Is this gy serious?

So I was just on Yahoo! and read the stupidest article I've ever read. And because I had to waste my time reading it, I want you too as well.

You can read it here.

Did you read it?

Like I said, it was dumb. Kind of made me mad, considering have quite a few tattoos. And by a few I mean nearly a full sleeve and some others.

Anyways, it was a dumb article, and now we are all stupider for reading it. Sorry to waste your time.

Hilarious

So I showed Desi this video the other day, and she watches it at least 4 times a day now. It's really funny. So I thought I'd share it with you.



I can't wait to have children and post videos of them making words like "ask" sound like cussing.

Set 'em ablaze

So last night I couldn't sleep. Not at all. I was up till 2:00 last night.

I had so many things running through my mind. So many bad things. All of my doubts surfaced last night. Trust me, I have a lot of them. Way to many to list here. So I have these doubts. For over an hour last night I sat right here at my desk and ran these doubts through my mind over and over and over.

So I decided I HAD to do something. I knew I couldn't sit around and let my doubts take control. I had to do something about these doubts. So I wrote them down on stick-it notes and stuck them to the door.


So I stuck all of my doubts to the door of my office. Then, I walked out and shut the door behind me. I left my doubts in that room and didn't let them come out. Then I sat down in the living room, and I prayed. I prayed that God would remove all of these doubts from my mind. I asked that I would look to Him to be all the things that I felt I wasn't. I asked Him to use me despite the doubts that come up in my mind.

Next, I made sure those doubts would never come back. I went into my office, pulled my doubts off the door, took them outside, and I set them on fire.


After the flames died down, this was all that was left of my doubts.


I can't tell you how much better I felt after I burned my doubts. See, now that all that was left of my doubts were ashes, I couldn't read them any more. Those words that filled my mind and consumed my fears were gone. Never to seen again.

What doubts do you have that need to set on fire?

Locked in a Closet

Has this ever happened to you?


Locked in a Closet from Travis Williams on Vimeo.

Seriously, it was funny. But I really want to know if anyone else has ever done this. I hope Desi isn't the only one.

Maybe

Have you ever realized the power of that word? Maybe...

Wow. I used the word "maybe" earlier, and it was amazing! I mean absolutely awesome. I never would have thought that such a simple word could lead to so much. When you start thinking maybe, you will ideas you would never thought you could think. Ideas would be plentiful if we all just thought "Maybe" a little more.

So challenge yourself. Stretch your imagination. Make things happen.

The next time you're faced with a question that you don't have the answer to try simply saying, "Maybe."

What do you think about...

Maybe.

Does it help if...

Maybe.

Do you think it's possible to...

MAYBE!!!

Found it in a Fish

This morning I read Matthew 17:24-27. And it spoke to me BIG time!

This one has always been curious to me. I didn't go to seminary, so I don't know all the little tips and tricks to find the real meaning behind Jesus' words. But I do know how to read. And I do know how to think. So I read this Scripture, and I thought about it. And then I realized something...

God provided. That's what He did in this scripture. He provided the 4 drachma that was needed. And he provided it in the strangest way I can ever think of Him doing so. Then it hit home. And I mean it hit hard.

About a week ago, Desi and I realized that we weren't going to be able to pay our mortgage for the month, which was already pushing the due date. We aren't living in that house right now, which is actually why we didn't have enough money to pay it. We have a house in GA, and an apartment in Charlotte which we actually live in. So we had already paid the rent, but we were way short on the mortgage. This is obviously not a good situation to find yourself in. Like I said, we don't live in that house, but we do want to sell it and buy another house. And something about being foreclosed on doesn't open up many opportunities to buy in the near future.

So I started freaking out. I mean really freaking out. For the next couple of days I stared at the wall trying to figure out how to come up with the money to pay the rent. Of course, I had nothing. There was no way I could every make up that much money in that short of a time. Sure, I prayed, but I didn't really think that God could come up with that much money in that short of a time either. I guess I kind of thought of God as having a bank account like mine. He only has as much in there as He puts in. That's how it works for me, so that's how I thought it worked for God. I mean I didn't really think that, bu what my faith about the situation was saying. I just did not think that God could provide. He had done it many times before. I remember when Desi and I first got married. Rent would be due in less than a week, and our bank account was sitting around $50. But I just didn't think God could handle this one.

