UCLA Has A New Coach!

The LA Times is reporting that they offered the head football coach position to UCLA Alum and legendary Quarterback Rick Nueheisel. I am super stoked! He is a great coach and he wins where ever he goes.

I think we will see the football program kick it up a notch. Looking forward to great things ahead. Maybe I will go to two games next year instead of just one.

With the incoming recruiting class and the retention of Dewayne Walker as defensive coach we are going to see some exciting football. Hopefully they will get rid of the West Coast offense and exploit their athleticism.

Dumpster Diving

Got a lead on a conference table that was left by a family that moved. So Joe and I headed over and reclaimed it from their trash pile. Needs a little TLC but nothing Tom can’t handle. It is a beautiful long narrow knotty pine table which will look great in the middle of the office. Best of all it is free!

Office Update

We moved into our offices yesterday. Everything went smoothly as all the jumped in and made the transition smooth except for when I smashed my thumb between the door and Susan’s solid oak desk.. Everything is pretty much in disarray but that should be ironed out by the end of next week. Susan and Christin were snapping pictures the whole time so when I get some of them I will post them here. The coffee bar that the church looks like a different place now with all the cubicles and file cabinets gone. It will be nice to have that opened up for everyone on Sundays.

I really like my office. Lots of space and light. Heading there this morning to study for tomorrow. The office is so close that I plan on walking everyday. We’ll see how that goes. Tom & Christin are going to share another office but we had to install bars on the windows to keep them on task . Susan’s area is going to take time because her new desk won’t be here until the end of the month.

In the middle of the office is our conference room. Once we get a table donated for that it will be a nice focal point. We pulled in a table from the church yesterday and were able to have our staff planning meeting for 2008 which went really well. Excited for what God has for the Village Chapel in 08.

Another Thumb sucker

Took Sampson to the vet yesterday because he was chewing on his paw. The hair in his paw was red so we thought he had injured it. Turns out that the red hair is from saliva stains due t his licking it so much. The vet told me in essence he is a thumb sucker. So it appears that every male under the age of five sucks their thumb in this house. Maybe we can get a picture of them all doing it at once. Too funny. Didn’t know dogs had the equivalent of sucking their thumbs.

Oswald Chambers

This is from this mornings devotional out of My Utmost For The Highest:

Not often, but every once in a while, God brings us to a major turning point—a great crossroads in our life. From that point we either go toward a more and more slow, lazy, and useless Christian life, or we become more and more on fire, giving our utmost for His highest—our best for His glory.

New Digs

After the first of the year The Village Chapel will have new offices. We are moving up the street from the church to some official offices. This was definitely one of our biggest needs and our staff is totally stoked. More details to come but I am excited because I will be cutting my commute from 1 minute driving to 30 seconds. This should merit some kind of award from Greenpeace or something . I don’t know if I will be able to come up with enough excuses not to walk to work so I am praying for El Nino this winter.

Having these new offices will allow us to be more organized, efficient, and permanent. It will make appointments easier and give us some much needed ministry space. Once everything is up and running we will give you all the details. The church phone number will stay the same but our mailing address will change. Maybe we will have an open house or something. Stay tuned.

Christmas Eve Services

This is really late in posting but it is the first chance I have had to post. Last night were our first Christmas Eve services and it blew my mind. We had a full 6pm service even though the off ramp right in front of the hotel was closed due to an accident. Everone had to go the long way around. The 7pm service was standing room only! That blew my mind. The whole time leading up to it I was second guessing if we should’ve done a 5pm instead of a 7pm but we got it right. Wow! We then had a good showing to the 11pm service. I am pretty sure half of the people there were there just to see if anyone would show up but that is cool. All three services went off well. The worship team did a great job, we had a ton of volunteers, and the sanctuary looked awesome! Man I had never seen it at night with all the lights and candles. Incredible and I am so grateful to Sharon and her team.

In between the 2nd and 3rd service we had a little party at our house for anyone who wanted to come and it was fun. Jen cooked all day making enchiladas and Chile Verde. We had several families show u and the fellowship was so sweet. Lots of people got to know each other which was a bonus to the whole thing. The new house held up well and poor Sampson got more activity in an hour than he gets in a whole week. He slept well.

Anyways I am praising God for our church!

Final Thoughts on UCLA Footbal

Another Bowl game and another loss. For the third or fourth straight year UCLA has gone to a subpar bowl game and loss. This time they put together a perfect two minute drill with a walk on quarterback no less and then blew the field goal! What a bummer.

Dewayne Walker actually made a good play for the head coach position by how he coached this game. The defense was back to its normal self. They need to dump the offensive coordinator. I know he didn’t have a quarterback to speak of but I hate the west coast offense. So boring and predictable. Throw it down field.

I guess I have next year to look forward to. Now on to basketball.

I actually watched the game online at ESPN 360. Pretty cool picture.  A lot of dumb ESPN commercials.

New Records

Our Website has seen record traffic this week and this month. Don’t know why or what that means but is an interesting note. We revamped the site about three weeks ago and I still can’t configure pictures good enough to get the ladies drinking off the front page but I consider it another humorous page in our history. I am hoping these people are checking it out to see when out Christmas eve services are. That would be great because it means we are reaching our target audience. We’ll see.

Spineless Christians

The Internet affords certain people a sense of anonymity. They can shoot off comments and email and remain completely unknown. This allows them to say whatever they and not have to worry about being found out. I have a growing group here on this blog. They shoot off comments with aliases and fake emails and basically put the church and me down.  I rarely post their comments because their comments are senseless and offer no useful insight. Others are just plain dumb.

Everytime we do something of significance they are quick to slam it. They take shots at my character even though few of them know me. They lament that people have left their church and come to The Village Chapel. They seem to know everything going on but yet never attend. Their words have no love and they are quick to criticize. What makes them spineless is that they refuse to own up to their comments. They want to drop bombs and then hide. It basically put them in the same categories as terrorists. You know those guys who run around setting off bombs but hide behind their masks because they are too chicken to stand for what they believe.

I am not calling you guys out. In fact many people will tell me not to give you them time of day, but if the church was full of men who possessed a spine then the kingdom work would be done much sooner and we all could go home to heaven.