Sunday!

Today was great at church! Journey is the best, Pastor Jeff is awesome! We had STOMP practice after church and to be honest I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but OH MAN it was awesome! The students stepped up and did an incredible job! It is going to rock the house Wednesday night at the Diamond Daze festival! Tonight we had our 5th Sunday communion night at church and it was great! The Holy Spirit was moving and you could feel His awesome presence there! What a great night of worship and just being intimate with Christ! We had a fantastic time together! We then went to our new house and got the keys and garage door opener and all that stuff! We move in tomorrow, YES! We ares so excited to have our very own place, that is a real house! It is going to be great to finally get settled here in Sallisaw! We love it here and God is using us so much as we reach out to the community and serve our awesome church! I love life and more importantly JESUS!!!

Guys Night

Well, it's 4:30 in the morning and I am here at the guys night! We had an awesome night with almost 40 students here, praise God! The goal of the night was mostly to hang out and build relationships with the students. It's hard to get to know 80+ kids only on Wednesday nights when we have service. Tonight was great! We played all kinds of games and hooked up the video games to the big projectors and just had a fun time! The students here are very respectful and listen well. I figured at this point there is no sense in going to sleep since it would only be a few hours anyway. Some students are still playing but most went to sleep. I will wake them up at 7 to clean up, eat breakfast and pack up to leave by 9a.m. God is doing great things here, it is great to build trust and relationship with these students God entrusted us with!

Rockin' & Rollin'

Whew! We are going at it here! We had some meetings today with other pastors about all the community events we are planning, hosted the Chamber of Commerce lunch here @ Journey, and have youth tonight to do. Things are great and getting better! What great opportunities God has opened up in our community to be a light! The community is asking us to do stuff, we aren't even having to ask them, that is favor! God is opening up all kinds of doors to reach and bless our community here in Sallisaw! That is what the church is ALL about going beyond the 4 walls and reaching those who don't know Christ! I am so in love with my awesome Creator GOD! My prayer is that Journey and all the other churches in the community catch a fire in their Spirit for the power of God and the passion he has for us! I have tasted and seen that God is powerful and amazing, my prayer is that we get more of His presence so that those who have never tasted God's presence get a glimpse of the reality of God! He is amazing and His ways are higher than anything we could ever think, dream, imagine, or even ask for according to Ephesians. What a great God we serve, I want to rock' 'n' roll with what God is doing!

I'm Back

Well, I am back from being sick Saturday night/Sunday. Saturday Erin and I went and hung out at prom here @ Sallisaw High School, and we had a great time! The theme was "A Red Carpet Affair" and they did a great job. Erin and I got dressed up and took Zion over to Pastor Jeff's house to hang out with Garrett & Gavin. We stayed for a few hours and talked with some of our students, meet parents, and met some new students as well, it was well worth it. After the prom we picked up Zion and headed home. That night I started feeling a little tingly and a fever started coming on, so I quickly went to bed so I could get as much sleep as possible for Sunday morning. Well, Sunday morning came and I didn't sleep at all, I was tossing and turning and feeling horrible. My whole body was achy and I was freezing yet sweating. Anyway, when I tried to get up Sunday morning for church I stood up and the room was just spinning and I couldn't get much balance. I tried to get up and get going but everything was hurting and I couldn't stand up for more than a few seconds before I felt like throwing up and falling over so I figured I better get back to bed and let this thing pass over. Anyway, it was the worst Sunday to get sick, we had pictures to take, stomp practice after church and we were going to move all the chairs for the Chamber lunch here on Wednesday. Needless to say it was VERY hard to stay home, but I don't think I had a choice!

Today I am back and feeling much better, I am still on the up though. We closed on our house yesterday, so we officially bought our very first home, YEAH! We are so excited. We move in this Monday, we have to wait a few days here, long story...but a legitimate one. We can't wait to get settled in to our new place and get EVERYTHING unpacked. We still have half our stuff in boxes in our garage now so it will be nice to get it all out. Well, this is a busy week with Diamond Daze coming up, youth, worship, stomp, banners, promo, videos, connecting, planning, organizing, and much, much more! I am so excited to be here in Sallisaw under an incredible pastor and with a great church!!!

House Stuff!

Today was a beautiful day outside. It is finally warming up again! We had an awesome service Wednesday night 4 students got saved and we are having new visitors every week. What is cool is that we are not even challenging the kids to bring friends yet, we are still trying to get to know the ones we have, yet they are bringing them every week! It is a good sign when growth is so natural and students are proud to bring their friends to youth! God is up to great things here!

