Our Friday project

I cannot say I had as much "fun" as my wife claims, but it was a good day. Better yet, it got completed. I am not so good at the drawn out projects.

What hurts?

When I was about 12-13 I fell off my bike and hurt my arm. My mom said it was probably a sprain. Being that we didn’t have insurance she thought it best to wait a few days to see if it got any better. It didn’t get better, it hurt really bad all the time. Mom took me to the doctor and it turns out I had a hairline crack. They set it (ouch) and casted it up. Everything was fine.

Another time I was riding my skateboard (it was a form of transportation back then) and hit a rock, all was well because I used my face as a break! I busted 3 of my front teeth out, ripped open my chin and had a rather nice “racing stripe” down the middle of my face. The Doctor pushed my teeth back into their socket BEFORE he put any Novocain in my mouth. WOW that hurt.

My point? No am not bragging about my scars, no I didn’t learn any life changing lessons from them. My point is the pain. These two things are probably the worst accidents that happened to me. And while they both had their share of pain, neither are the first to come to mind when someone ask me what has hurt me the most. When I think about my worst pains, I ALWAYS think about the times I was hurt by something somebody SAID. Not a cut, not stitches, not broken bones but WORDS. WORDS can hurt worst than anything I can think of. Why? Because, for most of us, physical pain goes away, WORDS linger in our head for years.

I think of all the times somebody said something mean, cruel or discouraging to me and it Burns, I had rather break another bone. I can remember the event, the setting and what they said like it was yesterday, and I have a terrible memory! Then I think of the things that I HAVE SAID, that may have hurt someone else. I’ll bet I have verbally hurt more people than I have been verbally hurt by others! I say a lot of dumb stuff in the name of humor (or attempted humor). Just this past week I opened my mouth and garbage came out. As soon as I said it, I knew how wrong it was. I thought about every way possible that my statement could have been taken. And EVERY WAY was painful. I had to eat some humble pie and apologize. I am not good at that at all. But I was and am sorry for my foolishness.

James takes about the power of the tongue and the damage it can do. I have seen a lot of really bad stuff in movies but I have heard worst in them than I have seen. Now, I know what you are thinking, “I have seen people tortured and murdered in movies!”. Yes we both have but I have hear people tortured for years verbally. Have you ever heard a “hate phrase”? Movies are full of them, and so are we. Sure ok, but what about murder? I do believe that words can kill. They can discourage someone about God that they will never turn to Him...and perish forever. I have see a persons talents insulted to the point that they NEVER use those gifts again. Thus, that part of that person is murdered. The Bible tells us that If we hate our brother, we are murderers.

There is power in laughter and a lot of US try to make people laugh. Unfortunately, it usually comes at some else expense. Now I can take a joke, but someone else may not take a joke very well. Or you may hit a nerve that you didn’t know about. So if we are together, and you feel the need to joke, joke me before you joke someone you may truly hurt.

Here is a list of things you can freely joke about me:
My hair, my sports ability (or lack there of), my taste in music (80’s rule!), my love for the Ford Pinto, my age, my size, my messy office, my computers (but you will lose) and my N.C. Roots.

Here is a list you cannot and should not joke about me:
My Wife, my tools, my skating (you WILL get owned out on the floor), my mom, my honesty, my loyalty or my intelligence (or lack of). These things are sensitive to me.


In closing: never, ever joke someone you really don’t like. I see this allot with the teens. And kids are getting hurt.

Cause you wanted to know

Attendance 03/23/08 was 210 and offering was $5219.00
13 1st time guest and 8 second timers :)

