This needs to happen more often

Another reason to own a MAC

It's about reaching people...

You know I am so excited about the new building God has provided for us. We will have new displays, new media software, new lights and a stage (wow what a concept). We will have time to test and tweak new videos. We will have a practice facility for our band. The kids will have their own theater! There will be so many cool things in this new building that will be so incredible. God has truly blessed us with an awesome facility. With all of this new stuff we have to remember that the whole purpose of this building is to help us reach people for Christ. All of the stuff we do is cool but it is meaningless if we are not reaching people and helping them grow in their relationship with Christ. My dedication over the next year is to focus my work on just that reaching people. Now I still want it to look good but sometimes I find that looking good becomes my focus. I love crazy illustrations in services and I love being different but being crazy cannot be my focus or the churches focus unless we are doing it to reach people or help them grow. I guess what I am trying to say is I am excited but I cannot let my excitement blind my focus.

Call me butter because it's on my couch

I will try to make this quick! This is another post in the my worst enemy series if you have not read the others click here and here to read them. Now Connor is not my worst enemy just has dual personalities like Christian Slater on my "Own Worst Enemy". Connor and Brady are my 3 year old twins who I love very much but Connor is a little McGyver. Well again I woke up int he middle of the night and the twins were up watching sports center on TV (because that is the channel I had it on when I turned it off to go to bed). I walked in to the kitchen and it was relatively clean in comparison to other nights of late night snacking by the twins. The fridge was open and there were a few bags gum rappers on the floor but nothing major. I really thought I had escaped with only minor damage. That was until I walked into the living room where the twins sat on our new couch watching TV covered in butter. Not only that but there were spoon fulls of butter smeared all over the couch with pieces of bread smashed into it. Bread crumbs covered the floor and the twins had managed to eat like 12 cups of yogurt with only minimal damage (they don't want to waste the yogurt apparently). So of course I clean it up by the time I am through it is almost 6:30 and Garrett and Ryan are waking up so I jump in the shower and get ready for the day. I know there are people who this who think just put the stuff where he can't get it well we do again he can get into things very well. I don't but if it makes you guys laugh then maybe its worth it well until he gets in to something worse then butter. 

Tonight is the night

So Tonight we find our whether or not we can use the building we have found as our new church home. Today is a big cluster of nervous anticipation and work which don't mix well together for me. For those you who know me you know that I don't get nervous about much. I'd like to say it is because I know God is in control and that he has given me a peace about things and to some extent it is. Truly though I just have that personality where things just don't get to me and make me nervous (angry is another story all together. This meeting tonight for some reason or another has me worked up. I keep telling my that whatever happens is God's will and that I should just chill out and get my work done today. On the other hand I am excited at all the possibilities this building brings. God has provided us with a group of talented people over the last several months and I am soo excited about the number of people we can reach for Christ and the number of people we can help in our community with this building. On the other hand I am reminded that we can reach people and help our community right where we are at. If tonight the city decides that we can not use the space for our new building then so be it. It just means God has something better for us. Wow it is amazing how therapeutic blogging is. I need to do this more often.

My own worst enemy #2

To read the first installment click here.
Ok so its about 4:30 on Sunday morning and of course I hear something in the kitchen and of course it is Connor and Brady. They have opened a bag of Doritos and scattered them all across the kitchen floor and opened several other smaller bags. I sent them into my Bedroom to get in bed with Sandra so I could clean up the mess. I walked into the kitchen and was over come by the horrible smell. I looked down and saw the fattest pooh my 2 year old has ever had smeared across the kitchen floor. Now we are potty training Connor (Brady wants nothing to do with it) and he has been doing really good. The problem is he only wants to use one potty and that potty locks when shut. Last night the potty was locked and instead of just pooping in his pull up he decided that it would be better to pooh on the floor and then Brady and him played in it like it was a Play-Doh. What the crap So Sandra gave them both bathes (remember it's 4:30 in the morning) and I took bathroom cleaner to the kitchen floor in hopes of removing the horrible smell. After that Connor snuggled with me the remaining 1 and 1/2 hoursI got to sleep (after his both of course). Needless to say I strugged staying awake through the sermon despite the 32oz Mt Dew Brien Duke bought me. Sorry Philip

Funny or Disturbing

You be the judge. This video is ummmm well just watch it and let me know what you think

This is for all of those who still don't get twitter

I found this a a great site called common craft
it has a ton of simple videos about social networking. Check it out!

