Mass Trip Day 4
Here are day four’s antics. We had some fun with a memorial Steve Irwin spin-off, and some good interviews…love it!
-AOD
Mass Trip Day 3
It’s hard to edit out footage to make it fit into the 10 minute time frame. This one is a bit long (little over 7 min) but it’s still good. You might need to hide it from the boss. Just pull up another tab! haha!
Day 3 was a good day, we got to canvas the neighborhood and pass out fliers for the week. Plus we had dogs and burgers on the grill, awesome!
I hope y’all are enjoying the videos, if so, let me know. Drop a quick line and tell me what was your favorite part. Thanks for visiting…
-AOD
Mass Trip Day 2
Day 2 in the books. I didn’t take a lot of this video, but you still get the idea of our day. A lot of glitches in the day, but it was a good one overall.
Enjoy!
-AOD
Mass Trip Day 1
Enjoy the Video Blogs for the next few days straight from Worcester, Mass!
-AOD
This Week Is Kicking My…
BUTT!!
Wow, crazy! We shot a new commercial/short for summer connect this week, had a great Wednesday Night service, did visitation, had practice every night (including Wednesday) for a gig we had last night at Club Relevant where we rocked to songs like “Meant to Live”, “The Pretender”, “Solution” (one of these days we’ll get our own tunes), and now (Friday) I am picking up the pieces for VBS prep next week in Massachusetts. So, that’s my life lately and why the slack blog time. I also had a great lunch on Wednesday with Nate and Terrace to talk about D-Now in October.
I’ll be leaving early on Sunday morning for Mass. and I’m praying our hotel has WiFi! Speaking of prayer, pray for my wife while I’m gone. She really wanted to go, but after camp with the students she realized it would be super hard with the baby and being five months pregnant.
You know, we (Kate and I) had a difficult discussion last night about…well…time. It’s very hard as a Youth Pastor or any staff member of a church (or even church member for that matter) to allow time for family. I vowed I would not work more than 45 hours a week when I started here because I heard of so many pastors getting burned out and ruining their families. I don’t want to be that guy, but it is easy to get sucked in to everything going on around you. Summers are especially difficult! I’m not really that tired though, God has really strengthened me through this. (I’m not as lazy as I used to be) But, I need to slow down for my family.
God, allow me to realize when I need to stop and just ride with my family to church!
Much Love everyone, I’ll write you in Mass.
-AOD
Thar She…Jumps?
Crazy!!
Kem McNair snapped this amazing shot of a spinner shark jumping out of the water behind surfers at New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Check out this link if you think it’s fake. I’M convinced!
I don’t think this is a place I would go surfing. When I was a kid, I loved sharks. I studied them, went to “summer shark camp”, conferences. I got all the books with the cool shark bite pictures and I swore I was going to be a Marine Biologist. Well, those days have passed, I suppose and now I prefer to stay in a boat or on shore.
-AOD
DVD Review:
It’s John Mayer Live in L.A. called “Where the Light Is”. It’s a great live performance DVD from John Mayer. It starts out with him “opening for himself” in an acoustic act. He rocks to songs like “Neon” and “Free Fallin’”. Then, after a brief intermission, he does a performance with the John Mayer Trio. These guys, John, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino BLEW ME AWAY! The driving bass lines and amazing rhythmic drums are mostly a blues sound with a few of John’s songs thrown in. Last, the John Mayer band plays their more “poppy” tunes that the girls love of course. You know like “Why Georgia” and “Waiting on the World to Change”. Oh, who am I kidding, I like ‘em too!
I give it 5/5 stars
John is a great guy to watch if you have even the slightest bit of respect for guitarists. The recordings are good, but when you SEE them play is when it becomes truly impressive. So check out the DVD…
Hope you enjoyed this review.
-AOD
How Can You Save $$$?