Tonight Erin, Zion and I went to Fort Smith and priced more appliances and stuff for our new house. We have priced just about every fridge, washer & dryer, t.v., lawn mower, weed eater, grill, patio furniture, etc.. we can! It is so fun moving into a new house and being able to get fun stuff! We are so blessed to have the opportunity to get the things we need for the house! God blessed us with a great deal on the house and many other scenarios since we have been married, and we are so grateful! We close on Monday, so hopefully we can move in in the next week or 2, FINALLY! We can't wait to finally have our own REAL house!

Well tomorrow Erin and I are chaperoning the prom here at the high school, we are excited! It is a great chance to meet students and make a good connection with the school. We already have a lot of favor with the school system. Journey has done so many great things in the community, we really have a good reputation for supporting many things in the county. Pastor Jeff does an AMAZING job with staying involved with the city and not just doing our own thing within the four walls of the church! Well, I am going to go back and search out more info on appliances and stuff, so God bless!

Tonight Is Going To Be Good!

Last night I played Table Tennis with some people in the church that play every week. I did not do to good! It has been too long since I played real table tennis, so it was a frustrating time for me. Anyway, tonight is going to be GREAT! We are talking about standing on God's strength. We will us the parable of the wise man who built his house on the rock and the foolish man who built his on the sand. Obviously the foolish man's house was destroyed by the storms but the wise man' house stood the test of time. Jesus is the ROCK! We need to build our life on the purpose, love, and foundation of honoring God in our life not on the quick sand of sin, the world, and all of it's influence. Tonight will be a great message that challenges the students!

We are so busy here with getting ready for Diamond Daze festival and simply running the day to day operations of ministry and touching lives! I love being able to focus all my time and energy on people and building the Church for God. I believe the Church is the lighthouse of the world. Not the small "c" church as a building, the Church as the body of Christ! God is awesome and only in Him is there power to change lives and situations. He is supernatural and His power goes beyond human strength, and we are on His side, YES!

Tuesday

Tuesday morning in the office, I love it! Lat night Erin and I watched Bob Ross paint "happy trees" & "almighty skies", it was awesome! I remember seeing Bob Ross on T.V. a few times when I was little. Pastor Jeff let me borrow his VHS tapes "The Joy of Painting". I must say it was awesome to see Bob paint these pictures in like 10-20 minutes. I am so excited about starting to paint, I have been practicing with some cheap acrylic paint and paint paper. I love learning new hobbies and new things so I am pretty fired up about painting!

Today I am staring the week off with ALL that needs to be done. Things are going great here and they are only going to get better! God is really moving in the hearts of the people here at Journey. We are seeing Him do amazing things among us. The students are really stepping up and getting involved. I can't wait to get moving on the remodeling of the zone and all the things we will be doing. God is amazing and His word is alive!

Good Day!

Today was great at church, Pastor Jeff slammed one out of the park, again! We had our 1st team meeting with those interested in being in the worship team. We had 12 people there total and it was a good starter meeting. I gave each student some CD's of the songs we are going to do as well as the sheet music. We are going to start practicing next week together. Hopefully we can start adding the team members here in a few weeks, after we get solid and work out stuff.

Our student leadership team met tonight and we had a great time! We are going to take our leadership team to Infusion 07 in Murray Kentucky. It is a conference I have been a part of for probably 10+ years now! Over 300 people join together for an intense time of seeking God and having a blast. This year will be the first year Journey will be going and I think it is going to be good for our leadership team. It's more than just your basic conference, it's powerful worship mixed with BreakOut sessions to learn, and awesome ministry to help students encounter God in a real way! This is going to be a incredible trip for us! It will be our first official big tip/event and I believe that this is going to point us to where God wants to take us!

Lots of Awesome Stuff!

Wednesday night was great! We can really see the students going deeper into worship and that's awesome. Last night we had a staff dinner get together thing @ Pastor Tony's and it was a lot of fun. We grilled hamburgers and Tony's wife Erin made banana pudding, whew it was good!

The Diamond Daze festival is coming up here in a few weeks and we are excited! Journey is doing a whole service Wednesday night at the festival. We have an hour to an hour and a half to do whatever we want. It is going to be great! We will have a booth with info for the church, music, performances, Pastor Jeff speaking and other cool stuff! Then that Saturday our students get the opportunity to serve the community with the BBQ night! They have all kinds of people around the country come in and cook their BBQ, and our students are going to serve the people and help with the whole night!

