We held a Wednesday night Encounter service last night. This is the second time we've done this. We are shooting for once a month. Encounter is essentially an act of obedience. We feel that God has called us to "Do the stuff" that the bible talks about.

Encounter is an opportunity to experience the God of the bible...not just read about Him, not just pray to Him, not just talk about Him. It's an invitation for the God of the universe to come and make His very presence felt among us. And so we invite Him. We invite Him to come and do things. We invite him to heal people...emotionally, spiritually, physically.



There is lots of music and lots of prayer flowing around our rented facility. Some day we may own a "church building" but that day is not today. What I've noticed however is that it doesn't seem to hinder God from moving...hmm. Interesting.



Afterward there is a good bit of hang out time.

Adam has bought himself a good camera...he seems to be pleased about it.



Have you heard? Dan is gangsta now.



Speaking of Dan...he turned me on to this video the other day. I am utterly fascinated by it. Watch it all the way till the end and let me know how afraid you are on a scale of zero to fail. At over 2.5 million views on YouTube...well...just check it out.

This is what MySpace has done to the world...

I've been growing my hair out for an undetermined amount of time until today. I played golf with some friends and I just couldn't take it anymore. Sometimes you just crave a change in your life. Whenever I grow a beard or my hair to a certain length I will inevitably be overwhelmed with the desire to remove it all at once.



Sometimes I desire other changes in my life too. I wish that I could control them as easily as I am able to control my hair removal. My heart for example. I wish that I could change my heart in an instant to love others more. It takes more than that though...it takes time...it takes prayer...it takes intention. I can't just flip a switch and be this ultra-loving person who sees people without judgment...it'd be nice though.

One thing I know for sure, it's that prayerlessness is my ultimate sign of pride. The more I think I can do things on my own...the less I'm praying about. I truly believe that I don't need God most of the time and it causes me not to talk to Him nearly enough. I'm changing it though. I don't want to be self-sufficient. I just want to live in the identity of who I am...someone who needs a lot of help along the way. Thanks be to Jesus that it's always there.

I am a skeptical jerk. Over time however, even the Grinch's little black heart began to change for the better. I've always made a thousand excuses about why we don't give money to global poverty.

"My mission field is here in my neighborhood." I would say.

And it is. I do feel called to draw those around me into an authentic relationship with this living Jesus who has changed my everything. But something has been stirring in me lately.

My wife Allison started a new job a few weeks back. We had been scraping by for a few months and now we are able to catch up on the bills that got stuffed into that junk drawer. I had planned to start giving more of our money to our local church, and I will, because we are truly investing in some amazing things God is doing around here...but I also feel led to give to something else. I'm feeling a call to give voice to the voiceless and help support those who can't support themselves.

Anne Jackson @ Flowerdust.net has inspired me quite a bit lately. She has informed me of the amazing things that Compassion International is doing. I've heard of Compassion before...probably a hundred times honestly, but I've been believing a lie that I don't have enough to give to something like that. I don't believe that lie anymore.

Last night Allison and I looked through photos of children in need on Compassion's website. Upon doing research it would seem that Compassion International is always at the top of the list when it comes to financial stewardship when it comes to money going directly towards the children. They have so many programs in place it's astounding. You can search for kids to sponsor in dozens of countries...there are so many that need assistance.

We sponsored two kids last night.



I picked Ana Rosa from Honduras simply because I've been there and seen the poverty. I had to pick someone quickly as I did not want to try figuring out who needed help the most. Ana had a little red heart on her picture that meant she has been waiting for more than six months for a sponsor.

Allison picked Miriam from Bolivia...another one of God's beautiful children. As I look at my daughter Ava, who lives here in the affluence of the US with all of her fancy things, my heart breaks a little. An axiom I like to live by is "Don't talk about it...be about it."

$32 a month is allowing me to be about it a little bit more. $64 monthly for two kids...hope will be boosted and there will be light in a dark place. Now as I slip into my cynical mind and begin to think of how little this will really help I have to stop myself and remember that I am a part of something much bigger than myself. If we all stop talking about it...and be about it, who knows what could happen.

Please check out these kids and sponsor one. I love what Tony Campolo said about Compassion and sponsoring a child. He says, "I don't think there are many things in my life that God is pleased about. But sponsoring a child through Compassion is one thing He is pleased about - I'm sure!"

If you do sponsor someone, I would love to hear about it. This is not bragging, but boasting in Christ.

To follow up the post from last week about our baptism service, here's taking it a step further. This is a video I worked hard on this week. It played during 3 services on Saturday and Sunday at the Vineyard. Socks were rocked.



Just remember - He loves us. No matter how far gone we thought we were. He's still relentlessly chasing after us. May we be found.

This past weekend was a powerful one. Vineyard Westside held an annual outdoor baptism service as we have done for the past 3 years now. We typically meet inside the movie theater, but for this service, we call everyone together all at once and meet outside in the parking lot.

