Rewind

It's a day late, so I'll try to keep it from being a dollar short, here are some things to get caught up on...

• Sunday. Chris Neff brought it. I started giving him a hard time yesterday because if he keeps speaking like that, and people keep complimenting him they way they did, he's gonna get a big head. Just kidding. He rocked it. As did the band, and the church. We well surpassed our goal of 150 boxes of Mac and Cheese, collecting over 200 boxes for our Thanksgiving project. And we had our highest attendance since Easter. That makes 3 out of the last 4 weeks that we can make that statement.
• Youth. The last couple weeks have seen diverse services in our student ministry. Two weeks ago, the message and content of the youth service was heavy as was the result. This past week was exactly the opposite, with a ton of energy and excitement. The neat thing about this past week's youth service was that one of the kids who most would have thought would be the last person to do such a thing stood up and read a poem and explained how much the previous week's message meant to him. And we continued the upward trend (or at least matched our previous week's total).
• Group. I love our (unofficial) group. The plan was to begin a college-aged group when we moved over, but haven't been able to move into a house that can allow for that to happen. Yet, it still unofficially happen. And each week it's diverse and different. This week started deep with a biblical discussion on some sensitive issues. By the end of the night, we were experimenting with seeing if the Diet Coke and Mentos thing worked in people's mouths. Then a couple of our more brave group-ies put the Diet Coke and Mentos together in a Neti-Pot made famous in a previous post, and tried to allow it to go through their nose. Interesting. Since someone ( I won't mention names :) ) hadn't heard of the DC and Mentos deal, here's a video...

• Still to Come. This Sunday is going to be HUGE. In more ways than one. Seriously, if you can find a way to be there, do it!
• Tidbits. The Bucs won (which the Swami predicted), and in doing so, they made a strong case for bringing back the creamsicle uniforms. Seriously, no one goes retro like the Bucs. And Freeman looked good. The Gators won. Again. The SEC Championship is now set and it's Florida v. Bama. Now will both teams be undefeated? That soccer girl? She deserves to be suspended for this season. And probably next. And if you wanna see an hysterical clip, check this out. Dude makes one of the cleanest open-field tackles. Wraps the guy up, brings him down. Only one problem, it was his teammate.

batman-u

In case you missed this one...the Spurs and Kings were playing a b-ball game Saturday night (which happened to be Halloween). Someone had the bright idea to let a bat loose in the arena. The game had been stopped earlier as the bat swung low towards the arena floor and interrupted the action. The staff couldn't corral the bat with nets, towels, etc... but later on as the bat tried to interrupt again, he messed with the wrong person, the Spurs' Manu Ginobli.

(Merge) Rewind

Things are going really well at RPC. We've had some exciting meetings over the past couple weeks as we look at space issues and begin to plan and pray for the future. Church this week was hot, literally as we finished up week 3 of Vintage. Gabe and the band got things started with La Bamba, and shortened the set because of AC issues. Timm was solid in talking about lordship. And we had probably the most fun making this week's bumper video, which you can check out here. No word on the house yet, and my hearing isn't all that much better. But this post is gonna give me a chance to catch everyone up on where Merge is at. Yesterday marked the completion of our third month at RPC, so it's time to take a little assessment of just how far things have come. So here goes...

Merge- Merge is the name given to our overall student ministry and also to the philosophy behind our Wednesday night youth service. Our goal is to create an environment where unchurched students merge with students involved in our student ministry. The Wednesday night experience is CRAZY. It's high energy and loud, and should be a place unchurched students love to attend. The cool thing about Merge as we've gotten started is that we've been meeting on Wednesday nights for about a month and a half, and we've already seen the attendance double. It's increased almost every week, and this past week (including leaders) we had 46 people packed into the portable. That's exactly double the initial group of 23. This past week was a little more serious as we dealt with a tough topic of moving from hopelessness to hope. I recounted the most difficult experience I've ever had in ministry and how despite the seemingly hopeless situation, God's hope continued to shine through.

eMerge- Students need a large group environment like Merge to be excited and to invite their unchurched friends to, but they also need a small group environment to grow. We've entitled that environment eMerge, as it's our goal that students emerge from group with a greater understanding of what it is we're trying to do, and where it is we're trying to go. As Merge has grown, we've seen healthy growth in eMerge, especially in the high school group that meets on Monday nights. It's our goal to have 60-70% of the students who come to Merge get plugged into eMerge to connect and grow. I'm going to mention leaders later, but I can't tell ya how essential it has been to have Chris Weatherly leading the small group experience for us.

subMerge- Our student leadership team is affectionately dubbed subMerge because what they do under the surface has huge ramifications for everyone involved. The leadership team has just started, but we had our first meeting this week, and it was exciting for the students to already begin the accept the responsibility of student leadership. We talked about their need to be part of the process of connecting students who might visit on a Merge night to get plugged into the other aspects of the student ministry. subMerge is going to take some time to get "there," but I'm excited about the prospects of leadership.

