Immersion Worship

Just one of the many reasons I love SoCal…

Continuing my lame trip through an excellent wall calendar series, and continuing my now traditional approach of being heinously late, here’s April’s trip to the most excellent place in the Cotswolds, one of my most favourite places in the entire country; Bourton-on-the-Water…



Here’s a picture of me at this same bridge, taken from the other side (where you see the white chairs in the above picture)…



Bourton-on-the-Water is a mere 28 miles from the hallowed turf of Witney, and is known as “The Venice of The Cotswolds” due to the river that flows through the village, spanned by many bridges. The river, by the way, is the River Windrush, which also flows through Witney.

Some of the cool things about Bourton-on-the-Water, apart from it’s oldness and quaintness, are the model village (an exact 1:10 replica of the village itself), the motor vehicle museum (full of really old cars), several tea houses serving tea and scones that are sinfully delicious, and the monthly farmer’s market which sells pretty much anything you’d want for dinner.

Perhaps the coolest thing is that every summer a football match gets played between two of the bridges, with the goal posts placed in the water. It’s a full-on, eleven-a-side match and it gets quite a crowd. I think the main purpose of the game, though, is just to get everyone as wet as possible. Good times, good times.

Oh, and I almost forgot. If my memory serves me correctly, Bourton-on-the-Water is where my good friend Kieran proposed to his Bride-to-Be earlier this year. How romantic.

Next up to be late is some other village that I don’t remember right now. Bet you just can’t wait.

It’s Creative Chaos day over at Los’s blog.

My entry this week is more of synopsis of a different type of creativity; the ‘let’s mmake do with that we’ve got’ type.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. The facility that we normally hold our services holds a Mother’s Day brunch; it’s the only day of the year that we can’t have a Sunday morning service there. Last year we did Saturday night there, but this year we decided to find another location nearby and hold a Sunday morning service. The location was just a couple of miles away, easy to find, and could accommodate us well.

When we got there, it was a slightly different matter. As is often the case in these types of scenarios, not all bases had been covered during the planning process. We discovered a distinct lack of power outlets, no loading bay, a ceiling too low for our projector screen and speaker stacks, and various other issues meaning we had to get creative with out setup.

I’ve always known that my team were awesome, but they really showed it on Sunday:

1. With no loading bay, it was a case of rolling everything in through the front door. With a trailer full of Road Ready cases, rolling apparatus, and staging, everyone chipped in to offload the trailer and get it all in place through the front door.

2. Our sound system usually runs on a dedicated ground, 240v circuit of clean power. Our sound team stripped the system down to the bare essentials and ran the entire thing off of two 120v outlets; board, processing rack, antennae, speakers.

3. With the projection screen so low, our video team brought the projector to front row, sat it on a small plastic table we found in some back room, ran a long VGA cable, and had the video sat towards the front, stage left.

4. The low ceiling meant we couldn’t stack our speakers as normal. So we did away with the subs and used the full range capability of the mains (we sacrificed some of the low-end doing this, but it wasn’t bad). Rather than put them on their usual stands, we just rolled in the now-empty Road Ready cases that the speakers are transported in, and stood the speakers on top of them. Perfect height.

5. With no kitchen facility to speak of, the hospitality team scrambled to get industrial amounts of coffee from the nearest Starbucks, and set everything up in the main hall, to the side of the seating, stage right. There was a brief moment of confusion when we didn’t know which coffee container had decaf in, but some quick coffee education from my wife on the taste differences between caf and decaf, it was quickly and accurately determined.

So with the band stripped down to an ‘unplugged’ type set (two acoustic guitars, one vocal), it had a real coffee-house vibe going on, and ended up being a really great morning with an absolutely killer message from Scott.

That’s this week’s Creative Chaos.

I’m pumped for this year’s conference, especially because a large chunk of my team are coming with me this time.



Who else is going?

Current weight: 200.8 lbs

So I guess this is where it all starts. After committing to this last week, I had a few guilty pleasures over the weekend knowing full well that as of today those things must be dramatically reduced.

I was thinking about the way to approach this, and I remembered a couple of gems that I heard from KFI’s fitness guru Jillian Michaels several months ago.

Essentially, she broke down the idea of weight loss for men in to three separate categories - Exercise (working out, obviously), Diet (changing what you eat), and Behaviour (changing how you eat). But basically it came down to two simple approaches:

1. Eat less.
2. Move more.

And that’s basically the model I’m going to use to try and shed some pounds. The amount I eat at each meal will be smaller. I don’t need to pig out. But, I will eat more often to keep my metabolism up.

