Tom Osypian :: Feeds

T-Minus 10 Days and Counting…

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

Time Management - Randy Pausch

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

Human Again

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.

Change Can Happen in the Blink of an Eye

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.

Off to NYC

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. : )

You Wanna Joomla?

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!

Exponential Church Conference - Day 1

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

Exponential Church Conference - Day 2

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

Easter, videos, websites, and mountain bikes

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.

Sunday Morning Media Equipment - Part 1

A large part of my current role with Coastland is directing our Sunday morning worship gathering, which is held in the Grande Ballroom at the Crown Plaza.  The Ballroom is divided into three 30′x50′ sections which, when all three put in use, would give us room to seat around 450 or so.  Because we have the room from 6am-noon on Sundays, everything is setup and torn down every Sunday, causing us to have to purchase the appropriate equipment.

We decided to go with two projection screens, and I thought it prudent to get projectors and screens that would work with HD.  Do a quick search and you’ll find numerous HD projectors on the market.  Most in the sub-$2000 range are for home theaters, and the lumens produced by most were no more than 2500.  We needed something in the 4000 range.  Quality HD projectors with 4000+ lumens are not cheap, especially ones designed for auditorium projection.  After a bit of research, I came across the BenQ SP831, which is a 4000 lumen projector that projects 1280×720.  The replacement bulbs aren’t that expensive either, another bonus.  On to the screens…

Da-Lite makes some great portable screens that are fairly cost-effective.  The BenQ projectors would need around 16ft. of space from the screen (use CalculatorPro over at ProjectorCentral to figure out distances!), and since I wanted to make the most use of the space we had in the room, I ordered two Da-Lite Deluxe Fast Fold 62×108″ front projection screens from ProjectorZone.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, each screen is built-to-order, and the lead time was 7 business days or so.  At the time I was placing the order, we were exactly a week out from launch!  I called and spoke to Nate Purscelley and explained my situation, he was able to call Da-Lite and confirm they could rush our order through to get it to us in time.  Talk about customer service!

Two days after placing the projector screens were ordered, we decided that front projection was not the best plan of action and we would do much better to have rear projection.  Another call was placed to Nate, and he came through big by calling Da-Lite and switching our screen type to the Dual-View at the 11th hour, allowing us to have front or rear projection with only a bit of a bump in cost.

To get those sweet projectors throwing a nice HD image on the screen, I opted for a Macbook Pro and set the secondary screen to project at 128×720.  Splitting the signal to both screens is handled nicely by a Siig 2-port VGA splitter, purchased at B&H Photo/Video.  Two 100ft. high quality VGA cables from CCT (ask for Brian, tell him Tom sent you) complete the setup.  Yep, simple VGA cables.  Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

ProPresenter running on the Macbook Pro beautifully handles the videos and lyrics for the songs.  The message notes and plugs (aka announcements) are shown using Keynote, which is easily switched to while ProPresenter is running.  I highly recommend ProPresenter!  It’s incredibly easy to use and easy for volunteers to pick up and use.  Pre and post-service music is done with iTunes on the Macbook Pro, which runs it all with ease.  Each service is recorded off the board by a Roland R-09, which allows for easy audio editing the next day.

I did not work out the details of our audio equipment setup, so I’ll probably post info about that once I’m more familiar with our equipment.  We’re toying with videoing the services, but we have to address our lighting situation first.

All of our equipment is neatly stored in custom made cases purchased from Portable Church Industries.  These deserve a post of their own, which they’ll get soon.  Let’s just say that they make setting up, tearing down, and storage a thing of beauty and that I can’t recommend them enough!

Coastland Tampa’s Grand Opening

Sunday was quite a day for Coastland!

We cut the ribbon, so to speak, for our grand opening and packed the Grande Ballroom out for an awesome launch day service!  We started a new series called My Life Count, where Steve is talking about how one can make a difference with their life.  There was such great energy in the room, and it was obvious that people enjoyed themselves and were excited to be there.  But more than that, God made himself known throughout the morning, as a number of people made decisions to take that next step in their journey with God.