YTBN Merge Band- One of the tough parts of starting a student ministry basically from scratch is that we all want to move in fast forward, to have everything at once. One of the things we've been talking about is the need to build a broad foundation to start and to not try to build too tall too quickly. But we have a LOT of students excited about starting up the "yet-to-be-named" Merge Band (which ironically might end up being the name). Their excitement is palpable, and they've already got their first taste of being on stage.

Leaders- I learned my first year in student ministry that for a youth group to achieve all it's capable of achieving, it's paramount for me as leader to invest in developing more leaders. Leaders only have so much time and can only develop a limited number of meaningful relationships. It's pivotal to develop leaders who can help the group grow exponentially. At RPC, we have the most diverse group of leaders I've ever worked with. Every week, Beth, Chris, Megan, Kaydee, Austin, James, Wade, Kyle, David and Logan all pour their heart into what we do in student ministry. I'm gonna write a blog in the coming months on them, just cause they deserve it.

So there's a brief rundown of where we're at so far in laying the foundation of this new student ministry. If you know any middle or high school students in the Winter Haven/Auburndale area, let them know about the new Merge Student Ministries. And if you have any questions, hit me up...

FYI

In case you missed it, Timm did a series of posts last week on the vision behind RPC. Check them out here, here, and here. Great stuff, and some things to chew on as we prepare for the coming weeks and months.

Rewind

It's hard to imagine, but another week has come and gone. This week's rewind is full of a plethora of random items...

Church- Week 2 of Vintage was every bit as hot as week 1. Sure, we didn't have the '68 Camaro out front, but we did pull out a classic gospel tune. Chris W. was hilarious as host, and Timm nailed the message. On top of that, we had baptism for the second week in a row. Because Chris was hosting, I got the chance to sit in with our eMerge middle school small group, and loved it. Wins all around.

Merge- Speaking of student ministry, I'm amazed by how much we continue to grow. Almost every week since we've started (all but one), we've seen the number of students increase. But more important than that are the discussions and growth that seems to be taking place. I mentioned a verse in passing Wednesday night, and within minutes of getting home, I saw one of the students had tweeted the verse. Awesome. In addition, this week we also had the debut of the Yet-to-be-Named Merge Band (which might actually be their name YTBN Merge Band).

Sickness- Pretty much since we came home from Catalyst/S@NP, I've been a little sick. It started as a cold which quickly went away. But I was a little too quick to sing the praises of Zicam as a little congestion remained. And remained. Finally, Friday morning I woke up with an earache, which went away as well, but the congestion gave me a bad headache Saturday night and even last night. I mean like ready-to-scream headache. So Beth saw this infomercial...and figured I'd should try this:

That was freaky. Our college group loved me enough to actually tape me trying this experiment out. Now mind you, they were all in the bathroom watching as I tried this. And laughing. So salt, in one nose and out the other, with people all around you laughing is not a good thing. My wife loved me enough to not just tape it, but to post it on her blog. So if you want to see it, you'll have to go there. But be prepared, if you're squeamish, you might want to skip out on it.

Gators- We're undefeated, and again #1 in the country. In the end that's all that matters. The last couple weeks have not been pretty. And I'll be the first to admit we've benefitted from a few calls. However, I do not think there is a conspiracy. Still, if we're gonna run the table and stay undefeated, we have some room for improvement.

Picnic- We had a chance to stop in Saturday afternoon as our former church was celebrating their 30th anniversary this weekend. They had a big picnic on Saturday, and I was privileged to be one of two former pastors to be their (with family). We had a good time. Ate. Played football. And just enjoyed some great conversations.

Busy Week- Seriously, there's no time to be sick this week. As we have something just about every night. We were even able to score some free tickets to Friday night's UFL football game/Switchfoot concert at the Trop. Probably good I didn't stay up last night to catch the webcast of the U2 concert at the Rose Bowl. Though I'm hearing good things about what was seen.

Peace.

Rewind

Confession time...

It's been a while since I've actually been checking out blogs/facebook. Sure I've popped in from time to time to update (mostly updating facebook via twitter). But things have been so busy in getting things started at RPC that I haven't been able to keep up with much social networking-type stuff. My blog reading has especially suffered. I just went into my google reader for the first time in a while, and I think I'm down to 239 posts to catch up on. Like Timm said Sunday, "it's gonna take me 9 hours to catch up". Different concept. But still.

