Responding To God

I have noticed that I am getting hits daily on “Buy My House”.  Someone out there is looking at it regularly.  So if you are one of those people, you may want to check this out…

I updated the Buy My House page to reflect a last ditch effort to sell my house.  We are moving on August 1st and we need to sell this house in Dallas, GA.  I am lowering it as low as I possibly can.  Lots of people have told me about “short selling” but, in my opinion, that would violate the character of God.  He called us to Savannah.  He knows our situation.  He is not going to send us there then cause us to do something ethically questionable.

Just know that this is my BOTTOM price.  I can’t negotiate any lower.

Check it out with the link in my pages area or click here: Buy My House   

Please pass this along to everyone you know who may be remotely interested!

So this is what is up…

- I’ve almost got the website the way I want it.  Just a few more tweaks and then I need to check and rewrite a few things.  It was more involved than I thought getting all the content on…and then changing it 5 times to get it the way I wanted.

- The newsletters came in today!  Praise God and curse the printer!  Just kidding.  Actually they look great it just took forever to get them.  In Mark’s article he talks about the baby and it has a picture of Trisha very pregnant.  Now the baby is a week old.  Oh well.  We’ve been working on getting those put together so we can send them out tomorrow.

- I took some time today and last night to cut the grass.  I always get good time alone with God when I cut the grass.  I felt like I got a revelation on our house and I’ll be putting that out soon.

- Today I also am changing the brakes and rotors on the van.  I don’t know why I mentioned that, other than it makes me sound manly.

- We are moving in 2 weeks and we still haven’t nailed down a place to live.  Pray for us!

We left Savannah this weekend pretty bummed.  Shelly and I didn’t talk much for the first 100 miles up I-16 back to Atlanta.  We just kinda rode and pondered all that we had seen.  Shelly says that sometimes to her it feels like God is playing a joke on us.  Now, she is smarter than that, but when you are just trusting Him for your next step and the path you have been given doesn’t make any sense, that is what runs through your mind.  You can read what she wrote here.

So we are still looking and still praying.  There are alot of people praying about houses selling and all of us moving to Savannah.  That makes you feel better when you think about that.

All of my focus won’t be on the church over the next two weeks because of the move, but here is what is going on with me…

- We are working on getting the website up.  We just have some content issues to work out.

- The stupid newsletters STILL aren’t here.  Hopefully they will arrive tomorrow.  When those get here I’ll be getting all those out.

- I’ll be working on getting some stuff packed up here and working on getting things together for our moving sale.

- I’ve got some contacts to make about a few schools that are possiblities for us to meet in.  Keep this in your prayers.  We really need to nail a meeting place down in the next 30 days so we can begin planning with that in mind.

- We are having a staff retreat of some kind on the 25th-26th.  We need to get the calendar for 2009 written out and the creative planning started for preview and launch.  That means I need to finish the teaching calendar this week or beginnig of next.  The pressure’s on.

Here are a few things happening at the Garvin house..

- Mark (our Journey pastor) and Trisha (his wife) had the baby (Trey) and we went to see him this evening.  He’s so cute and now Shelly is talking baby again.  NO babies!

- We are heading down to Savannah on Friday to look at/sign for some place to live starting in August.  I think this move is really getting me wierded out.  I feel a little distant right now but I’ll get over it.  God has really blessed us and I know He is going to do even greater things in Savannah.

- The website is almost ready.  Matt and Shannon at Factor 1 did a great job.  I worked on it a little tonight, but I am waiting on the photography that just makes the whole site work.  Mikey is sending it.  We built the site around a few simple ideas: 1. keep it simple  2. keep it all on the page  3. local photography is king and can really bring out who we are as a church

- Still waiting on God to come through on the house situation.  Trust!

- Newsletters should be here from the printer soon and will go out to another 300 people.  They look good, but they need to get here so we can send them… they are taking forever at the printer because we ordered them right before the holiday.  They must have taken a whole week off.

- I got to play golf on Monday, which was nice.  I still stink but I love to play.  I get to play again this Monday with my Dad.  I bought him a gift card for Father’s day and he is going to cash in.

- We need more people, businesses, small groups, churches, etc. to give to the 249.  Money has come in,  but we have a long way to go.  This money goes directly to the expenses of equipment and supplies for launch.  If you haven’t given and want to, its not too late.

I have been noticing more and more how presentation makes me feel about a certain product.  Whenever I see an advertisement for a personal business, for instance, I tend to notice how it looks.  What medium did they choose to advertise through?  Is it neat and clean.  Is it easy to read.  What does the medium itself say about the quality of the product?  Why do some types of adversiting work, but others don’t? 

I have noticed several stickers on the barrier posts of restraunt drive throughs.  One was for skydiving, one was something about make-up I think.  But I’ve never seen the skydiving people on a billboard or a TV add, yet I might call those people (if I wanted to go skydiving, which I DO NOT).  But, I would never be compelled to buy, say toothpaste, from seeing a sticker like that. 

I saw an advertisement for a web design company on the back of a big beat up pickup truck the other day.  It said they did web design, logo development, virus removal and computer repair.  First of all, those are two totally different categories of product.  Two, if you have to advertise that you do virus removal and computer repair, you probably aren’t that good at logo development.  And, his work better speak louder than the condition of his truck, because I’m thinking if your work doesn’t pay you enough to advertise on a better vehicle, are you getting any business?  Hey, the dude may be great at it, I don’t know, its just observation.

Anyway, what does that mean for the church?  I hate that the church even has to advertise.  But, even word of mouth is advertisement.  What do you do when all you can do is not much?  Do you just leave it up to word of mouth?  Is presentation THAT important?  I’m thinking you do a little VERY well and leave it at that if your word of mouth speaks for itself.  If it doesn’t, you’ve got bigger problems anyway.  What do you think?