I’m still alive. Of course, you wouldn’t know it from my blog. A lot of life has happened in the last couple months. I think I’ll start playing catch up over the next couple weeks and blog retroactively. Stay tuned…
Filed under: Ordinary Life | Tags: blog, entertainment, Football, travel
Finally found a few moments to catch up after a very busy week. The trip to Vegas was interesting. The GodBlogCon conference was underwhelming in terms of production, creativity, content and insight. Ironically, the overall geekiness and self-absorbed tendencies along with the ever present delusions of grandeur of personal blogging that were on display almost made me want to quit blogging forever. A couple real standouts that were really good were the sessions with Andrew Jones of Tall Skinny Kiwi and John Mark Reynolds at The Scriptorium Daily. Mark Joseph was interesting as well. You can listen to their podcasts here.
Of course, the best part of the whole weekend was hanging out with old friends and meeting some new people. I really liked Tim’s advice, “What’s really important about each session isn’t so much what’s being said up front – it’s who I sit down next to and meet.” While that’s great advice, it’s also one of the harder things for me to do. I’m a total closet introvert. I often try and pretend like I’m friendly and sociable and even gregarious. Really, I’d just assume stick to the familiarity and comfortableness and safety of people I already know and trust. I’m glad though that I met some truly engaging and even fascinating people like Dave Bruno at guynameddave.com and Brett McCracken at stillsearching.wordpress.com just to point out a couple.
Some highlights of things outside of the conference included Football Central at the Hilton with eight games at once on a GIANT screen, the $5 pizza deal at the Silverton, the fountains and garden at the Bellagio and best of all – Red Rocks. On the way out on Monday, got to drive out with Michael to Red Rocks National Conservation Area and also got to walk through the Red Rocks Resort. If you’re ever out in Vegas, take the time to get away from the glitz and trash of the strip and visit an area like this that is truly extraordinary. I’m always looking for cool things to do in Vegas that won’t get me into trouble and won’t make me spend a lot of money. Let me know if you have anything that fits that bill…
Filed under: Ordinary Life | Tags: blog, Calvary, church, leadership, production, travel, work
This week has been really full. I’ve been at work until way past usual almost every day. There has been a lot to get done and there never seems to be enough time to do it all.
Looking back over the last few days, I can see some big things checked off a still growing to-do list. I finished most of the design work for our big fall outreach at Calvary called Light the Night. Went to the LifeGroup leader training – still not sure if I want to be a leader, but I’m at least still interested in it. Had a 6 hour long, off-campus planning day for our new series on Nehemiah. I think this could be one of the best series we’ve ever gone through as a church. I hope all the good ideas translate into real moments of inspiration and life change for the people who attend each week.
I was also invited to my first ever church elder meeting to participate in the presentation of our campus development plan. It went amazingly well. I was personally so encouraged that night by both our elder chairman and our architect, who at different times gave me compliments and affirmation that meant more to me than they could imagine. I think I really needed that sort of encouragement in the middle of this insanely full week.
To top it off, I leave before the sun comes up tomorrow for a conference called GodBlogCon in Vegas, which is dubbed as “a gathering of Christians to advance the kingdom through blogging and internet technologies.” I’m hoping to get some new ideas and insights into how I can use the web for more than I am now. I’m also really looking forward to just hanging out with the other guys I’m going with – Jason Loftis, Tim McMahan and Michael Welles (who needs to start a blog about all of his world travels).
The only big downside is that I’ll be out of town Sunday, so I’ll miss this Sunday’s services (which I think should be extraordinary) as well as the LifeGroup leader vision rally that afternoon (which could be amazing as well).
Sometimes, there just seems to be too much good stuff to fit into a very limited amount of time. Time really is one of our most precious resources. I pray that I can be a good steward of what time I do have.
I was getting tired of the look of my blog.
So, I tweaked it out a little.
I think I like it now.
What do you think?