I don't Know what I am more excited about .....

The New Building or this...........




I know I signed my nerd card a long time ago but at least my wife agrees with me.

New Logo

So the news is Discover Point is moving into a new permanent location! After 3 years of set up and take down we can finally exhale on Sunday mornings and put our energy towards other things. I am so grateful to God that he let us go through the last 3 years of set up and take down it has made me understand how hard planting a church is. It's funny to look back now and see how far God has taken Discover Point in the last 3 years as well as in my own life. Each of the staff members have seen ups and downs just like Discover Point. We have not brought in huge numbers but the few that have come have seen life change. We have managed to be financially stable with a smaller crowd in these times when our country is in financial crisis. Up until this point it has been hard to see what was over the next hill but now looking back we can see that God has brought us through a lot to prepare us for what is to come. We are preparing our members now for the great things. God has given us a clear vision and time to prepare for what's to come.

The new logo represents that path we walked and will continue to walk on this amazing journey. I hated the old logo but looking back it was perfect. A new horizon for a new church. Now that we are moving it is time to stop thinking like a church plant and start being a church. I am so excited about the things God is going to at Discover Point over the next 3 years not only in the many lives we expect to see touched but also in my own life. I am so excited about the things I get to do with a permanent location. I am even excited about running wire to get ready to move in! You will here much more about the new building location and I will try to keep updates on progress and how we are coming along.

Tutorial of the Week

I found this on Video Copilot This is a tutorial about creating an energy wave in After Effects. Pretty cool stuff check it out here

My inspiration of the week

I decided that once a week I will post 1 tutorial that really taught me something and one piece of inspiration I found during the week. Now my skill level may be lower or higher then who ever reads this. I am sure you have seen some of these images or videos before but hey whatever. Here is video I love. This is a worship leader at Granger Community church in Indiana. Not only is the song beautiful so are the lights and motion graphics behind him. The guy's name is Seth Bible. Mark Beeson wrote a pretty cool blog post about him. If you want to hear more of his stuff you can go here

Do you twitter?

Twitter is so cool! For some reason though my local freinds just can't get into it. I follow and tweet with musicans, video editors, pastors and graphics designers from all over the world. The best part is I can do it from anywhere by a 100's of diffrent ways! All the bugs seem to be fixed and it hasn't crashed in weeks. So my question is today. If you don't twitter Why not? 

True.......True

Happy Birthday Garrett

7 years ago yesterday my oldest was born. Happy Birthday Buddy!

When the inspiration doesn't come

What in the world do you do? I have been blessed to have been inspired by things more often then not. I am working on a graphic project for the church right now and I have no idea what direction I want to take it. How do you find inspiration when its not there?

You have probabally seen this before but....

