Kicking off the new series this weekend….

Crave from Chris Johns on Vimeo.

We can spend our entire lives trying to satisfy the one insatiable part of our being, our soul craving. Our capacity for spiritual experience proves our need for something greater than ourselves and leaves us wanting more when we fill it with anything but God. This week Erwin McManus will be with us sharing on our Soul Craving. I cannot wait.

My buddy Lance’s daughter is three years old and recently purchased her Halloween  costume (Fall Festival costume for you opposed). Kennedy raced home from the store, ripped open the package putting on her Supergirl costume as fast as possible. She quickly stood on the couch, outstretched her arms and jumped. She was REALLY mad when her feet hit the floor as she realized she wasn’t flying. She told Lance and Brandy that they needed to get a different costume because “this cape doesn’t work.”

Just an illustration that outerwear doesn’t make us a believer….God getting control of our affections does. Fly, baby, fly.

Bob made a statement during his message today about applying parental resources. The same would hold true with those in a leadership role….

There are 5 cent problems and $50,000 problems. Don’t ever spend $50,000 (of money, people,time or energy) on a 5 cent problem. Likewise, don’t apply 5 cents worth of effort to a problem that needs $50,000.

What are the top three problems your ministry faces? What “size” problem are they? How much woul each solution “cost” you? If you could only solve one problem, which one would move you light years forward?

Wow…this was an amazing moment in our service.

One a great bump by our own Chris Johns:

Ruling the Roost Sermon Series Bump from Chris Johns on Vimeo.

This is the full version of a shorter clip we used in service:

Mark and Valinda (Director’s Cut) from Chris Johns on Vimeo.

We have trick we are using that isn’t reflected in this version. We interview with one camera because of the involvement of moving our expensive Worship Center HD cams that shoot so nicely we can’t seem to bring ourself to use others. We only move one of these super nice cams. Here is the process:

1. 1. We shoot the whole interview with only the interviewees on cam (this is the video you see here)
2.  2. Then we have them leave and turn the camera on the interviewer where I ask the same questions to a blank chair. I take their wireless and wear it. Our cam only captures two sources of audio at   once. Sure we could use a mixing board but then our editor wouldn’t have three isolate channels of signal.
3.  3. Then we shoot me in listening mode, where I am visually listening by nodding my head, etc. This is important as it gives our editors a shot to cut to if we need to edit the interviewee. This way you don’t see them visually jump on screen. We do the cut on them while holding a shot of a shot of me.
4. 4. We piece the whole thing together magically  and wallah. I’ll have Chris post up an edited version so you can see the magic happen!

I just discovered a parallel system for Getting Things Done called Zen To Done (no I am not changing religions!). Looks promising as long as it doesn’t have any Eastern mysticism tied to it. Seems to simplify and give a more relaxed approach to GTD.

(Danger Will Robinson, I am just getting started reading this blog/information. Be a Berean and don’t swallow the hook yet. Check it out with me and leave a comment here if you see something glaringly wrong with the method of operation).

This process is like crack cocaine for my soul…. I cannot stop. Amazing stuff. Currently translating on page 76…only 399 left before my supply dries up and I have to go hunting another Puritan drug. hahaha.

What things would you do differently if your boss came in and said, “You now have double your budget?”

What things would you differently if you only had half your current budget?

Would things be that different? Would you start something new or simply expand and broaden what you currently do with a larger budget? What we be core to your ministry that you would never stop doing and what would you quit doing if budget became super tight?

NorthWood was recently featured in the Fort Worth Star Telegram article and Baylor study on megachurches. Check it out here.

In this spiritual exericise, I hit this quote which I just had to share. This is the modernized version…

We sing in worship to engage and express our affections. There is no other reason to sing. If we aren’t dealing with our affections in worship, we might as well just read the lines of the songs dryly together in paragraph form without any music. We worship with music to because God has created music with a certain nature where it tends to move our affections deeply.

Here is a form we send home with each of our vocalists for yearly self-evaluation.

vocalist-self-eval.pdf

With our vocal team members (but not all bridge team choir members), we then sit down and let them share their answers with us.  It offers us the perfect opportunity to then turn around and say, “Here is where we perceive you are strong, and here are some things we’d like you to work on.”

For our more comprehensive year end review 4 step process, click here.

This free website lets you control wild tunings and the scale and mode in whatever key you want. Even a Hungarian Minor or Neopolitan mode. Pretty cool. Yes, pretty cool, my friends.

Well if you are gonna be so proud to waste a ton of money drive a big ‘ol gas guzzling Hummer, you might as well have internal security cameras in place in case anyone should attempt to key your mammon (woops, did I say that? YES I DID….). This story happened in our neck of the woods.