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EIKON Part 3: Matt's Mistake

The third in a four-part miniseries chronicling the events that surrounded Matt, Wes, and Austin as they prepare for Eikon summer camp.

In an effort to rid himself of a shadowy tag along, Matt makes a serious mistake.

Bungee Jump Over The Nile River

In case you didn't know, one of the things I do here at Journey is oversee the production of our creative elements which mostly involves videos, graphics, etc. We attempt to stay three sermon series ahead so that we can plan and prepare appropriately. Everyone once in a while we get even further ahead than that.

We've known for about 4 months that we were going to do this series called "Jump" in January, which allowed me to get some pretty unique footage for a video. When I was in Uganda back in October, we captured footage of me bungee jumping over the Nile River. In case you missed this weekend, here it is again.

Rock Your Face Off - Episode 3: From the Minds of Matt & Wes

Rock Your Face Off - Episode 2: What's Cookin' with Shef & Adam's Ultimate Challenge

From the Mind of Matt & Wes Short Film Festival

As part of the 2nd Annual 2008 Winter Rock-Your-Face-Off Christmas All-nighter Bash. Matt & Wes will be putting on a short film festival. It's going to be unbelievable. Check out the teaser trailer:

(P.S. It is not really rated R, and there isn't any nudity, unless you count nudity of the brow after I shaved my eyebrow)

From the Mind of Matt & Wes - A Week Without Coffee

The new feature at our monthly Uprising event is a huge hit, and it's back by popular demand. This month the boys tackle very serious issue of coffee addiction. I have no idea who the modeled the main character after. I'm sure it's completely fictional and any similarities to a real life person are purely coincidental.

From the Mind of Matt & Wes: Mannequin Man Strikes Again

Okay, so you you're not allowed to ask what the heck this is. Well, you can ask, but you won't get an answer, because I honestly have no idea. I gave two guys who work with our student ministry the task of coming up with a random video for Uprising event every month. I asked them to take ownership of it and create the video from beginning to end. The only boundaries I gave them: 1) Don't be Vulgar. 2) It has to be funny. 3) All of the video must come from you, from inception to fruition. 

We call the segment "From the Mind of Matt & Wes" (in case you didn't figure it out, those are the names of the guys who are responsible for the segment). A few weeks ago, they aired the first ever "From the Mind of Matt & Wes." I've debated ever since then about sharing the video on my blog, because... well... it's random, makes little or no sense, and might be a little demented (maybe I should have added a fourth rule: don't be demented). I'm not even sure if it's funny. But since it's airing, I've had multiple requests to put it on my blog, so I've finally decided to do so. 

So here it is. If it doesn't make you laugh, it will probably at least somewhat entertain you. You will find it popping into your brain randomly throughout the day as you continually ask yourself, "What the heck was that?"

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!

Fight of My Life: Episode 3 (better late than never)

So, I just realized yesterday that I never posted Episode three of the "Fight of My life." So I'm posting it now. Some of you who do not come to Journey may have been waiting on this for sometime. My apologies. Better late than never, I guess.

One Message. Two Locations.

This week I will be preaching at The Warehouse and Crouthamel will be preaching at the Theater. I love the process of preparing to preach. I love the praying, searching my heart, and searching the scriptures. The only problem is that you can only put so much information in one message. The temptation is to want to take everything that you have learned and impart that knowledge to everyone. There is a huge problem with that, however. Knowledge in itself never changed anyone's life. In fact, scripture says that "knowledge puffs up." My job as the speaker this weekend is not to impart knowledge but to help people follow Jesus. That's why, as we prepare, that Jimmy is constantly pushing us to identify the irreducible minimum. If I could only communicate one thing, this weekend what would I communicate? Then, take that point and build your message around that point so that you can communicate the one thing that you think will most help people.

At Journey, we measure success by life change. Numbers are not a true gauge of success. Finances are not a true gauge of success. We want to know how many people's lives are being changed. Are we helping our people at Journey follow Jesus? Are they looking a little more like Jesus every day, month, year? 

When we are preparing messages at Journey we are constantly evaluating whether this message is helping us reach our goal. What has been unique about this message is that we team developed the message. I've never been a part of something like this before, and I loved it! Jimmy, Paul, and I all studied up. Then we all came together, presented our material, stripped it all down to a common irreducible minimum, and then began building a single message together. It was awesome. What an honor and a privilege it was for me to build a message with two veteran (and by veteran, I mean old) preachers whom I respect and admire. I couldn't be more excited about it. Don't miss out on this weekend. It's going to be a cool weekend. If you have the time, what would be really cool is to go to both campuses so that you have the opportunity to hear the same message presented by two different people! Then you could see where they are the same and where they are slightly different. And then we will do an on-line poll where you can vote for who you thought did a better job! No, just kidding. But seriously...