1.  This week, I had a great time eating here and bowling.  And yes it is true, Joni did beat me in one of the games.  She’s got skills!

2.  Eric and Callie are officially engaged!  I guess he’s doing a good job as the Connections Pastor.

3.  I attended a very sad funeral this week.  It really caused me to think about how brief life is.

4. Seems that A-Rod and his wife is getting a divorce.  He has been seen with Madonna in recent weeks.  Can you say disgusting?

5.  This team is issueing a ‘no standing’ policy for their football games.  Are you kidding me?  I guess next they will only allow the golf clap.  Then again, what reason do they have to stand?

6.  Tonight, we are headed to Cauble Park with about 10,000 other Acworthians for a huge 4th of July party.  Freedom Church will be giving out free balloons to the kids.  Some of them will even contain a little surprise inside.

7.  We have some friends coming into town for the weekend.  Fun times!

I present to you 2 reasons why people think Christians are weird (this is definitely not an exhaustive list):

a.  There is some band out there called Coldpray.  Apparently, they like to re-write Nirvana songs.  Are you serious?

b.  We just got something in the mail from a large denomination advertising their “African American Sunday School Conference.”  Is the way you lead your Sunday School different for every race?  I’ll have to admit that this made me a little angry.  Why do we continue to violate the cultures that we try to establish?

I can’t say that I blame them for thinking we are strange people.

Yesterday, I wrote about how Freedom Church is playing offense to dominate Acworth GA with the good news of Jesus.

Today, Pastor Furtick wrote about how to be on offense in our personal lives.  Check it out here!  It’s good stuff.

In case you didn’t know this, I am a HUGE college football fan.  One of the things that winning progams understand is that you always have to play to win.  You will see some teams get a lead and relax.  It is at that moment that the other team sees an opportunity and often gets back into the game.

Here are Freedom Church, we play to win.  Need an example?  Many churches decide to relax during the summer.  They have an ‘everyone is on vacation’ mentality.  We have decided that we are going after it hard this summer.  We have worked to ramp up the things that we are doing to serve the community.  We choose to be on offense, not defense.

The bottom line is this…there are 90,000 people right outside our door that are living without hope.  We are working like crazy people to change that!

1.  I was glad that my Pastor was able to take a break from speaking and spend some time at the beach.  He deserves the break.

2.  Attendance was great!

3.  The music was pretty incredible.  The band really rocked ‘We Shine’ and ‘The Real Thing’.

4.  Everyone I talked to thought Mark did a great job.  He communicated what it means to be authentic in a very concise and simplistic way.  I think everyone in the room could I identify.

5.  I was really proud of the way our church has rallied around the Snyder family.  I was glad they were able to be there yesterday.  I know it helped them greatly.

6.  Our giving has been really good over the past couple of months.  It seems that people are beginning to get this generosity thing!

7.  If summer is any idication of what things will be like in August, the house will be PACKED.

8.  We are only 1 1/2 months from launching the student ministry.  Great meeting yesterday.

9.  Kenny was back! 

10.  A very smooth Sunday.  I’m still amazed that I get to be a part of this!

11.  I found myself in a discussion with 2 guys about ‘So You Think You Can Dance’.  Probably shouldn’t have told you that, but it did happen.

12.  I enjoyed hanging out with Shea yesterday.  It is always fun and helpful to talk about the details of church planting. 

Chad Bowen is one of my best friends and was my roommate in college at North Greenville.  He is the Lead Pastor at Metamorphosis Church in Greenville, SC.

He and his staff are currently living on the roof of Liquid Highway for 48 hours in an attempt to obtain a bunch of canned food for people who need it. 

The event is called Hunger Hurts Greenville.  Check it out here!

Update:  I just talked to Chad.  He informed me that they have surpassed their goal of 2000lbs of canned food.  A very cool thing!

1.  It is hot!  We took the kids to Swift Cantrell park today.  Needless to say, we didn’t stay too long.

2.  Kenny, Freedom Church’s box truck, is close to being fully repaired.

3.  In the past couple of weeks, I have deleted my myspace, stopped using Twitter, and greatly reduced the number of blogs I was reading.  I’m trying to not waste too much time.

4.  I saw a church sign yesterday that said, ‘If you were a potato, would you be an agi-tater?’  Wow.  What does that even mean?

5.  I’m watching the season finale of  Celebrity Fit Club.  Never seen the show before.  I wish I could still say that.  It’s pretty dumb.

6.  I used to be a HUGE wrestling fan.  I watched about 10 mins of it last night.  It was the worst acting I have ever seen.

7.  Freedom Church now has people throughout town on Friday nights from 5-6 holding signs promoting our current series.  You might see some of our signs dancing around!

8.  Sunday will be a big day, as we close out the One Prayer series.

From time to time, I like to post my daily schedule to give people a glimpse of what I do.  Here’s what today looks like for me:

6:30 - 7:30     Men’s Group

7:30 - 8:30     Check Email, Blogs, etc.

8:30 - 11:00   Went to Northstar Church with J.R.  He was speaking for their summer camp.

11:00 - 12:00 Lunch with my Pastor

12:00 - 1:00   Checked email, made phone calls, etc.

1:00 - 1:30     Wrote a press release for Family Night Downtown in August.

1:30 - 2:00     Called insurance company, storage place, and mechanic about the truck incident.

2:00 - 2:45     Prepared for college group and wrote this blog.

2:45 - 3:00     Took a break.  Walked around the office.

3:00 - 4:00     Worked on reports and financial side of things.

4:00 - 5:00     Checked Email, blogs, prepared for tomorrow

5:00 - 8:45     Hung out with my family.

9:00 - 11:00   College group at my house.

Yesterday, I had the awesome opportunity to connect with Daryl Strickland, who is the Executive Pastor at Lifepoint Church in Wilmington, NC.  It was almost creepy how many similarities there were in our stories.  Daryl was extremely helpful and willing to give me almost an hour of his day.  (Breaking news…I just read on their website that he is also a rapper.  That makes him even more cool.  I’ve secretly wanted to be a rapper but never had the skills.)  Be sure to check out his blog.

Lifepoint is doing an incredible job in their city.  They are seeing God do some pretty incredible things!  I’m looking forward to getting to know them better and learning from them.

Lifepoint - welcome to the network!

As I watched the NBA finals last week, I was constantly reminded about the importance of having a good team around you.  This year was a classic example.

-On one side, you had the LA Lakers.  LA is fortunate to have (probably) the best player in the league in Kobe Bryant.  He doesn’t seem to miss, especially with the game on the line.  The problem with the team is that there is no supporting cast there.  It all rises and falls on Kobe.

-On the other side was the Boston Celtics.  There is probably no one on the team that could play with Kobe one-on-one.  However, they had more supporting cast members.  On any given night, anyone on the team could lead the team statistically.  When someone was having a bad night, there was always someone there to pick up the slack.

It made me grateful for the team that we have at Freedom Church.  We have a staff and partners that are passionate about seeing God do His thing in Acworth.  We realize that it is going to take each person doing their part to reach this city. 

I can’t wait to blog about what God is going to do in and through Freedom Church in the coming weeks, months, and years.  It is an honor for me to be a part of what God is going to do in this city.