and now is the time to burn

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help a brother out!

Insane Campaign

Call it insanity, but our church is attempting to raise

$200,000 in two months! During the two years of our existence, The Vine has been a portable church. Each Sunday, we set-up and tear-down for two crowded worship services. In those two years we have experienced God-sized growth in attendance and amazing work in the ministry of the Kingdom of God. To see the highlights of our first two years of existence, please check-out the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKN-kwHrkkI

It is imperative that we move to continually provide empty seats at optimum times so people can experience the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. God provided the ideal space for this next phase of ministry through a course of unexplained events and unimaginable timing. This new space will allow us to experience worship with approximately 400 people at a time, and within 4 miles from our current worship facility! We began our improvements during the week of May 18^th. God has already provided us with half of the improvement costs and our petition to you is for a contribution toward the remaining half. It is our desire to fund 100% of the construction costs while continually supporting local, regional, and global missions, including Meet The Need and eradicating childhood homeliness in Maputo, Africa.

We ask that you prayerfully consider the following actions:

  - Donate $10, $25, $50 or more

  - Pass this email along to family, friends, facebook contacts, people in your church, and everyone in your address book

 - Pray for The Vine, our build-out, and all of the people who will hear the Gospel in these new empty seats.

Donations can be made one of two ways:

By Paypal: http://www.connecttothevine.org/component/option,com_dtdonate/Itemid,144/index.php?option=com_dtdonate&task=pre_paypal&Itemid=144

By Check:

The Vine (designate as “Insane Campaign”)

PO Box 244

Braselton, GA  30517

Thank you and let the insanity begin!

"i resign"

and other things i've learned not to announce on a blog...

nearly three years ago on july 20th 2006 i spoke with my then pastor and told him i would be resigning as his youth pastor and moving to colorado springs, co to go to the new life school of worship.

that same day i blogged about it. i didn't realize any of the youth had my blog address and one of the youth saw it and things went relatively down hill from there.

sometimes i don't get why certain things shouldn't be said out loud, so i can tend to put people on the spot...

there are public and private sectors to all of our lives, but i wonder how much distance there really should be between the two. i learned not to blog something as "big" as resigning before filling certain people in the "real" world in about it. but the line between digital world and real world is blurring more and more each day as well. and blogging it was my way of letting the people that care enough about me to check my blog know about it.

so i am wondering out loud. is 'censoring' ourselves a way of coddling others that may not be able to 'handle' it? has 'tact' become another word for 'watering down'? would people mature more quickly if they were given the 'hard' stuff early? would lessening the line between public and private actually make us more honest people with fewer secrets, more transparency, and less to hide?

would being more openly 'critical' or opinionated actually allow people an opening to be more honest in return?

stay with me here...i'm swinging the pendulum. put yourself into one of those situations you were 'lead with a gentle hand' and imagine the same situation with a little more brutal honesty and less 'patience' and be honest with in your comments.

would you have grown more swiftly?

would it have hurt more? most assuredly. but would your growth have been greater? could you have reached a new level of growth in days, weeks or months, instead of weeks, months or years?

nothing

i really don't have anything to say lately...

i've been reading some good books, like:

rest of God-mark buchanan

secondhand Jesus-glenn packiam

question behind the question-john g. miller

re:skimming/reading:

made to stick

pursuit of God

21 irrefutable laws of leadership