Josh Young

We just shot, edited and uploaded a new welcome video to our church website.

You can check it out here.

For those of you who know our buddy Jim Willison, currently serving our country in Iraq, here’s a link to a little video message from him that will be featured on Channel 5 (WLWT) throughout the month of December.

We’re praying for you Jimmy. Hope to see you soon.

Jim Willison - Holiday Greeting on WLWT.com

Another whirlwind weekend has come and gone at ACC.

APEX was Saturday night. The theme was Facing Your Giants, based on the Max Lucado book of the same name. We used the story of David and Goliath to show that we should sprint into battle with our giants, whatever they might be.

One of the elements we used was an illustration of just how tall Goliath was. We have these new pillars that spell out the letters of APEX in big, glowing, red letters, and they’re about 8 feet tall each. With a little more height on top of that, Mike placed a wax sculpture of his head on top of it (interesting story - listen to the message to hear about it) to show just how tall Goliath really was. And then we had one of the kids from ACC who was about David’s age come up and stand next to it to show the contrast. Dang, he was tall! I’ve never really visualized it like that, but that was a serious dude to go into battle against.

Thankfully we got an extra hour of sleep that night.

Sunday, we started our new series called LIE$. Lie No. 1 was “The Church Only Wants My Money.” Mike did an amazing job with a message that most ministers struggle with. Money is such a “hot topic” in the church, and he did an excellent job of handling the subject in a biblical way. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the series. Like Mike, I think God is going to blow our minds through this series.

A good friend of mine sent me this article posted by Perry Noble (pastor at NewSpring Church), and I couldn’t help but post it. He is discussing the misnomer some people have that wearing a suit or dress to church actually makes you “more godly.”

Man, I could not agree more with what he is saying.

Just an excerpt:

What I am wondering is where in the world did the modern day church ever get the idea that somehow dressing up in a suit OR wearing a dress equals godliness…and those who would wear jeans and a T-shirt, or even (GASP) flip flops just are not as godly. Can we all say “insecurity” boys and girls?

Now I’m not a theologian or a scholar…but it seems to me that someone who would look down their nose at someone else for not dressing properly–when no dress code is mentioned in the Bible–is PRIDE and ARROGANCE…you know, the things that got satan kicked out of heaven!

Now, I’m not saying that you’re wrong to wear a suit or dress by any means (and neither is Perry). I know several people who wear suits every week that are some of the most godly men I’ve ever met. But I’ve also met many on the other extreme. I’m just saying that what you wear on Sunday (or any other day, for that matter) doesn’t define you in God’s eyes.

Go check out the whole post.

Perry Noble dot com - Superficial Sunday in the South

Church Marketing Sucks also had a good post on this a few years ago: Sunday Morning Dress Code

As did Monday Morning Insight: Church Dress Code Still an Issue for Many

Last Sunday, we didn’t have a “sermon” at Amelia. The last message in our Decibels series was brought by four individuals in our church family via video testimonies or stories.

I finally got them posted last night, so you can see all four of them on our website.

Go check them out when you have a few minutes. Several of us put quite a bit of work into them (including the four people who gave their stories, Mike, Brian, and myself), and we hope they affect you as much as they did us. One of them is even from my wife, Marie.

It was an awesome weekend, and people are still continuing the discussion even today, which is a great sign.

Great things happen when God’s people are real.

Amelia Church of Christ - Shouting With Your Story

We’re back from CIY and now in the midst of VBS (it’s like the month of acronyms or something).

CIY was amazing. It was great to get to know some of our high schoolers more and to see them grow throughout the week. We have some great kids at ACC.

Marie and I also got a lot out of the week aside from the kids. The whole conference was just a great experience (just as I remember it being when I was in high school myself).

One thing that was amazing to me (and yet not surprising) was the way technology has shaped what we do at these things in the last 10 years. The amount of audio, video, lighting, etc. that was used there was staggering. It’s amazing the resources that we have now that we could have only dreamed of 10 years ago. CIY did a great job of marrying everything together to produce some amazing worship experiences. They were able to use these tools to engage a very large group of otherwise distracted and media blitzed teenagers.

