Create Official Site
Posting a quick screen grab of this year’s PZ Kids Camp promotion design concept! All fun. I use Adobe Illustrator CS4 for 3D lettering and custom vector objects. Adobe Photoshop for layout. ClubFlyers.com for printing.
2012 Brand & Identity – High Resolution JPG
Custom Die-Cut proof – front & back
One of the largest attended and most watched televised events is happening this weekend — the NFL Super Bowl! It’s game time and everyone is excited. It’s about a competition to find out who is the best of the best each year. Personally, I wish we were watching the Houston Texans against the Packers or Steeler’s but there’s always next year!!!
So here’s my question ‘What can the church learn from the superbowl?’ Besides the emphasis of excellence, atmosphere, energy and so on… the NFL has built up an incredible following and fan base around this one huge weekend — it’s goal and purpose to determine the best team of the season and put on an incredible show for all the fans.
So let me state the obvious – we ‘the Church’ are not here to compete with one another and certainly not here to put on a great show. We are the body of Christ and are called to work together to accomplish one goal to share the good news of Jesus Christ, reach people for him and equip them to reach others who do not yet know what He did for all of us. This was God’s original vision for us ‘The Church’.
Pro football players understand they are a part of something bigger than themselves. Let’s employ every method and means to give people a glimpse of the vision of the Church that Jesus talked about when He was with us on this earth — an incredible team of people who love God, love each other and love life.
Join us online or on your mobile for a LIVE stream of “Stairway to Heaven” and see the Grace Fellowship team rock Led’s Zeppelin’s original. Also, for everyone waiting for the LIVE video for iPhone & iPad. It’s finally here! To watch with us visit http://live.gfcfamily.com at 12noon cst today (May 2, 2011) from iPhone, iPad. Oh and bring a friend, this is going to be incredible.
Pumped about our new series, “So You’re Dead… Now What?” What will happen to you the second after you die? Tomorrow’s message is going to be pretty cool, it’s titled “Stairway to Heaven” — Join us tomorrow and judge for yourself if the band lives up to Led Zepplin’s original! See you there http://live.gfcfamily.com 9:30am & 11:00am cst.
Just released a brand new GFC App today to the Android Market. It’s in beta of course so if you find any bugs or weird happenings – leave feedback here on the blog. Also, happy to say that AppMakr.com is meeting our need for mobile content pretty well. It’s great to have a Free option to create and publish mobile apps to test the water and see where and how it would be wise to invest further. I am pretty happy with the solutions for both iPhone and Android. The Android functionality is limited to RSS feeds mostly but allows users to access our streaming media, flickr, blog posts and some social media.
By the way, publishing an Android App is about 1000 times simpler than the iPhone app. Excellent work Google for keeping things simple.
Thinking about Tony Morgan & Tim Stevens and the impact and influence both of these guys have on the church and where it is going. Got to meet Tony today at Grace Fellowship. He is here for a couple of days to review and give us feedback. Love what he is doing and how God is using him. He is obviously capturing the attention of leaders around the nation. Looking forward to our staff meeting tomorrow and what he has to say about this weekend and his perception of GFCFamily.
Just browsed Tim’s tweets and blog and then a GCC series promo and it felt like I read over and over what has been on my heart for some time. This is going to look obvious but “What if the church looked more like Jesus?” What if we were an army for His purpose and got off the Christianese buffet and actually started to love and care for the people who need it most? So, what would the church look like if it decided to look more like Jesus? If you have been following @TimAStevens Twitter or blog feed lately or have checked out the GCCWired website you will see they are moving closer to purpose and challenge that Jesus left for his followers. This has been on my mind more and more lately. “Churches are starting to feel like cruise ships instead of battleships.” This statement has stuck with me since Tierce Green said it just a few years ago.
Tim and GCC leadership spent some time writing a vision statement for the next five years of the church. Now this sounds like the church that Jesus told his disciples to go and lead.
“The differences at Granger Community Church in the next five years will be greater than the changes of the past twenty-five combined. GCC is not just an institution or location; we are a movement of people who understand that we are Jesus’ plan to transform and heal communities. We accept the challenge and we are raising the bar.”
God has called them to raise the bar to do something with the thousands of people who have gathered together in Jesus name. They are fired up — really really cool to read.
So I have wanted to build an iPhone app for about a year now and received several cost estimates from excellent companies SubSplash, MobileRoadie and a few others. We will most likely move ahead and invest a bit in the next year for mobile media but before we totally took the plunge I wanted to test just how popular and useful an iPhone mobile app would be.
If you have been looking for a simple way to build and fairly simple way to publish an iPhone app and really don’t want to invest thousands just yet, I would recommend AppMakr. You can design and build straight forward apps pretty quick and if you know some HTML and CSS you can push the functionality a bit.
Building is the easy part actually, it’s connecting and publishing to the Apple iTunes App Store that’s a bit complex, at least at first. I’ll outline that process in a future post. If you don’t want to figure the second part out AppMakr will publish for you at $1,000.00 (each release).
Give it a try, I think you’ll dig it. Here is the direct link to the Grace Fellowship Church app. Released today. Looking forward to checking out the stats. Have fun.
Great meeting today prepping for 2010 Christmas at Grace Fellowship Church. Stan Durham our Pastor of Creative Innovation shared his initial script for Christmas with Myra and me. I am blown away by the creativity and how his mind works. It is rare that I am caught off guard by people and I have to say this time I truly was. I have always known that Stan was a creative person, I have seen his part in creating many services, skits, dramas, songs and messages. I have often referred to him as being “out there” x 10. He really is. For some reason this was different. He locked himself away for several days in a row to create a Christmas piece and wanted to walk-through it with Myra and me today so we could get a feel for art direction, parts, roles, etc. Lots of fun. Even at 2:00pm in the afternoon right when the lunch lull hits.