Well, tomorrow afternoon we have our 1st team meeting for anyone wanting to be involved on the worship team for JSM. I hope we have a good turn out of students that desire to worship God with their musical talents. We are going to build the best worship team EVER!!! Above all though is the matter of the heart, and we are going to talk about that, since worship is more than just playing music for people. Worship is alive and passionate, it is a way in which we express our thankfulness and honor to God! We are going to build a team that not only is good dynamically but that most importantly falls in love with Jesus more & more! We were created to worship!!!

Tomorrow we also have our student leadership team meeting. Our team is doing great jumping in and helping out on Wednesdays. They are entering into worship, moving chairs, praying before the service together and just being awesome leaders. Without student leaders youth ministry does not have the impact it can. Students are more impacted by peers than by youth pastors & adults. It's not that they aren't impacted by us by any means it's just that when they see people their age stepping up for God it gives them permission to step up as well. Just as when students don't step up for God it gives other students permission to not become all they can. We are building a team that gives permission, challenge, and examples of what it means to step up to the plate for Christ!

1 Timothy 3:2-5

Tonight is going to be great! I have an awesome message for the students about standing out from the crowd! I love Wednesdays and the excitement I get to hang with the students and seek God together, it's awesome! I started posting the message outlines with the audio messages online so that our students can go back and let God's word sink in their heart as they listen and read the outlines. Things are so great here at Journey, we LOVE it! I love the staff and serving Pastor Jeff! I feel as though we are a family here as staff and we have so much fun together as we work and build the Kingdom together. I have so many things in my brain and heart to do that I feel like I could seriously never stop working. I mean it feels weird to stop for the day and go home because I feel like there is so much to do that there is no good time to stop. I thank God that He instilled in me a right balance between work and family, otherwise I would always be torn. I love putting my hand to the plow with ministry but I also love my family very dearly and never want them to suffer in the name of ministry. The best way I can look at it is if you are at work be there 100% if you are at home be there 100%. Most people when they work wish they were home and when they are home they wish they were working. I want to be someone that has a great work ethic for Christ when I am putting my hand to the plow, yet also has a Christ-like example of loving family and spending time with them. 1 Timothy 3:2-5 says,

Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, ^3 not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. ^4 He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. ^5 (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)


I want to live my life that way! One who is an example in and outside of ministry. God is so amazing and the plans he has for us are great! Erin and I are so excited that God has called us here to a church that has such a heart for people and a desire to grow as followers of Christ! We are so blessed to be here and invest into lives and this community. God is awesome!!!

Easter

Today was a great day at church we had almost 500 people within our 2 services! Everybody comes out on Easter Sunday which is funny, but what an opportunity to reach people. I hate calling it Easter Sunday since Easter was the pagan goddess of fertility and that is why we have bunnies as a sign for Easter (since bunnies/rabbits are known for extremely fertile animals). When pagan & Christian religions/cults merged resurrection Sunday & Easter became a holiday celebrated among all. So why we call it Easter and have bunnies mixed with eggs has NOTHING to do with Christ and His resurrection, not that I am saying it is evil or anything like that. I just like calling it resurrection Sunday rather than Easter although I find myself just saying Easter because that's what we've always called it. I think it is interesting with these holidays such as Christmas and Easter that we have merged Christian celebrations with ultra pagan celebrations. Sometimes it's good to know what we celebrate and make sure we have all the facts covered since our faith has a long history (considering it started before anything was ever even created). Today we had a good time with family and Zion ate lots of chocolate and we have 8 million plastic eggs ALL over our house, how evil (just kidding, actually it is since we have to clean them all up).

The girls night went AMAZING! Erin did a phenomenal job organizing it and involving other leaders. She said the night could not have gone any better. The leaders that helped did an amazing job cleaning, helping, speaking and hanging with the girls. They had 25 girls come, which is like a little under half the students we run on Wednesday nights, so that is great! The girls are still talking about it, they loved the whole night. Our students here are so respectful and they listen so well. There seems to be no need to keep an extra eye on them because they are such great students, we love them so much! We couldn't have a better fit for us here, I know I say that a lot but it is so true! God is so faithful to lead us where He wants us to go. We just need to be faithful and hang in there, God will never leave us high and dry! He has our best interest in mind, His plans are perfect! Stay the course and God will direct your steps!!!

Back At It!

