This is the latest edition of my Friday mindless post. Today I bring you two of my favorite things: an iPad and Velcro. Separately they are great; together they’re a force to be reckon with. If you could pick two of your favorite things and put together what would they be?

Yesterday my church, Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN gave birth to its fourth campus in the Bellevue area just west of Nashville. I have been on the board since our early days and I must say this is the most successful launch we’ve ever had. Yesterday morning we had over 1,200 people attending two services. It’s a phenomenal statistics by any standard. There are many factors why we saw such success: from the newly remodeled Circuit City building we purchased, to a beautiful sunny day, and to several families from the area already attending our downtown campus. But I believe the main reason for this amazing first day rested on Bellevue’s campus pastor, Justin Davis becoming a shepherd to the community before we even had a first service. Months before our opening day, Justin and his wife Trisha and their three boys have been living among the people God…

As a church consultant, I have resisted the trend to define and template what some call a contemporary worship experience. I’ve had pastors ask me what to sing, what to say and even what to wear–often that turns out to be what NOT to wear.  However, North Point Church did a great job in deconstructing the modern American worship service in this fun and somewhat scary parody. “For some years it has been apparent that the rage for novelties in singing, especially in our Sunday Schools, has been driving out of use the old, precious, standard hymns. They are not memorized as of old. They are scarcely sung at all. They are not even contained in the non-denominational songbooks which in many churches have usurped the place of our hymn books. We cannot afford to lose these old hymns. They are full of the Gospel; they breathe the deepest emotions…

We just launched our first iPhone/iPad app a couple of weeks ago. This is a media-rich app that allows the user to watch videos, listen to audio, read notes, share information as well as bookmark favorites for access later. The Met Church in Houston, TX was our pilot church– you can find it in the app store under “The Met Church.” This app works together with our online “Media Machine” which The Met uses. They upload media files only once and the Media Machine takes care of their website media, Podcasts as well as the iPhone/iPad apps. While it’s an easy process for our clients, it’s quite of feat of programming prowess for our team. Our challenge was not only creating the app, but making it interface with our existing platform and making it seamless for our clients using our back end we call TAG Tools. We’re a learning organization…

Last night was a blur. After working all day and traveling most of the evening, I arrived home to help my 15-year old son, Marcus, with his Spanish class project. He and a partner, his friend Tanner, were to cook a famous Spanish dish, Tortilla Espanhola, document the act in a short video in Spanish. The next morning, the boys, their Spanish fritatta and a short video were to compete with the other teams in the class. My task was to film them using my trusty $150 Flip Camera, and help them put together their video. It took us 2 hours to cook and document the dish, and by then it was past 10 p.m. Exhausted, I opened a video editing program that came loaded on my Mac, iMovie, and prayed that I would be able to figure it out and get this thing done. I had never worked with…

Today my Pastor and friend, Pete Wilson, releases his first book. I’m proud and excited for him because I believe this is an important message that will resonate with many people and hopefully allow them to get closer to God in their walk of faith. I always thought the book would be timely. I had no idea of how timely. In the past few days Cross Point staff, church members and thousands of people in our community have lost belongings, their entire homes, and some even loved ones. Suddenly our entire community is thrown into our very own collective “Plan B”. But Plan B is not a book just about dealing with catastrophes; it’s also a conversation about dealing with disappointment in life and reconciling our faith with them. So what happens when God doesn’t show up the way you thought He would? I struggled with that question this morning…

It rained hard for 2 days. Very hard. As a matter of fact, harder than anytime ever recorded in the history of this town. We were warned, but not prepared. Here’s some of the sobering pictures of the Nashville flood of 2010  We were fortunate and escaped with the minor inconvenience of having to stay home for a couple of days. Thousands are dealing with devastation and tremendous lost. My church, Cross Point, has set up a Relief Fund for the victims of the flood. You can help by participating in the ongoing clean up and rescue work as well as making an online donation. It’s simple and safe through their website. As I watched the terrible pictures of destruction and folks stranded in homes that are now covered in water, I asked myself: “Shouldn’t we have been better prepared? How can this happen?” And the answers were simple but…