foolishnotions.net

dirt, people…. D I R T !!!!

what?!?!?! [ lol ]

i don’t know what you all were thinkin’! y’all need to go pray about it i think.

why? well… because i can.

have a wonderful day everyone!!!

made you look!!!

just got an email from my mom. my brother, jesse, is officially back on US soil!

well - - almost… he’s in new jersey.

JUST kidding!

do i even have any jersey readers?

i don’t know…  maybe not anymore - lol!

thank you all so much for your prayers!

does anyone out there still have family at war?
please leave me a comment.
i’d like to pray for you.

this past sunday was one of the most historic days in the history or the rock. if you don’t know what i’m talking about, you can read about it here, or listen to the podcast here. we have been getting a lot of supportive feedback from our church family, and pastor ron has been diligently sharing the encouraging words and emails with the rest of the staff. one particular response he forwarded to us made me wish he had a blog so everyone could read it. so i asked him if he would allow me to post it as a guest post on foolishnotions. he said yes :-).

i love the heart of my pastors. they are some of the most wise, genuine, compassionate, generous people i have ever met. it is an honor to serve them and i hope i grow up to be a lot like them. you could comment here but i would rather you email your encouraging words directly to…

pastor ron - ron [at] rockwilmington.com
pastor norma - norma [at] rockwilmington.com
pastor bryan - bryan [at] rockwilmington.com
jennifer - jennifer [at] rockwilmington.com

and now… pastor ron. enjoy.

Bold faith is not often easy or peaceful because it always stretches us far beyond our comfort zones and moves us from the realm of the known into the unknown. The announcement Sunday was a bold faith move for me filled with a lot of yet unknown things. In some ways it was scarier than moving my family to Wilmington 19 ½ years ago when we knew no one here.

These are the known components of this move for me:

1. It is the right thing to do
2. This is the right time to do it
3. It is the word of the Lord to me
4. It is necessary for this church to be relevant and effective in the 21st Century

These are the unknown components of this move for me:

1. I don’t know what the final picture will look like for me, my family or this church
2. I don’t know who or how many will embrace this bold step of faith and move forward with us to impact our city, nation and the world in the 21st Century
3. I don’t know who or how many will not choose or be able to go with us
4. I don’t know how the city God has called us to make a difference in will react

As I have compared the two lists and asked the Lord to help me put all of this in proper perspective, this is what He has shown me. The unknown components are scary, but the known components are powerful, awesome and incredible! Bold faith requires me to embrace the known and release the unknown back into the hands of the God who called us here almost 20 years ago. Then, the known list was about the same as it is now, but the unknown list was long and much more intimidating.

But God was faithful, has continued to be faithful and will be faithful yet again.

I love God too much to not do this. I love my family too much not to do this. I love this church and the wonderful people who call me pastor too much not to do this. I love the lost too much not to do this

Fasten your seatbelt. It’s going to be an exciting ride!

Make Every Day a Great Day!
Pastor Ron

my brain is mush from learning all this light stuff. and, 20 minutes ago i pulled out our super duper new portable recorder to hook up. that should be easy enough, right?

holy smokes! i think this thing could get up, lead us in worship and then preach our sunday message for us! it has a ton of really fun features. i know. i know. just hook the thing up and get it recording. learn the fun stuff later. but, what fun is that? i mean this thing even has p-h-a-n-t-o-m p-o-w-e-r.

oh, alright… just the basics.

you know the funny thing i have found out about myself while on this little learning binge? i have found that the rest of my brain goes into moron mode. seriously. i have asked some of the most obvious, easy questions e-ver. people have been looking at me like, did you seriously just ask that question?

lol. the path to humility is humbling.

about 2 weeks ago i started purposely unplugging at the end of the day, turning off twitter, resisting the urge to blog about every little thing.  you know what happened?  i started getting some really great (God) ideas about my life. go figure.  the first issue God put on the table (and the reason for this little exercise)… learning to guard my family time.

it’s real easy to blame my lost family time on everything but the real culprit.  myself.  the truth?  it is noone’s responsibility but my own to make sure my tasks get done in time to claim all of my weekend time for my family.

God’s little revelation to me was this.  my ‘want to get it done’ list will always be more appealing to me than my, ‘have to get it done’ list.  doing (very important, great things) when they are not my real priority only serves one purpose… to feed my ego and my creative appetite.  these are the things that sabotage my family time by leaving my have to’s unplanned for, undelegated and undone on thursday sending me whining to the office on friday, saturday and sometimes really, really early sunday morning.  [ouch]

so, this week i have two lists.  i am officially unlumping my less appealing routine tasks from my fun new exciting tasks (and named them accordingly as a reminder).  i am removing my ‘want to’ list from my eyesight.  nothing gets done on my fun list until the essentials are taken care of.  wow! this little exercise was very telling.  my have to’s only amounted to 3/4 of a page.  now, i’m sure it will grow throughout the week as it usually does.  but now i’m not distracted by all the things i would rather do but, in all honesty, would not even consider leaving my family on the weekend to complete.

(like posting this blog)

[sigh]

baby steps.

i love my God.  He is great and loves me so much no matter what.

i love my family.  i love my job.  i want them all to keep on loving me.

