Thursday, April 19, 2007

Brian Bailey -- Afterword Series

Brian Bailey is the author of The Blogging Church and he recently posted a series on his blog, Leave It Behind, that I believe are the essentials of blogging. These posts are a wealth of wisdom and experience about blogging. Check out these posts:

Afterword: Introduction

Afterword: Open Our Eyes

Afterword: Look Up

Afterword: Smile

Saturday, April 14, 2007

From the Mouths of Babes

Every once in a while you have those moments with your children that are unforgettable. My 4 year old son is a source of many of those moments. For example a few weeks ago we were in the C.O.A.C. (see this post) at our church and it was time to go that Sunday afternoon and the building superintendent turned out the lights. At that point my 4 year old son proceeded to run around the "gym" yelling, "We're in Hell, We're in Hell!" Obviously someone has taught him that Hell is a place of darkness so there you go.

I have been struggling with letting go and letting God here recently which comes down to a matter of trust. God, though has been faithful and has lead me to His Word (Psalm 55:22, Matthew 11:28-30) this week which has been awesome. So this morning out of nowhere my son says, "I only trust God. I never trust...(pointing down at the floor). I will always trust God."

Childlike faith! Our God is an awesome God and can teach us through even the mouths of babes.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Sometimes It Is Better Than You Think

I was reading Dave's post Everybody's A Critic of Going to 11 based on Perry Noble's post Dealing With Critics... and it got me to thinking of how blessed I have been over the past couple of years to not hear of something being too loud or just plain not sounding good in one of our venues. As a church we call it the Christian Outreach & Activity Center which is basically a gym with a stage on one side. A big block building with horrible acoustics is what it is to me. As we outgrow our Sanctuary this room is being used more and more. I have had to do some serious reconfiguring of the sound system. I have not had the luxury of replacing equipment so a re-installation was my only option. However I have purchased in addition two portable speakers for a couple of pole mounts for better coverage and a whole package of Shure microphones and cables. Other than that is was a total rewire and optimization. One immediate move was to take the amplifiers off the same electrical phase with the horribly installed lighting system. I have heard noise from dimmer packs but this was unbearable and they had used it like that for years!

So over the past couple of years I have been accomplishing a rework of this sound system. A couple of weeks ago it was finally at a position whereas I thought it may sound decent. I was not happy with the sound and I'm still not (I'm a perfectionist) but after a recent choir cantata (yes, we still do those) a gentleman that operated sound for 15 years in that church come running back to FOH with a big smile on his face and shook my hand and told me that it was amazing how it sounded in that room now. I was really pushing that system on the finale and God made it stick. Folks I didn't do much and I did it with nothing but I believe that if we are putting forth the effort to make better with what God has given us that He will bless that. And even though it is not a new state of the art installation that you read about in all of these magazines it is probably a whole lot better than you think.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Perry Noble-Playing For An Audience Of One

WOW! What a great post by Perry today. It is so true that often we get wrapped up in what other people think or we get wrapped up in "serving" God that we are not "seeking" God. Our entire life should be playing for an audience of One. That is worship!

Check out Perry's post Playing for an Audience of One

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Blogging & Hosting, Hosting & Blogging

Although I don't have as much time to blog as I once did I still feel that something is lacking in the current blog other than posts. I registered a domain and signed up for hosting with the same company last summer but I soon found out that this company is not truly blogger friendly or user friendly for that matter. I never had the time to really build a great site and was not happy with the templates and tools provided. Plus all the user interfaces were very confusing. I'm also not comfortable supporting this company with their questionable advertising and antics of their CEO.

I'm looking to a host that knows blogging. My ideal set up is a blog that is primary and a web site that is secondary and not the other way around like most hosting. Although I'm good enough and smart enough and people like me I just don't have time to build a website from the ground up so I need great looking templates and easy to use web tools. I'm also wanting to know the ramifications of domain transfer, if any.

My current hosting agreement expires in August so I have a few months to play with here. So, let me know what is the way to go? Now the last time I asked about something you guys left me hanging so help a brother out on this one. Let me add that I'm leaning toward Wordpress for a blogging tool and have looked at Blue Host, AN Hosting & Dreamhost to name a few.

I'm hoping and praying to increase my efforts in this part of ministry and would love to offer something that is of better use and value to you my subscribers and to the many that visit this site everyday.