CoastlandTampa :: Friends blog

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Yes, in 10 days I will officially be married to the most amazing woman I have ever met!  Bekah and I have been so busy getting all the last minute details taken care of.  Planning a wedding in 3 months is a challenge, even if our guest total is around 30!  We put together a website with info about the wedding.  Check it out and be sure to sign the guestbook!

Tom and Rebekah’s Wedding Website

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Randy Pausch gave a great talk in November of 2007 about time management:

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Alex McManus has a new book coming out soon called Making the World Human Again this January. Check out this video:

It looks quite interesting! I like the main premise, that Jesus came not to start a religion, but to realign people to follow Him. Reminds me somewhat of Charlie Peacock’s book New Way To Be Human. I’ve only recently become familiar with Alex McManus, knowing only of his brother Erwin, who pastors a church in LA called Mosaic. Alex is definitely a progressive thinker when it comes to the church and his blog is always thought-provoking.

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It’s amazing how much can happen in a short time.  One year ago, I was living in Dayton, OH, unsure of what lay ahead for me in this adventure we call life.  A random email, a timely meeting, and a ride home from the airport brought me to where I am today.  Living just outside of Tampa, FL, and about to marry the most amazing woman in the world.

On June 22 I asked Rebekah Sjogren to marry me in Central Park, and on September 6, 2008, we will be getting married! We are inviting our families and a few close friends to attend the intimate ceremony on a beach beautiful white sand, with the setting sun and roll of the gentle waves of the Gulf of Mexico providing the perfect backdrop.  This fall we intend on visiting the Cincinnati/Dayton region as well as the San Diego area to celebrate our marriage with our friends

A wedding website is in the works and will be online this week.  Stay tuned here for the link, where you’ll find out all the details you’ll need to know.

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My girl and I are heading to the Big Apple tomorrow! Even though I grew up in state of New York, I never once made the trek over to NYC for a visit, so I’m thrilled to be finally going there. We have quite the itinerary planned out, from a death metal Nintendo-sounding concert Thursday night (we might even dress the part maybe we’ll go as Tetris?), to seeing “Wicked” on Friday, to visiting the Guggenheim, Central Park, and maybe even Ellis Island. We’ll also be checking out some cool restaurants, including a ninja-themed establishment serving Japanese cuisine. I think the food is delivered by ninja’s gliding down from the ceiling on ropes! Ok, not really. But that would be sweet! Pictures and stories to follow…probably. : )

I am pleasantly surprised with this Shapevine community. Thank you Steve Sjogren for the heads up. I look forward to participating in the discussions and growth that will go from here. I will post some free flowing ideas and crazy questions in future blogs. Here's hoping someone reads this and stirs the pot.

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One of the aspects of my work here in Tampa is to manage and work with a number of different websites.  Most of the sites are blogs running Wordpress, which I’m fairly familiar with.  I have yet to go deep into a Wordpress site by doing alot of custom coding, so most of my dealings with the WP sites is to update the content and make sure they are running the latest version.  Fairly easy stuff.

Three of the sites I work with have custom built backends that have required me to do a bit of learning in order to work with them.  The sites work great for what they’re designed to do, but because they are running fairly custom code, there isn’t a whole lot of flexibility for someone like me, who doesn’t code in ColdFusion.

As such, I’ve been keeping my eye open for an open-source CMS that is extendable, easy to use and manage, run LAMP, and visually easily customized.  The bit of reading I’ve done is pointing me towards Joomla.

For these three sites, Joomla might be perfect.  Two of the sites are E-zines, while the other is an online portal with articles, media, forums, etc.  A number of plugins are available that will give me the kind of functionality that I’m looking for, and upgrades would be a snap.  As an added bonus, there are a large number of Joomla designers who offer these template clubs, where one buys a 6-12 month subscription and then has access to anywhere from 20-60 templates, depending on the club.  And these subscriptions are quite reasonable, say $50-$200, depending on the club and length of the subscription.

I’m already running a test site of Joomla and have found several free templates to toy with.  It’ll take a little bit for me to pick up how to configure and organize a site, but it looks uncomplicated.  I always love learning a new technology, so it should be fun!

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Today was the first day at the Exponential Church Conference in Orlando, FL, a church conference for church planters.  I almost came to the conference last year and at the last moment, decided to come this year.  Having my family living in Orlando made it an easier decision, since I can stay at their house instead of driving an hour and a half back and forth from Tampa.

The conference offered a number of different tracks, depending on what focus a church planter might want to take.  I decided to go with the Reproducing Churches track, but likely would have gone with the Missional Living track if it wasn’t totally booked.