We set up tents and chairs and expect that hundreds of people will show up. And they do. Five hundred or so show up hungry for hamburgers and hotdogs, drinks and sides, but most importantly they show up hungry for God.

Our worship team cranks everything up a few notches and they play until their fingers are numb.







They rock out a few songs and get everyone excited to be there.



At this point, Jim, our children's pastor comes up to do baby dedications. This is an opportunity to have parents and their kids prayed over to devote themselves to a life of following God.



And now it's time for the waterworks. Emotions quickly begin flying all over the place as people line up to get into a horse trough. We don't have a fancy baptismal or anything like that. We've got a 300 gallon Rubbermaid container...and it's holy. It's holy because people step into it who are announcing to the world that they're willing to die to themselves to be raised to life in Christ.

Music continues to play as friends and family join around loved ones for prayer and support.



And then it happens. People surrender themselves and become so vulnerable that everyone can see it. And we have baptism. My sister goes first. Those of you who know me personally are aware of the insane crap that's gone down with Amie...here's to a step in the right direction.







One after another, people line up and get ready for the big splash.







I even got the opportunity to baptize people who are very close to me.

This is my father-in-law Ted. He wrote a letter that stated he doesn't want to do it all on his own anymore.



Ryan and Carrie, our beloved house mates were baptized.



My friend Jon baptized his son Jonah.





My wife's sister Andrea came out of the crowd as she was overwhelmed by the Spirit...she just had to do it. Her husband Chris was given the honor.



Lo and behold my beautiful bride Allison made the decision to be baptized as well. She was baptized as a baby and she wanted this one to be up to her.





I'm still reeling from everything that happened yesterday. It was all a bit surreal. I took about 400 pictures and this is less than 20 of them. At least 35 people were baptized yesterday and some serious damage was done to the kingdom of darkness.

Praise be to Jesus.

Flipping through the phone book turned up a surprisingly small number of church possibilities for us this Easter Sunday. It was between two of them; Eastpoint United Methodist and First Baptist (or something like that). We decided that the United Methodist church probably had lower standards so we opted for that one. Plus, it worked out perfectly for our brunch reservation afterwards.

3 carloads of us pulled up and giggled simultaneously. I'm fairly certain that all of us were thinking the same kinds of thoughts as we looked upon the one-room, maximum occupancy of 40, middle-of-a-trailer-park, traditional-as-all-get-out, Methodist church building.

A younger man, whom we would learn to be Bill, was running back and fourth frantically pulling out metal folding chairs for some sort of an outside event. He raced over to us to hand us a full-color Easter program for the upcoming service...you could tell they had went all out on these programs. They had colored stamps and Easter-egg prints all over them. Everything was laid out like a southern wedding down to the minute in a play-by-play break down. A sense of excitement flooded us as we walked in and tripled their congregation.

The pastor was energetic and uber friendly. He wasn't the normal he as he was a she and she was there to praise Jesus. Her name was Beth.

As we waited for the service to start I read through the colorful program. My favorite part was the bottom line of the last page. It read: Last Weeks Offering $286.29 - to think that this place is staying afloat on less than $300 per week is a miracle in itself.

The sanctuary filled up with close to 30 people for the Easter celebration...it was obviously a huge turnout that they weren't used to. The pastor opened up the service by making us, yes our family, all stand up and introduce ourselves. She said that anyone who traveled all the way from Cincinnati OH just to be with them was worth introducing. The twelve of us all shared our names and told them why we were there. It was excellent and for some reason not at all embarrassing.

We then moved into a prayer of praise where everyone in the church stood up, held hands in a circle, and shared something that they were thankful for. So simple and meaningful.

A couple terrible songs later and we found ourselves listening to a message of little substance...that didn't matter though - the substance was in the surroundings. That little place lived and breathed Jesus. After the message we were all escorted outside where Bill, who had himself set up the outdoor sitting area, would be baptized into the family of God. They didn't have a baptismal, but they did have a bird bath and two bottles of Ice Mountain water.

We all stood around Bill as he was sworn in as the 4th official member of Eastpoint United Methodist and we prayed as he was sprinkled with with blessed, bottled, bird bath water. After he was baptized, we all came up to him and laid hands on him to pray a blessing over his life. That was a beautiful site I won't soon forget.

We ended the service by taking communion together as a family in Christ. Homemade bread dipped into fruit juice never tasted so good. All in all this was the best Easter service I've ever been a part of. It was a vision of the Kingdom of God alive in Apalachicola County.

Family is everywhere...even in the places we least expect it.

...I've decided to come up with a cooler, more professional name for Dodgeball. Sphere Eluding. Well...either that, or Orb Avoid. Or maybe Ditchglobe? I dunno, maybe I'm reaching.