Well, all I can say now is that God provided in a HUGE way! I mean I couldn't believe what happened. Turned out God totally had the money to provide for us to be able to pay the mortgage. In fact, he provided twice as much money as we needed! We were asking for X amount, and God provided X times 2. Now we didn't go out to Lake Norman right here, cast out a fishing pole and find the money in a fish's mouth. But we did end up with more money than we needed.

I know this isn't going to be the last time that Desi and I face a financial crisis. I just hope that next time one comes up, I can remember this verse, and mostly remember what God did for us last week.

Verizon tries to keep up with iPhone

Have you seen the latest touch screen from Motorola for the Verizon Network, the Krave? It looks pretty nice. Check it out...

What's really great is that the flip part is still touch sensitive. It's actually clear, although you can't tell in that picture, and there's a membrane basically running through it. That way your crummy fingerprints done get all over the screen. It's motion sensitive too. So, like the iPhone, when you turn the phone sideways the screen turns with it. And the great thing about it is that it's fairly inexpensive for a phone with those capabilities, less than $200 with a 2-year contract.

Yahoo did an article on it. You can read it here.

The only major complaint... No Wi-Fi. Now that's pretty stupid.

Super Sunday

S yesterday was a great day. Let me tell you why.

First off, I didn't have to wake up until 8:00, which is a whole lot later than when we meet in the theater. When we meet in the theater I have to be up at around 5:00 when we meet in the theater. So that was really nice. Also, I played with Brad this weekend. It's just really nice to have someone else to play with. Kind of takes all thee focus off you, cause I sure don't want that. And he's pretty good at what he does on the guitar. After the worship, we had a pretty good conversation about connection. We talked about our need for connection and how we can make sure people are connected at Sojourn. Not just that they get plugged in, but that they we are really connected together. After church, we went to Showmars. If you don't know what Showmars is then you're the lucky one. Their slogan is "Fine Dining Fast." Basically it's a restaraunt that thinks it serves nice greek food in a very quick manner. It's not that good, and it's certainly not a place that I want to eat at often, if at all. But spending lunch with everyone was great. So I guess it doesn't matter where you go when you're having a good time with friends.

After lunch, we came home, watched a little football and relaxed. Then Desi decided she wanted to go to the mall to find her a UGA Bulldogs sweatshirt. I was pretty excited about that. But of course it's really, really hard to find a UGA sweater in North Carolina. So that didn't happen. But after we left the mall, we went to Gamestop in Birkdale Village. That's always a good thing for me. Desi let me get Lego Batman for my PS3. I have to say, it's one of the funnest little games I've ever played. So I played that last night for a little while. Then we had some left over pasta that we had at Toby and Mindi's Saturday night.

Then came one of the best parts of the night. The ALCS game 7. TAMPA BAY WON!!! I was so excited, just ask Desi. I'm so sick and tired of Boston and their stupid comebacks. I was mad when Tampa Bay lost 2 games in a row tieing the series ancd 3 games a piece. Fortunately, they didn't mess the whole thing up, and won game 7.

Then I went to bed and slept like a baby.

So yesterday was a very good day. I hope I have more days like yesterday coming my way.

Bed Head

I woke up this morning, looked in the mirror, and saw this...


My bed head. Actually I think it looks better than when I try to make it look good. Maybe I'll just go with this from now on.

Got a, Want a, Need a, Get a, Have a

So I stole that from Bojangles. I don't care because I like it. But for me I don't got a want a need a get a have a Bojangles.

I got a want a need a get a have a songwriting.

I LOVE songwriting. It's something God has blessed me with the ability to do, and He has blessed me greatly through it. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I just thought I'd share a little of the advice that was given to me about songwriting. This really applies for Christian and worship music.

I figured I'd start the number one best piece of advice ever given to me about songwriting, since that's we always want any ways. So here it is.

Songwriting starts with Scripture.

My favorite and in my opinion most powerful worship songs are based directly on a piece of Scripture. How Great is Our God. His Love Endures Forever. Anything Shane Barnard. There's a ton of reasons to do this. First, it is a true reflection of what God is doing in your life. You read The Word and get inspired by it. Or changes something and you have to get it out. Or it affects your life in some way. Another reason is that it's really hard to make a song doctrinally wrong if it is based straight off of Scripture. Not that it's impossible. Lord knows there's plenty of people misinterpreting His Word out there. But it's easy to jack God's Word if you completely make it up yourself.

The next advice on songwriting is a bit of an odd one.

Listen to other peoples songs for musical inspiration.