I’m excited to see what will happen this Sunday, where Steve will be sharing with us his death-experience and how that has affected his life and perspective.

Practice Is Over!

Today was our last “practice” Sunday at CoastlandTampa, it being the 4th week we’ve met at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in their Grande Ballroom. And yes, “Grande” has an “e” on the end. It’s that awesome. All of this means that next Sunday, February 10th, is our official grand opening, crazy-go-nuts launch day!

Each week since we’ve been meeting in the Crowne, we’ve tweaked and added and adjusted and fixed so many different things. From the signs directing people to our meeting area (which we initially purchased at FastSigns but have since hooked up with another vendor for a super deal), to the flow of the service, to adding a full band this week (this made a HUGE difference in atmosphere!), to stepping up the quality of the videos shown during the service.

Sunday morning service is basically my baby…the room is my responsibility so it falls on me to make sure everything is ready to go and that things are done right and well. I’m so thankful we’ve had these practice weeks to learn and experiment and figure out what works well, because I definitely needed it! I’ve been meaning to share about our room setup and equipment (for any church planters out there along with those curious), and I’ll get to that this week sometime. But I wanted to share a key part of each service: our videos.

Each week we show two videos during the service: a man-on-the-street interview that is related to the topic of the morning, as well as what we call a Jesus Story…someone telling their story of how Jesus changed their live, of course connected to the topic at hand.

The MOTS is shown right before the message, and the Jesus Story is shown in the middle of the message. Before coming to Coastland, my video work was fairly minimal, though I knew I could learn and do it well (after all, Input and Learner are in my top 5 strengths!). So each week for the last 3 weeks, I’ve shot and edited a good deal of video and I’ve learned and improved each week, something quite satisfying to see.

Here are some videos I’ve shot and edited. I’ll get into how they were made soon. For now, take a look and let me know what you think.

Instant Energy

I went to USF today with two other guys to shoot some Man on the Street interviews for Sunday morning @ Coastland. I did the same thing last Friday for this past Sunday and got a chance to meet and talk with some very cool students at USF who shared their thoughts on prayer. It was a very refreshing experience, and so I looked forward to going there again today.

We ended up interviewing 9 people and again had some great conversations. People at USF, and I think in Tampa in general, are so spiritually open. People are surprised to be served by someone else, completely shocked. One gentlemen was blown away by the $5 Starbucks giftcard that we gave him at the end of the interview, as a thank-you for his time. To me, it was nothing…just a $5 giftcard. It was as if that guy had never experienced kindness or generosity like that before.

I felt so energized by my experience today. I’m so excited about what God is doing here in Tampa! We’re coming up on our official launch day of February 10th quite quickly. Our first two Sundays at the Crowne Plaza have gone well. We are tweaking, fixing bugs, and ramping things up each week…this past Sunday was a definite improvement over the first. A sound issue with my laptop ruined the opportunity to show a video or play selected music, which was very frustrating. This past Sunday our amazing sound guy Corey was able to fix the buzz and everything went off without a hitch technically. I’m hoping the same for this Sunday…definitely something I pray for! Ah technology…we are so dependent on you.

Coastland Tampa Buzz: Get to Know Tom

I was recently featured in the Coastland Buzz article for people who are connected or interested in CoastlandTampa.  Sign up for the Coastland Buzz at their website to stay up on the latest news at Coastland!

