Loud & Clear

redeeming grace backdrop

Well, it’s late as the series is officially over. But if you didn’t see it, here was the backdrop design we had for it.

As a series though, wow… What an amazing four weeks. God did some awesome things and I continue to hear stories of relationships God is restoring because of it.

Oh, and see if you can find the little easter egg we put in there.

a surprise gift from Dean Koontz

The family and I went to Asilomar, next to Monterey, this week. As usual when we pack, we checked and double check to make sure we got everything. I made sure I packed my laptop and a few books I planned on reading while we were there. The garage was the staging ground. I loaded it all in and off we went…

…leaving my laptop bag with my computer, my books and my phone charger sitting in a stroller in the garage.

Nothing like a little enforcered technology fast.

After we were all in the room and I realized I was soon with nothing to do (no TV’s in the rooms at Asilomar), I went to the front desk and scrounged through all the books they have for folks (I’m assuming like me) who need something to do when you’re not at the Monterey Bay Aquarium or  freezing your rear off in the ocean .

I picked up Dean Koontz’s book The Taking for some recreational reading. And wow, what a gift it was. I’m not usually a big Koontz fan, but this book was amazing. It was an easy read and extremely interesting. It’s about how Molly and her husband Neil face an overnight changing of all they know from what seems to be an alien invasion. But I’m here to tell you, the ending…

Sometimes, a writer doesn’t just write a good story, he uses it to teach important lessons. Koontz teaches about the importance of hope and fighting despair in this one. But the ending…

When you think you know what something is all about, and then you get a revelation at the end that makes you want to start reading the book all over again from the beginning?

Yeah, that’s a good book.

You should pick yourself up a copy and we’ll get together at Starbucks and have ourselves a chat about Koontz, hope and the end of the world.

social networking now more popular than porn

Can you believe it? A decade ago, the only reason (I was told) people used the internet was to access porn. For 10 years porn has still been the hottest (pardon the expression) searched and visited topic on the web.

Well, it’s finally happened. The reign of porn appears to be over. Or at least failing.

“…surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites,” says Bill Tancer in his new book Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters

Now I know many of you still don’t fully get this whole social networking thing. You’re just discovering Facebook. And many of you think you just don’t have time for Twitter.

But I’m here to tell you, this is the future. And, unlike the prior internet king, this one has the potential to enrich your life, not destroy it.

Then again, people get addicted to all kinds of things. Moderation- it’s a wonderful thing.

To help explain to you folks who still don’t get the whole social network thing, here’s a stripped down explanation of social networking.

the price of play

It seems obvious that carpets are different from each other. I, however, apparently did not take this into account.

I crawl on my hands and knees and chase Rohan all the time at our house. I’m a monster, a horse, all kinds of things.

The location may change, but the games remain. At my folks house, we played our game as usual. But their carpet is different.

In just about 5 seconds, I realized my knees were burning a little from crawling on the carpet in my shorts. Can you say “rug burn?”  Yeowch!

“to treat a symptom” - the saga

So for about six months I’ve been having this weird pressure in my ears on and off again. It’s like I’m coming down off the mountain and my ears won’t pop. In the past, it’s just been annoying, eventually going away. This past Friday, it was worse. It gave me a migraine and make me feel sick. So it was time to see the doc.

Doc says no ear infection, so it may be a tube thing causing blockage and prescribes me this “super-sudafed” steroid that should clear it up. Well, it eased the ear pain, but left a big case of vertigo. With a quick adjustment by my good friend Dr. Sorensen on Sunday morning, the vertigo was gone, but the pressure remained.

Oh, if that was only the end.

Sunday afternoon, the hiccups started. And stuck around for the next 24 hours. Ever had the hiccups, big violent hiccups, for that long? Let me tell you, it really sucks. I tried every internet cure listed and nothing. I was convinced it was the medication. Hiccups wasn’t on the sheet, but upset stomach was. So, a pharmacy consult and message to my doc later, I was prescribed an anit-hiccup med.

So, now I’m taking two meds to treat an ear thing that still hasn’t gone away. And this second med I’m given? Yeah, it could have “permanent side effects” and in rare cases “could be fatal”.

Um, hello? This is a secondary med to treat the primary med that isn’t fixing my problem!

So now, I’m a dude on vacation with ear pain, a jacked up digestive system and sporadic hiccups which is battling out supremecy in my body with a potential lethal other drug.

I just want my ears to stop hurting. Who would have thought it would be this complicated?

ask anything

I’m super stoked about this.

The church at large has a bad reputation and history of being a place where you shouldn’t ask questions. Not Clovis Hills.

We’ve done services like this throughout our history, where people could ask questions during the message and we’d answer them live at the end. No prep time, just Pastor Steve on the spot.

Well, inspired by what some other churches have done, we’re taking that to the next level. We’re going to do an entire series entirely based on the questions people want to ask the church.

So here’s the deal. If you don’t go to church, have a bone to pick with the church or God, or feel the church has let you down, go to askanything.clovishills.com and ask your question.

It’s completely anonymous. We’re going to spend the month of October answering the questions you ask. THEN, we’re going to take more questions during the service and answer them live at the end.

So go ahead. What do you want to ask? askanything.clovishills.com