Besides the different tracks offered, everyone at the conference attended a number of main sessions.  Today’s main session was kicked off with Ed Stetzer sharing some statistics about church planting…his PowerPoint from his talk available on his website (at least they should be).  Ed then talked with a number of church leaders who are involved in planting churches: Randy Pope, Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, and two other people who I can’t remember.  Their dialogue was good, but I didn’t hear anything earth-shattering.

Andy Stanley was the speaker for the second session and he  who talked about Vision. He basically summarized the main points of his book Visioneering, which is an excellent book.  His talk was a great reminder of how incredibly important vision is in a church.  As the proverb goes, where there is no vision, the people perish.

After Andy spoke we all broke out into our various tracks.  Bob Roberts spoke about Visioning for an Apostolic Movement Locally & Globally.  I took notes as he talked, and though he shared some interesting ideas, I walked away from the session wondering “What was that all about?”  I probably need to go back over the notes again, but nothing stuck out to me.

I also met up with my friend Dave, who is planting a church in Springfield, OH this fall.  It was good to catch up with him and so exciting to see him getting ready to start a church.  I’m looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings, hopefully it will be a little more insightful than today

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Today was my first day at the Exponential Church Conference in Orlando, FL, a church conference for church planters. I almost came to the conference last year and at the last moment, decided to come this year. Having my family living in Orlando made it an easier decision, since I can stay at their house instead of driving an hour and a half back and forth from Tampa.

The conference offered a number of different tracks, depending on what focus a church planter might want to take. I decided to go with the Reproducing Churches track, but likely would have gone with the Missional Living track if it wasn’t totally booked.

Besides the different tracks offered, everyone at the conference attended a number of main sessions. Today’s main session was kicked off with Ed Stetzer sharing some statistics about church planting…his PowerPoint from his talk available on his website (at least they should be). Ed then talked with a number of church leaders who are involved in planting churches: Randy Pope, Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, and two other people who I can’t remember. Their dialogue was good, but I didn’t hear anything earth-shattering.

Andy Stanley was the speaker for the second session and he who talked about Vision. He basically summarized the main points of his book Visioneering, which is an excellent book. His talk was a great reminder of how incredibly important vision is in a church. As the proverb goes, where there is no vision, the people perish.

After Andy spoke we all broke out into our various tracks. Bob Roberts spoke about Visioning for an Apostolic Movement Locally & Globally. I took notes as he talked, and though he shared some interesting ideas, I walked away from the session wondering “What was that all about?” I probably need to go back over the notes again, but nothing stuck out to me.

I also met up with my friend Dave, who is planting a church in Springfield, OH this fall. It was good to catch up with him and so exciting to see him getting ready to start a church. I’m looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings, hopefully it will be a little more insightful than today

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Wow…how did a month go by since my last post? It’s amazing how quickly time goes as I get older! I’m going to set a goal of posting once a week, even if it is something short, just to get into the habit of sharing my thoughts, ideas, questions, musings, and memories. Each of us on the Coastland team is or will be blogging regularly, so look forward to continued thoughts on that topic.

Our Easter celebration at Coastland was awesome! A bunch of people came out, more than we normally have on a Sunday (something very uncommon for church plants), and God definitely showed up big time. We were able to give our Easter offering to an Ethiopian church in downtown Tampa. Leaders from the church were there to accept the offering, and we’ll be partnering with them in the future, to help them focus outward in reaching the 3,000 Ethiopians living in Tampa. I found out yesterday that our offering was 10x what they normally receive, so that should be a huge boost for them to be able to serve their city even more!

I’ve been staying quite busy in a number of different areas with Coastland, but mostly with the media aspect of the church. I’m slowly but surely learning Final Cut Pro 6, and will soon dive into the latest version of Motion. I shoot and edit all of our videos right now, most of which are interviews or man-on-the-street, but I definitely want to branch into more creative ventures that will come alongside the weekly message. You can check out the videos at Vimeo.

Another big project that is almost ready to be launched is a redesign of the Coastland website. We’ve teamed up with my good friend Mark over at AntistaticDesign to build us a custom site running on ExpressionEngine. I hope to have that live in the next few weeks.

Outside of work, I’ve gotten into mountain biking, thanks for my friend Eric. Right down the road from where I live is Alafia State Park, which has some of the best MTB trails in the state of Florida! I’m riding a Redline Monocog 29er, which is more or less an oversized BMX bike: single speed, no shocks, lightweight design, and those monster 29″ tires to roll over anything in my path.

The first time I went I hooked up with another group of guys and ended up following them down some seriously difficult trails, one rated a black diamond. They couldn’t believe I went down them my first time out because I was riding so well AND that I was riding a bike as “hardcore” as the one I was on. I’ll be honest…I felt pretty cool. I still have to check out the 3 other nearby locations that have trails, something I’m really looking forward to.