I am blown away how we are all truly made different, with unique talents, minds, ways of doing things and communication style. Dig it. Looking forward to see this in full detail. Good work Stan. Glad you stay true to who you were made to be.
What do you see when other people let you into their world? Do you really listen? Are you judging or are you patient or open enough to hear their story?
Great weekend @gfcfamily. Launched brand NEW church online stream. 209 people in 4 countries and 10 states joined in for the first weekend! You can check it out this Sunday 9:30 or 11:00AM CST & Monday 12Noon http://live.gfcfamily.com.
I have to say it was an amazing moment to hear BJ announce on-stage and on-air that we are now LIVE and broadcasting across the area and that several of our friends and family were joining us from all over. We are using LivePerson.com for the private chat software and JS-Kit.com for the lobby chat that integrates well with OpenId, Facebook and Twitter. We also hooked up a simple connect form for those new to Grace Fellowship and donation link for regular attenders.
We ran three services this weekend and all three were great! Currently only offering one medium bandwidth stream but moving quickly to accommodate a low and high stream by next weekend. Our next step is to stream to mobile. Love to get the word out. But also trying to implement a channel that offers more for very different audience. Who? You will see! A Big thank you to our streaming partner vLifeMedia — these guys have been streaming for years and they know what they are doing.
If you are interested in streaming for your organization give them a shout. They deliver small to large scale streaming solutions. http://www.vlifemedia.com.
It is crank week at Grace Fellowship Church as we get ready to launch the all new Live streaming of the services! Check it out September 19 at 9:30 & 11:00am. We tested behind the scenes this weekend and the quality looks good so far. The second DSL line is scheduled to be installed this week in order to help with load balance and maximizing bandwidth. We plan on using a simple custom css/php template to run it with chat, live prayer, social media integration and more. The best thing is letting friends, family and new viewers see what Grace Fellowship is all about. It’s a great way to check out the church and see if it is worth visiting but also a great tool for getting the message out across the states and globally. Stay tuned!
Also, our temporary page and recent announcement seems to be drawing attention from many sides. Love seeing the different perspectives in the area.
It has now been a month since I have relocated to Paradise, Texas. For the first time in four weeks I have been able to spend more than three days in a row with my beautiful wife and two amazing kiddos! I thought it would be tough but tolerable to be here without them waiting for school to end and for the house to sell. It’s been tougher than I could have imagined. The good news is we are moving our essentials up this weekend!
Imagine 81 acres in the country with a stocked fishing pond, a metal barn that has been converted into a house and wide open space to roam. There is also a creek that cuts through the rock & hills lined with huge trees! Every bit of the area was created to photograph. Beautiful wild Texas flowers, tall grass perfect for horses, cattle and a spectacular sunset every night! God knows what we desire and in time He speaks.
This was a very tough transition for us relationally – we are starting over 100% in every way. For me things went quiet almost over night. Timing is never what we expect but each step has been one of faith – and believe me mountains have moved. For Myra she is leaving so many great friends and memories. But somehow it seems like God is underlining that He created us to do life together. He has a purpose for us that we do not yet fully see or even understand and that He desires our full attention.
Funny – how just two years ago I sat in my car in a shopping mall parking lot reading over with the faith of a mustard seed we could move mountains. I literally began to pray for mountains to move, for anything to move – for one particular brick on a wall to just move an inch! I trust God, I have faith that He loves us and would do anything for us – He truly does want to give us our heart’s desire – it’s just not the way we ask or expect sometimes. Honestly, I began to pray that He would give us Colby back – that losing him had caused so much pain – left wounds that we could not repair. Just as in 2 Kings – I expected for God to raise him and give him back to us. I truly believe God could do that and I wanted to see it happen. That we did not deserve to lose our son and that Colby did not deserve to go at the age of three – especially to Cancer.
For the next two years – I prayed, pushed, ran out of patience and let myself burn out. I was insistent on my timing for everything; our finances, my marriage, for leaders to lead & love, for negative or blinded people to find Jesus again – to forgive. I had faith that a mountain would move but I was more focused on my wants rather than His will. Even though I was not asking for anything out of the norm – I was unknowingly expecting it to happen now. I was fighting God. Again. I kept it up until I exhausted everything in me.
When we tell God that we are in control we are taking the first steps to totally messing up. I promise. We can move mountains without God – it’s called dynamite – it ugly and destructive. It’s impatience, selfishness and hurtful. Blasting your way through a mountain to get your way is not His plan.
When questioning His plan and thinking about heading out with our own He allowed us to go through some of the toughest yet most clarifying trials in our life. He hammered us with trials and storms and each brought a clear choice. Each one with very clear consequences. It was then I heard clearly “it’s your will or Mine”. In his grace, He allowed us to see that he was in control, that we have no clue what’s best for us. He knows exactly who we are and how He wants to use us. We had to choose. Especially since we claim to believe that Jesus died for us – and that we are to spread His story to the world, but we could not be in His will without choosing Him every-time – not just when we feel like it. Every time.
Mountains have moved. Our hearts have moved. Our vision, passion and love have moved. Stone by stone I have seen the mountain move. I am grateful to have chosen Him every step of the way.
God thank you for who you are – we truly do get to experience Paradise with you, here on this earth if we simply seek and trust you. Thank you for calling us to a place where relationships are first – with You & with others. Thank you that we are on our way to being totally who you created us to be. Thank you for using us.
Lund 