Attendance 03/16/08 was 163 and offering was $3862.23
11 1st time guest!
Attendance 03/09/08 was 140 and offering was $2694.31
Attendance 03/02/08 was 190 and offering was $7505.75
Attendance 02/24/08 was 199 and offering was $3223.10
Attendance 02/17/08 was 182 and offering was $3452.76
Attendance 02/10/08 was 205 and offering was $2702.00
Attendance 02/03/08 was 190 and offering was $7186.00
Attendance 01/28/08 was 163 and offering was $5461.50
Attendance 01/20/08 was 160 and offering was $2110.88
Attendance 01/13/08 was 206 and offering was $2229.00
Attendance 01/06/08 was 162 and offering was $4096.69
Attendance 12/30/07 was 156 and offering was $5610.70
Attendance 12/23/07 was 145 and offering was $3553.00
Attendance 12/16/07 was 132 and offering was $3213.00
Attendance 12/09/07 was 166 and offering was $3522.00
Attendance 12/02/07 was 153 and offering was $3879.00
Attendance 11/25/07 was 124 and offering was $1215.00
Attendance 11/18/07 was 189 and offering was $3906.00
Attendance 11/11/07 was 169 and offering was $2613.00
Attendance 11/04/07 was 145 and offering was $3459.70
Attendance 10/28/07 was 166 and offering was $2234.00
Attendance 10/21/07 was 126 and offering was $1295.00
Attendance 10/14/07 was 95 and offering was $1015.00
Attendance 10/07/07 was 156 and offering was $4523.07
Attendance 9/30/07 was 140 and offering was $2951.06
Attendance 9/23/07 was 159 and offering was $1612.00
Attendance 9/17/07 was 177 and offering was $4547.73
Attendance 9/09/07 was 163 and offering was $1822.30
Attendance 9/02/07 was 138 and offering was $3394.45
Attendance 8/26/07 was 199 and offering was $4596.00
Attendance 8/19/07 was 127 and offering was $2747.46
Attendance 8/12/07 was 132 and offering was $3945.00
Attendance 8/05/07 was 107 and offering was $2971.71
Attendance 7/29/07 was 132 and offering was $1998.00
Attendance 7/22/07 was 137 and offering was $2557.82

pictures to go

Set-up this week
Crosslink this week Our youth Group
The Rock this week
Our Children's Church

I love my job! But we miss a lot of cool pictures. Anyone want to help Craig take pictures for us?

Thank you ALL

Here is a list of those who rocked out our setup this week! you guys and gals are great.
Thank YOU THANK You, THANK YOU!

non staff:
Jon Rennie
the Ellingswoth clan
The Wallace clan
The Wessels
Mike Collier
Frank Lodeserto
Ben Naggatz
Darayl Spencer (Hasn't even come to our church and helped set=up!)
Benji Taylor (he even went up a ladder)
Marcus Barefield
Dre' Gregory
The Stricklands
Dian Alberts
Ryan Morris

Staff
Cannons (hey thats me!)
Davey
Jason
BradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradROCKSBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradRocksBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradBradROCKS
Thanks Brad, you ROCK!

I am sorry we were not better prepared to get all you guys and gals on task but we are not used to THAT much help. We will be better prepared in the future.

Easter rantings / my longest blog EVER!!!

Disclaimer, don’t feel bad about anything you did for Easter regardless of what you read below. This is just my thoughts and PERSONAL conviction for this Easter, I may feel different next year!
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Last week at Crosslink (our youth group) decided that they wanted to meet Easter night for youth group. I was surprised but pleased. I figured they would be out of town with family and stuff like that. We have been having about 22 teens showing up on regular nights. Like I said, I was thrilled that they didn’t want youth cancelled! The last time we cancelled Crosslink, Shannon (one of our teens) highjacked the entire youth group and had them come over to her house. These kids will meet with or without us. So when we were presented with an opportunity to continue to minister to them, we jumped on it. Hindsight, I found myself second guessing meeting on a holiday. (Thus the reason for this blog to myself) But that didn’t last long.
You see Easter is a time “traditionally” that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. We do this by going to Church and hearing “the Good News” (great job on that Jason!!!) then we all gather with our families and eat ham (hmmm, how did that happen? (for you OT junkies)). That takes about 4 hours...what now? We hang around digesting, Watch some sports or parades on tv, the kids play in the yard we reheat the ham for dinner and all go home. SOME of us get baskets with eggs and candy and SOME of us do an egg hunt. Yeah, I know these things have some pagan roots, we will get to that later. Anyway, How do we really Honor God’s greatest gift and miracle this way?
Jason talked this Easter service about the Transformation rather than the Information. For the youth we talked about the Acts rather than just the Facts. How does this tie in to us having youth on Easter evening? I’m glad I asked. I feel we better celebrate this wonderful event of Jesus death, burial and resurrection buy actually doing something Jesus told us to do...Love others, sure your family is “others” but I don’t think this is what He meant. Easter is a Christian thing (Sorry non christians, Its ours get over it) And IF you have a Christian family THAT IS AWESOME, we should all pray for that. But I didn’t have this growing up. And a lot of our teens don’t have this now. Get ready, here it comes...I was, as a kid, bored out of my mind most Easter Sundays and even some Christmas evenings! There I said it! The stores and malls are closed and my friends were “stuck” at home with their families and couldn’t hang out with me. So this Sunday night we had an opportunity to honor Gods gift by getting together with others, some believers, some not. And talk about what Jesus did for us, discuss how to apply it in everyday life and even have some fun hunting for some eggs (hang in there, I will get to the egg thing in a few!). We normally have 22 teens as I stated above, Easter night we still had 17 teens and two of them brought friends! This represented 17 kids that wanted to be here, 17 that were not traveling to families in other towns, 17 that knew we were going to talk about Facts and challenge them to Transform. And they still came. I CANNOT feel bad about that. A lot of our teens have what I call “seeker” families. They are not full on Christian families (yet), so Easter has a totally different meaning to them. But through Crosslink, we can get the Good News into those teens and into those homes.

