Month: April 2012

Gateway Church: Easter – Your Great Story

I just have to write about why I love my church so much.

There’s something amazing when you get to be on staff at a church that you’d certainly attend if you weren’t ministry. I’m about to celebrate my 4th year at Gateway and I’m so proud to be at this church.

Two of Gateway’s core values is to be a church for those who are far from God and to place a high value stories. Both of those values were carried out at our Easter services this year.

Read More

Don’t let SOPA return!

A few months ago, SOPA and PIPA were shut down because Americans showed policy makers that we value freedom. If you missed that post, you can read it here. It was one of the most successful campaigns and the bills were totally shut down as policy makers pulled their support.

However, the Obama administration is still voicing support of SOPA. Wired noted recently that:

“The White House did say that it wouldn’t endorse a bill that endangers freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risks, or negatively affects the DNS system. On the other hand, it says elsewhere that “combating online infringement” — not protecting free speech — is a governmental priority “of the highest order.”

I got an email from Fight the Future yesterday stating that:

What is the White House working on exactly? Just the other day, the administration sent a letter to Congress to demonstrate their support for new internet censorship legislation.

Read More

The Eric Trap Blog Tour

On Monday, April 9th, the Eric Trap blog tour BEGINS! Let me tell you. This isn’t like any blog tour you’ve ever seen. This one is going to be Epic. I’ll go ahead and apologize right now because the kidmin blogospher and twitterverse are about to get overloaded. Almost 50 people are participating in the blog tour and most will be using multiple streams of social media. Many of the bloggers will be giving away books (more than 40 up for grabs).

So, get ready. The Eric Trap goes on sale in 3 weeks and you’ll get some sneak peaks in the coming weeks about this new book. Stay tuned, I’ll post more on Monday as the blog tour starts up. I can’t wait!

Read More

Free Books!

Everyone likes the sound of that, right?

My wife just sent me a link telling me that Francis Chan is giving away three of his most popular books away for free on the Kindle on April 6 and 7th only. You just have to shoot over to Amazon and download them today. I’ve heard Francis at the Orange Conference a few times and his messages were very challenging. However, I haven’t read any of his books yet (although they are on my list). Seeing this new, I quickly jumped over to Amazon and downloaded them, so hopefully I’ll get to read them this year.

I’ll make it easy for you. Click here to download the free books (the deal states that the books could go back to their regular price at any time).

Read More

CMO turns 5!

WOW! Today this little blog turns five years old. That means she’ll be starting kindergarten in the fall! It’s amazing how fast time flies by.

Starting this blog five years ago has been one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve made in ministry. I clearly sensed God’s call in starting it… as I wrote this all those years ago. I’m so grateful because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have 70% of the relationships that I do today if I hadn’t been obedient. Guys like Jonathan Cliff, Matt McKee, Sam Luce have been bothers to me. Gina McClain and Jenny Funderbuke have been sisters I’ve never had. Jim Wideman has become a close friend, mentor and confidant… I feel like a treasured Timothy. I could go on an on with all the other names of people who have become good friends, faces I look forward to seeing at conferences, and ministry professionals that I like to learn from. I really don’t think most of this would have happened if I hadn’t started this little blog.

Read More

Augmented reality glasses: coming soon

I saw this today on a bajillion people’s facebook feeds.

Sure, there are many downsides to this kind of technology. With these, we’ll become the multi-tasking addicts we’re already becoming comfortable with as it is. However, if you look around, most people are wandering around the city goofing off with their phone, looking for directions, checking in and listening to music… these augmented reality glasses just put it all on a more convenient screen.

Here’s what I’m seeing though. Remember when the bluetooth headsets became really popular and everyone was talking hands free as they walked down the street. It quickly became a social turn-off.

Read More

Good Friday family experience

I’m excited about what Gateway is offering families this year for Good Friday. We’ll have Easter services on Saturday and Sunday, but we’ll offer a unique experience on Friday. From 5-9, we’ll have several “choose-your-own-adventure” type experiences for people to choose from. We’ll have dramas, music, worship, short teachings, short films, audio experience of the cross, art installation and tactile experience (with a several crucification nails from the 1st century), a guided prayer experience and several other options. All these things are happening multiple times during the evening all in different venues. Due to the nature of Good Friday, many of the venues are not really child appropriate, so we are hosting a family experience in addition to childcare for kids under the age of 4.

The family experience will feature songs and a short film about Good Friday (I wrote about it here) which we’ve broken down into parts where we can expound on what was happening and guide families in discussion around the events of Good Friday.

Read More

Printing bliss

Last week I posted about my search for the perfect wireless laser printer. I got a couple of good recommendations, but I got an email response from someone with some pretty compelling reasons for picking up the HP LaserJet Pro P1102w.

I got it last night and I’m in love. I call it printing freedom because I can print from just about anything I care to print from. iPads, iPhone, Macs and PCs.

Read More

Good Friday resources: Where are they?

It seems that there really isn’t any shortage of Easter resources. From curriculum, video, and other needs, you can find just about anything you’re looking for. But that’s not true of Good Friday. It appears that most resources seem to lump all of Good Friday and Easter into one package, but the Good Friday stuff really can’t stand on it’s own. With more churches offering Good Friday services, events and experiences, the need for stuff specific to Good Friday has increased.

At Gateway we’re doing a very interesting and unique (unique to us) experience for Good Friday which I’ll write about later. We’re putting together a family experience around around Good Friday and we really had a difficult time finding what we were looking for. With what we did find, it was hard to find something that wasn’t too bloody and something that wasn’t too cheesy.

Read More

Recent Comments