I love this video I get a little inspired every time I watch it

My Own Worst Enemy

For those of you that don't know I have 4 children a 7 year old, 5 Year old and a set of 2.5 year old twins. When my daughter (the 5 year old and only girl) was younger my wife would write in her blog funny Ryan Stories because my daughter would do the the craziest things. She had a tendency to get up in the middle of the night and get into everything. She was sooo sneaky and mischievous and she did it so often my wife would have a new story every few days. Don't get me wrong she is a tender heart and a daddy's girl and I loved her then just as much as I do now that she is over the whole crazy phase. Maybe one day I will find my wife's old blog post and post them here. Flash forward a few years and a pair of twins. Connor the oldest of the twins seems set to dethrone his sister as the craziest child in our house. This past Monday Ryan (My Daughter) came into my room at 4:30 AM (After I had gone to bed around 1am) and informed me that Connor had got out of bed and spilt some sugar. No big deal I thought I will grab him and put him in bed with me and clean the mess up in the morning, NOt that simple. When I walked out into the kitchen I saw possibly the biggest mess I had ever seen in my house ever! Connor had pulled a chair over to the pantry and opened a full bag of flour and dumped it on the floor, along with kool-aid packets, noodles and pretty much anything he could get his 2year old hands on and open without a can opener. He also got in the fridge and drank milk out of the carton, put the sour cream container into butter container and the list goes on and on. Now I know what you are thinking why don't we have protective devises in place to stop him. Well we do. You see Connor is the Macgiever of 2 year olds. No matter what you put in front of him he will find a way through it. At less than 1 years old he was climbing out of his crib. The problem is (Hince the title of this post) he is just like the charatcer on the new NBC show my own worst enemy. He is the sweetest kids ever. He loves to snuggle and sit in your lap and he plays so well with his brothers and sisters. It's like he is two diffrent toddlers sometimes. After I called Sandra (She works 2 nights a week as an ICU nurse) to make sure Connor had not eaten anything that would hurt him I realized that I had to clean up the mess. I scrambled for a camera but in a house full of technology I could not find one piece of equipment that had a charged battery even my cell phone was not working.

Things I learned from vacation

1. No matter how much food you eat on a cruise ship they will never run out.

2. There is sooooo much inspiration out there in the beautiful Caribbean Cultures

3. I can spend 7 days with my lead pastor Philip and not get sick of him

4. My wife can spend 7 days with me and not get sick of me.

5.When you get off of the boat you still feel like you are moving for at least 24 hours

6. That a Sunday service runs just fine without me or Philip

All in all we had a great trip. It was busy and yet relaxing at the same time so I came back refreshed and ready to work. I uploaded a few pics below so you can see how much fun we had!

David's Blog

This is the video blog of our Worship Leader David Collinsworth Check it out. e says he's not very interesting so he doesn't post that often. What he does post in pretty interesting though. If you are a worship leader and want hear from some one who understands you this is your blog. If your like me and want to understand want in the world goes through the mind of a worship leader this is the blog for you too. Check it out.

A little about my church

I thought I might give you a little insight on Discover Point (My Church). We are located just east of Atlanta in Conyers, Ga. We run about 70-100 at the weekend services. Our mission statement is "To be relevant as we lead our generation to Christ". I know that the word "relevant" get tossed around a lot but we really work hard at being relevant without watering down the message of Christ. Our music is upbeat and modern, our messages are down to earth and our people are friendly and down to earth as well. We have a lot of fun while we peruse our mission of leading people down a journey towards God. We want to be fresh with our art and our music. We want to show people just how exciting a relationship with Christ can be!

Our staff is made up of 5 guys. We are all bi-vocational. The lead pastor owns an advertising business. The lead worship pastor is a hotel manger, the other works for Georgia power. Our Admin pastor the director of the math department for a local high school (its cooler than it sounds) and I am an IT director for an industrial shelving company.

Needless to say we are busy but we are all passionate and we all know the mission. If you think about, in you prayers, remember to pray for the growing church in Conyers Georgia. We would appreciate it!

Pixar Does it again

It is really impressive how creative these people are.

Current Project

Here is the new logo for the "Project Series". This is the "Project Feed" Logo. I will be working on the rest later.

Relevant vs Copying

I read an article the other day in Collide Magazine (A great Mag if you have never read it) about bad church design practices. In the last segment Cameron Smith rants about how annoying it is when the church copies popular TV Shows as the title of their sermon series and chalk it up to relevance.  The truth is it's lame. I believe as alot of others do that the church should be on the forefront of innovation. It is important to leverage the culture and to know the culture but copying is not nececary. I have a passion to be on the forefront of innovation for the sake of communicating the greatest story ever told. I worship God through my art and videos. I just wanted my first blog to give everyone a good idea why I do what I do. More Later!