Now on to the Eggs! (sorry in advance!)
We choose our battles don’t we? How so? Well, we set rules for what is acceptable and what isn’t. I will venture to “rabbit” trail for a few: Let’s take witchcraft and magic, we as good Christian families know better than to take our kids to Harry Potter movies, even though he uses his witchcraft for good, its still witchcraft. Good call? What about Narnia? We good Christian families were first in line. Sure there is, a subtle, gospel parallel there but Jesus isn’t mentioned and since the movie is highly fantasy based, the message is not very applicable. The movie is full of unnatural creations, witchcraft and sorcery. Even the good guys used some magic (the healing potion), but they used it for good, didn’t they? Humm. I am not saying that either movie is good or bad BUT if we didn’t know that C.S. Lewis was a Christian, how would we look at the Narnia movie? Be honest now. After all there are tons of movies with “Jesus” like sacrifices and even resurrections but we don’t rush to see them.

Now to the eggs, Sure I can show you some pagan roots, I can also show you a few Christian roots. I don’t think anybody today thinks about Eostre, Bede or Ostara (look them up) while hiding or looking for easter eggs. We are not doing it to honor these (loosely) tied in pagans and fabricated goddess’. If you find problems with hiding and hunting Easter eggs, you should (at your own conviction) avoid Cadbury Eggs, Malted eggs, marshmallow eggs even peeps and chocolate bunnies are all kinda off limits not to mention the Christmas tree (oh yeah, you may want to find new names for the days of the week!). I personally don’t find these things to be evil, I also don’t find them to be good. It is the thoughts and actions of people that are evil or good. The (if any) pagan roots for these things are long lost. The pagan god is NOT being honored any more than God is honored by an unbeliever wearing a cross. God uses symbols in the Bible, “Jesus like a sheep to the slaughter”, yet even the pagans slaughtered sheep and even sacrificed them to false gods. Does this make sheep and the comparison or symbol wrong, Not in my humble opinion. We chose our battles. Weigh your heart then take it to your knees and let God sort out the chaft.

Myself included, we spend to much time with our family and not enough time with the people that Jesus asked us to go to. Myself included, we help our family and Christian friends way more than we help the ones Jesus asked us to help. Myself included, we preach too much to the choir and not enough to the lost people of this world. So how would Jesus ask us to celebrate his birth, his death and his resurrection?

If you find it difficult to discern what is acceptable and what is not, I ask you to do what I do:
Look it up, the Bible has a ton of info on allot of issues. Google it if you have to!
Define worship and ask if yourself if you are worshiping something other than God
Try to do without it. Can you go one Christmas without a tree? No, ask yourself why? Then see #2.
Most important: talk to God about it. Spend time on your knees and ask for wisdom.

In the words of Forest Gump “Thats all I got to say about that!”

WOW, What a great Easter service!

Ok, thanks for those of you who prayed me through today! Church ROCKED! I had a great time, we had a bunch of guest and EVERYTHING went perfect.