Along that line, one of the electives I attended was called “Backstage Pass and Production Principles,” and it was basically a tour of the whole stage setup (back and front of house) and Q&A session with the Production Manager, Josh Maichele. Josh was very impressive. He took any and all questions, and he was a great resource to all of us there. He ran a killer production, and he was extremely nice. It was great to ask him specific questions about how they do what they do, and to see up-close all of the equipment and props they were using.

I’ll post more later on the week. I’m also working on some videos from it all, and I’ll post them once I get them finished.

CIY

Luminous Student Ministries

Our youth group is getting ready to head to CIY in Illinois this upcoming week, and they happened to be two sponsors short at the last minute due to some unforeseen schedule changes, so Marie and I decided to jump on board!

We had originally considered going months ago when the suggestion was brought up, but we didn’t think we were going to be able to at the time. We were still unsure of whether stuff was going to work out with it or not, but we decided to go ahead with it anyway and let God figure out the rest.

It’s been years since I’ve been to a CIY conference, and Marie has never been, so we’re both looking forward to it. It will be great to spend some more time with the awesome teens at our church, and it will be a great time to recharge ourselves as well. I think we both need it right now.

It’s funny how God gives you the right thing at just the right time. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere. And sometimes when you plan on something (or don’t plan on something), God gives you His plan instead.

Can’t wait for next week! Maybe I’ll post a video or something from the week when we get back.

Read a great post over at eMinistryNotes this morning about explaining RSS in plain English. I’ve taken a stab at it on our church’s website before, but this video (from CommonCraft) does a great job explaining things.

Check it out.

Click To Play

eMinistryNotes - RSS in Plain English

CommonCraft - Video: RSS in Plain English

Our new student ministries website is officially live starting today. You can visit it at www.ameliastudents.com.

We’ve worked really hard to make it a safe and fun place for our students and their friends. You’ll probably see some changes with it over the next several months as we tweak it to be even more centered on the needs of our students.

On the tech side of things, I built the site using WordPress 2.0.7 (there are some conflicts with 2.1 and the polls plugin that we’re using) with a custom widgetized template that I designed. I also integrated Vanilla 1.0.3 (forum) into the design.

Here is a list of WordPress plugins we’re using on the site:

• About Me Widget
• Akismet
• Angsuman’s Referrer Bouncer
• Auto-hyperlink URLs
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
• Email Shroud
• FD Feedburner Plugin
• Google Analyticator (gotta love those stats)
• Google Sitemaps
• Image Manager
• Page Links To
• Polite-ifier
• Search Pages
• Sidebar Widgets
• WP-ContactForm
• WP-Polls
• WP-Polls Widget

Here is a list of Vanilla extensions we’re using on the site:

• Account Pictures 1.1
• Announcement 1.2
• Applicant E-mail Verification 0.4.0
• BBInsert Bar 0.1.5
• Better BB Code 1.0
• Discussion Filters 2.0
• Extended Text Formatter 1.0
• Guest Welcome Message 1.0
• Hide Success 1.0
• Invite Friends 0.3
• Legends 1.0
• MarkAllRead 1.0
• New Applicants 1
• NewsMailer 0.2
• Predefined Attributes 0.3.3
• Private Accounts 1.0
• Role History 1.0
• STOP CAPS ABUSE 1.0
• Saved Searches 2.0
• Smooth Page Jump 1.0
• Yellow Fade Effect 0.1
• Comments Permalinks 1.0

For the games on the site, we’re using code from a free Miniclip.com game each month. Watch out, the game I have up as Last Month’s Game is really addicting!

Luminous Student Ministries - ameliastudents.com

Wordpress

Vanilla

Miniclip.com

Our very own Mike Edmisten is being featured in a Cincinnati Enquirer article called Preaching beyond the pulpit: Web-savvy pastors turn to blogs.

It’s pretty cool to see the things that have changed and the new people that have been reached because of the use of our website and Mike’s blog. He’s really embraced it wholeheartedly, and he’s committed to being real with people, which is awesome. Hopefully even more people will be reached and affected because of these tools.

Mike Edmisten: Enquirer Article

Enquirer: Preaching beyond the pulpit: Web-savvy pastors turn to blogs