Ok, so I am a Finance grad from ODU. Since that makes me a bona fide professional (hahaha), I am now going to put that to work. Frankly I am pretty sick of hearing about gas prices and bad economy stuff. I really feel like the economy is affected mostly by the media instead of government. What has this world come to when we trust people looking for a story over the people that supposedly know what is going on? I digress…
So in this state of the economy, I would like to encourage you first and then give some tips as to how to save a few bucks. Think about this, are you better off now than you were 5 years ago? 2 years ago? 1 year ago? last week? The only one you may have trouble with is last week because you may have already spent the paycheck and don’t get paid ’til next week, I get that. For me, i am definitely better off after all those times and we have added a little crumb cruncher to the mix in the last year. Praise God for that, He’s the only one to put us in this great position!!
So, how can you save? Start here…
1. STOP going out to eat – if you have trouble in this area, make it a goal to cut back to at least twice a week first and then go to once a week. I’m not saying don’t eat out at all, I am saying don’t do it every day.
2. Turn the air conditioning up a few extra degrees – this is hard with a pregnant wife, but you can deal with a couple degrees of warmth. What did the people that came over on the boats do? They came from a cold UK to smoking hot summer in VA. In addition – run ceiling fans
3. Make sure car fluids are at proper levels – if your car has adequate fuel, oil and coolant, it will run better and more efficiently. In addition – keep at least a half tank of fuel in your car, you get better mileage this way.
4. Go to the store with a list – do not deviate from this list. If you want an energy drink while there, put it on the list (and subsequently in the store budget). Impulse has and sometimes still gets me hook, line and sinker. I’ll end up spending $30 instead of $15. That is a meal “out”.
5. Budget billing – most of your utility suppliers will budget bill you for the year. So, instead of that $120 gas bill in the winter and $12 in the summer, you will pay roughly $25 monthly all year. Accelerate your mortgage payments to twice a month. You can save almost $30,000 over 30 years in interest this way.
These are some quick money-saving tips not from a website, but from my personal experience. If you ask Katie, she will tell you that we still struggle with holding to these things, but they are helpful tools to putting some change in your pocket.
Bottom line, folks, God should be the master of your money, not you or the things you buy. If you spend money to further the Kingdom (tithe) you won’t put yourself in a sorry financial position. Be responsible, use your money to glorify Him, i.e. make Him obvious!!
Stay tuned to read financial tips for your business/church…
-AOD
The 4th in NC
My family and I along with Jen, Justin and Gavin Sleeper are in Hampstead,NC for this weekend. It has been a great visit with my mom and dad and sisters. I love that they are this close (4.5 hours) as opposed to 9 hours away when they lived in PA last year. We are close to Topsail Island here and last night we went to Holly Ridge just up the coast to watch fireworks. Abigail was amazed and Kate and I were surprised that she was in such awe. My wife and I agreed that once you see fireworks once, you’ve seen them all. However, once you’ve seen your 10 month old watch fireworks, you wish you could hold on to that moment forever.
Here is a pic of Abbi watching. Happy fourth, praise God for freedom!
Success By Cigarette Butts
Sometimes we as churches or church leaders tend to look at our numbers and success as determined by baptisms, and Sunday School attendance. This is okay and it is one way of measuring numbers inside the church. But there may be a better way to look at how we are reaching out community. The good people over at Catablog highlighted a new way to look at church success. W. David Phillips came up with this interesting missional score card. What can you and your church mark off?
You can tell you’re reaching by…
1. The number of cigarette butts in the church parking lot.
2. The number of former convicted felons serving in the church.
3. The number of phone calls from community leaders asking the church’s advice.
4. The number of organizations using the church building.
5. The number of emergency finance meetings that take place to reroute money to community ministry.
6. The amount of dollars saved by the local schools because the church has painted the walls.
7. The number of people serving in the community during the church’s normal worship hours.
8. The number of times the church band has played family-friendly music in the local coffee shop.
check out the rest of the list
-AOD