Here are a few pictures from our children’s service. We used a little cute white lamb (stuffed, sorry Valerie but we couldn’t find a real lamb :( ), passed it around for the kids to “mark” with red, black, blue and brown Sharpie’s. They were told to think of something that they did wrong as they marked the lamb. I used Isaiah 53:5 (look it up) to show them how Jesus paid the price. Then we used a cutout of Jesus to show that ONLY HE could do what he did. And that we don’t measure up. We don’t fit the mold, but we should try hard to be like Jesus. I really think the kids got it. I even had a rob and cloak (any of you Kings Ave peeps recognize that?) for them to wear to show it isn’t about looking but acting like Jesus. More pictures here!







Sheila (I so love her!) had a great idea to use a polaroid to take pictures of the kids in the mold, date them and give them each their picture to take home. The parents seemed to really like it. I know it’s not a craft but it’s as close as this Children's pastor gets to one! Also, she had the idea last night so she hit 4 different stores THIS MORNING before church looking for instant film for her prehistoric camera.

poop week!

just plain poopie! Everything that could "tick" me off...did! Nothing big, just little stuff. When people annoyed me, I just ran with it instead of using it as an opportunity to minister to them. So it is NOW Easter Sunday and we are about 3 hours from service time. I spent some time in prayer and will be spending some more before church starts. I am NOT getting in front of those kids with this attitude! So keep me in your prayers, ask for visitors and ONLY God's words to get through Jason and myself today, hey while your praying, ask that last one for every day, every word!

Anyway, I will post pictures from church today...It will be great, how do I know that? Cause I prayed for it and you prayed for it!

This week

For you who just cant wait, here is a teaser for this Sunday's set. It isn't done but very close.


And here is what we are doing in the Rock (children's church...keep up!) The kids will step up and try to fill in Jesus. My attempt is to show them that only he can do what he came to do, we cannot. Also show them that without Jesus their is a hole, a void, something missing.

Bout time!

So Jason, our pastor, went out of town for a seminar this week. Big mistake! That puts me at the helm. So, since before we launched over 2 years ago, we have been battling sound issues during service. Things like poor quality, feedback, buzzing and that works. Well our first set of speakers we got were pretty cheap. As a matter of fact, I have seen cars on the street with bigger speakers in the back window. Then we found a "good deal" on a small set of floor monitors that we could use for house speakers. That was a step up but not great. Then one of our partners loaned us a set of powered JBL's and wow, what a difference. But they were not ours. Next a guy loaned us a bigger set of JBL's still a good move in the right direction. But we can do better...and we did. While Jason was away playing, we ordered some REAL speakers that we should have had since day one. We are not getting bigger speakers to make it louder, it's actually opposite. Higher quality will equal less volume and more clarity. Please don't think this was an impulse buy. We were professionally advised that this was a good choice. We got a few other things that should make this Easter service awesome sounding. Here is what we got: QSC Hpr153i x2 (3 way mains), QSC Hpr181i x 2 (base baby!!!), DBX166xl to compress highs (keep loud things down) and Ashly GQX3102 (equalizer 31 band). To top it off, the sound reps told us how to set it up and Davey pulled a sound tech out of his hat for this Sunday morning. I am telling you, I am stoked! Too bad I will not even be in there :(

Did you hear that?

Hear God
Have you ever tried to hear God speak to you? Have you ever been upset or disappointed that you don’t hear God speaking to you? Yeah, me too. Awhile back I read this passage in 1 Kings 19:

11 The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." 
      Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. 
      Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

God was not in the wind, God was not in the earthquake, and God was not in the fire, But after all this, came a “gentle whisper” and Elijah heard it. And Elijah responded by covering his face. Ok I think we are all a little like Elijah here. God was moving in his life but he let other things distract him. God was speaking to him but he couldn’t distinguish God voice. After all, who told Elijah to “Go out and stand on the mountain”? God! If God tells you to stand on the mountain...THEN DO IT, don’t go in a cave! (he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave). You see God was talking and instructing him the whole time, even before the storm, earthquake, fire and even before the gentle whisper. We look for things we already have. God is talking to you. He has put his word in your heart and he has put it in your hand (the Bible). sometimes I think we can get caught up in looking for deeper meaning or hidden messages. When God just wants us to take it for face value. What he says to us IS enough.

