loveisgreaterthan[dot]com

today we launched the toledo campus of cedarcreek.tv. it’s been a long journey, one that i have times been a big part of, but for the most part i’ve been able to observe from the outside. it’s a weird thing, having our original campus being in a suburb, and now launching a campus within the city. there is so much opportunity to reach people, we’ve been hard-pressed to remain patient during the construction process.

last night there were two soft opening services. these were really meant for our volunteers, and a chance for us to do a run-through along with the live video from our perrysburg campus (via streambox). everything went well, so today was the big day.

nearly twelve hundred people attended the two services tonight at the toledo campus. god is good! multiple first-time commitments to christ tonight at the toledo campus. god is good! the streambox (live video over internet) worked. god is good!

it’s hard to not be excited for what the future is going to hold at cedarcreek. i believe god is going to continue doing huge things through the church, all of our campuses, especially over at the toledo campus. it’s so great to have that place launched finally after so much work, but we don’t have long to rest! it’s almost time to start thinking about our fourth campus!

but for now, it’s all i need, to know that god is good.

i’m sure i’ll have some pictures of services actually happening at toledo soon, but for now, here are some pictures i took on friday. as per usual, there are a lot more pictures than i’ve linked here. you can view the whole set on my flickr by clicking here.

i’ll be back tomorrow with the recap of the weekend services.

unless i somehow manage to justify blogging while at work, this blog will go silent until a week from monday as i attempt to “unplug” this week. for seven days, outside of work, i will not be using my laptop, the internet, video games, ipod, anything that requires power. seven days of family, friends, reading, and focus. it should be great.

you can read more about the plan here, and if you are so inclined, join me on this journey. as far as i know, there are about twenty people in blog-land coming along on the journey, and we’d love to have more!

i leave you with some pictures i took from this weekend. as always, check out my flickr for the full set.

i’m absolutely wiped. the “travel day” portion of vacation can be exhausting, and today was a doozy. it involved waking up at four am, our luggage getting sent to the wrong airport, frustration, two small planes, one of which with a very loud non-stop crying baby, and no food for twelve hours (which probably wasn’t a horrible thing considering how i ate while on vacation — more on that later.)

since i know what you all really want anyway (pictures,) i’m just going to let them do the talking (for now.)

before that, i want to take a brief moment and thank the guest bloggers last week; bryan2, addison and pete thomas… and a huge thanks to jason for taking care of the site. i appreciate you guys very much!

ok, and for the pictures. here’s 80ish of my favorite thus far. i took well over a thousand pictures, so i will be adding to the set as the week goes on. for now, check out the few i’ve embedded in this post below, and then click here to visit the entire set on my flickr.

this morning… me and some friends; whitlow, mark and i headed to charlie’s diner on route 25 in perrysburg, ohio. whitlow found out last night that senator john mccain would be stopping there for a meet and greet sometime around 9am. thankfully, mark got there stupid early, like 7am, and got us a booth.

now for some full disclosure, i openly support barack obama, and hope to convince as many other people as i can to vote for him on march fourth, as well as the general election. nevertheless, i’m completely in love with politics and the process as a whole, so i’ll listen to any major candidate regardless of who it is… it’s history one way or another.

so whitlow and i showed up around 8am, and the place was just starting to fill up. by the time we got there, there were only a few open seats… thankfully a few of them were being held for us by mark.

senator mccain showed up around 10am, and by then the place was PACKED. outside as well as inside. here’s some bullet points from what stuck out to me:

• first impression when i saw him up close… dude is seriously old.
• there were ron paul supporters with signs up in front of the restaurant. they certainly are tenacious.
• in the pictures i’m linking below, the first one shows a red circle over a guy. this kid fake-fainted his way up to senator mccain, and when he finally got mccain’s attention, what did he have to say? “ron paul, i’m a huge fan.” idiot.
• in the second photograph, you’ll see a man wearing a brown shirt to the right of john mccain. he was a reporter for channel 11, the cbs affliate here in toledo. as mccain was speaking (and the rest of the room hushed) this guy takes the mic back from mccain and starts talking, loudly, into it. so, in a moment that made me actually forget about all the reasons i dislike mccain, the senator took the microphone (not in a rude way or anything) from the reporter and said into it “i’m john mccain, and we’re here at charlies, and this guy is interrupting me.” the crowd went nuts. it was absolutely hilarious.
• listen, there are a few things about mccain i like. he seems to be very straight forward, and his plan for veterans healthcare is quite good (which he spoke about this morning). his plan is to give all veterans a card that will allow them to get whatever medical care they need at whatever physician they so choose. but i cannot get behind his war policy, or the fact that he’s more of the same. i just don’t see enough change from the current administration in him.
• the new york times article, about the alleged affair with the telecom lobbyist was not brought up. i don’t want to jump to conclusions here, but if there is a “dress in the freezer” type moment in this investigation, mark my words… mitt romney will get back in the race. as it stands now, he is probably somewhere banging his head against a table wishing he wouldn’t have dropped out when he did.
• we got interviewed by the columbus dispatch and toledo free press. wonder if we’ll get quoted in either.
• all in all, mccain was pretty civil. he didn’t spend any time slamming other candidates… he didn’t mention them once.
• he spent his time talking solely about the economy, healthcare, and a little bit about the war.
• there was a serious pandering moment though, when he started talking about the ohio state buckeyes. i mean seriously, if that’s not pandering to a crowd, i don’t know what is.
• here’s an interesting fact… out of the hundreds of people i saw there, other than a couple press people, there was not a single black person in attendance. in addition, i only saw a few other minorities.
• we guessed the median age of people there (not counting kids and people too young to vote) at 56.