That's right. Listen to what has already been done for inspiration. Get out your favorite CD and listen to it over and over to get ideas. Obviously I'm not saying you should do this to copy what they did. That's totally unoriginal and totally dishonoring to God. You heard me right. It is dishonoring to God to simply copy what someone else already did. We'll get into that another day. Back to inspiration. Everyone does this. Seriously, all the big wigs out there. And I'm not talking only about Christian music here. Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Rihanna, Beyonce, The Killers, all of them. They all listen to other artists music for musical inspiration. They say it all the time. Kanye West got a lot of inspiration for his album "Late Registration" from The Jackson 5. So don't copy it. Listen to it. Make it better. Improve it. Make it new.

The last piece of advice I'll give is this...

Co-write as much as possible.

Co-writing is a very very difficult process. But end result is amazing. I've done a whole lot of co-writing in my life. One of the worship songs that I'm most proud of is a song that my good friend Robby Hurd and I wrote together called "Waters of Witness". I love that song. It took us a long time to get it done, but it got done. We would sit down with this song over and over and just look at eachother and say, "What do you think?" Like I said, it wasn't easy. The best part of co-writing is having anothe creative mind there. Two minds are always better than one right? It's always exciting to see two people read one scripture, interpret it differently, and then come out with a cohesive song with one song. Plus, if you get stuck, the other person might have their brilliant moment, and vice versa.

So that's my advice on songwriting. I've really tried to put these 3 ideas into practice as much as I possibly can. I'm always writing songs, always jotting down ideas for songs, always looking for new music to inspire me. This obviously is no gaurantee to succesfull songwriting. I'm certainly not any type of super succesfull songwriter. But I have been blessed through that avenue.

Upsets Abound

So the Red Sox won last night. Tampa Bay blew a 7-0 lead! How do you do that!? This is the picture on ESPN's home page right now. With it is the headline "Don't Stop Believing". I feel bad. I feel like I did jinx the Rays. I spoke too soon. But oh well. Now they go to Tampa Bay. They're expecting a huge crowd. So hopefully things will go better for the Rays than last night did.

7-0!!!

Go Rays!

I'm not going to jinx it and say that Tampa Bay is going to the World Series yet, because the game isn't quite over yet. But it looks very promising, they have a 7-0 lead in the 7th inning. So things are looking good for them.

Now, I'm not a big baseball fan. In fact this is the first baseball game I've watched all season. But I love the story that the Tampa Bay Rays are writing themselves. The team with the worst record in the entire MLB last season has turned it around and has a chance to be on top of the America League, and maybe even the whole Majors. I mean come one. That's a great story. And they're doing it with the lowest budget in all of baseball. To give you an idea the New York Yankees have a salary of over $200 million. The Tampa Bay Rays are doing with less than $45 million. And the Yankees didn't even make the playoffs this year.

It just goes to show that it doesn't matter if you have the best players in the game, or some of the worst. As long as the leader of the team can get everyone on the same page, working together, working towards a similar goal, and believing in the same ideals then you've got all you need. It doesn't matter if you have the fastest car if the alignment is jacked up. All the wheels have to be moving in the same direction or you'll have a really hard time getting where you want to go.

So good luck Rays. And congratulations on the greatest turn around in history.

I'm not in high school any more

I'm not very happy right now, in case you couldn't tell. I just sat down in front of my 'puter, and guess what I saw...

A stain (over the "S")! I have a stain on one of my favorite shirts!

So, it's really not that big of a deal right? It's just a shirt. Well, the problem is that this isn't the only shirt that I wear all the time with a stain on it. Either I don't know how to eat right, or I eat so much that the chances of food getting on my shirt are greatly increased.



Looking at this picture, I'd say I eat too much. But no, that's not what I really look like. I was pushing it out. I swear. I really was. Desi might argue with me, but I really was. Anyways, I think it's time to take up jogging. Well, maybe I'll start with walking and work my way up.

Staying Healthy-Part 2

So it's been a while since I last posted, so I'm just gonna jump right into it.

This is the second part of a two part post.

Click here to read the first one.

So in the first "Staying Healthy" post, we talked about being relationally and spiritually healthy. Those two were pretty easy to write about, and, like I said, those two things are not the reasons we pushed back the launch date at Sojourn. These next two are difficult to write about, and they both contributed to our decision.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you that you might not like to talk about these next two issues, but they are still a very big reality of the church. So get over it.

