Oct

31

Thoughts on Turning 30

Post Category: Blog Posts 


(Click Here if you can’t see the video above)

Oct

25

God is so cool!

Post Category: Blog Posts 

I know that sounds like a dorky post title but that is exactly what I kept saying yesterday over and over. Maybe  it’s a reflection on my lack of faith but have you ever prayed for something and then were blown away when God actually…answered your prayer?

Lisa and I were praying through the month of September that God would supply new freelance design jobs since our last day at the Church was the end of that month. Having done freelance design back in Michigan for several years I knew the challenge we faced. It could easily take 3-6 months before the jobs starting coming in and even then it’s not always consistent. We prayed anyway, asking God to give us a sign that we were on the right track. Starting a new church takes money and we weren’t exactly rolling in it!

Since my last day at the church I have been blown away as God has brought job after job. Keep in mind, I’ve been trying to do freelance jobs for the last 18 months so I could make some extra money on the side and nothing really came in. But from Day 1 of my new venture I have had steady, well-paying jobs.

The reason I’m so blown away by God’s provision is how He goes out of His way to show you that He’s in charge and will take care of you. In the last few days I was contacted by two people that I had done some work for in the past. I haven’t heard from them for almost 5 years and out of the blue they both contact me looking for design work - one of them was one of my better-paying clients from when I first started my design company back in Michigan.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised when God provides like this but I always am. It encourages me to know that I’m on the right track and that God has everything under control.

Isn’t God cool?

Oct

17

Go In Peace

Post Category: Blog Posts 

“Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again rejoice! Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

This passage from Philippians 4 has meant a lot to Lisa and I over the last 2 months. Anytime you’re stepping out in faith and doing something that stretches you to the limit it’s good to know that God has your back.

If you’re like me you’ve been ashamed of your lack of trust in God at times. I mean, we say that “we’re stepping out in faith” or that we know that “God’s going to work everything out,” but do our thoughts and emotions line up with what we’re saying? Do we really believe ourselves or is it just the “Christian” thing to say?

I think that genuine faith in God is more than just something we say we have to act like we’ve got it all together. According to Phillippians 4 it is accompanied by peace. Not just any peace but God’s peace - something that our human minds can’t fabricate or even understand.

I’ve found that when you step out in faith to do what God has called you to do - no matter how crazy it is - you know that God is with you because in the midst of the storms of doubt around you you feel…peace. It guards you against the cruel and hurtful words of simple-minded people. It protects you from the barrage of discouragement that tries to tell you that you’ve made a stupid decision. It reminds you that God operates on a different economy of scale than we do. He’s in charge. We’re not.

I know you’re busy. I know you have lots of things that are pressing in all around you. But just take a couple of minutes and let the words from Philippians 4:6-7 sink deep into your soul. If doubt, depression and discouragement are plaguing your thoughts ask God to replace them with His peace. Let it wash over you and remind you that you are God’s child. He’s watching out for you and is carefully writing each new chapter in the story of your life.

Shalom.

Go in Peace.

Oct

16

Things that make me MAD!

Post Category: Blog Posts, Videos 

This is a great video my brother and I put together for a message illustration. I thought it was pretty funny.

Filming & Editing by Jason Ruggles

Oct

15

Target City Investigation: Valparaiso and Merrilville

Post Category: Blog Posts, Church Planting 

This past weekend we hit couple of cities on our “Target City” list for possible church plant locations. Our first stop was in Valparaiso, Indiana (map). It was a cute little city with a nice downtown but after driving through it for 15 minutes we decided it probably wouldn’t work for what we were looking for. We have a very specific target demographic for a city in establishing this new church. A church planter told me that a city has got to reflect the style and heart of the planter (a conservative southern pastor wouldn’t do well in a city like Portland, Oregon for example). I’ll talk more about our specific goals for a target city in future posts.

Next on our list was a nearby city called Merrillville (map). This was starting to look a little more like what we were looking for although we hadn’t spent a lot of time researching it online. After driving through it we put it up a little higher on our list of cities to research. I’m not going to make any firm decision about whether or not I like a city until I’ve tried a coffee from their coffee house - very important! :-)
Finishing up our trip we visited a church in Granger, Indiana that I have watched closely for a while now called Granger Community Church. These guys have redefined what is possible for what a church can be like in the midwest. They have raised the bar in the area of media and message and are one of the closest examples to the kind of church we will be planting as far as style and geographical location.

