or not, but it sure seems smart.

then we went to union station for the main sessions - ed young jr. from fellowship was there in his own inimitable way. he did this impersonation of joel osteen trying to preach like td jakes. funnnnny. lots of great insights from his experience.

from there we went back to ebenezer's for a q&a with some of the staff. joel schmidgall was talking about how they do outreach and as he spoke, it was as if i was reminded just why it is that i really really like this guy. heather zempel (LSU grad was there, and then there was ncc's media pastor, dave clark - a singer, i just learned today. i'm impressed. and then there's david russell - newbie on staff, but what a win for ncc! he's "digital pastor" at ncc and he's one genius on the web as well as an "edge"-like guitartist.

after the panel did their q&a, we went into the film festival that hpc shoulda woulda coulda won - our guys are good enough to pull stuff together to win a thing like that. even with our line we've drawn to stay completely legal on our music copyright use stuff. but then again, the ones that did win were totally awesome. granger had one that was a review of a baptism service. really great concept (as well as technique and content). made me wanna go get baptized again. the other winner i really thought was impressive was sugar creek baptist. slamming stuff they turned in.

ok, ao now it's time to sleep. getting up early to roll over to the bloggers' breakfast deal - i think the gist of it is to meet the dudes (and dudettes) that are here whose blogs you've been reading but never met in person. pretty cool idea. i've already met for the first time a few: gary lamb, david russell, tony morgan, scott hodge, and heather zempel and i'm planning on finding a few others while i'm in there.

good job, ncc. all the hecticity is paying off! it is unignorable that you're making historicity.

my favorite lincoln of all

having seen the "original lincoln" earlier today - the huge monument in DC, i am reminded quickly that the best lincoln out there is my own. vicki took him to see "finding nemo on ice" at the river center tonight. he's sporting a shark hat and some really cool invention toy. he said he also landed a coloring book. sounds like mom's a softy. but who can say "no" to a face like that?

the rest of the day in DC

okay - i know you're figuring (hoping?) i didn't only see lance's calves all day. well, i did find a few other interesting things to shoot pics of.

WARNING: some images may include a rather frightening image of my big ol' face in the very near foreground. i'm not on an ego trip. who could be with a face like that? i've included me just to personalize it a bit - even at the risk of striking fear in the minds of small children. now - on to the pictures....


the washington monument


the world war 2 memorial - i'm so humbled by what these great people did for us to keep our country and world free. i'll shake a vet's hand with a little more vigor next time. i was seriously moved by some of what i saw there. quotes inscribed on the walls, and the sheer determination and willingness to die for that passion - wow.



then there was the lincoln memorial - what a great man he was. (and it is a little more of a special one for me because my six-year-old is named lincoln.)


and the smithsonian (mini-tour) had a few things but nothing worth showing pics of. our little mini self-tour was WAY too limited.


then it was some work time in the hotel, followed by dinner and then back to the hotel for some more work.

tomorrow morning, we're off to ncc's ebenezer's for the buzz. can't wait.

a day with the calves...

okay so we're in DC for the buzz conference. get here the day before and we've got some time to blow so we go walk the mall - smithsonian, washington monument, lincoln memorial, ww2 memorial, korean war memorial (lots more pics - but not for this post).

it's marc cleary, mike haman, lance leblanc and me. i'm not too sure what it is about lance's calves, but for those of you who are interested, here's some shots...