The Well-Documented Life of the Firstborn

My son turned one this weekend. We documented every moment - from 2 and 3 angles, at times. That's what you do for the firstborn... but, what if you are not the firstborn? This weekend's opening at The Net tells a brief story from the life of a second born child... me.

Breakfast for the Homeless

Just got off the phone with Keith and Jenifer Riddle - they oversaw our portion of the breakfast. As part of our One Prayer series, we were able to partner with two other area churches to feed over 100 homeless people today. I'm told we had a combined volunteer pool of about 40 people lending a hand for the two-hour event.

Kudos to everyone who helped pull off the breakfast this morning! Glad to be a part of a church that puts hands and feet to the gospel.

Father's Day

Yesterday was The Net's 1st Father's Day... as well as, my own! My son turns 1 on Saturday. I opened the service this weekend with a couple pictures and a brief story of my own father when I was a wee little lad. You can listen to the clip below... Enjoy!

Habitat for Humanity

This past Saturday, 17 brave souls from The Net weathered the heat to raise the walls on a Habitat Home in Chattanooga. The blistering sun made the day long and hard, but each one of our volunteers spoke of how much they enjoyed being a part of the process. The morning crew got the added blessing of meeting the homeowner and her grandson. And I was personally blessed to have the opportunity to pray over the home and it's future inhabitants. You can get their full story by clicking here.

We were also joined by a group from Christ United Methodist Church off East Brainerd Road. It was great to invest in such a worthy cause with another incredible group of believers!

And next weekend, we get to do it all over again - on a new project with 2 other churches for a Homeless Breakfast at Miller Park. Looking forward to hearing a good report from that event, as well.

Thanks to Linda Sneary and her team at Habitat for the opportunity to serve along side you. And thanks to Craig Groeschel and lifechurch.tv for developing One Prayer. We've enjoyed every minute of it!

Follow Up to Adoption Interview

During our LIFE series we interviewed a couple from our church - Jarrod and Anita Roussel. They were in the process of adopting a boy from Taiwan. If you missed the interview, you can catch it by clicking here.

After many grueling months their patience finally paid off this past weekend, as they returned to the states with little Andrew in hand! Congrats to the Roussel family on your new edition. We are grateful to be a part of the process with you and look forward to watching Andrew grow along side our own son!

WORSE THAN WE THINK OR NOT AS BAD AS WE THOUGHT?

This week Brown-Forman Corp. (one of the largest American-owned companies in the spirits and wine business and parent-company for Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey) announced fourth quarter earnings. Although they beat analyst expectations and experienced a favorable response from the market - their report showed a 19% drop in profit and a 12% drop in sales.

Translation: A drop in sales and profit for a liquor company means people are drinking less. Now, logic would tell us that if life is getting harder for people (i.e. foreclosures, job loss, etc.) then more people would be prone to hit the bottle. But, according to these numbers, fewer people are doing so. Which means one of two things: Either (1) the economy is so bad that people can't afford to drink their problems away or (2) things aren't as bad as we thought and people don't need a Jack Daniel to make it through the day!

Here's to hoping the latter is true... that wasn't a toast! :) Just thought I'd add my predictor to the never-ending supply of market indicators people are looking at to see when the bleeding will stop!

ONE PRAYER

This weekend we joined over 1600 other churches from 36 countries in beginning a new series: One Prayer. Three main components make up our One Prayer series:

• Over the next few Sundays we will be exploring various attributes of God with some of the best speakers of our time.

• We are also working with The Springs Church in Fort Oglethorpe, GA to schedule a local outreach project closer to the end of June.
  

• In addition, over the course of this series, we will be giving financially to help new church starts around the world and assist target areas with clean water supply, health education, literacy instruction, and financial training.

This past Sunday, we kicked off the series with a message: God is... Patient. I used a personal story to relay God's patience in my life - the story of meeting my wife and the dramatic turn of events that transpired prior to our finally getting married.

You can watch the message, by clicking here.

And... as promised: here are links to the engagement and the wedding itself (with all it's theatrical magic)!

12 DUNKS and a whole lotta food!

Last Sunday The Net Church hosted its first baptism/picnic combo. The event started at City Church where we baptized 4 indoor... Then, we traveled up Hwy 153 to Chickamauga Lake for 8 more baptisms and a feast to end all feasts!

With nearly 100 in attendance, I'm still wondering how we fit everyone around the single picnic table we were able to secure. And I'm still unsure how our attenders managed to find us among the masses of humanity that decided to make use of the park the same day of our baptism!

On that note, a few thank you's are in order...

Thanks Nick and Keith for putting up signs to guide everyone in.

Thanks to Heather for securing the inflatables, so our kids could bounce and slide for 3 straight hours!

Thanks to Andrea for organizing the group being baptized.

Thanks to Bryan for setting up our sound system.

Thanks to Travis Talley for heading home to get two more tables, so we could spread out the pile of food that covered every square inch of our lone bench!

Thanks to TJ, Kenny, and Ryan for documenting the day through the lens of a camera!

Thanks to City Church for allowing us to baptize 4 of 12 in your heated pool.

Thanks to everyone who brought food and seating.

Thanks to everyone who allowed us to baptize them... it was truly an honor.

And a special thanks to the Chattanooga Police Department who allowed us to utilize our 2 inflatables without a permit... note to self: next time secure permit before meeting on federal property!

Oh and lest I forget... thanks to the couple kissing in the lake, who upon seeing we were in the middle of a baptism, slowly and inconspicuously moved away from where we were dunking our people. The added distance likely helped our guys keep their eyes on the baptizees instead of the two-piece!

Looking forward to our next gathering! And in case you are interested... More pics and video will follow over the coming days at www.netgroups.cc!

PLAYBOY DISCREPANCY

An interesting weekend at The Net! The highlight clearly being our baptisms and picnic - more to come on that in a blog post to follow.

For now though... I'd like to look at a troubling issue that has the potential of causing a church split! You see, this past Sunday morning while the congregation was intently listening to our guest speaker, Jim Miles, bring his sermon to a dramatic close... movie trivia began playing on the screen behind him. Later he commented how he noticed a point in the message where all eyes slowly moved from him to something over his head.

As he preached away one particular piece of movie trivia blazed across the screen... something about Playboy and a certain playmate... this is where the discrepancy comes in. Some of our members told me the playmate in question was Pamela Anderson. Others claimed it was the late Anna Nicole Smith. Having not been in the room at the time, I cannot say who's face graced the screen.

Now, at The Net we do our best to not dabble in non-essentials, but I fear if we do not settle this issue, it could divide our congregation. If anyone out there saw the ad and has insight into who the infamous actress was, please feel free to weigh in.

And know that going forward we are working with Rave management to ensure such divisive issues are kept at bay and that playgirls and scripture verses don't share the same screen space at the same time during our weekend experiences... Not that we would want playgirls sharing our screen space at any time during our weekend experiences!