Back at it today! I am in my office getting stuff organized, planning upcoming events, series, meetings, etc... I love being in the office and working towards impacting lives, it's greeeeaaaaat!!! I love being here at Journey church serving under the best pastor I could think of, and serving a wonderful group of people and teenagers! Erin and I love being used by God to make eternal investments into others lives as well as ours! I got a few paint supplies yesterday as we were out for our anniversary. I just picked up some REALLY cheap, small tubes of paint and an acrylic painting sketch book thing. I will spend some time practicing with this stuff until I get used to it and actually paint on real canvas with real paint. I am so excited to start a new hobby, I love picking up new ideas and new adventures. Anyway, today is a busy day with getting things ready for this weekend, youth, the girls night (which is most of it). Erin is so excited about the girls night and she is doing the most AMAZING job getting this event to be top notch! My wife is like superwoman, she is so smart, compassionate, loving, passionate, fun, and organized with everything she does. I have no idea where or who I would be without her, I LOVE her soooooo much! She takes our ministry to a whole new level. It wouldn't even be half as much without her. Well, I am going to get back at it, as we prepare for a great event and great things to come for our teenagers here in Sallisaw!

By the way, Wednesday went great! God really was moving and I could tell the students were facing some giants in their life. This series, "The Stand" is perfect timing for us and for what God wants to do. You can listen to the messages from JSM. We are podcasting now or you can simply listen online after every Wednesday service! Check it out at journeychurchonline.com under JSM/Messages & Podcasts. God bless!

Standing Up for Christ!

Alright I just got back from Wal-Mart to pick up some smooth stones and markers. Tonight for JSM we are talking about Standing up for Christ and who not better to talk about than David & Goliath! David stood up for Christ when no one else would, and we need to face the giants in our life as well. Tonight at the end of the message we are going to have the students take a stone and write down the giants in their life and pray over them. They will keep the stones to remind them of defeating their giants by the power of God only! It is going to be a great kick-off to our new series, "The Stand".

Tomorrow is Erin and I's 4th anniversary, and that is awesome!!! We are going to take the day and spend it together. Last year we both kind of forgot so this is a make-up year. We were so busy with ministry and life that Erin's mom had to remind us it was our anniversary. We even went out to lunch together (which doesn't happen often) and we didn't even know it was our 3rd year anniversary. Sometimes we get so caught up in doing life and ministry that we forget the most important things and that is our FAMILY! Family has to come before ministry, and I want my life to be an example of that!

Well, the girls night is this Friday and Erin is pumped! She has got everything ready to go and has been praying for the last 2 weeks like non-stop. My mother and father in law are coming in tomorrow for the weekend, so that will be great!!! Easter weekend this weekend, so we have lots to do!

I Love Life!

Yesterday Erin, Zion and I hung out ALL day, it was awesome! We went into Forth Smith and I got my haircut, we walked around different stores. We were looking at things for our new house, yeah! I got my office chair and some other things. We found out the other day that we will probably be closing on our house here in the next few weeks, we are so excited!!! We had a great time just hanging out and spending the day together, I love being with my family, I love them SOOOOO MUCH!

So check it out! About 6-8 months ago I had a dream that I was painting on canvases all these different designs and cool modern art stuff (you know all that simple stuff that looks cool and you think I could do that why is it $3,000) Anyway I had that dream and ever since I have this excitement about getting canvas, paint, brushes, palette, and all the stuff that goes along with that. I don't think the dream was some serious spiritual thing, I just want to do it to have fun and for it to be a new cool hobby. I love to learn new things and pick up new skills, so I am so excited about starting to paint! I am going to have to save for a little but when I can I want to go get all the stuff and sit in my new garage and spend some time doing some designing. I can see myself now out in the garage on a beautiful day chillin' with some worship music and just having some down time with the canvas, YEAH! So yesterday we went to hobby lobby and I priced everything and figured out everything I need to get started. I even went to some bookstores and read about painting and the different techniques. I can't wait!

Well, tonight we have our student leadership team meeting and I am looking forward to that. We have such amazing students here and I can't wait to see them step up as leaders and lovers of Christ! The other night Erin met with 5-6 other leaders as they planned the Girls Night coming up this Friday which is going to be awesome! Erin is so incredible, she is an amazing leader! They met from like 6p.m. - 1a.m. I went to Pastor Tony's for a meat & poker night with ALL the guys! We had like 9 or 10 people there cooking meat and playing some fun innocent poker. We love being here among such beautiful people that are so loving! As Pastor Jeff says, "Our best days are ahead!" We totally agree!