The whole bloggin’ world . . .

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that Emily has entered the blogging world.

You can see her blog at emmyk.wordpress.com

Meeting Update . . .

As I mentioned before, we had a meeting yesterday with one of the largest church contractors in the country.  I made contact with this group at a church planters’ conference a couple months ago, and knew immediately that there was a potential connection for our company.  As it turns out, the company is real strong in the northeast, and is growing rapidly south and west.  However, the number of architects in the southeast that are truly sold-out to the idea of design-build is pretty slim.  Our company is 100% sold out to design-build, particularly for churches.  The headaches this can save a church are unbelievable — especially in today’s volatile market.

After meeting with these folks, we know that we have the same goals for helping churches achieve the facilities they need to grow healthy ministries.  It was very refreshing to talk to a contractor who has the tools to do even more church growth analysis than I am capable of, and to take that analysis and be willing to tell a church to add another service or use their existing facilities more efficiently before building.

We have some great relationships with other design-build contactors in our area.  I have no desire to sever any of these relationships.  Some have incredible tract records in our area, and I want to work with them as long as we can work togethere to provide a high-quality, effective, and timely product to our clients.  But I am also looking forward to adding this new group to the list of potential contacts for us to work with.

God has not stopped amazing us with overwhelming grace as we stumble our way through building this company.  We all expected to struggle our way through the first few years.  Here we are less than two years into our company, and find ourselves running to catch up with God more often than we would like to admit.  God is doing a wonderful things, and we are humbled and amazed to be along for the ride.

Easter Aftermath

Well, the Easter Egg-Stavaganza at Journey Church is now over for 2007.  We had been praying for 300 people to show up . . . which is about 6-7 times the number of people we normally have.  In all honestly, we only set up about 120 chairs . . . so I guess our faith wasn’t fully into our prayers . . .

But, that’s OK . . . because we had a great Sunday and did a great job of ramping things up for the future.

We finished our Easter Bunny videos . . . we’ll get the second half on You-Tube soon . . .

We added a backdrop with a “Rolling Stones” logo, which made the stage look awesome!

We launched a new format and new time for JourneyKidz . . .

Plus, we had the easter egg hunt and moonwalk after the service . . .

And it ALL RAN SMOOTH (scary, considering the set-up wasn’t quite so smooth).

OK, so you’re waiting for the numbers . . . We had about 62 people in the worship service, along with children and workers at other locations in the building . . . so we totalled around 80 people.  Not the 300 we were praying for, but significantly over our average . . . and we made some excellent potential contacts with disconnected folks.  Connecting with the disconnected is our primary goal, so all-in-all it was a great day.

After all the eggs were found and the mess cleaned up, Emily and I had several of the college guys over for an Easter Dinner.  A great time of fellowship and fun!  We have to do it more often!

ANYWAY, we’re pleased, and we are now praying that we can get the visitors plugged-in as a part of the church.

Egg-cited about Sunday!

OK, I know . . . every Christian ought to be excited about Easter . . . after all, without Easter, we wouldn’t even have Christianity.  BUT, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about Easter.  My entire life I’ve been a part of churches that do big productions like contatas at Easter.  They do these in hopes that they will impact the people that only come to church a couple times a year (Easter and Christmas.)  Sometimes people are impacted, and sometimes their lives really change.  But, for the most part, these productions turn out to be more of a celebration for the Christians that come every week.  Most people who are disconnected from church just can’t understand this big Choir singing and all the hoopla that surrounds it.  Only the Holy Spirit can break through all the church going on to impact peoples’ lives.

Don’t get me wrong.  It doesn’t matter what we are doing, only the Holy Spirit working in someone’s heart can cause genuine life change.  BUT, this year, I want to take away as many of the “church” barriers as I can so the hurdle between the person and the Holy Spirit’s work is as small as possible.

This year, we are at Journey Church, and it is a church that wants to be 100% sold out to reaching disconnected people and transforming them into passionate Christ-followers.  It’s a major adjustment for me, but I’m finding myself getting more and more excited to see what God is going to do!

I’ve never had the Easter Bunny at church before.  MAJOR adjustment for me.  BUT, here, I find myself pushing the Easter Bunny and the videos we created as much as I possibly can . . . and I’m excited about it!

I’ve never thought that a mini-carnival would be a good idea ON EASTER SUNDAY.  Most church people do things like that on the Saturday before Easter. (Or other “convenient” time.)  But this year, we are adjusting our typical Easter Dinner plans to take advantage of the opportunity to connect with as many disconnected people as God allows to show up on Sunday.