In terms of working out, I’m aiming for at least three days a week for at least an hour, with an even mix of cardio and weight training.

I’ve lost pounds before. I can do it again. No more fat arse.

Good luck to Brent, Kristen, Joe, BuddyO, Dan, Rick, Brandy, Deborah, Mandy, Joel, Theresa, Steven, Love, Tawny, Kelly, and anyone else who’s in on this as well.

A couple of weeks ago, this happened:





A couple of times year the fire department run this fundraising campaign where they hang around busy intersections and collect money from people waiting at red lights. My wife was on her way to the feline adoption agency that she volunteers for at the weekend and drove through one of the intersections that the fire department were using. The car that was 3 cars in front of her decided to cross the intersection on a green light, and then stop abruptly to give some cash to the firemen. Boom boom boom. Three cars all piled up because some dozy driver thought it was a good idea to stop on a green light. My wife was the last car.

I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank the fire department and the numb-nuts who stopped on the green light. Thanks for causing the mini pile-up. Thanks for depreciating the value of my one year old not-so-cheap car to the point where it’ll be pointless trying to sell it after I’ve finished paying for it. Thanks for the potential hit on my insurance premium and for the ding on the carfax report on my car. Most of all, thanks for letting me spend the money I had saved, which I had intended to take my wife on holiday with, on paying my insurance deductible instead. I can’t tell you how much I love you right now.

Enough of the sarcasm. I refuse to be bitter. Actually, I forgive them. Farmers Insurance put me in a better mood. Within half an hour of the accident, my insurance agent was on the scene (since the Police Department didn’t feel like showing up promptly). Within an hour, the car had been towed to the repair shop. Within 3 hours we had the claim filed. Within 5 hours, I’d received a call from the Claim Adjuster. Within 2 days, I received the repair estimate and approval for payment notice. And within 12 days, my vehicle had been repaired and was ready for collection. Farmers Insurance, thank you. You’re awesome.

Here she is, all shiny and repaired:

This season of LOST is shaping up to be one of the best yet, but last night’s episode was just crazy…

1. Richard Alpert is clearly immune to the ravages of time. We’ve seen him present day, we’ve seen him when Ben was a child, and we’ve saw him last night when Locke was a child. His age does not change.

2. When Locke had his first encounter with Jacob last season, I declared that it was Christian Shepherd sitting in the chair in the cabin. I was right, but…WHAT ON EARTH???…Claire is now in on whatever is going on?

3. I like Ben. I didn’t used to, but his character has become incredibly complex this season. I’m particularly intrigued by his involvement with some of the Oceanic Six in the flash forwards.

4. Next week’s trailer looks excellent. Are we going to finally see how the Jack, Hurley, Kate, Sayid, Sun, and Aaron become the Oceanic Six?

There are way too many people I know that should be on Twitter that aren’t on Twitter, and when they ask me to explain to them why they should be on Twitter, I can’t seem to articulate it very well. So instead, there’s this, that does a much better job of explain things than I:



Now that we’re clear, follow me.

Here’s a video that we used this week to highlight out recent baptisms. Major props to Jenny and her team for putting this together.



What do you have for this week’s Creative Chaos?

Alright, I’m in on the “Fat Arse” thing. There are a few things I’d like to make clear, though.

1. Updates will be on Mondays. I will be transparent enough to declare my weight and any sinful food I’ve eaten in the preceding week, but there will be no pictures. I don’t want to scare anyone, nor do I want my blog to get blocked by firewalls for being obscene.

2. I’m not going to give up drinking beer. I don’t drink that much of it anyway, but it’s a beverage that I enjoy, particularly with curry. I will, however, elect to find a “lite” beer that doesn’t taste like gnat’s piss (which already removes Bud Light and Miller Light from the list of possibilities).

3. There will be weeks where I don’t go the gym, but I will make an extra effort to do what I can to go to the gym at least three times a week.

4. I love hamburgers. Truly. In-n-Out’s Double Double is gastronomic heaven. And I also love chips (french fries to you troglodytes Americans). There will be times that both are consumed, separately or together. But I will cut down the amount that I eat.

5. Recently, my intake of fruits and vegetables has been mostly via V8 products. I need to eat more vegetables instead of drinking them. I’ll work on that.

I think that’s about it for now. Monday’s will be “Fat Arse Day” around here, so look for an update in 5 days.