is this thing on?

dude, if you were not at Freedom this week, you missed one of the best Sundays in the short history of Freedom Church! like, for real. the band was rockin’ and they busted out a banjo and played “Somebody Like You” by Keith Urban. the people went nuts! as soon as Clint kicked in the intro, people went crazy. we got some country music lovin’ people at Freedom! JR’s message was probably one of the most memorable for me of the past 10 weeks. and even though we’re not married, Callie and i had a good discussion about the message when we got back to my house later that afternoon. apparently, i’m doing ok. check out the podcast here. then, the band ended the worship service with “It is Well” and went into “Everything” by Lifehouse. Blake has the entire set list up on his blog.

the Easter After Party was pretty awesome too! i heard lots of people coming into the room saying “wow!” and “this is awesome!”. we had to move it inside because of all the rain we had here on Saturday. at any rate, kids were running and sliding and bouncing everywhere. i saw moms and dads sliding down the huge inflatable slide with their kids and laughing all the way down. hot dogs were eaten. many a Capri Sun were had. fun times!

after tear-down (which took forever because we were all exhausted from the after party) Callie and i went back to my house and i turned on the tv and Memphis and Texas were just starting the 2nd half. i fell asleep. like knocked out. big time. after my nap, Callie and i went to Wal*Mart because she wanted to make a red velvet cake and i was NOT about to stop her. we got the stuff and went back to my house. we had dinner while the cake cooked and we watched the season opener for the Braves. i fell asleep again, around the 5th inning.

i’m still tired today.

yesterday was a great day in my life and in the life of Freedom Church! i’m so honored and pumped to be a part of this revolutionary movement of God! get ready people. God is about to do some huge stuff through Freedom Church…

BIG HUGE props to my buddy Corey. this is a direct quote from his blog. if you don’t believe me, go read it for yourself!

D-FAT: I have really hit a brick wall and have not done well the past couple of weeks. Sorry, Zach. I did just have a little motivation added to my life. I needed some more jeans, so I went to try on a pair. The ones I have are getting loose, so I thought I would try a size smaller. The store didn’t have that size, so I went even smaller. They fit! I just bought a pair of jeans that are two sizes smaller than the ones I have been wearing! You skinny people may not appreciate the feeling I had, but WOO HOO, it was a good feeling! I have got to get uber-serious about losing weight again.

dude, i am so pumped for him! they say there are NO moral victories but i completely disagree! i don’t care if they win the D-FAT competition - Corey Tutor is a winner in my book! great job buddy.

oh, and i’ll be there on the 19th for free pizza and moving your house!

ok, ok, i know i skipped out on numbers two and three of creative chaos and i have no excuse. but now, i’m back on the bandwagon. and just to attempt to make up for me missing the past two, i’ve got two this week. i know i’m still one down but i’ll get it - i promise.

anyway, the first creative idea we had at Freedom is to break up the creative team. do what? i know, crazy right? well, we do things a little differently anyway. we now have two separate teams that combine to form the “Creative” team. there is a message team that helps JR with his message every week. Todd and Corey do a great job of helping focus the message down to one nugget that people can walk away with. on the flipside, we have a production team (consisting of me, Blake, Ian and Tyler for now) who take the message for the upcoming week and figure out the flow of the service and how we can creatively expand on the message and attempt to make it stick in people’s minds for longer than the following week.

and then there was two… number two.
i think i stole this idea from another church but it’s all good. i figure if i steal it, the least i can do is give it out to other people as well. anyway, we had our first parent call to FreedomKidz this past week. Dawn had to come into the auditorium and get my attention and put up a number on the screens to notify the parents of a kid. everything went off fine and JR didn’t even know we had done that until staff meeting Monday night. however, Dawn and i decided that this week, since we both have macs, we could open iChat and if she needed to send us a number to alert a parent, she could iChat it to us and then she wouldn’t have to leave FreedomKidz to give us a number for a parent.

there you go…

well, the University of Miami is at it again. they just keep doing completely unheard of things down there. this time… well, how about just read it for yourself.

can I just say to every one that i absolutely LOVE my girlfriend? she’s pretty much the greatest girlfriend on the planet. and if you tell me otherwise, she will beat up your girlfriend just to prove that she’s better. she’s pretty much one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me. people are already asking us when the wedding is. this guy’s wife has already said that she’s just going to treat us as a married couple. i don’t know if that’s a good thing or a not so good thing. i’m going with the “that’s a good thing” approach.