Deuce: I preached at Staunton Alliance Church today in Staunton, VA. Heather and I drop up last night and Nathan stayed with my mom. I preached at the 8:30 service and then at the 11:00 service. This was the first time that I have ever taught twice in the same day. I did the same sermon since there would be minimal overlap and I must say I improved the second time. I learned something, I feel I made an impact so it was a good day. Now I'm dog tired from preaching twice and driving the 3.5 hours home but I'll make it.

Torture: One of my good friends from college used to sit around and develop ways to conquer the world. It was a sort of Pinky and the Brain but it was Chris and Nick and Richard. The latter of the two playing a non strategic role. Chris would come up with forms of torture. One of which was to put two guys in a room together and the first one to bite the others lips off was allowed to live and the other...well he had his lips bitten off and they both had to live with the humilitation of being that close to another man's lips.

The other form of torture that I thought was blog worthy was to put a person in a round padded room and make them listen to Lisa Loeb non stop. Possibly to Chris' chagrin I have to confess that I now have a Lisa Loeb song on my ipod...and I like it.

Sorry buddy!

Went fishing: I went fishing this morning. I noticed how it's called fishing and not catching. If it was called catching people would actually catch something but since it's just called fishing it's a lot like hoping but with a rod and reel. But as I was leaving the old guy that runs the bait shop asked with a smug grin, "catch anything?" when he could clearly see I was carrying no fish...smart alek old fart...I replied "I didn't come to catch anything I just game to fish". He got a good laugh out of that and we said our goodbyes. So my fishing this morning was good. I was able to relax, let my mind wander, and get some inner peace. Refreshing.

Life is hard, wear a helmet



Being Green: We've started recyclying, I subscribe to National Geographic and I'm seriously considering buying a vehicle that will improve my gas mileage by 20 mpg, so while I'm no tree hugging hippie I'm becoming a little more green that I used to be. I figure when it all goes down and global warming melts all the ice caps and I have beach front property and get ravaged by tidal flooding and hurricanes I can pass the blame on to someone else. So really all my new found environmental actions are to avoid fault...interesting.

Seriously though, I wonder how much junk mail I throw away on any given week. It seems like every day I get about 4-8 pieces of junk mail. That's a lot of waste all for stuff I seldom open. Is there something that can be done?

500th Post: Oh yeah I hit my 500th post a on my last post. I was going to zip by it without a pause but I second thought that and felt it worth mentioning.

What Else: There's been a good bit going on but right now on this lazy Sunday afternoon just doesn't feel like the time to blog on it all. Who knows though the more I type the better I might feel about writing it all down.

Blue Grass: Last night we bluegrassed it up down at Chesapeake Park with some friends. Bluegrass playing in the background the ladies talking, the kid running amuck and the guys throwing the football. It was pretty much the perfect summer night.

Month Ahead: I got approval to use both the neighborhood pool area as well as Bennett's Creek park for our School Opening Festival. We're going to use our pool area. The party will be just for the our neighborhood kids and we're celebrating the opening of our new 800 student elementary school. The school is going to be a beauty and will also be what I believe to be a turning point in the previously poor Suffolk Public Schools. I'v been in contact with the Administration with the school and we're meeting later this week to talk about the Creekside/Bridge Church partnership.

The part will feature some grade level competition, individual games, a photo booth, as well as prices and get to meet the prinicpal time. We, of course, are going to use this time to meet out neighbors, get our church out there and show people that we value children and what our children's ministry will be like. I'm so excited!

Beach Bash: August 12 the teenagers of the Mid-Atlantic District of the C&MA are sacrificing a few of their hours on the beach to help out The Bridge Church. We're going to distribute 5,000 door hangers/post cards. With all that man power it's cost effective and too great an opportunity to pass up. That day we'll also host a few mini festivals for children at local parks with balloons and temporary tattoos.

Pastors: If you are a pastor and keep up with my blog please read this and take it to heart. My wife and I walked into a church today with our son Nathan. Nathan was walking and him being only 17 months he walks pretty slowly. We walked by 3 men at the outside door, they were talking we didn't receive a wave, smile or even glance. We walked into the foyer and just sort of waited to be greeted. After it was obvious that wasn't going to happen we proceeded to find the nursery. There were no signs no directions and no greeters to point us the way. We finally found the nursery and once again were left to guess what we should do. Basically this goes on and on and after the service when we left only 3 people had met us and knew our names and 0 people knew anything more than our names.

Sing: Girl beside me is singing pretty loudly in starbucks. She has headphones on so she doesn't know how loud she's singing. The singing is pretty much the worst I've ever heard. YIKES!

