These are the main reasons that I’m taking a break from traveling and spending most of my Fall in Dallas…
My wife of almost 13 years, Chrissy (she has a blog, too):
My oldest, Grace, who I call Bee Pie:
My son, Tommy (named after my dad) – who I call Bud Bud:
My youngest, Katie, who I call Boo Boo:
I am a VERY blessed man – far beyond what I deserve.
That’s me with Chris and LV from Catalyst. They and Jesse (from the Catalyst blog) were at the Church 2.0 Local Forum – Atlanta. Behind us is the infamous “Vanagon” that LV has been driving around the country. It’s pimped out on the inside – don’t let the outside fool you. Jesse blogged about Church 2.0 a week ago HERE. I’m trying my best to be at Catalyst this year, like I have the last 3 years. Are you going to be there?
I had an amazing time in Atlanta. I heard of what the Church there is dealing with – good and bad. My heart was encouraged to hear of Unite and how churches are working together on various issues in the ATL area. My eyes were opened and I was stunned to hear of the child sex trafficking going on there (Atlanta is #1 in the nation). I had no idea. There are some great stories that I believe will find their way into the book (Church 2.0).
Like always, I met some new friends and some people I knew online face-to-face for the first time. It was a joy to connect with them. The host church, Perimeter, was awesome. They are doing some amazing ministry to their local community that was exciting to hear. They also have staff dedicated to just reaching out to other churches to work together – that’s cool and THAT’S a Church 2.0 Church!
PERSONAL:
Though my heart was full and I was encouraged by my time in Atlanta, I came back exhausted and desperately missing my family. I’ll blog more about them tomorrow. For now, I have decided to take the month of September off from traveling. I’m still coming to Boston in October, but have moved Portland to November – November 7th to be exact. For the next month, I’m going to rest, write and be with my family.
An Apple iPhone or iPod touch will become a central part of Abilene Christian University’s innovative learning experience this fall when all freshmen are provided one of these converged media devices, said Phil Schubert, ACU executive vice president.
At ACU – the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class – freshmen will use an iPhone or iPod touch to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.
ACU’s vision for technology has been captured in a forward-looking film called ‘Connected,’ found online – along with information about ACU’s other ground-breaking mobile learning
efforts – at www.acu.edu/connected. – You can read more from this article HERE.
Below is a summary from someone who was a part of the freshman orientation at ACU:
This past weekend Abilene Christian University gave away about 1,000 iPhones and iPod Touch’s. All of the devices were given away totally free. Parents had the option to opt-out of the iPhone, in case they did not want to pay the monthly bill. In that case, students still received an iPod Touch 8GB Model. The iPod Touch, when connected to ACU’s Wifi Network can do pretty much everything the iPhone can do with respect to all of the ACU specific Applications. The iPod Touch just doesn’t have the GPS Guided campus map available.
ACU is the only place in Abilene, Texas with 3G Network Coverage from AT&T. AT&T did the work just for them, and will get to the rest of the town’s 3G coverage later. This in an unprecedented leap in technology for education, and Abilene Christian is leading the way. Oklahoma Christian University will soon follow. ACU gets calls weekly from other university’s administrations inquiring about this initiative. Hopefully many schools will follow in ACU’s footsteps.
HIGHLIGHTS:
PERSONAL:
Today my son, Tommy, turns 6 years old and starts his first day of school. My little boy is growing up!
The Don Moen Company Purchases MediaComplete (below is a press release from them):
We are excited to announce that the Don Moen Company has recently purchased MediaComplete Corp. The acquisition caps weeks of discussions and planning for how to best resource the church for a new generation of visual media. The new entity will be known as MediaComplete LLC. Don Moen recently founded the Don Moen Company. He is best known as a songwriter and worship leader having written some of the most recognizable songs in the church today.
Don commented on the acquisition, “We believe that making MediaComplete part of our organization will help us to better equip the Church to communicate more effectively and to lead life-changing worship which rests at the heart of God’s Kingdom. Additionally, we are committed to increasing financial and organizational support to the MediaComplete team as they strive to better serve the Church with cutting-edge technologies and expanded content offerings.”
All current staff will remain in place and the MediaComplete founders will continue with significant roles in the company including Todd Temple as Vice President and Chief Product Developer, and Paul Jackson as Vice President for Sales and Marketing. Additionally, MediaComplete will continue to be located at its present location in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.
We are very excited to join forces with The Don Moen Company to better serve the church, and we believe this relationship will allow us to significantly expedite our product development process. We are looking forward to increasing our customer service capabilities, as well as introducing several important new software releases in the months ahead.
Additionally, Kevin Weimer, son of Christian industry icon Jerry Weimer, will join the team as President and CEO of MediaComplete, LLC. Weimer worked with Moen and The Don Moen Company, Chief Operating Officer, Chris Long, during his tenure as VP of the Integrity Label Group.
Weimer stated, “It is a great honor to lead the MediaComplete Team for Don and Chris. As more high quality media is being developed for worship, youth and children’s ministries, we are committed to developing cutting-edge products and services that will enable the church to utilize these media tools in the most effective way for their local ministries.”
MediaComplete is the first major acquisition by the Don Moen Company, which was started in 2008 by Platinum selling recording artist, songwriter and worship leader, Don Moen. Over the next twelve months Moen will be demonstrating the software both domestically and internationally as he appears in markets including South Africa, Nigeria, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines.
