Yeah…thanks Todd for giving the State of Florida another black eye. I truly don’t understand this type of hype and garbage that this man is spewing out. If you are into the charismatic thing please consider reading this resource by Church Smith.

Since our church is in a temporary facility (for another month or so), we have had the luxury of going back to one service. I enjoy this because it gives me Sunday morning as another time to get a run in. Notice I said ‘get’…with three kids and the responsibilities of being a husband and father my running schedule has had to flex. But Sunday mornings…yeah Sunday mornings are mine (as long as I hit the road by 6 am and am back by 7 am.

It is with great pleasure that I announce that I have officially finished my most recent college class. The past 3 months have been crazy…a new son, Church building flooding, college class, running schedule picking up…I am glad I can check one thing off my list. I have so many things I want to write but I suppose I will have to tackle them one at a time. For now I am glad to have some “free time” again!

Sunday was just “one of those days” when it comes to having 3 kids. As usual, we got up, ate and got ready for church. Billy leaves earlier so it’s up to me to get all 3 ready and in the car. Actually getting them from the car to their various Sunday classes requires a double-stroller and another set of hands — thankfully Billy meets me out front of the church and assists with the process.

Once church is over, it’s time to pick everyone up from their classes (after feeding Colty in the nursery so he doesn’t scream the whole way home) and getting them back to the car. Billy has to stay and tear down (see his post on our current mobile church status)… so once again it’s up to me to get them home and in the house. Well, upon picking Kinley up from her class I realized she had had a little accident in her undies. She refuses to let anyone else take her potty (other than mommy), so it was one of those days when she just couldn’t hold it all and had a little “leak” as we call it. It’s pretty rare for her to have an accident. I took her potty and I just put them all in the car and told her I would change her when we got home. About a mile from the house Myleigh started saying “potty potty potty” and then started yelling “poo poo!”. Of course, I couldn’t help her until we got to the house. By then it was too late. She started crying hysterically and I realized as we were about a block from the house that she hadn’t been able to hold it.

I pulled in the garage, got Myleigh out — yes, she had the big “D” and messed in her undies, despite her desire to stay dry/clean. Poor baby. As I carried Myleigh in the house, Kinley thought I forgot about her and started screaming in the car. I finally got everyone inside. I had to put Myleigh in the tub immediately and try to clean her off. Myleigh was crying.. and soon Kinley was crying and begging to get into the tub with Myleigh. I explained that there was poo poo in there and she couldn’t get in the tub. She proceded to tell me “I want to sit in the poo poo water!”…. um…ok…. well, I didn’t let her of course, so she continued to cry and protest. All this commotion caused Colty (still strapped in his carseat, sitting on the floor next to the bathroom) to start crying. With only one set of hands, I continued to just deal with Myleigh, but I could feel a nervous twitch coming on from all the screaming.

The chaos continued through lunch. I got everyone changed and up to the table and as I started to make lunch, Colty started screaming, which again is not normal for him. I had to let him scream until I got their sandwiches ready, then held him to help him calm down. The girls started protesting because they wanted more to eat — and due to their tired state, it was just incessant whining. So basically the noise alternated from the girls whining/crying to Colty screaming until they were completely fed. I quickly wiped everyone down and then one by one laid them down for naps. Finally, I had a moment of silence.

At around 2 p.m. just as I got everyone to bed, Billy walked in… and said “are you ok?”. I’m sure I looked frazzled — the nervous twitch had surfaced and I was starting to stare off into space. I leaned on the counter and thought in that moment that I might pass out from physical and emotional exhaustion of the morning and early afternoon. These are the times that I try to refocus on the bigger picture, and then thank God for the gift of my children. They may make me crazy sometimes, but I love them more than anything and thank God for entrusting them to me.

Well, it’s that time again… time to lose the baby weight I gained during my [third] pregnancy. In a way, I enjoy the challenge. Of course, in another way, it’s annoying to have start again. How many times should a body lose a significant chunk of weight in 3 years?? I was able to lose it (within 6 months) after the first two, and I’m determined to do it again. It’s a combination of eating right, exercise and breastfeeding (which burns calories too). I’m trying to get into a good pattern of walking, so that I can eventually start running (and training for the Disney half-marathon in January).

I know each woman is different, but for me… my body has a specific weight it MUST reach before I can give birth It sounds strange, but with all three pregnancies, I gained the exact amount of weight (35 lbs.) — and I mean exactly 35. In all three, my diet was different and even my level of exercise. As an example, with Myleigh’s pregnancy, I walked at least 5x a week (2-3 miles each time) and with Colty’s pregnancy I hardly walked at all…. YET.. I gained the exact same amount of weight. Even though both Kinley and Myleigh were a week early and Colty was a week late… I still gained the same. It’s very interesting.

