Kyle's Random

I would have never guessed that having kids would be so entertaining.  :)

For several years, we’ve drawn names to give Christmas gifts with both my family and Keri’s family. This past Christmas, someone from Keri’s family came up with the terrible fantastic idea of creating a surprise handmade gift for “our person”.

I drew Keri’s sister, and after a few weeks of making no progress, Keri suggested that I make her a bird house.  After a little research, I decided to go the route of decorating a birdhouse that I bought at a hobby store nearby.  Here are a few pics of my project in action:

The bad news of the story: I think they want to do hand made gifts again next Christmas.

For Christmas, we decided to mix things up a bit.  Before my parents arrived on the 26th, we traveled with Keri’s family to South Carolina and rented a house on the beach for a few days.

It was pretty cold, but Nathan (A.K.A. Great Gorilla) and I managed to get in the ocean for a few minutes.

Just a few weeks before Christmas, my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. At this point, they still don’t know the stage or extent of the cancer, but it seems that she will be undergoing surgery in the very near future.

Fortunately, the news didn’t disrupt their trip to Knoxville, and we had a great time together during the time they were here (including a trip to Biltmore).

We would really appreciate your prayers for my mom and dad – for wisdom in their decisions and healing in her body.

I’m planning for 2010 to be the most disciplined year of my life so far. Rather than planning for big ministry or family breakthroughs, I’m going to commit to daily and weekly disciplines that I believe will pave the way for those other things to happen too. This isn’t a new thing for me, but this year I’m branching out to include some new areas.

To aid me in this process, I’ve documented each of my 11 goals (for accountability). For the first time, I’m also going to journal my food intake and try to lose 10 lbs with the aid of an awesome free website called DailyBurn.

You can see a few of my resolutions below as well as the main screen from DailyBurn running on my iPhone.

What about you? Have you set any goals for 2010? If so, I’d love to hear about it.

I recently updated my personal home page and when I was finished, I recommended the same format for my friend and leadership mentor, Dan Novak.

The graphic in the background is a social network diagram – one of Dan’s specialties as he consults with churches and other companies that want to improve communication and cooperation across their organization (If you were a part of our West Campus, you’ll remember that he did this sort of thing with our group before we launched).

I’m sure that we’ll end up doing more with his site in the future, but this is a cool start.

This past week I finally got around to updating Josh Whitehead’s blog, and I think it turned out pretty nice.  It’s the same basic theme that he already had on there, but I spruced it up a bit.

You’ll need a wide-screen monitor to get the full effect.

I never thought that a video about Google searches would nearly make me cry. What a great example of engaging people’s emotions through media.

I’m a rather huge fan of the Faith Promise Internet Campus.  We’ve added a third service at 9 pm, and this online ministry continues to gain momentum.

The ministry happening online continues to blow me away.  Just this weekend:

• People were connected from four countries outside the United States (Canada, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and El Salvador).
• One family connected from their hospital room the day after their new baby was born. (Yay, Crass family!)
• One family connected while traveling on vacation to Disney. (I think to make the rest of us jealous.)
• Our worship staff connected while traveling home after the roads were closed on their way back from a mission trip in NYC.
• I spoke on the phone with someone who gave his life to Christ three weeks ago while watching the iCampus and now wants to follow up by being baptized.

And that’s just the stories I heard about this weekend.  Many others attend anonymously until they are ready to take the next spiritual step.

My favorite part of the iCampus is that although the staff has provided this tool, it’s people leveraging their social networks via email, Facebook, and Twitter that has spread the word.  If you haven’t already, you’re help letting people know about this would be appreciated and could even make an eternal difference in someone’s life.  Just make sure that you include http:// so that the link will be clickable, and posting right before or during an online service is the most helpful.

To those of you who already play a part in spreading the word and who serve online as volunteers… thanks so much!  You guys rock!

If you attend Faith Promise Church, you can hardly help but get into the spirit of personal evaluation during this time of year.  Both Josh and Pastor Chris start focusing their attention on personal growth and establishing their plans for the coming year (excellent post by Josh here).

I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon to let you know about a cool update to YouVersion (a free Bible website that is mobile enabled and supported with mobile apps) that now allows you to select from a variety of reading plans.  This is a very cool update, and if you’re a person who struggles with reading the Bible, I’d highly encourage you to take a look at their reading plans and find a good fit.  There’s nothing that will help you grow spiritually like the systematic reading and application of God’s Word.