ChrisMoncus.com

… to worship

During the last worship set at youth group tonight I look up to find my light guys gone from the production booth. Disappeared. Both the lead guy and the guy in training.

My sound guy pointed them out… hands raised… singing their heats out to God in the crowd.

I’m ok with that.

It seems that recently things like this are happening more. Like God has finally gotten through the blocks our youth had in their hearts - allowing Him to move in their lives. The event we call Inside Out on Wednesday nights has been going so well as well.

Shannon is getting better and better at leading and the music is getting cleaner and cleaner. The band is worshiping while leading worship. Their sound is great.

The messages recently have been outstanding. We’re seeing kids change their lives and appear to be following God like never before. It’s so amazing.

I could go on and on but I’ll leave with this.

When you find your production crew forgetting their jobs because God is moving in their hearts, consider it a triumph. I do. Praise God.

Good night/morning. This whole Central time zone thing messes me up a little.

Today Fred, Travis, Bo, and I left home to go to Chicago and attend the Willow Creek Arts Conference. We flew American Airlines out of JAX nonstop to Chicago. It was rathe eventful from the getgo as Fred and I found that a dog was brought as a carry-on and the owners were in the seats behind us - with the dog - who would not stop yelping for a long time. We survived I’m glad to say.

Once we landed we headed to our hotel and chilled out until dinner. Dinner was at Lou Manalti’s Pizzeria. I had my first deep dish Chicago style pizza. It was pretty amazing. I feel Amanda and I will be attempting one soon. Now we’re back at our hotel and I’m throwing these pictures up for you to see. You can also see them on my flickr.

Wanna see all of my Willow Arts Conference 2008 recaps?

A new series started this week at SSCC. We’re calling it “Happily Ever After?” (notice the question mark). From our website…

Once upon a time, God delivered the nation of Israel from slavery and offered them a land of their own, a land of promise. And yet they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses speaks to the Israelites preparing them to finally cross over into the Promised land of Canaan. He reminds them they were slaves in Egypt, speaks to their their wanderings in the wilderness, and proclaims what will be necessary if they to enter and remain in the place of promise.

Does the story end happily ever after? Are we promised a “Happily Ever After” ending today? Join us as we remember this story from “Once Upon a Time” and learn the modern lessons of Egypt, the Wilderness, and Canaan.

I think it’s going to be a great series.

For the series art, Travis and I kept ping-pong-ing off of each other’s ideas to get what we have below. I said “fantasy”, Travis found the typewriter, I got it together with the dreamy feel, Travis thought of the lights.

That is actually one of the things I love about working at SSCC is the freedom to spend time developing ideas and being able to collaborate with some great people, our pastor being one of them. He really believes in our media department and as someone who worked a little less than ideal situations at other jobs, I can attest to how freeing this is. (If you read this, thanks David!)

Join us if you can. We have services at 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00am on Sundays.

This morning after Men’s Fraternity (which was awesome) Fred decided to record his Worship Confessional for last Sunday. I appear a minute in. Thanks, Fred, for the kind words.

Wow. I just found out that the logo I created for First Baptist Brunswick’s young adult fellowship, Access, was featured on Logo Archive, a collection of logos from all across the world. I’m honored that the author saw it fit to feature on the site. Wow. Just “wow”.

About the logo…

The Bible study name is based around the verse Ephesians 2:18 which reads, “For through [Jesus] we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

I sought out whatever visual ideas of the word “Access” came to mind. First thing that came to mind was the oh-so-typical door or keyhole. Not good enough. So I dove into a couple dictionaries and thesauruses only to find my answer in a reference to ATM’s. It said, “such as ‘accessing one’s account’”.

Aha! My access to my account was through a pin number. When I type it all that shows on the screen is ****. I also thought of other areas like logging in to websites or other electronics. The asterisk has become the universal electronic access symbol.

Also, as I heard from my Architect friend, the asterisk is a symbol they use to show an entrance.