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Thought I'd occasionally post a soundtrack for my life using iMix. If you use iTunes you can 
download this custom album or select songs... but it'll give you a little more insight into my world. =) This one gives you the theme song for our upcoming Christmas Eve service in two renditions. You'll also get a taste of Christmas and the most compelling spiritual song on my heart right now. I've thrown in a Starbucks fave and two epic songs for their timeless sounds. Finally, a bit of country because you can take the boy out of Ohio, but not the...
On Monday, I'll start profiling the conference speakers for The WhiteBoard Sessions -- one for each day -- over the next two weeks. I'm excited to announce these incredible leaders.
In the meantime, I've started working with our web sponsor 
- Site Organic - to create the conference website with full registration capabilities. These guys create some of the best church websites on the planet, including Frontline, the National Religious Broadcasters, and Church of the Redeemer, to name a few.
We're looking at an early January launch date...
...Travel preparations for a Kodak sweepstakes trip to London for the movie premiere and after-party of The Chronicles of Narnia. I've never won anything else in my life. This trip gave me a heart for London, though, so I'm going to follow with interest the blog of this family who moved from Life Church in Oklahoma to start another video venue campus in London.
After searching the ends of the earth to find a solution for turning our movie theater into a virtual planetarium on Chrismas Eve, we settled on using star-poked gobos with our ETC Source 4 theatrical lights pointed north -- a solution of about $75 for us. We still have some testing to do, but our talented special effect department is working overtime.
Barton Damer of Igniter Media just sent me this link from a visually stunning performance of "Jesus Paid it All" by Frontline ministry, just down the road from our church... using the new Igniter Tracks product. Okay, if that's a plug for a product, I don't know what one is. But I truly dig it.
The White Board Sessions needs a unique setting. A church is too familiar. The movie theater is too limiting. University auditoriums too sterile...
A month ago, I looked around Reston Town Center and thought, What pastor wouldn't want to spend a day here?" New-urban environment, great restaurants, vintage movie theater, Starbucks, Wi-Fi, free parking garages, gorgeous cityscape, Starbucks... =)
Enter the exclusive Reston Hyatt Hotel. It's a beauutiful venue, but expensive too. Ridiculously cost prohibitive in fact. Still, I didn't take it off the drawing board. Two weeks ago, I dropped by the hotel for a second meeting, praying the whole time for God's intervention.
Something was different at that second meeting. The manager acted rushed. She whisked me into the large ballroom and quoted a price that not only matched our budget, but also gave us 3 times more space. The venue has such a great vibe, including an outdoor balcony overlooking the Town Center. I knew at that moment God had something huge in store for May 22. It's booked. Speaker line-up still to come...
Just one question can introduce a whole slew of Friday night movie-goers to our church. A simple movie poster concept. Once again, the beautiful work of our talented Josh Wilcox... By the way, we own the color "burgandy." =)
Don't know anything about this candidate [think he's Libertarian], but loving the creative logo. Really entrenches two words in your mind... very Bono.
You can get a free trial issue of Igniter Media's new magazine for church media -- Collide. Just got mine in the mail yesterday. Beautiful design and some great articles. Very picturesque. This is a better replacement for the corporate-run Vision magazine that went belly-up last year. Only downside -- chock-full of Igniter ads. Not very objective.
I resonate with authors who say they wrote the book they wanted to read. In my case, I came up with a conference scenario I'd love to attend.
It's called "The White Board Sessions." One day. 8 influential leaders. 30 minutes each. And 1 compelling idea.
Lord willing, it's going to happen: Thursday, May 22, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in the Reston Town Center.
Some national sponsors have come on-board, and the speaker line-up is unbelievable. I'll trickle-out the roster on this blog over the next few weeks. Conference registration will open at the beginning of January on a forthcoming website.
I'm going to start posting about the development of this conference under the category "Conference in the Making." You can follow the thread in future by clicking on this category in the sidebar. I'm going to tell all the remarkable stories of how God is putting together this event. I believe it's going to be a revolutionary conference in the world of church leadership. Stay tuned...
I've been wondering why the church never caught onto the projection artistry that we see in other creative industries -- U2's superbowl halftime show, the olympics grand opening ceremony... Finally, someone is mastering the art of projection and lighting. Camron Ware is showcasing stunning imagery on the walls of Irving Bible Church, as their Lighting and Projection Designer. Can you say 'Awesome'?
Okay, I wish I could say this was Ainsley and me picking out a Christmas tree yesterday on my day off... but it's not. This would be too cold, too strenuous, and I don't see a Starbucks anywhere in sight.
Instead, here we are at Michael's Crafts, picking out their newspaper clipper special. Hey, you put it up in the living room, sans splinters, and it has the same effect. It's even pre-lit for us... =)
Tadd Grandstaff shows in pictures how God can use a passionate group of people to launch a church when they put their hearts and hands into it... love his story in the making!
John Eldredge leaked the audio from his Sacred Romance conference onto iTunes in installments. And now they're putting up the video podcasts as well... which bodes well for a video iPodder like me. John's not necessarily wired for tv, but you gotta love the bonzai sword collection in the background and his library of epic books and bicycles. =)
The book "Starbucked," describes the state of the
coffee-industry prior to the green giant's emergence. It was instant, watered down, weak sludge that people barely tolerated.
Companies like Foldger's and Maxwell House even injected an artificial
"coffee aroma" 
into their cans so that consumers would feel like they were getting a quality product.
When Starbucks came along, it exploded in growth as if the market was simply waiting for it to appear. Seriously. It's like the whole country knew what it wanted -- the industry existed -- but nobody had ever seen it before. Starbucks became the living embodiment of everyone's desires.
Have you ever seen a church plant do this? A community gets "coffee-can churches" for years and years until, finally, a church comes along that fits what everyone really wanted in a church, but could never articulate it. This is true, incarnational church planting -- become the living embodiment of what people really crave and need.
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