New Favorite

Tonight I finally made it out to a place I’ve been wanting to check out for some time, a bar called Speakeasy in five points. They host a lot of jazz music and every other Monday night is big band jazz. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the 16-piece band turned out to be fantastic! Looks like I found a new favorite spot to hang out! One of my dreams is to be able to sing with that type of band one day, so maybe I will have to start working that angle too…

Pictures

Okay, okay, all you commenters! Check out the last 2 pictures here to see the latest on the remodel. Its not really all that much to look at yet…

Progress

Dad came down again today to help me work on the house. Its funny – both times he has come we get way more done than just twice what I could do myself. Synergy I guess. (Actually, it has very little to do with me. He is just amazing at all of that kind of stuff.) Thanks also to Mikey Marshall for helping out with everything today. We got the permanent beam put up where the wall and fireplace once were and took out all of the temporary bracing. With all of that out of the way you can really start to see what its going to look like when its finished. Very cool. After all of that, we got down in the crawl space and worked on leveling up the floor. I was doing some major army crawl in the dust under my house, but it paid off in the end – the floors are SO much more level and dont flex when you walk across them. Next phase: patching everything back…

Worship Experience

Last night our church held a different type of worship service than usual. I’m not sure what to call it; we have used the terms “experiential worship” and “worship stations” when trying to explain it to people. I’m also not sure where the idea came from, but we used it this summer at youth camp and I know Clemson’s FCA has used it on their mission trips recently. Here’s how it works: Instead of having the whole group of people focus on whatever is going on up front, (music, teaching, etc…) each person is guided in their own worship through different kinds of environments set up throughout the facility. For example, there was an area with small notebooks where people could take one and spend a few minutes journaling or writing a letter to GOd. There was another area with a large cross and a bucket of small stones allowing people to pray and symbolically place their burdens in God’s hands. Still another area had several laptops displaying video images of the city of Columbia, where people could spend time praying specifically for the city we live in. These are only a few examples, but hopefully you get the idea.

Now in case you have never heard of this type of thing before, it probably sounds pretty strange. In fact, the first time someone explained it to me I thought it sounded pretty cheesy. However, after participating in this type of service on a few occasions I really do appreciate it from time to time. One thing I really like about this type of experience is that it is not passive. Because each area leads you to do something specific, you cannot help but talk to, listen for, or worship God. Another thing I like is that it is incredibly personal while at the same time involves a large group of people. Each person has the opportunity to focus on their relationship with God while simultaneously seeing, hearing, and sensing people all around them doing the same.

I do not think that this type of service should be the primary form of corporate worship for a church, but last night was powerful. I saw and felt God working in many people’s lives, and I have heard many positive comments about the evening. I hope that God will continue to use this sort of thing to stretch our hearts and minds as to what worship is all about, and that he will grow our group of believers to be more like him in all that we do.

The 17 Year Drought….

Is finally over!!! It has been way too long since the Tigers won in Tallahassee, and to be honest before last night I didn’t even really get my hopes up about it anymore. Congrats to the players and coaches for coming back after a tough loss last week! If you want to watch a little recap, play the video here.

More Funny Bible Stuff

“From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.” – 2 Kings 2:23,24

…….beware the bald headed ones!

Midtown Update

This weekend was a cool time for our church. We made the move to a new location and time- the SC State Museum on Sunday evenings. It is a much better facility with better meeting spaces, a great lobby area, fantastic childrens area, and a parking garage! All for less money than we were paying for the theater we had been using!

We had the most people we have had so far last night, and people seemed to really engage in the worship service. After the worship service we had a thing called GroupLink, which is simply an environment to help interested people get connected with small groups. We had about double the number of people we were expecting, and almost all of them will be meeting in small groups in the next few weeks!

Funny thing is- all of this is surface stuff. If people aren’t being impacted by the love of Jesus through it all, then it is essentially worthless. The cool part is…… they are. I wish I could begin to put into words all that God is doing around this still small group of believers. Not a day goes by without me hearing about something that God is doing in someone’s life. From time to time I have to stop and pinch myself and ask, “is this for real?” And then I thank God for allowing me to be a part of it.

So if you are in a place in life where God seems a long way off….I have been there and know how it feels. I hope that somehow you can be encouraged by what he is doing here in Columbia. I hope that you will continue to seek him with all of your being and that one day soon he will show up and surprise you, and show you all that he has been doing behind the scenes of your life.

Why Didn’t I….

For those of you who have an entrepreneurial spirit, check this out. This guy started with a single red paperclip and traded his way up to a house! Who even thinks to try that?! I mean, can you imagine his friends when he says, “hey guys, I’ve got this idea…” Amazing.

Homecoming

This weekend was a new experience for me. I had to road trip to a Clemson home game. After living in Clemson for 16 years, it was very strange to not be able to just get out of bed, watch a little College Gameday, and drive over to campus. The weekend was great though, and was kind of like a homecoming for me. It was almost overwhelming trying to catch up with everyone at the game Saturday and at Newspring Sunday all in a short amount of time. It was great though, and God refreshed my soul through many of you. All of this reminded me of a post I made a couple of years ago, so here it is…

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College football season is finally here! Now before you dismiss this post as another crazed fan’s ranting about his favorite team, hear me out. Clemson home game saturdays are about much more than football. In the hectic world that we live in, they display some unique aspects of life. For six saturdays of the year, people from all walks of life from all over SC and other states come together for one huge party! People who dont even know each other share a common bond, a comraderie of sorts. They will carry on conversations with total strangers, share food with people, and even be courteous and patient in traffic! It always amazes me that such a huge number of people can get together in one place and have a good time together.

For those that do know each other, home football games are a time of fellowship that is sometimes hard to find time for in the everyday routine of life. For students, it is the ultimate social event, for alumni it is homecoming, for families it is a reunion. Today in just a few hours I saw friends from high school, family members, coworkers, and of course many fellow Clemson alumni.

I have always struggled with the idea of heaven. The sunday-school image of the pearly gates, streets of gold, togas, and harps just doesnt fire me up. However, I think this is another one of those places where words really cant express something that is too wonderful for us to imagine. All of those afore-mentioned images are simply attempts to portray how awesome the presence of God and heaven will be. Today I decided that in many ways heaven must be much like a Clemson football game. We will all be together for a great celebration. We wont know everybody, but we will somehow be connected to them, and even though they might be different from us they will feel like family. There will be a lot of pagentry, a band, and something even greater to see than the Tigers running down the hill!

Heres to five more Saturdays this fall of a slice of heaven on earth. Hope to see you there!