What are 5 key words that tell what you are all about? I’m going to have to go with my top five strengths: Responsibility, Input, Belief, Learner, and Deliberative. Can you briefly describe the path that brought you here? More than a year and a half ago, I was sensing that God was moving me in a new direction away from the role I had in my church, to be involved in helping plant a church.  I came across Steve’s blog last year and read about Coastland and thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to plant a church with Steve Sjogren?”  This past June, I decided to email Steve to see if he could see someone like me joining the Coastland team.  He emailed me back the next morning, we met for coffee later that week, and the rest is history.  There’s obviously a bit more that happened than that, but that’s the brief version. Tell us a little about your family. I’m the oldest of 4…I have a sister and two brothers.  My sister and one of my brothers are married, and including my in-laws, 3 of them are teachers.  We’re originally from Niagara Falls, NY, and all of my family but me moved to the Orlando area in the last 3 years.  I’m so glad to be able to live so close to them now! What music have you been listening to lately? I’m a big fan of indie music and lately it has been bands like Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, or Menomena.  I just picked up the latest albums from Maroon5 and OneRepublic and have found I can enjoy some of the mainstream stuff that’s out there. Favorite Books? I love to read, so this question is always a tough one.  Here are the one’s that are close to the top, though ask me the same question in 6 months and it’ll likely have changed. The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider Seeking the Face of God by Gary Thomas The Presence of the Kingdom by Jacques Ellul Exiles by Michael Frost Favorite Movies? My favs are The Matrix, The Bourne Trilogy, The Usual Suspects, and Crash.  Now that I’m hanging out with Steve and the crew, I’m sure we’ll be watching a lot of movies, of which some will get added to the favorites list. What are you currently involved in at Coastland? I’m currently involved in overseeing media & IT support, while collaborating on website management and development with some of the other Coastland team members. If you were a car, what kind of car would you be and why? I would be a 1991 Honda Civic DX, a car I just recently owned.  It was a very dependable car that had a few quirks, but always got the job done and never failed me. What is a word or sound that you love?  Hate? I love the sound of the exhaust of high-performance sports cars, but I’m not in any way a fan of country music.  Yes, I consider country music a “sound.”  That’s how much I dislike it. Is there a Bible verse that stands out in your mind at the moment? A verse that I try to keep at the forefront of my mind is Matthew 6:33,  “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

happy new year!

Time definitely moves faster as one gets older. I can remember being 12 years old and thinking “I wonder what I’ll be doing when the year 2000 comes?” Now here I am, 8 years beyond that, amazed at how quickly time passes me by as a twenty-nine year old.

This is a new year of incredible possibilities. A little more than a month ago I moved over 1000 miles to be a part of a movement that I believe God will use to help change the world, this movement called CoastlandTampa. I had several people tell me that I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, and I’m realizing that they were right, and in a good way. The latent energy that is building and brewing here is something I’m excited to see realized in the very near future.

We are fast approaching our January 13th “soft-launch” date, where we will begin to meet in the Crown Plaza Hotel just off of I-75 and I-4 in Tampa. Our official launch is February 10th, so we will have 4 weeks to work out the bugs, so to speak. There is so much to do in the next 10 days to 5 weeks! Some of it is logistical/utilitarian, such as ordering hardware for FellowshipOne Check-in Kiosks, video projectors and screens, laptops and presentation software, redesigning the CoastlandTampa website, etc. I’m shoulders deep in all of that, as well as creating several videos (that have yet to be shot) for our series of messages. All of that is going well and I’m happy to be using my gifts and skills and experience, but what really gets me going are the conversations I and others are having with the people here in Tampa as we show God’s love in practical ways.

One of the big goals we are going to accomplish before our February launch is to touch 250,000 people through random acts of kindness. This Saturday we are going to be handing out water bottles to motorists, something we have done twice already in the last several weeks. We don’t expect nor want every person we touch to come to Coastland. That’s way too many people! : ) Instead, we want to change the perspective people have toward Christians and ultimately toward God by showing them God’s love in practical ways.

I have been shown God’s love in a very practical way by the families who have and are supporting me financially so that I can serve here at Coastland.  I am incredible grateful for each of you and will be praying for you that God will bless you and give you opportunities to show His love to the people around you.

As this is a new year and resolutions are of the order, I will make it a practice of posting each week how things are progressing here in Tampa.  Please pray for God’s favor as we bring everything together for the 13th!

initial thoughts on tampa

Wow…I can’t believe how quickly the last 2 weeks have flown by! It seems like yesterday that I arrived here in Tampa to begin this new chapter in my life. I think I’ve lost track of what day it was several times, so you could say it has been an interesting adventure so far!