Update: it just got louder, laughter is imminent.

ok she just left- laughter averted.

Dear MySpace User: I know you might think it's cool to take a picture of yourself and then post it of yourself but really it's not. Find a friend have them take a picture, it looks much better.

Love Me: I read this online this morning that 212 Million Americans have cell phone and this entire article is about cell phone addictions.

I heard a song that says you're nobody till somebody loves you by Dean Martin. When your cell phone rings it says I'm somebody and somebody thinks I'm important. Listen to number 51.

Habitudes: I'm looking into Habitudes by Tim Elmore for a group study in the fall. I found it interesting that 64% of people that looked at Habitudes wound up buying Why men Hate going to church...

Warning: I like mullets, I don't have them so I must not like them that much but I think they are funny as heck. I take pictures of them, I laugh at people that have them. I have mullet spotters all over the world and they update me on sweet mullets they have seen. So far my mullet fan club has been for humor purposes only but I think I have discovered an actual use for mullet spotting?

Ever seen COPS the tv show? Ever notice how most of the criminals on there have mullets? Now don't jump to conclusions but you see where I'm going with this. I've also heard it rumored that Usama Bin Laden has a mullet under his turban. Oh and by the way I noticed that Bin Laden is number 2 on the fbi's most wanted list. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm

12%: I heard a stat the other day that said 12% of Americans read books on a regular basis.

It'll be ok: We teach about Jesus and we say "Jesus is going to make everything ok...I'm starting to think he isn't." -Don Miller at Catalyst Unplugged.

Captain America: I served as the program director of Summit Grove Campt in New Freedom, PA last week. I'll comment more about how the week wnt. I definately enjoyed it and the week of service served me than required me to serve. But perhaps the general highlight of th week was this. I was about to go up to do a general introduction of myself, I hadn't met many of the counselors and none of the students. I was thinking about what I would say and figured that it'd be pretty boring for me to stand up there and say "Hi, I'm Nick, I'm your camp director this week, love me." So instead I stood up there and said "Hi my name's Nick but people call me Captain America, welcome to Summit Grove Camp". So for the past week my name has been Captain America.

Sabbath: Sabbath is the new buzz word in the church particularly with Gen X-Mosaics so I don't mean to jump on this band wagon. I was driving up on Sunday and I listened to a few of the Catalyst Podcasts and the people talking kept brining up Sabbath and being the new buzz word I was just sort of ignoring the word but trying to grasp the concept but like fasting I figure it would be something that led to frustration not freedom in Christ or connection to him. But this week while I was serving I was being served. I forgot the power cord to my compy, I wasn't dependent on my ipod, I didn't read, I didn't feel pressured to work, I just work with the students and counselors. I hung out with my friends, I had a good time. Most of all I unplugged, whether intentional or not I unplugged from my computer and my regular life and it was sabbath. Not planned but great.

I won't even put a title on this. I'm sitting here in the middle of a field on a picnic table at Summit Grove Camp in New Freedom, PA. The breeze is cool this morning and any idea of a rant that I had has left me and I'm just enjoying the cool breeze, the slight smell of skunk in the air and the fact that by driving a mere 5 hours last night I have escaped into another world where church planting is what I do and not who I am. It's been fun sharing with friends what we've been up to and what's even more fun is telling them what we're going to be doing these next couple months. I know I'm going to be tired at the end of this week of working a jr. high camp but I also know I'm going to be refreshed. I've asked God to meet me here this week not that I deserve it but because he give his children good gifts.

Habitudes: I had never heard of this guy or the ministry before but I highly recommend it after hearing a cd of the catalyst lab I purchased last October. Check out his website here->www.growingleaders.com or go straight to the store and cash in on the 3 Habitudes books for only $27 bucks. I'm pretty sure they're going to be worth it.
online store: www.growingleaders.com/store_intro.php

Learn: I really learned a lot yesterday driving up here. I took advantage of my time alone in the car and took the time to listen to some stuff I had on cd and my ipod. I had mostly labs from Catalyst but also a few sermons from Rob Bell, one of my favorite communicators. It was a good trip and despite the trafic I actually enjoyed it.

Watah: Last night, 4th of July. I took 50 bottles on ice down to Portsmouth waterside where we'd watch the fireworks. I seriously had my doubts if I could get rid of 50 bottles of water in the 45 minutes we had before the fireworks. Rob and I started offering free water and in only a matter of about 10 minutes we had disributed all of our water. It was a great first run for the Street Team and I wanted it to be a test of possible future events and it did seem to generate about 15 hits on our website from the time we got home last night and this morning at 9am.