see the rest of the set on my flickr by clicking here.

i read somewhere a while back that one way to assist in getting a good nights sleep is to journal your days thoughts before going to bed. i guess it’s good to get those things off your chest before you attempt sleep, hopefully thwarting your mind racing through thoughts.

so, here goes… with a gratuitous random image at the end:

• i really like the panera on airport highway. it just opened a month ago, and everything is nice and new. free coffee refills, free wifi, and a bench off in the corner by the fireplace that will one day have my name on it. just have to always remember to bring my earbuds, because their music is awful.
• got a lot done on an intro video i’m working on for pete thomas‘ speaking engagements. i wonder if anyone thought it was weird to see a guy sitting in panera watching old episodes of the biggest loser?
• clothes shopping, something i usually hate with the fire of a thousand suns…. wasn’t so bad tonight. i’ve gone down in pant size, from a 52 to a 46, and down two whole shirt sizes. was much easier to find clothes than it has been in the past.
• i’m sad to say that ryanne and i went to a chinese buffet for dinner. all i had to eat prior in the day was a salad, so i probably didn’t do too bad overall for the day. nevertheless, i told ryanne to not let us go to chinese buffet’s anymore… they’re just not worth it (unless it’s the one in perrysburg with really good sushi).
• work is getting really stressful. there’s a lot going on, an awful lot!
• my friend, probably still best friend, even though we have grown apart somewhat since i got married and he moved away first to florida, then to las vegas, is coming home this weekend. i am so pumped, i don’t even know where to begin.
• msnbc is reporting that obama is now winning in total overall delegates. obama won 13 states on super-tuesday compared to 8 for hillary, and new mexico is still counting (i think). beautiful.
• looking forward to next weekend. nearly one hundred people will be getting baptized at cedarcreek’s new community service.
• then, the extreme home makeover episode on abc featuring patrick henry hughes premiers at 8pm. be sure to tune in! he’s coming back to cedarcreek in may!
• going out on a limb, placed a “help wanted” ad in cedarcreek’s weekly bulletin to try and find some help to work on our website. this has never gone well in the past, ever… so i don’t know what to expect, which is why i am not expecting much. you’d think in a church of 7,000, there would be someone with some web-skillz who is dependable, willing, and has a few hours a week to donate.
• feeling much better, but still can’t talk very well. it amuses me to listen to myself. i sound silly.
• i found myself amazed today at how much someone can get done in a day without ever speaking a word. my team at cedarcreek knows i’m sick, so they have been communicating with me via email, im and text, and the same has been true with friends and my freelance clients. it’s pretty cool. but my fingers are tired
• a fifth underwater internet line in the middle-east has been cut. it has gone beyond coincidence now… you read it here, something is about to happen. i do hope i’m wrong, but i don’t think i am.
• jason, over at theworstblogger.com is posting some pretty good content, especially for being so young in his “blog-life.” if you haven’t visited yet, you really should.

• watching shawshank redemption. i’ve seen this movie so many times i’ve lost count, but it’s still good every time.
• i haven’t ate a single thing yet today. i feel like i should. it’s not that i feel like i can’t eat, i just don’t really have any desire. for whatever reason, zoup! sounds really good. i must have saw a commercial or something, because i have never ate their food (or in this case, soup) before.
• really looking forward to patrick henry hughes coming back to cedarcreek in february. he will be speaking/performing just two weeks after his “extreme home makeover” appears on national television. should be a great weekend.
• i hope i feel better tomorrow morning when i wake up, i really can’t afford to stay sick for much longer.
• god bless my wife, i think she had a tougher night than i did and she still managed to go to work today. good for her, but i’m a wimp.
• really wanting to get out and take some pictures… i’m feeling the urge
• hillary signed papers saying she wouldn’t campaign or appear on the ballot in michigan or florida… yet she did both anyway. great start on building trust.
• edwards dropped out, should be interesting to see who he endorses (along with his 56 delegates). i think the kennedy endorsement of obama would shield him a bit if edwards decided to endorse hillary, but i don’t see that happening. edwards was too much of a “change” candidate to endorse someone whom he often referred to as the “status-quo.”
• i really can’t wait till super-tuesday.
• about three weeks till i’ll be in the carribbean on a cruise. looks like i’m going to miss my goal getting to 320 by february. that saddens me.
• i really wish i could afford a treadmill/bike/elliptical… some form of exercise inside.
• i really wish i could afford (and have the tenacity to use) a gym membership.
• this last weekend at church was outstanding. we showed a dave ramsey video for our message. i love dave ramsey… i long for the day when i can shout “i’m debt-free!”
• ryanne’s and my previous landlords finally mailed out our deposit check back to us. unfortunately, they forgot to take out the $315 we owed them for the remainder of december’s rent… so the check is roughly twice as much as it should be for. does it make me an awful person that i seriously thought about cashing it and just not saying anything?
• we did end up calling and letting them know the problem though… haven’t heard back yet.

links to the full sets of these photo’s are here and here.

how do you do church?

well, i wanted to do a post today about all the fun stuff on the trip so far. all the random notes, elaborate on some of the twitter-feed thoughts on the right… things like that.

before i get to that, here’s the essential information. we’re in edmond, oklahoma right now. we’re literally less than a mile from the edmond campus of lifechurch.tv, i can see their building from my window. last night we stayed in springfield, missouri. we made 700 miles in ten hours the first day of driving. today we drove for about three and a half and made it into edmond. so far daisy (my newly-named prius) has been doing well, albeit a lot less mileage than i anticipated… lots of hills equals low mileage.

then we went to to oklahoma city national memorial & museum.

i don’t really have all my thoughts together, but i will share some of the pictures i took…