Smooth Via

Cell Phone Fun - Quarter Sleeve

On Tuesday nights, when I get home from work, I give Kelly the night off. As soon as I walk through the door, she is free to go do whatever she wants, wherever she wants. That means, at home, it's just daddy and the girls. You can imagine what this means. The girls love their daddy time, and we usually find some daddy-time-only fun (or trouble) to get into.

Last night Cana asked if she could have a tattoo after dinner (she received two full pages of temporary tattoos for Christmas). Well, one thing led to another, and soon enough we were digging through the remains of her stocking to find every last tattoo. What resulted was Cana's first "quarter sleeve." You can see the results for yourself. She's my little 3 year old rocker chick!

Cell Phone Fun - 1 Thing @ Starbucks

Okay. Here it is for all you "1 Thing I Need to Change" junkies. Here I am at Starbucks today continuing the campaign. If you can get your hands on some of our "fake" newspapers, they make great reading material at your favorite coffee spot. I dropped a few off today, as well as employed a few other tactics.

The volume is not that great as I was trying to be discreet, since I one of the things I was doing was posting a "1 Thing" flyer on their announcement board!

Cell Phone Fun - More "1 Thing" Ideas

In a previous blog, I showed you some snippets of some ways that I distribute our "1 Thing" cards. Every once-in-a-while somebody will mention from the stage (at Journey) some of the crazy ways that I give out the cards. Some of you don't think that it's true. So over the next few weeks, I am going to document (via cell phone video) some of the ways that I give out cards.

Sometimes it's difficult to come up with ways on your own, so I thought I would help out with my blog. Also, I would love to hear about any crazy ideas you've come up with. Email me (smooth@takeajourney.org) and I will post it on my blog. If you video it, post it on youtube or something, and I will feature it on my blog!

This campaign is about to go viral, but it needs your help!

Without further adieau here is crazy idea # 3:

Cell Phone Fun - Loitering & Littering?

Here at Journey, we are in the middle of a big campaign called 1 Thing I Need to Change. When you have a moment, you should totally check it out at 1ThingiNeedToChange.com. We have asked our people to get involved in this viral campaign to help get the word out. Well, I talk all the creative ways that I find to disseminate information all the time. So here is this episode of Cell Phone Fun: "Loitering & Littering." (Important note: I in no way support loitering or littering... unless it furthers my own personal goals)

Cell Phone Fun - Adventure Landing Lock-in

This past Friday night (or Saturday morning - however you look at it) our youth had a lock in at Adventure Landing in Raleigh. Now, I'm no stranger to this event. I've done it multiple times before and it's always a blast. But this particular time was very rough for me.

First, consider the fact that I have been out of the youth pastor game for 3 years. Youth paststors have a way of building up what I call youth pastor stamina. I am newly back in the game, so I still have not yet re-acclimated to the crazy schedule and grueling events. Second, Friday was already one long day for me. It was one of those days where all of my multiple responsibilities unavoidably collided. Most days are not like that, but Friday was out of control crazy. To help matters, I slept in until 8:00am and then went to work. I started work at 9:00am. I worked hard on weekend stuff, advertising stuff, and OneThingINeedToChange.com stuff (more on that at a later date). Then I had an informal "meeting" to hang out with some kids and go see "House" together at 3:00pm (which was AWESOME, and I'll give you a full review some other time). Then at 5:30 I had a party to thank and celebrate all of my volunteers for all of my First Impressions teams at a farm out past Creedmoore (about an hour away). Then I left there at around 10:00pm to make it back to the Warehouse campus to get ready for the lock-in. I met a few of my leaders there and we left at 11:30pm to head to Adventure Landing where we were meeting all the kids. I left there at around 7:30am (Saturday morning) and headed back to the Warehouse to tidy up a few things I didn't have the chance to finish up on Friday. I finally headed home around 9:45am, and was in bed by 10:30am. My wife was loving and gracious and took the kids out of the house for the day so that I could some sleep. I told her not to let me sleep too long so she called at 4:30pm waking me. She had to call 20 times (not 20 rings, but 20 calls)! Needless to say, I took the night off that night. Thanks to Meme, Kelly and I got to spend some alone time together that evening.

So that was my weekend! On to the real reason your reading this blog: Cell Phone Fun. This is a nauseating clip of one of my youth and I running the doubles kart around the track. Enjoy!

Cell Phone Fun - Preparing for NW Launch

Alex Harding is a good friend of mine and he is also going to be the director of our Middle School ministry at our new campus. We are excited to being this new phase of our ministry. Basically, since we are one church in two locations (and eventually one church in many locations) the idea is to reproduce the same experience at each location. It's going to be awesome.
So today, Alex and I met at 8am to hang out and put some finishing touches on preparing for the launch. We had to pick up a few things that are necessities for ministry. The question is where does one go to find such items as: board games, card games, tables, chairs, rubber balls, footballs, drop cords, power strips, rubbermaid containers, and stereo systems? Why, Wal-Mart of course.
Now, I'm going to let you in on a secret. I HATE Wal-Mart. I'm pretty sure that Hell will look something like your local Wal-Mart. You pick out all your junk. You head back to the front. There are 200 check out lines. Only one is open. And it has 200 people waiting in line who all have 200 items, and all are paying with coins and/or checks!
So how does one keep a good attitude in Hell... I mean Wal-Mart? Have fun with it, of course! So without further adieu, here is this week's Cell Phone Fun. Alex and I shopping in Wal-Mart.

Cell Phone Fun - Dad of the Year

This was my Saturday afternoon.

Cell Phone Fun - "Oh No He'll Never Let Go"

If you are a parent of young kids you know how difficult car rides can be, especially when it's past the kids' bedtime. Last night we went to an engagement party for Matt Scott and Stacy Morin (By the way, the Morin's really know how to throw a party! Thanks for a great time guys!). The drive home was about 30 minutes, and it was getting late. To top things off, Kelly had to stop at the grocery store to pick up a few things. Sitting in the car, on a rainy night, when it's getting late, with two cranky girls who have been loaded with sugar and junk food, what was a dad to do?

Why, improvise of course! It's amazing how many times my smart phone has saved me in such instances. I've included one of many clips from our layover in the Lowe's Foods parking lot.