Dodgeball is a good name I guess. It's definitely a good game. I'm proud to say that I'm the owner of at least one good idea in my lifetime. That idea was men's dodgeball. For over a year now we've been renting a little gymnasium and gathering anywhere from 15-30 guys to play a couple hours of ferocious dodgeball every Sunday night. Dodgeball isn't a new idea, but what's different with our dodgeball session is that we play with dangerous brutality.

We don't use the "regulation" full-sized, wouldn't-hurt-if-it-fell-off-a-building-and-landed-on-your-head, foam balls that actual dodgeball leagues use. Those balls are for ninnies.
We bring the pain.

The funny thing about our dodgeball is that it's opened the door for many people to get connected with God. Guys from all over the place show up for dodgeball...guys who would never set foot in a church. Time and time again they show up and after the group of dodgeball players show them that they're real men who have fun AND happen to love Jesus, they end up coming to church. It's been an amazing opportunity to show people the love of Christ...oddly enough by smashing them in the face with a rubber ball. God is weird like that.

I brought Tony with me to dodgeball tonight. Tony is 15, and he works at the hobby store with me. I've known him since he was about 5 I guess and he never really says much. He's a teenager. He either mumbles or he whines. I told him I was picking him up tonight for dodgeball and he was all for it. I picked him up and he was his shy, normal, teenager-y self. After dodgeball though something broke...Tony was talking up a storm and he was asking me questions and telling me stories and kind of acting like a real human. Once again the mysterious power of dodgeball has opened up some kind of door. Schweet.

God is telling me that I'll be the person to open the door for Jesus in Tony's life. We'll see.

I love dodgeball. It's so many things to me:

* A healthy outlet to vent anger or frustration.
* Proof that I do guy stuff too and not just gardening, cooking, and stampin' up. I mean...I don't do stampin' up...that's for women only! I do not do that kind of thing!
You should see my new Valentine's Day Bundle I picked up from cincymoms.com!! It's so totally fab!! Love, love, LOVE it!!
* A work out like you wouldn't believe.
* Connection for guys who aren't ready for church.
* Guaranteed sympathy from onlookers...the occasional black eye is great for attention!!

If you'd like to play some serious dodgeball in the Cincinnati area...lemmeknow!
Just remember, we play for reals yo.

I'm one of those people who has suppressed a lot of my childhood memories.

The thought of that statement annoys me. I never wanted to be someone with fractured thoughts and memories, but the more I look around inside my brain the more it's become apparent that I've got compartments to be unlocked.

Even when I try hard to focus on the past, I cannot think back to before I was four years old. I've got a couple of memories during that time, but most of my recollection comes in from the time I was five to now. There are many breaks in between though. Sometimes I takes a person mentioning something that has happened or some random tidbit that will spark a conjuring of thoughts.

Allison told me a story the other day about an owl that her dad found in the yard. It was rather large, and in my estimation probably a Barn Owl. It died mysteriously and landed on his property. This caused a flicker in my brain and I began to remember a field trip I went on in the second grade. I would have been seven years old and during this time my mom would have been a full-blown alcoholic as well as a drug addict.

She wasn't addicted to crack cocaine yet. Crack wasn't that well known on the drug scene in 1989. Marijuana, and "White Crosses", which were amphetamines, were a a daily devotional. Mom would smoke, snort, or gag down anything you put in front of her. Needles didn't fit her style though so that form of Heroin was out. Everyone's got boundaries.

Dad worked for Coca-Cola as a beverage systems specialist and things were rocky at the workplace by now. Mom's alcohol and drug related shenanigans proved to be too much for a regular work schedule. He and mom had already lost the house and the car due to reckless lifestyles and an inability to conform to adulthood. They were party people and they were bad with money. That combo removed us from a nice bi-level in the suburbs to a $300-a-month dilapidated trailer. Oh how I don't miss that place.

I woke up the morning of the big field trip and I was so excited! Dad had taken me to lots of parks and nature preserves, but there's something about a class field trip that gets you all keyed up to solve the world's problems. You're a better human being the morning you wake up for a field trip. You don't have to do actual school work and you get to explore something new...what could be better? Breakfast perhaps. That would have been too much though.

Dad was off to work and mom's sole responsibility was to get me to school to catch the field trip bus. We would be heading to Governor Bebb Preserve to explore some old village and take the lay of the land. It was going to be great. We were going to check out their little wildlife sanctuary and have a picnic and make pioneer toys and learn about different cultures.

Mom wouldn't wake up though. I was awake. Of course I was awake, I was charged for my upcoming adventure. But I couldn't wake my mom up. She just wouldn't get up. I shook her and I yelled and I pleaded and I just couldn't get her to wake up. This happens sometimes when you have an alcoholic/drug-addict parent. You miss days of school ever now and again because they are sick. This happens sometimes. It's expected sometimes and it's not surprising, but it can't happen on the day of the field trip!