If and when you feel you are not getting messages from God or hearing his voice, here are a few questions you can ask yourself:
If I don’t hear God, what DO i hear?
What are the distractions in my life that cloud or muffle Gods voice?
Do I listen enough to even recognize and understand Gods voice?
Do I know his language?
Has God already spoken to me about something that I don’t want to do?
Is he waiting on me to take the next step?
If and when I hear from God, will I obey?
God didn’t walk with us on the garden not to be heard (Gen 3:8)
God didn’t put his word in our heart not to be heard (Deut 30:14)
God didn’t give us 66 books not to be heard (2 Timothy 3:16)
God didn’t send us his Holy Spirit not to be heard (Mark 13:11,Luke 12:12)
It seems to me that God has made a lot of effort, to be heard! So why are we trying so hard to hear what is all around us? Stop looking volume and you will hear the clarity.

Unleash, the Aftermath

If you have been following my Blog then you know something about the Unleash conference we went to BUT I am sure you are still a little in the dark. So here is the breakdown. There is an eight year old church near Greenville South Carolina that is bumping 6000 people on Sundays. This is awesome due to the fact that they are not in a major metropolitan area. They actually have less people that we have in the Greenville area. About 3 times more people in fact. New Spring church loved what God was/is doing in their town church and wanted to share it with others. Intro Unleash, a conference on church growth by reaching people for Christ. They are indeed reaching people for Jesus and it was a thrill to see how they go about ministry.
I promised you some “take home” from this conference so here you go:

1] I, Claude Cannon, am useless to Discovery Church. So is Jason Ebeling, Davey Kolk, Randy, Brad, Sheila, Lora, Kim, Derek...everyone serving here are useless to Gods kingdom UNTIL we lay down OUR lives and take on HIS LIFE. You see, I am a sinful, prideful fool that wants to do things to impress people so they will like me (we all are). But what God needs is for me to lay all that down and work ,my best, for Him. Not for me.

2] the more we think we “got it figured out”, the less we rely on God. He is the great “I AM” and too often we try to take on that title ourselves. Here are some examples: “I am” going to work on this problem! “I am” doing my best! “I am” only one person! “I am” providing for my family! “I am” going to kick this bad habit. You see how easy it is to take the title “I Am” from God? Here is how the above statements should play out: “I am” trusting God to help me with this problem! “I am” doing the best I can with the gifts God has given me! “I am” part of Gods family! God is allowing me a paying job and puts food on my table! With Gods help, I can kick this habit.

3] Sometimes we are working to hard to recognize and celebrate people coming to Jesus. We get sidetracked buy the task and forget about the vision and the big commission. Think about the last time you helped with VBS, how much time was spent on decorating? How much on prayer? Yeap that so! This year when you are looking for volunteers make sure you ask for a prayer team. How easy is it for us to get off the trail on goose chases?

4] we often celebrate the wrong things. We are thrilled a lot of people showed up but miss that one that moved a little closer to God that day. We measure success by our efforts and not His outcome.

5] Pastors, your sheep WANT to leave. you cannot make them all happy and that is NOT what we are called to do. We are called to lead them. Sometimes this will take them where they do NOT want to go. If you open the gate in a field of sheep...they will leave. No matter how good a shepherd is, the sheep want to do what THEY want to do and not what the shepherd wants them to do. We just need to help them realize there is something better for them on the right side of the fence.


Thats all for now, I have more but I am losing my short attention spanners, hey Jim, I miss you...just kidding bro!

Unleash :( all done till next year!

I think we can all 5 say it was awsome! I know that I got a ton of take homes and I don't know if I should be excited or intemidated by the work that we need to do.

My mind is fried so I will give you all some of the take homes after I get to a computer.

Unleash last session starting in 1 min

I am pumped!!!!! B back soon

Unleash break away session 2

Sheila traded with me on this on. She is doing volunteers and I am doing the youth. We are starting in a few minutes so pray they give us some tools to use over the next hour. Later.

Unleash too cool

I am now on a computer they have set up to check emails and blog and junk. There are about 15 computers in here and most are being used. One by Sheila so jump over to her blog and see what she is saying. So the deal with my laptop seems to be the charger or battery and not the unit itself, I will check it out using another battery tonight. Please pray for my Mac!!!!

So there are churches here that have larger staff than we have congregation! One church has 50 staff people here at this conference.

