• first real snow day we have had at Elevation.  We saw about a 30% decrease in attendance.  No one with kids there today after all the snow storms we have had….it was crazy weird to have no one there this morning.
• Joel Johnson, our new youth pastor, spoke this morning and did a great job of communicating to us about looking towards the future and not our past.
• Felt good to sit back and be part of the gathering without having to speak…reminded me of when Ryan was out here.  Man I miss that guy.
• Worship was good as usual.
• The survey for Elevation 2007 is going good…we have had a lot of people respond to the survey.  Hopefully we will reach a good amount of respondents by Wednesday night.
• Too many sick people in the Elevation community…pray for good health.
• Early movies at the theater are a pain, yet the biggest blessing in advertising for our services.
• Miss all the people who are gone for holiday vacation.  Come back NOW.
• Did I mention I won my fantasy football league?
• The Denver Broncos beat the Vikings to keep them out of the playoffs.  Sorry Ryan.
• Patriots are undefeated…WOW.
• Great to see parties springing up for New Years amongst the Elevation crew without the “front office” booking them.
• Staff meeting tonight was great.  We have some great leaders.
• Pumped about the next two days off with the family.
• I’m really enjoying the nightly games of Mario Party 8 on Wii with my daughter Madison.
• Relationships are important.  The way we treat others matters.

Alright…I’m off to bed.  Happy New Year.

Ok Elevation people…we are doing a survey this year to learn more about the people that consider Elevation Church their home church.

This also helps us in our planning for 2008.  We don’t do voting at Elevation and we have learned to survey each other to find out the pulse of the momentum amongst our community, coupled with what we feel God has called us to do…we plan strategically to move in big or little ways.

The survey is available online, but we will bring some hand-out copies tomorrow morning as well.  If you can take this survey by this WEDNESDAY, Jan 2nd at 10pm, it would help us out.

If you don’t attend Elevation…don’t take this survey.

Click here to take the 2007 Elevation Survey!

Christmas was nearly perfect.

We started a new tradition in our family this year, we decided to have the family sleep out in the family room together Christmas Eve night.  We sat around talking about the birth of Jesus and our 3 year old Madison knew the whole story, right down to the details of King Herod wanting to be the only king.

In the morning we read the Christmas story from the Bible, had a family prayer, lite the final Advent candle, and then we gave each other gifts.  It was so much fun and the girls loved it.

We got ready for the day and went to my dad’s house for brunch.  We had fun making breakfast, eating, and just relaxing with family.  We made one more stop at another family members house to give them gifts before we made our way back home for the evening.

Our friends, Brian and Miriah, stopped by in the evening for a relaxed Christmas dinner.  It was fun to hang with them before we all called it a night.

The only bad in the whole day was I woke up with my left eye slightly red.  During Madison’s strep throat week, she also had pink eye.  We had medicine for pink eye and I took some to make sure I didn’t get it, well….I had an allergic reaction to the medicine and this morning my eye was swollen shut.  Had to go to the doctor to get new medicine.  If it wasn’t for the eye….it would have been a perfect day…it was nearly perfect.

So last week, friends Mike and Jen Foster, were in Utah on a ski vacation.  Friday night our families hooked up for dinner as we are now making a tradition of doing when we are in California or he is in Utah.

Mike gave me another copy of his book that he co-wrote with Jud Wilhite, called Deadly Viper: Character Assassins.

I wrote about this on my older blog when it first came out.  But, since I love to read I picked up this book and read it for the second time this weekend.  This time I decided to journal as I read it.  And I wanted to share something from the book that caught my attention this time around.

On page 77…Mike and Jud are talking about your emotions taking control.  They list out a list of practical things they do to keep their emotions from going crazy.  Here is that list as I rewrote it in my journal with some additions and comments.

•  don’t read blogs, emails, or letters that are attacking you
• if a meeting gets heated or is starting to get strained emotionally, take a break…STARBUCKS
• “Be the Duck” let mistakes, failures, or let downs roll off your back
• If you get ticked…check out and head to the movies that day.  Get away and cool down.
• Do not use email to handle relationally-sensitive subjects.
• Contrary to what others think in this world, other people’s feelings matter…
• When something upsets you, don’t make a decision to handle the subject without counseling with someone else and sleeping on it.

There is so much more that this book has taught me and made me think through.  I’m thinking about getting a copy for each of our staff members and I think this book would be awesome for our Basement Confessions House Church.  If you haven’t read this book yet or don’t have one for your library, get it now.

Go to their website or get it here at Amazon.com.

I give it a big THUMBS UP. 

Today was great.  We went about 15 minutes long on time, but who cares.  It was so worth it.

I heard from so many people, “we should have had that sermon weeks ago..I need to refocus.”

Perko and the worship team did a great job with the music.  They had a couple of new people singing with them this morning.  Great job Lyndi and Danni!

We had two videos this Sunday that I thought did a great job of mixing really well with everything.

My favorite part was the candle lighting at the end of the service with the song Yahweh.  It looked awesome to see all those candles lit and everyone focused on God.  Awesome!

We gave everyone a white candle to take home and lite the candle on Christmas morning.  The candle that sits in the middle of the Advent wreath is traditionally white and is lite on Sunday morning, representing Jesus.  One guy, Dave, came up to me to tell me that they were going to take the candle to his Dad’s hospital room to lite on Christmas.  How awesome is that?

We had a great crowd even with a lot of people gone for the holidays.  I am so happy to be part of the Elevation community and seeing us grow.

Just wanted to let all of you Cowboys fans out there know that you stole a game from the Panthers tonight.  There were some very bad calls tonight that if they had gone the other way, the Cowboys might have lost.  I hate badly officiated games.  Tonight was one of those.

Yuck.

Ok, so this is my deep thought of the day. It actually started yesterday when I was talking with our former intern, Andy.

Do we live on the risks of yesterday? In other words, when we share our story of God working in our life is it always about the big risk we took in our past instead of the big leap of faith we need to take today?

Was Moses’ problem that fact that he would sit down and tell his kids how nervous he was to follow God into Egypt to lead the people out and then do nothing after that? How crazy the thought was when he first heard it from the burning bush and how it was this huge risk, this leap of faith to do it. Then when he actually got out of Egypt and was heading to the promised land was there ever another risky step he took for God? I can’t really find one. Did he live on the risks of yesterday?

Am I? I got a great story of making $10 an hour in a construction job when we first started this church. Just had our first kid two months before, moved into our first house, but felt God had called us to plant a church. No one could talk us out of it. I was asked by one pastor during that time what we would do if they told us we couldn’t work with their association, “Well…I’ll plant the church anyways cause God has called me and it is in me to do this.” I even quit my $10 an hour job to work full-time at raising support, awareness, people for the church planting mission. Not having a guaranteed dime! We had nothing for two months.  We made it.  I was crazy. Crazy for the vision. Crazy for the call.

I don’t want to live on that story. I want to remember it. I want to encourage others with it. But I keep thinking that there is another leap of faith for my future. Something bigger. Or did I miss something today?

There is a reckless abandonment to following God. I think it is human nature to settle into being comfortable and living on the risk of yesterday instead of the reckless abandonment of today.

Check out this video from a pastor that had that same reckless abandonment in life. Click here. And in the middle of the page there is a video of his story. 1 minute long. Coolest video. We are going to steal the idea.

We had our annual staff Christmas party.  It was awesome.  Great friends, food, and Brandon was hilarious.