The bottom line is that I have about 17 lbs. to go to reach my target weight. I hope I can report back in the next few months that I’m getting there!

I am proud to report that for the first time our girls (who share a room) went to bed with out a peep or reprimand. This means Kelli and I got to enjoy two full episodes of “what not to wear”…of course I just sit and ‘enjoy’ this type of non-sense with her. I makes me wonder about the future of television/cable…anyway that’s another topic for another day.

As Billy mentioned in the previous post, I have entered a new season in life and in doing so, have had to leave behind something that I love dearly, only to focus on something I love even more… It is a bittersweet time as I have made the decision to step down as worship leader / music ministry director at our church (Calvary Chapel PSL) in order to focus on the care of my family - and specifically the needs of our three small children. As God has blessed us with a third child, it no longer became possible for me to really balance my time as a worship leader and as a mother. I have a heart and a calling for worship, but know that my family is my first and most important responsibility right now and I need to do it to the best of my ability. This is just another season in life and I know that my gifts and calling have not changed.. so in the future, I know I will be back in worship leadership — that will be yet another season in life

You may remember that I officially “resigned” over a year ago, but we were unable to find a replacement despite the numerous resumes/interviews that were conducted, so I agreed to continue until God revealed that right person. The exiciting thing is that my friend Dave Carroll, whom I have known for many years, contacted me recently and let me know he was interested in the position. God drew him and his family back to Florida and to our church — and as of last week was hired as a full-time worship pastor in our church, after providing worship leadership the past few months during my maternity leave. It’s such a blessing to be able to pass the torch to someone you know and trust! God is good.

I will miss the weekly interaction with my team, but will stayed involved at some level in worship participation as part of the team. I will also assist Billy as I can with the youth ministry…and will lead worship for their monthly gatherings. This will allow me to continue to participate in ministry without having so many time commitments. I’m looking forward to this new season!

My wife has been our worship leader for over four years now. Yesterday she officially stepped down to focus her time and energy towards our three children. It’s a bittersweet ending however it was cool for me to see the Lord work in her heart and steer her towards this. She will assist me with the student ministry and for that I am excited.

I just wanted to take some time to thank her myself for all that she has done to kick start the worship ministry at Calvary Chapel Port St. Lucie.

Today there was a lift station failure across the street from our church. This lift station is used to pump waste water to the waste water treatment plant…well since our facility and for that matter entire building is lower than the lift station we experienced the affects of Bernoulli equation for compressible fluids. In laymen’s terms ‘crap always flows down hill’. We had some (actually a lot) of flooding in our church facility. It’s strange because we just had service in there the day before. Needless to say we are preparing for this coming weekends service. We have experience as a portable church so it’s like finding that old bike, dusting it off and catching a ride again.

Knowing that Colty was on the way, we started making preparations for Myleigh to move into Kinley’s room…since we only have a 3-bedroom house. Several months ago we bought a second toddler bed and put it into Kinley’s room so the girls would get used to both beds being in there. We got Myleigh matching bedding as well, so everything would be the same. Today, we passed a milestone and put Myleigh in her new big girl bed for the first time! She (unlike her sister) loves to sleep, so I’m pleased to announce that she fell right to sleep in her new bed with no protesting and no resistance. I suspect she is excited about the new bed, since it means she will be a big girl like her sister. After several days of napping in the bed, we’ll probably get brave and move her in there for night-time as well. I’ll report back when we’ve had BOTH girls in there at the same time It could be interesting!

So what have I been doing at Church lately…

Well besides overseeing the student ministry (612 Students) I have the pleasure of implementing new technologies.

One piece of sweet technology we are going to implement involves Google. Right now our main church website is hosted at Kintera. Kintera is the spawn of Satan…well not really…but at times my ‘relationship’ with them has been…well…rather interesting. We are going dump Kintera and push our site over to Powerful Church Websites (I know…sounds cheesy). It’s a Joomla platform and is much simpler to use and implement. In addition to this we have set up a Google App’s address so that we can point our MX record (email) to Google. The benefit of this is that we are going to move to a 100% web based church. To some extent we will use Google documents for non sensitive documents and such. The anticipated result will be a highly collaborative Church Staff and Leadership Team.

I personally like this idea because if all of my email and calendars are web based that means it makes perfect sense to pick up an iphone

Dude…this is one line that has forever been burned into my head. I just finished reading Confessions of a Pastor by Craig Groeschel. This book was brutally honest and is in my opinion a great read. Check out my review here.