Their Children’s Ministry was awesome! Chloe & Emily are still talking about it. After we checked them in (which was extremely easy for a first-time visitor registering two kids) we were personally walked over to their “launch area.”


They call it a launch area because they get into a slide and slide down into their classroom in the level below us! We were able to watch them come out of the slide on a television monitor that was mounted above the slide (a nice touch for a concerned parent).

The service was amazing and exceeded my expectations. It is much cooler live than watching it online. You can see the actual service we experienced while it is live on their site this week by going to www.gccwired.com and clicking on their link “Watch last week’s service.” The message we heard by Pastor Mark Beeson was part of the Heroes series. It’s neat how God works things out because it spoke specifically to several things that we have been thinking and praying about recently. If you’re ever in the South Bend area on a weekend you simply have to allow some time to visit this amazing Church that is touching thousands of lives. They have 5 services each weekend to choose from - 2 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.

So that was our first stop in our TCI (Target City Investigation). We’re looking at our calendar to set a date for our next weekend TCI and will be posting more details about that when we know. As a side note - a special thanks to everyone in 29:11 who pitched in and bought us the GPS unit. You have no idea how easy that made things this weekend and how much we used it! Thank you!

Oct

12

How to use chopsticks

Post Category: Blog Posts, Family, Videos 

My brother Jason is getting married next weekend and they’re going to have all sorts of ethnic foods at their reception. Because of the ethnic foods they are going to have chopsticks available to eat with. Jason wanted to show people how to use them and decided to use my daughters Chloe & Emily to demonstrate. Watch this video he made - you’ll get a kick out of it!

Oct

11

Seasons of Change

Post Category: Blog Posts 

I was reminded this morning in a blog post by Steven Furtick that God takes us through seasons in our lives. We know that God ordains seasons and times for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11).

I’ve known for a few months that Lisa and I are in a new season of change. It involves the dying off of old things and a time of letting go. It’s important to remember that in God’s cycle of seasons there has to be a Fall and a Winter before there can be a spring. Things have to die so that new things can be born. We’re starting to already see the beginnings of this now as we feel the brisk winds of fall blowing in and see the trees begin to drop their leaves.

It’s kind of hard to get excited about the “Fall” and “Winter” seasons in our lives. We like the birth of new things but we don’t want to see things die in order for them to be born. Right now I’m adjusting my expectations for what the next 6 months look like for Lisa and I. I’m already feeling the uncomfortable stretching of change take me out of my comfort zone. It’s all part of God’s plan but that doesn’t make it easy.

Another thing that really encouraged me was this thought:

Just because you’re experiencing bad weather doesn’t mean the season is bad.

As we recognize the seasons and cycles of change in our lives we begin to trust God more. Here are a few questions to ponder.

  • Are you a fair-weather person?
  • Does the changing weather patterns in your life determine your mood?
  • What season of life are you in right now?
  • Are you prepared to go through times of change and some things die off in your life so God can birth something new?

Oct

10

I’m back!

Post Category: Blog Posts 

It’s so good to be back on my blog again! You may have wondered where I’ve been the last few weeks. Things have been CRAZY! But that’s actually not the reason I haven’t been posting. We recently switched our hosting to a new provider. Since I’m a geek and use the self-hosted version of Wordpress that meant I had to export the SQL database from the previous server and set up a new database to import it into on the new server (have I lost you yet?).

Well, somewhere along the way something got screwed up and my blog broke. So I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to fix it. I almost decided to just cut my losses and start over but that would have meant I would have lost all my old posts.  That’s kinda like losing an old journal - I would have been really bummed.

Thank God for Jon Heugh, a programmer I worked with a few years ago on a project. I emailed him and he spent a few hours working on it last night and voila! It’s working again!

What bugged me the most about being down for the last few weeks is that I’ve had so much I wanted to write about and share with everyone but I couldn’t! It was so frustrating!

So I’m back and I have lots to write about! Stay tuned! :-)

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