Our Pastor, Eric Taylor, is praying that 300 people show up.  We’ve been averaging between 40-60 people each Sunday.  Have you ever honestly prayed that your church would multiply 6-fold in a single Sunday?  The school where we meet doesn’t even have 300 chairs in the cafeteria storage closet! What an awesome problem that would be! Our Growth Group met last night and talked about this . . . while we stuffed over 300 plastic eggs with candy for the Easter Egg Hunt.

Speaking of which . . . we had a great Growth Group last night.  Each week, I find out something new about someone’s life and/or background.  Each week, we get to do a little life together, and we are growing together in authentic community as we do.  If you are not in a Growth Group at Journey, you are missing out!

Join us in investing, inviting, and PRAYING for God to bring disconnected people to Journey on Sunday!

Rolling Stones at Journey Church

OK, so I got this from Gary Lamb’s blog, but since our new series at Journey Church is called “Rolling Stones,” I thought this would be an interesting bit of information . . . as sick as it is!

News about Keith Richards, Rolling Stones’ guitarist

Thank God!

OK, everyone is going to tell me that this is totally cheesy, but I just needed to put in a little note here about how much I appreciate my wife, Emily.

We’ve been married since July 2005.  That’s really not very long ago.  I got married just a few months before I turned 30, but I can hardly remember what life was like in those previous 29 years.  I could not do or accomplish everything that I do if I did not have Emily.

Sometimes Emily feels like she doesn’t really do anything, especially when she sees everything that I am doing.  But I am quick to let her know that if she wasn’t working so hard to keep our home in order and keeping us both fed, I would have to spend time doing that and would have to let something else I do go by the wayside.

And, I can’t forget the fact that she is working part-time for me at the office, again helping me accomplish all that I do.

AND, she’s also one of the children’s ministry directors at Journey Church.

AND, I watch her read, study, seek God, and invest in other people throughout the week.

So, I think it is very worth-while for me to take up a little space on my blog to tell Emily that I love her dearly and am glad to be doing life together!

I love you Em!

Church Architecture

OK, folks.  Most of you know that my full time job is with Godwin-Jones Architecture and Interior Design, Inc.  I work as Project Manager for Church Architecture. 

When we began the company in July of 2005, the construction market was out-of-control, so we decided we were going to try and stay out of the estimating business as much as we could.  Fortunately, God has provided us with contractors who are willing to partner with us on Design-Build projects (Design-Build is essentially a must for church projects to run smoothly).  Generally, the contractors (who are in the construction business every day) do the estimating for us.

Unfortunately, the construction industry has yet to see any relief.  Recently, the prices have gotten so out of control, many contractors can’t guarantee a price for more than a week (generally not enough time for a good review of a price).  In fact, most of the contractors we have been working with are having a hard time keeping up with the price increases in their estimates.

I have two rather large church projects I am working on right now.  Both have a basic building design they want to pursue.  One is about to set me free to develop the design, while the other has a hard price for a portion of the building and is discussing details on the remainder.  Both projects are now being budgeted significantly above our original estimates, and it is a hard pill for the churches to swallow.  I’m at a point where I want to tell churches to add at least $1-2 per square foot to the estimate for every month it takes to get it under construction.  I’m not sure if that is really acurate, but it seems like everything is that far out of control.

Our team spent about 5 hours on the phone discussing the pricing situation with one church yesterday, helping them come up with a plan to proceed despite the insane increases.

The other church has spent several months pursuing several options before coming back to the original vision and deciding they need to bite the bullet and proceed.

I have a meeting next week to possibly partner with one of the country’s largest church contractors.  I am looking forward to what they have to say about the pricing situation, and how they feel about providing acurate estimates in such a volatile market.

At any rate, it is a challenge for my work in providing facilities for growing, healthy churches.  They need facilities that will allow them to grow, but they also need to build what they can truly afford to pay for.  It’s an age-old dilemma complicated more by a crazy market.

I’m really starting to appreciate the “portable church” and rented facilities we are using at our current church, Journey Church, in Auburn, Alabama

Journey Church on YouTube!

Journey Church is now on YouTube . . . Actually, I think it might be on there twice, but for the sake getting maximum exposure, use the following link:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKFB5p8hjuA

 

Enjoy!

My first blog . . .

Hey folks!

OK, so Eric Taylor and I went to a Church Planter’s roundtable discussion last week.  It seems like every church planter we run into is insisting that successful church planting in this day and age requires extensive blogging.  Since Eric hasn’t been updating his very often, I decided to create a blog.  Of course, Eric is doing better than Zach . . . Maybe if we all try it, we can get the hang of it.

 I hope to use this blog to communicate what is going on with the Growth Groups ministry as time goes on . . . and I’ll also try to use it as an announcements spot, a publicity spot, and who knows how else I’ll wind up using it.  Hopefully I won’t wind up embarrassing Emily too bad.

 God bless!