Still one of my all time favorite bands.

Dave Emmert

So my friend Dave Emmert is in a band called Mr.Lendingworth and Friends and they just finished their new album. I love this guy. GO LISTEN. I am really proud of him.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE MUSIC.

Ecclesia. Sign me up.

Sometimes I’m not so sure why I want to be a pastor. I mean lets just break it down: bad pay, long hours, high stress, and I have to deal with weird church people. So why do I want to spend my life this way?

Every once and a while, they are becoming more frequent, I have these moments of clarity. These moments of clarity allow me to see exactly why I want to be a pastor, why I want to be a part of the Church. Today at church I had one of those moments. Today was my church’s fourth anniversary of being planted and we had a baptism service. They gave each of the candidates a chance to address the congregation and give a few words of why they were being baptized. One of ladies who was being baptized said that she had been a Christian for over a decade now and was instrumental in planting Ecclesia and had been heavily involved in starting ministries. For a long time she couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t willing to be baptized. Then she said she really did know but it was hard to say out loud. She went on to tell us that she was afraid that she would leave, leave the faith and the Church. She said that it had been easy for most of her time as a Christian but she was worried that when times got hard that she would just give up. She continued to tell us how this past year had been the hardest year of her life, the loss of her parents, the long fight against sickness and death of her husband, and now being a single parent. The reason that she didn’t leave she said was because of the church. At this point the pastors on stage and anybody who knew the woman and her story were crying and fighting back tears. She said the reason she didn’t leave was because of the people in the church who paid her bills when her husband was sick, the people who constantly stayed with her in the hospital overnight, and the love and support that the community gave. She said she hadn’t walked away and it was time to go public with her faith because she knew she was never walking away. The pastor chocked out through tears you were dead in sin and dunked her into the water and when she came up he said you are now alive in Christ. In that moment I knew that this church, this community and others like it around the world was what I wanted to spend my life for.

Intelligentsia

So not to belabor the point about Portland being better than Los Angeles but when I moved out here I was really disappointed. Portland has an amazing coffee culture and it was hard to leave. There are some descent coffee shops around me but nothing really that good. No one knew how to make a pretty cappuccino. You would think that LA, being the hipster/yuppie capital of the world, would have serious coffee drinkers. Up until last week I didn’t think so. My friend Drew (not a coffee drinker but works at Starbucks) asked me, “have you ever been to Intelligentsia Coffee?” I hadn’t but I wasn’t really expecting too much but he said he had heard good things! Since I don’t have much of a life, checking out Intelligentsia was immediately on the top of my important things to do list. So I went and I discovered serious coffee! Their baristas have to go to school for a few months to brew their coffee. Ever cup is freshly ground and brewed. Not to mention one of their baristas just won third place in the world barista competition! Needless to say I was pleased with what I found. I sat down and had a seriously good cappuccino.

Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea here.

Owen

Owen takes me there. I am not sure where "there" is but we go there. sad news its usually alone. working on it.

I love this video. Relax. Breath deep. Watch.

Port-land.

Thought about Portland a lot today. Someone was asking me what I thought about the city, my friend Chad is coming to visit LA from Portland, and the New York times did a story on Sunday on how affordable/perfect Portland is. So of course it was time to think about all the ways Portland is better than Los Angeles. That's how I do things... grass is always greener.

Here for the full article.

Espresso Book Machine

"What Gutenberg’s press did for Europe in the 15th century digitization and the Espresso Book Machine will do for the world tomorrow."

The Espresso Book Machine is the newest technology in printing, it prints, collates, covers, and binds a single book in a few minutes on demand. The sad reality of out of print books is a thing of the past. These machines are small enough to fit into a retail shop or library (or my bed room - Christmas wish 2012) and can potentially change the way people buy books forever. The customer can choose from a web based catalog of books or bring in their own file or flash drive in PDF format.

I am just thinking about the possibilities and implications of this machine. self publishing. Seriously amazing.

On demand books here.