As you may have already read on Pastor Alan’s or Anthony Burns’ blogs, Glen Allen Community Church is now officially Richmond Community Church! Pastor Rick McDaniel announced it publicly this past Sunday. This is so exciting because of the way it positions us as a more regional church. With the vision of eventually opening five campuses, the name is much more suited for a multi-campus church. I am thrilled to be a part of the staff as we continue to grow, reach more and more people, and raise the bar on excellence.

The West End Campus will now be known as Richmond Community Church - Glen Allen, and the South Side Campus will now be known as Richmond Community Church - Midlothian. The new website is www.RCC-Impact.com. A new website is now being designed and is on target to launch in January, 2008.

This is without a doubt my absolute favorite song right now. It’s the best I’ve heard in a long time. It’s the first single off Pat Monahan’s solo album. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the name, he’s the lead singer from Train. Forgive the joke, but he’s “derailed” for a bit and plans to “climb back aboard” with the band after this solo album. Anyway, let me get “back on track.” The song’s called “Her Eyes.” Check it out! 

I love Christmas. I’m about as Christmas crazy as anyone can get. Some refer to me as Clark Griswold from Christmas Vacation because of all the lights I string up on the house every year. I have a couple hundred Christmas songs I load onto my iPod every year. But despite how much I love the season, I just don’t think I can take it this early. Beginning this Thursday, XM Satellite Radio will launch its annual contemporary Christmas music channel, Holly, and will play 24/7 Christmas songs for two straight months on up until New Year’s Day. Christmas is coming earlier and earlier every year. At this rate, it’ll be Christmas all year long in a decade or two. Even I get burnt out on holiday music after two months. I have XM. I love XM. I love Christmas music. But I just don’t think I’ll be listening to channel 103 for a month or so until the day after Thanksgiving. Here’s an article from local media website VARTV about the holiday channel.

XM Satellite Radio will kick off the holiday music season on Thursday, November 1 with “Holly: An XM Holiday Channel” on XM channel 103. It’s mainstream holiday music. “Holly blends contemporary holiday music with just a touch of the classics for the perfect mix of Christmases present and memories from Christmases past,” states XM on its website. XM will be adding an additional five channels of holiday music come Monday, November 19 thru Christmas day. To make room for those new channels, XM is putting XM17 (US Country), XM29 (U-Pop), XM80 (The Move), XM90 (Fuego), and XM113 (XM Pops) on hiatus.

I went to see “Dan In Real Life” last night with Tori. I’ve never seen anything bad with Steve Carell in it, movies and television alike. This movie was no exception. I thought maybe it would be sort of a chick flick, but it actually had a great story line and had a lot to say about the way life is. Steve Carell showed a whole new side to his acting talent in this movie. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Evan Almighty, and NBC’s The Office, he’s in a more comedic role. That’s not to say that this movie wasn’t funny, but it had a more serious undertone than his other roles.

My overall rating:

I’ve been so excited about this and I’m so glad that I can finally share this information with everyone. Pastor Joey submitted a video drama we produced this summer, “Daily Inventory,” to the Church Production Magazine Video Production Awards Competition. Turns out we won Best Drama in the country in the category of churches with 600-2,000 attendees! Tori and myself worked many hours editing this production. Congratulations to everyone else on our team that put so much hard work into this video! Click here to see all the credits. The other winners can be found on the magazine’s Awards page. The video will be shown at the Worship Facilities Expo this week in Atlanta, Georgia.

It brings me so much joy to be a part of such a wonderful group of people and it’s even more awesome to be able to see just how many individual lives are changed as a result of the church’s Impact Arts multimedia ministry. Best of all, I’m working for Jesus and growing the Kingdom of God. What could be more satisfying than that? Great job everyone! Click below to play the video:

“Daily Inventory”

Wow… it’s actually finally raining. On my way down to VCU it started pouring. They said on the weather that we might get an inch of rain tonight. We need it so badly. It was weird even seeing dark clouds, much less rain coming out of them. I can’t even remember the last time it rained. Maybe mid-August? Tori mentioned last night that it seems like everytime we are on or about to be on mandatory water usage restrictions, we get a soaking rain that puts a big dent in the drought. It seems to be true. Anyway, you know why this is happening, right? I hadn’t washed my car in months and I spent an hour yesterday washing it and Windexing the windows inside and out, not to mention cleaning everything inside and vacuuming all the carpets. Murphy’s law!

After originally saying they wouldn’t allow any third-party applications on the iPhone, Apple has just recently announced that it will, after all, open up its’ popular phone to developers. Currently, you can only use Web 2.0 applications through the Safari (internet) application, which of course offers limited functionality. I’ve never been so satisfied with any phone, or gadget for that matter, as I am with my iPhone, but this will make it even better. What would I personally download first? An instant messaging application and one that lets you send picture mail (can you believe you can’t send multimedia messages on the iPhone?!)

Click here for the full story on iPhone applications from Electronic Design’s website.

After I figured out the whole (complicated) deal with hosting WordPress on my own server, I helped Tori do the same. Her blog, “Thoughts of a Quiet Dreamer,” is now hosted at her own domain name. She writes a lot of insightful, thought-provoking posts. Be sure to check out her blog at blog.toricarol.com!

Here’s an interesting article I came across online. It’s amazing how the little stuff adds up. And the last item on this list? Shoot, I go out to lunch/dinner almost every day in some form or fashion. It’s hard to believe how much money you can save by making small changes. This article comes to you from the researchers over at Tesh.com

If you’ve ever wondered where all your money goes, even when you’re not a big spender, I’ve got the answer. It’s actually surprisingly easy to blow THOUSANDS - a few dollars at a time. Here are some tips from Bankrate.com to help you stop frittering away your hard-earned cash on little daily expenses. Avoid these money traps:

Your grand total? Cut out all this frivolous spending and you’ll save $6,500 a year.

I’m going to start posting a music video each week reflecting my favorite song at the time. I’ve never heard a bad song when Carlos Santana pairs up with another popular musician. Chad Kroeger, the lead singer from Nickelback, has teamed up with him in the past to record the hit, “Why Don’t You And I” a few years ago.