1st official day with the lights and our new beautiful black wall, and everything went soooo smooth. i have the most amazing team. i mean honestly. they are like a well oiled machine.

ok, i think i really have to let others blog first about today. what happens next is going to be amazing. there are better pictures coming too. but I have to say i’m continually impressed by my little iphone camera.

i’m pooped. going to hang out with my boys before rehearsal tonight.

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

i am sooo excited about my newest feature at foolishnotions.net. it was an idea born out of the comments section of one of my recent posts.

i love art - all kinds. photography, painting, videography, graphic design, typography, music… all of it. and i love finding new artists. are you an artist? want some free exposure? send me your art… if i love it i will feature it prominently on my homepage, again on my featured artists page and also in a post. it will beautify the halls of foolishnotions.net and send the link love right on back to you. sound good?

there are guidelines… so if you want to play - go read the rules.

my very first featured artist is my good friend, matthew ray. matthew is one of the most multi-faceted, artistically talented i people i have ever known personally. and, it was my conversation with him in the comments section that started this whole thing. you will be seeing much, more from him here. go check it out.

now, fill up my inbox with
beautiful music, art, photography… whatever!
i can’t wait to see

from the artist…
I took this shot from my lap while sitting on a moving train in the NYC subways. I was drawn by the contrast between the care-free and the care-full. There are several of these prints floating around the States. I would love to see the expression on this ladies face if she ever stumbles on a print. - matthew ray

there has been a ton going on around the rock the past couple of weeks.  wow… i mean major transformations.  things we have felt like we have been waiting for and anticipating are happening.  right now.  as i type.  it is soooo exciting.

land is being cleared… this was all unusable underbrush and small trees.  now it’s all cleared out leaving beautiful usable space.

jen and her team have started the wall mural down the kid’s rock hall and she is working on fun stuff for the kids during vacation bible school this summer.  (summer’s almost here!  yay!)

and did i mention the lights?  yeah, i guess i probably did.  yesterday i got trained on our new light board and the painters have been here all week making our back wall miraculously disappear into beautiful, black, invisible, nothingness.  i’m going to let you see that one first hand.

so, what could possibly be next?

you should probably really plan on coming this sunday to find out. cause there is, indeed…. more.  pastor ron will share with us all what’s NEXT.  bring a friend.

this was so good i am posting it in it’s entirety here so you will read it. cause i know noone really follows links to ‘great blog you should really really read’. i didn’t write this. that would be robert bruce, guest blogger over at problogger.net. i didn’t ask. i’m using it image and all. robert, if you object, give the word and i’ll replace it with a boring link. great post!

if you are an artist… and addicted to blogging - - read on. you need to hear this as much as i did.  then go tell robert thank you.

Guest Post: Robert Bruce is one of the most widely read, linked and reviled poets working on the web today. Grab yourself a free poem every Monday morning, subscribe to Knife Gun Pen.

1. There’s never been a better time to be a working artist. Ever.

2. There’s never been a worse time to be a working artist (if you’re not truly dedicated to your craft).

3. Social Media will not help you if you’re sending folks to sniff out a pile of crap.

4. If you’re thinking about SEO while writing your digital novel, you’re already screwed. Quit now.

5. The tech tools do not make the artist.

6. If you’re spending more time on Twitter than on your novel/painting/film/poem /play/sculpture, you’re dead.

7. The creation of great art has nothing to do with Community.

8. You will never have as many readers/listeners/viewers as TechCrunch. Get over it.

9. If you’re the real thing, you’ll be around in 30 years, still working. Most of these services and sites you now admire will not.

10. Your Technorati rank is not as important as you think it is.

11. Do not try to please an “audience”. They will ultimately hate you for it.

12. Income isn’t proof of anything. Ask Van Gogh.

13. Aim for Greatness, not the front page of Digg.

14. If you have a fall back plan, you will, inevitably, fall back onto it.

15. Though tempting, you’ll never crush your own mediocrity working only four hours a week.

16. If success finds you, please resist the urge to open a restaurant or start a line of clothing.

17. You do not need the middleman anymore. Quit begging.

18. If you wouldn’t do it without an audience, don’t do it all.

19. Ultimately, nobody really cares about your work. It may seem “negative” but trust me, this knowledge will serve you well.

20. Artists don’t outsource. Unless you’re Andy Warhol.

21. Make the technology work for you. Not the other way around.

22. Remember that the mainstream culture has yet to catch on to the power of the individual artist online. Keep working.

23. Consider getting a second job instead of slapping another Adsense unit next to the .jpg of your latest painting. Contrary to popular belief, work won’t kill you.

24. You no longer need to live in New York or Los Angeles. See: Hugh.

25. Do not work for the good opinion of anyone. Work for joy, wonder and the Lord God Almighty.

26. You do not need a signed letter from The American Academy of Arts and Letters to begin.

27. Blogging is easy. Art is not.

we’re just in channel assigning mode right now so, they are all pointed at the back wall right now.  you can’t really tell how well these bad boys are covering by this shot.  they look awesome!

i need some gel advice for all of the par cans and elipsoidals.  the boring white diffusion paper definitely needs to come out immediately.  i have the lift until the end of the week.  anyone who knows their light stuff, please - i’m open to suggestions here.