I’m living in what we’re calling the Intern House, which is where Steve Sjogren and his family, along with 2 interns, are living as well. The house has plenty of room, though not enough (right now, anyway) for me to have my own living space. So I’ve setup camp in a living room upstairs to sleep in that doubles as our worship meeting area on Sunday mornings. Thankfully, Steve and his family will be moving into their new house this week, which means I will be able to move into my own room and establish some sort of rhythm again in my life.

I’ve already been able to use many of my gifts, talents, and experiences here at Coastland. I’m helping bring their use of media during Sunday morning worship up a notch by utilizing some presentation software that’s out there for the Mac. We still need to decide which software to use, something I’ll try to post my thoughts on this week. I’ll also have a big part to play in implementing FellowshipOne, the ChMS that I helped rollout while at my previous church. And though I haven’t had much hands-on development (ie. actual coding and graphic design) of websites, I’ve had a fair share of experience developing a number of websites. I’ll be able to use that experience as we move forward with revamping some of the many websites we have here.

Besides enjoying the work I’ve been doing, I have also met some great people down here. I’m enjoying getting to know the Sjogren family as well as the rest of the talent team, who are a fun-loving bunch of Jesus-followers from all over the country. One of the couples are from western NY and we’ve been able to reminisce about Buffalo food we miss, the Bills and Sabres, amongst other things. We’re planning on having a “Buffalo Food Night” every so often, just to keep close to our roots.

Finally, I’m loving the weather and the Tampa area. It’s been sunny and in the 80s almost every day that I’ve been here, something so odd for me to experience in the month of December! I’ve been to the beach a couple of times and absolutely love it. I thought the sunsets were great in Ohio, but seeing the sun set into the Gulf is like no other. I’ve also been able to get together with my parents and siblings since getting down here. I’m so thankful to be living near my family again!

i made it to tampa!

15 hours is a long time to drive in a Mazda Miata.  I have first-hand knowledge of that!  But we made it without a hitch, and I’m here getting settled in right now.  My brother Dan and brother-in-law Dale drove up Friday and arrived 5am Saturday, so I can’t really complain much about a long drive since they doubled what I drove!  I’m so thankful they were able to drive up and help me move.  And thanks to Mark Wells for taking time off to drive down in the Miata with me.   Before Mark flies out tonight, we’re planning on checking out some of Tampa, which should be fun.

On another note, if you look at any of my Zooomr photos, please know that Zooomr is having some MAJOR issues right now!  All of my photos have been replaced with the photos of other people, and some of them are quite inappropriate.  I’ve emailed Zooomr about the issue and hopefully it will be resolved soon.  If not, I’m done with Zooomr and going to Flickr.

So please…don’t bother looking at my photo sets right now…thanks!

the close of a chapter

Goodbye. One word that has so many implications. I’m realizing just what those implications are as I say goodbye to my friends and my church family here in Dayton. This past weekend was a celebration of sorts: a celebration on Saturday with my close friends to remember the good times we’ve had; and a celebration at Far Hills on Sunday to reflect on what God has done while I have been there. Both gatherings were sweet moments with people I care deeply about.

I did not realize how much of an influence and impact I have been able to have on people’s lives while I have been here. And I suppose that’s normal, maybe, for some. Many of us go through our lives not fully understanding how the way we live our lives affects those around us. I’ve made some very close friends here and knew I’ve had some influence (hopefully the right kind!), but I never realized how much before this past weekend. I am truly blessed by God to have my friends in my life. They are some of the most genuine, caring, fun, godly people I know, and I’m going to greatly miss them.

I’m also going to miss my church family, especially the staff. I’ve had the privilege of working with an amazing team of people who I’ve grown to love over the years. We’ve had fun together, stuck it out through tough times, and learned to depend on each other. They are a great group of people and I know God is going to continue to use them to move Far Hills in the direction He wants the church to go.

And so goodbye is tough. It is bittersweet. But, without a goodbye to one adventure, I cannot start another, and that is what I am about to do with Coastland Tampa! I’ll share this week how I got connected to Coastland as well as how people can support my ministry there. Stay tuned!