So nice. Love Coca-Cola’s homepage. Very sharp stuff going on with Coke these days. YOU can design a Coca-Cola bottle HERE. Enjoy!
EXTRA:
Church 2.0 Local Forum – ATL goes down today from 10am to 2pm (EST). Direct Twitter me with your questions or topic suggestions. Pray that God moves here in this great city.
This is from WiredChurches.com – We’re looking for original films created by church volunteers or staff to further their mission, illustrate a point, or promote or highlight an event. Professionals in the film and advertising industry will determine the top films in each category to present during the film festival at Granger on Thursday, September 18.
To get more info, go HERE.
PERSONAL:
Today I fly to Atlanta for the Church 2.0 Local Forum – ATL tomorrow. See you soon ATL!
At Bent Tree, we’ve got a busy Fall coming up. As part of what all we have going on, we’ve been working on 2 in-house video projects, as well as a few smaller pieces and outsourcing several things that we couldn’t fit in.
The 2 we’re working on now are a baptism highlight video for next Sunday, the 31st and a look back in time video for our Grand Opening on Sept. 7th. I’m sure I’ll post these on here later for you to check out.
I’m curious: What video projects are you up to at your church?
Sunday, I was working on Church 2.0 book stuff with co-writers Tony Steward and Cynthia Ware. Yes, in case you missed the announcement on Facebook yesterday: Tony and Cynthia are co-writing the technology section of the Church 2.0 book!
While we were sitting outside of Starbucks and brainstorming, we saw the Cowboys’ new tight end Martellus Bennett. Here’s the crazy thing: he saw me notice him and walked over to me, stuck out his hand and said, “Hello.” He was as nice as could be and we chatted for a bit. He was funny and warm and way nicer than someone with his fame would normally be.
I asked if I could take a picture with him. He said, “Sure” – so I did. That’s Tony sitting on the left (my right). Martellus represented the Cowboys in a great way. He was down-to-earth, friendly and a super ambassador for the team. We all remarked how well he represented the Cowboys. He even mentioned his faith when Cynthia told him I was a pastor.
I was truly impressed with his humility, humor and accessibility. My hat is off to him and the entire team, which, by the way, I’m picking to go to the Super Bowl. SO… who do YOU have going to the Super Bowl?
I had an interesting conversation with some friends this week. I found that many follow several, random people and in turn, those people then find out about them and follow them – thus they have a lot of people following them on Twitter.
That, honestly, never occurred to me. I only follow people that interest me, so it’s a relatively small group (78). I could probably have more people following me if I followed more people (makes sense), but I don’t want to get constant updates from people that I don’t particularly want to follow. Does that make sense?
So… How do YOU use Twitter? Do you follow as many as you can? Are you picky? Are you following me? 
You should. I will be releasing updates and exclusive Church 2.0 info on just Twitter.
BONUS:
Check out my friend, Bill Seaver’s blog on Podcasting 101 HERE.
If you’re not at ECHO, you’re going to wish you were and you need to plan for it next year. It’s always a good thing to come to Dallas! I had a great time for my first day of the ECHO Conference.
I got to catch the pre-lab class on “Design” – which rocked. It was so refreshing to watch a talented artist, Barton Damer, peel back the layers (literally in PhotoShop) and show how he created the conference logo (seen above).
I then hung out with Cynthia Ware and talked with several friends that were in town from around the country. Then Cynthia and I attended a special lunch and got to hear what’s coming down the road for WorshipHouse Media.
The rest of the day was a blur of conversations, meetings, classes, talking with my friends that are exhibitors, BBQ for dinner, more deep discussions and meeting people in person that knew me from online (Facebook, Twitter or my blog).
I was most impressed with how the ECHO team and the host church, Watermark, handled the night main session with my friend, Mark Batterson. Hats off to my local tech buddies Ryan Howell (Watermark) and Jason Cole (Lake Pointe) who were making it happen, along with Les and the rest of their team. My intern, Jonathan, even jumped in on camera. So Bent Tree, Watermark, Lake Pointe and the ECHO team came together as one – it was beautiful. We have a great local group of tech directors. I saw most of them today, including my friend, Brian Davis, from Fellowship Dallas.
The worship last night was great (led by my friend, Will Pavone, from McLean Bible in Washington DC. I moved from serving in the Washington DC area to Dallas). The visuals and lighting were notable. They truly led artistically and tastefully. I was very impressed and want to get the backgrounds that they used for the songs – they were awesome.
They had created a nice countdown, made great use of a left, center and right video screen and had a cool brief conference starter video. Good stuff. Batterson brought it and was encouraging and appreciative to technical artists. It was good to see him and his digital/tech team (Dave Clark, David Russell and Jeremy Sexton).
I ended the night chatting briefly with some local friends, including new Dallas resident: Rhett Smith, and got some brief time with my college friend, Shawn Wood, who will be speaking today. I also talked with Tim Stevens and his associate from Granger. I’ll spend some more time later today with Tim.
I picked up Tony Steward last night from the airport and am looking forward to spending some time with him these next few days. I teach today and tomorrow and am looking forward to meeting more of you.
More later, including my new resource of the month: Unifyer – which is one of the sponsors for the Church 2.0 Local Forum in Atlanta next week and is a new partner with my ministry. I can’t wait to tell you more about what they’re up to!
DAY ONE: Great. Well done ECHO team. Looking forward to the rest of the conference.