New Spring church has a whoppin' 1200 kids in children church! They do a great job and focus on Sunday being GAME DAY. All of their efforts go into prepin for it. So they are NOT doing Awana or RA & GA's or anything like that.

Unleash oh no, my laptop battery will not take a charge!!!

I am by a plug that works but my laptop isnt charging and the battery is dead and gone. For now I will continue to blog via my phone. So expect some grammar issues.

Unleash I'm in thier nursery room

it is truly amazing. It is colorful and eye catching BUT as I get up close it just paint and home made props but they come together nice.My point, it looks good and better than it actually is. I so want to argue that "they have a building" BUT they have only been in here for 2 years! Before that they were PORTABLE! It will take some investing (time and $) but it will be worth it to incorporate some more themed visuals into our atmosphere.

BTW, this room is packed, It is mostly ladies but their are a few other real men who are not afraid of kids :)

Unleash 1 main session was/is awsome!!!

It was a great message and I pray we can apply it! We will buy the DVD if they have it and you guys need to check it out! Great conference! Break time.
Just take a lok at Jason and Sheila...

Unleash 5 minutes!!!!!

Unleased is starting!!!!! Laptop is dead, so my blogs will be from my phone. Sorry. The greaters were amazing! Big smiles and waving to us as they pointed to parking. Hey check it, they had candy bars free in the lobby... I got one. :)

1 min till launch be back soon!

Unleash 280 miles in...

we just got done with dinner just south of Charlotte. We ate at a Japanese steakhouse. It as great But janelle found a spider on our light so davey came to the rescue by knocking it into the ginger sauce. Janelle had about a gallon of diet coke so now she is wound up and ratteling a mile a minute! Here is her plate before and afrer she dove in, don't it look yummy? Well we have 113 miles to go so I am out for now.

Unleash 62 miles in and...

ok, so we stopped at the new Sheets on Memorial. We got gas and snacks, Sheila asked Jason if wanted anything. He said to get him a bag of Funyuns but all she found was the large bag (8 servings). Not wanting to upset our pastor she got them. 60 miles later the bag is empty and he offered none to us! He ate the whole bag! We figured it was about 1200 caleries!!! So he only has 800 left for the day. I will get you all some pictures when I find some wifi.

Off to learn some church stuff..Unleash

Jason, Davey, Janelle, Sheila and myself are headed to Unleashed near Greenville SOUTH Carolina today. We will be back Friday afternoon. I think we are all looking forward to the conference tho I am not looking forward to the ride. 6 hours with Davey is just plain hazardous.

I will try to update you from my phone over the next few days. Trips with jason ALWAYs provide good blog material!!!

Later gator

Sorry bout the poor quality :( camera phone ya-know!

um-k, this is what we do at youth-group (aka Crosslink). Here we have Shannon and Izzy showing us their claim to fame.

cause you wanted it

Here are our attendance numbers:
Attendance 03/09/08 was 140 and offering was $2694.31
yeah, yeah, spring break!!!
Attendance 03/02/08 was 190 and offering was $7505.75
Attendance 02/24/08 was 199 and offering was $3223.10
Attendance 02/17/08 was 182 and offering was $3452.76
Attendance 02/10/08 was 205 and offering was $2702.00
Attendance 02/03/08 was 190 and offering was $7186.00
Attendance 01/28/08 was 163 and offering was $5461.50
Attendance 01/20/08 was 160 and offering was $2110.88
Attendance 01/13/08 was 206 and offering was $2229.00
Attendance 01/06/08 was 162 and offering was $4096.69
Attendance 12/30/07 was 156 and offering was $5610.70
Attendance 12/23/07 was 145 and offering was $3553.00
Attendance 12/16/07 was 132 and offering was $3213.00
Attendance 12/09/07 was 166 and offering was $3522.00
Attendance 12/02/07 was 153 and offering was $3879.00
Attendance 11/25/07 was 124 and offering was $1215.00
Attendance 11/18/07 was 189 and offering was $3906.00
Attendance 11/11/07 was 169 and offering was $2613.00
Attendance 11/04/07 was 145 and offering was $3459.70
Attendance 10/28/07 was 166 and offering was $2234.00
Attendance 10/21/07 was 126 and offering was $1295.00
Attendance 10/14/07 was 95 and offering was $1015.00
Attendance 10/07/07 was 156 and offering was $4523.07
Attendance 9/30/07 was 140 and offering was $2951.06
Attendance 9/23/07 was 159 and offering was $1612.00
Attendance 9/17/07 was 177 and offering was $4547.73
Attendance 9/09/07 was 163 and offering was $1822.30
Attendance 9/02/07 was 138 and offering was $3394.45
Attendance 8/26/07 was 199 and offering was $4596.00
Attendance 8/19/07 was 127 and offering was $2747.46
Attendance 8/12/07 was 132 and offering was $3945.00
Attendance 8/05/07 was 107 and offering was $2971.71
Attendance 7/29/07 was 132 and offering was $1998.00
Attendance 7/22/07 was 137 and offering was $2557.82