The third part of being healthy is being numerically strong. Go ahead. Get it out. Rant a little about how churches are all about numbers and that's all that matters. Ok. No, numbers are certainly not all that matter to us at Sojourn, but they do help. Right now we have nearly 30 people in our core team, which is a great number. I can't tell you how awesome is for me to see new people come into our church and enjoy their experience so much that want to right in on the ground level. Like I said, 30 people is a great number.

The issue for us is that we don't feel that we launch a church the way we really want to with 30 people. I know plenty of churches that have launched with well less that 30 people, and they are doing just fine today. But this is our feeling. We want to have a larger team for a couple of reasons. First, having a large team just feels good. It does. It really pumps you up to walk out in front of 50 people rather than 15. And it helps create more energy. 50 people are louder than 15. We also want to create an environment where people desire to serve and aren't forced to. With only less that 30 people, it really requires everyone to volunteer at the church every single weekend. Which is very, very tiring. Having to be in a room with a bunch of little kids will wear you out really fast. So we want to avoid that as much as possible. So having a larger team will allow people to only volunteer when they desire to, instead of feeling like they have to.

There's also one other thing that having more people provides for a church, which is actually the fourth part of launching a healthy church.

Get ready to rant a little more. Well probably a lot more.

Finances.

All churches ever ask for is money. If you don't give them a lot of money, they don't care if you come or not. Blah, blah, blah...

So again, that's not how it is at Sojourn. But here's the honest truth... It takes money to run a church. Wow. Shocking huh? It shouldn't be. I mean think about it. We are renting a theater. RENTING. Meaning we are paying the theater for us to meet there. That takes money. We want to have coffee there for you every weekend you come. Guess what... We have to pay for the coffee too. And of course, Toby, Kristi, Clay, and I would love for us to be able to devote full-time work hours to the church. Well, we have bills to pay, mortgage, car, utilities, food, gas. We have to have money to pay for those things personally, so guess what... We have to receive some sort of salary for that to happen.

So I know you might be sick and tired of churches asking you for money, but it really does take money to run a church. Like I said, rent and coffee at minimum. And honestly, that's all that we are paying for right now. There's no salaries getting paid right now. We don't have offices we are renting. I, as the worship leader, literally have a $0 budget for the worship ministry.

But as I said before, having more people does equal, to a certain extent, more money. So as the church grows we will be able to do more things through the church. And just to let you know what a couple of those things are. We want to a small marketing campaign. We want to send out 30,000 postcards to the homes around the mall before our launch on January 11th. We would like to do another 30,000 postcards at Easter time. Those things sure aren't free.

So as a summary, we want to launch a healthy church. We want to be relationally, spiritually, numerically, and financially healthy. This isn't going to come easy, and we know that. But we do feel that this is a calling that God has given us. So if you don't like it, well you don't have to. We'll still love you, and you're still welcome.

Sick

So I know I said that i was going to post some stuff yesterday and still haven't done it.

Let me show you why...

I'm a little sick.

See the red watery eyes. That's literally as much as I've been able to open them all day. See my face breaking out just under my lip and in the corner of my mouth. What you can't see is the snot that just literally dripped out of my nose. So forgive me for not caring to much about blogging today. Although I am blogging about not blogging. I'm done.

I've got Gas

This whole gas craze is ridiculous. That's a picture of me waiting in line to get gas. I've never waited in line to get gas before. And I never want to again. It's so ridiculous. Desi was down to less than a quarter of a tank, and I bet someone in that picture has 3/4 of a tank. The only reason they're in line is because they're worried they won't have gas. Well, I don't have gas. It's not a matter of I don't want to run out, it's that I am about to run out. Well, not now. I have a full tank now. But it's just so stupid. Let's all freak out when, in reality, there is nothing to freak out about. If we all just went about our business like normal then there wouldn't be this problem. I don't know a single person who fills up their tank when they're down to half a tank. Now, everyone fills up when they're down to half a tank. I heard one gas station owner said that what usually lasts them a week only lasts them 4 hours.

Here's the deal. There's no shortage of gas. There's plenty of gas. And we've been told that over and over again. That same gas station owner is getting the same amount of gas he always gets, something like 6700 gallons. Like I said, that usually lasts him a week. So there is no gas shortage. If that gas station is able to get 6700 gallons of gas nearly every single day, I certainly don't think there's a gas shortage.

So can we all please stop freaking out about nothing! There is plenty of gas. Don't worry about it. Go about your business as usual, and I would be willing to bet that everything would get back to normal very quickly. Actually the only thing that isn't normal is us freaking out about it.

So stop whining and filling up your tank every time you see a gas station that's open. Everything will be alright.

Thank you.