So it's time to get you caught up on more than just the set re-design. Then it's time for me to get caught up. Some of which has already started to happen. So here we go with a little rewind action.

Friday Day- Beth and I got a little chance to sleep in Friday morning (taking turns taking the kids to school), which was needed as I was trying to recover from a cold that hit earlier in the week. We then spent the afternoon running errands and getting some props for the work day set up on Saturday.

Friday Night- We had some down time in anticipation of the weekend. We travelled over to a fall festival taking place at my mom's church in Pinellas County. Great night. Until Hamee went on whatever it is they used to call the Gravitron. Poor kid could ride any ride there except that one. We were seeing his dinner for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, we didn't see any wild boar. He wouldn't show up near the carnival for a couple of nights. But on a high note, it was great to find out that one of our former students (who works for PPPD) was one of the officers that pulled a gun on the beast. Way to go Shea. I could make a joke about pigs shooting pigs, but I'll refrain.

Saturday- All that was detailed in the set redesign in my previous post was only possible due to a group of about 12 volunteers who came in (with a lot of energy and very little sleep) Saturday morning to help with the designing. It was a great time as we were feeding off of each other creatively, coming up with more ideas as the day wore on. Kyle had set a goal of being done by 3:20 to catch the Gators kickoff. We met the goal, no thanks to the aforementioned, who showed up literally as we cleaned out the last paint brush.

Saturday Night- After catching the Gators game, we reconvened (ok most were already there for the game) Saturday night to shoot the video that was to play as the "bumper video Sunday am". We even hired out a couple of voice actors to play the parts. They came cheaply. If Jamison ever loads that video up, I'll post it as well. This was the 2nd late, late night in a row (though not quite the 2am late night from Friday).

Sunday- Rocked. We already detailed most of the experience, but if you haven't seen the video of the band, take time to go check it. Kenneth getting baptized was so cool. Post-service, we also shot some video which we're going to use coming up in the future.

Sunday Night- I love our group-which-isn't-even-officially-a-group-yet. We started meeting unofficially to talk about what we want to see happen. And we loved meeting so much, we just kept doing it. Sunday night was a great night, and I love the cohesiveness of the group, even those who are just starting to come. But by 11:30, I was ready to kick everyone out.

Blog Stuff- I've added some newbies to the blogroll. I should have done this before, but as I stated earlier, I've not been around a whole lot other than for the quick post. So in the linked up section, Jamison (aka the blog thief) and Megan are now appearing. Let me know if there's anyone else I need to add! And a side note about the linked up section, the section rotates by the most recent blog updates, so whoever's first on the list is the person who most recently blogged. Just saying.

Peace. For Now.

Vintage Weekend- Behind the Scenes

Yesterday morning, we kicked off the new series Vintage. At RPC, much of what we do would be deemed "non-traditional" (to put it lightly). However, there are some vintage things that will never go out of style at our church. This is that series. To pull it off, we wanted to produce something that would fit with our church philosophy (to be a church unchurched people love to attend).

Really, I'm thankful to have such a committed group of volunteers who sacrifice time and talent to allow us to truly put together a quality launch of the new service. But for something like that to work, it took much time and planning.

The concept was launched months ago, in a content meeting where Timm introduced the series concept. He had seen that Next Level Church in Ft. Myers had done a Vintage series, so I contacted them to see if we could use some of their graphics and videos in promoting the series. They were tremendous in not only giving us complete access to everything they had produced, but they also allowed us to come pick up signs, banners, and the cardboard cut-outs.

At the same time that was happening, the band was beginning to get some ideas for some Vintage songs they could use to kick off the series.

In the days leading up to the series, we were able to finish painting the rest of the back wall black. We were able to purchase and hang records from the ceiling in our worship center. We mounted a 26-foot banner outside promoting the Vintage series. We secured a '68 Camaro in show quality condition that we had outside the front door of the church Sunday morning.

As people entered Sunday morning, they were greeted by a host (Elvis) and two new additions to the fresh start table (Marilyn and James Dean). We also had our own DJ (Wade) mixing in some classic songs, leading up to the intro to the service.

And the band rocked it.

They started off with R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and Rebecca (along with the rest of the band) nailed it.

The I had the opportunity to host. Only to be interrupted by Chris Weatherly's shenanigans. Pretty funny stuff. Even pulled in a game where we called some volunteers up to the stage to name the vintage TV show that went along with the theme songs we played. How about some Sanford and Sons, Gilligan Island, and All in the Family?

Then Timm kicked off the series by looking at how Scripture will never go out of style. The "heralding" of the Word will continue to be the very purpose behind what we do. Everything we did on Sunday morning was paving the way for that message. And everybody seemed pretty pumped.

And we've only just begun. Wait 'til next week.