The ManHug

Being a man and a christian we can encounter "man hugs" often. So I post this well informative documentary on it. So men, get a notepad and be ready to learn.

Br afraid, very afraid!

This may very well be one of the scariest things you have ever seen!!! This is so scary that I cannot even post the picture here so that some timid person could stumble upon it. Go here but be warned!!!



yeap, you guessed it...that IS my foot! We were watching the Wallace kids and they got the idea to paint my toenails...So I let them, tho I don't have a thing to wear that matches, the color suits me fine. If you have seen Shannon in the last week, you have probably seen this picture. It is being spread all over South Central High.

My feet are scary enough without polish on them. I pray that the image of my nasty toes haunts Shannon long into her life!!!

If it doesn't work out

If Pasturing a church turns out NOT to be for Jason, I think he has a future here:

I think, with his friendliness, he could do well selling soda's, gas and candy to customers. I can see it now: Greeters at the door, connection cards for every customer to fill out, emails and visits to first time guest...the works! And their motto already works: HA "Community Connection", I love it!!! Connecting people to Coca-Cola one person at a time :)

The best thing:

Here is what I hold most dear on this side of eternity. I blog about stuff and junk and all but this one is special to me. Sheila. She is my everything under my relationship with God. Sheila is and has been my best friend just about since I met her. She supports me so much it kinda defines who I am. I try a lot of things that most people would run out and pay someone to do. Sheila always encourages me when I attempt things. If I succeed, she tells me she is proud of what I did. But check this: When I fail (and I do!), she tells me she is proud of me for trying. Some of you think I am good with tools. When I met her I could put all the tools I owned in a single hand held toolbox. She supported my attempts to fix things and my collection is now so big it takes up a garage and a half! She fixes me coffee in the morns, she sets my clothes out when we are going somewhere, She puts the seat down when I leave it up. I cannot tell you all how lucky I am to have her at my side. She is more than 1/2 my value in anything I do. She is my suitable helper and I pray that I am hers. So, before it gets too mushy, Sheila, I LOVE YOU and here are some pics of my gal:





Hubba, Hubba, bubba, luv ya!!!

This Sunday!

Was as awesome as last Sunday!!!
We did week 2 of The Price Is Right and it went well. Here are some pic's and comments for you all to laugh at.

Our Game line-up was Cliffhanger and the Credit Card game.


Our contestants! Shanna, what are you looking at?


Show me the money, Here Jason showed us how much a $450 dry really cost us credit card users...$1150!!!



Ok, you guys need to ask Jason exactly what he said at this point in the service. Go ahead, ask him.



I am not gonna comment on this one, buy you can!

I thing the messages are really hitting home. and yes we are giving out some prizes but they are all thing to help people honor God with their money. This was not a message on giving but on not being a slave to your money.

They Frosted me!

I don't know why! I wasn't doing anything to them! I was minding my own business and they frosted me!

But I'm not mad, I really don't get mad. Even, thats what I get, right Val? Right Jas? Yeah, I will let this one simmer and when they (you know who you are) have forgotten, they are gonna get it :)


This happened at youth tonight. Kevin brought cupcakes and some of the teens though I would look good in blue. What a mess. The other side of my face was as bad. I battled them off for a few minutes and a few other teens tried to help but in the end, I got frosted. Its in my pores ears and hair. At least its the god stuff not that "healthy" junk some people put on cakes.

oh well, stayed tuned for my comments on this weeks message and I may post a video of it.