The beauty of thinking about past and future adventures is the realization that most often don’t unfold alone. Adventure happens in community. My adventures have and will happen with my wonderful wife, and the wonderful group of friends who surround me and serve as co-adventurers.

In this vein, I stumbled upon this photo essay (here for slide show. here for list.) that I linked to off of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s website. It’s a collection of 101 things to try in 2011 in the Greater Cincinnati area. I thought it would be a fun blog and/or Facebook exercise for everyone to share the list of the things they’ve done, and the things they’d like to do in 2011. After all, if you can’t adventure in your own backyard, how will you do so in any other context?

Here’s both of my lists and a quick nod to the friends whom accompanied me on the journey.

The things I’ve always wanted to do, and hope to make happen in 2011.

LoveStories Attendee,

We wanted to say thank you for your presence on Monday night at LoveStories. Each of you truly made the evening something to be remembered. We want to take a moment to update each of you on the financial goals, and applaud the sponsors and storytellers.

First and foremost, we are thrilled to report that together we raised $700 for Mimi’s House! $500 is the direct result of your dinner tickets, and $200 is the result of a few generous contributors who gave above and beyond. After sharing these figures with friends of the event, we have been encouraged to raise the bar and shoot for a final LoveStories total of $1,000.

A $1,000 gift from LoveStories would enable us to participate in the tile program at Mimi’s House (click here to read about the tile program). This will give LoveStories a permanent presence on a wall inside the house where these young girls will experience love and opportunity in a way previously unimaginable. Do you want to contribute towards the final $300? Have you told a friend about your LoveStories experience that might want to join the cause? Please reply to this email for further instructions on how to give.

We also want to make sure that our sponsors and storytellers are well recognized. Please take a moment to read a little more about each person and organization below who helped make LoveStories possible.

Sponsors

• Event Producer – Luke Dooley: Read Luke’s blog here. Follow him on Twitter. Attend his next event which will be announced soon!
• Photographer – Jessica Agee: Jessica has offered to give a discount to any LoveStories attendee who books a photography session with her. View Jessica’s work here. Email here at the following address to book her services: Jess [dot] Agee [at] yahoo [dot] com
• Chef – John Schwab: John is available for all types of catering and food services. Contact him about your party or special event by calling his assistant cook at: (phone number removed for blog post. contact me to connect with john.)
• Decor & Supplies – Journey Church and Monroe Church of God generously donated printing services, sound equipment, room decor, and much more. Visit their websites which are linked above.

StoryTellers

• Christopher Gilmore – Read Christopher’s insightful and witty blog here.
• Julie Bauke – Visit her website to read about her career consulting services and to buy herwonderfully helpful book.
• Larry Renner – Follow Larry on Twitter. You’ll appreciate his insight, and love his heart!
• Jennifer Scroggins – Read more about Jennifer’s paradigm shifting story of her travels to Lebanon by reading her feature report on AmericanCatholic.org
• Doc Wieland – Catch up with Doc on Facebook. If you live in the Lakota corridor look for Doc’s beautiful family on a Journey Church mailer in your mailbox next week.

Thank you again to everyone who made LoveStories such a success by helping, giving, sharing, and attending. Until next time.

“Have a Story Worthy Week”

LoveStories Organizers

P.S. If you were unable to submit your payment at the dinner due to the inability to process credit cards, please reply to this email and we’ll help you get squared away.

This is my answer. I would love to know how you would answer this question!

The Gospel is God’s ongoing story of restoring all people (available to all, given to those who accept). God has been, is, and always will be authoring a grand story, which He has invited us to play a role in. It is the story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. We have a choice to make: Will we star in our own story of brokenness and insignificance, or play a supporting role in God’s grand story of hope, redemption and healing. To join God’s story is to play a part in advancing the Kingdom… not through rules, regulations, and religion, but through love, justice, and relationship.

The Gospel is nothing more, and nothing less than God offering everything He has to us in order to restore us to the people that we were created to be. He does this so that we may enter into a loving relationship with Him, so that He may fill us with His Spirit, so that we may be fully equipped to complete our primary task as humans made in God’s image: To reflect the Glory of God, so that others may see, and the Kingdom may advance. That is Gospel.

Ultimately the conversation centered around the question why. More specifically, how would we answer questions like these:

• Why do you love God?
• Why do you go to church?
• Why do you even do this “Christianity” thing?
• Essentially this: What’s the point of God/Church/Christianity?

I have a great fear that there are thousands of people sitting in Christian churches each Sunday, who have been in the pew for a long time, but have no clue how to answer these questions. I’m not suggesting that there is ONE right answer, but I think there are some key principles and ideas that people simply fail to understand, or lack the ability to communicate about.

So… how about you? Why?

There is something about a good story that has the capability to capture so much more than just our attention. A good story can capture our hearts, souls, bank accounts, or any number of other things. Bottom line, I love a good story… as does just about every person on the planet.

I had the great privilege of going to Chicago last week to serve on the resources staff for the inaugural STORY conference. STORY is the product of one of my favorite bloggers, and good friend Ben Arment. It was truly a wonderful experience for me to serve alongside Ben and so many other great leaders as we poured into the 1600+ ministry leaders who attended STORY.

The heart of STORY was to gather and learn from some of the most gifted Gospel Communicators in the land.  These leaders talked about their stories, how to more effectively share stories, and ultimately about the greatest story ever told: the Gospel story of rebellion, rescue and redemption. It was quite an experience.

I highly recommend that any ministry leader who was unable to attend STORY purchase the 2009 STORY DVD. This DVD will include all of the main session teaching content, and some of the creative elements as well. This is a steal for $79. Also, begin making plans now to attend STORY 2010 in Chicago. STORY will be expanding to a 2 day event next year, with tickets available now for $149. You can click here to find both of these resources!

Check out the STORY Flickr photostream for some great shots from the event!

This church has an incredible story, and an unbelievable leader in Steven Furtick.

I post this link to his Easter message with a couple of basic headlines.

1.) The dude can flat out preach. Like old school preach, but it’s awesome.

2.) As one who enjoys “preaching” myself, this gets me fired up… I was ready preach to the masses from my couch at midnight last night as I watched this!

3.) What an awesome telling of the Easter story. The Gospel is the most compelling truth on this planet, when communicated with passion, it’s a unstoppable force.

Check it out here: http://www.elevationchurch.org/mediaPlayer.php?sermon=168

I’m really excited about sharing with Journey Church on Sunday. We’ll be wrapping up our current series entitled: Make Change. It’s always fun to be the “closer” for a series (hey look, two baseball analogies in one post in November… when do pitchers and catchers report?). I feel like God wants to do something special in and through our community in 2009… I’m praying that this Sunday can serve as a launch-pad towards 2009.

I leave you by saying…. if you haven’t watched this video, you seriously need to.

• I’m currently at my favorite local coffee shop. It’s comfortable, low traffic (unfortunately for them), and has good hot chocolate. I hate coffee, call me a kid if you’d like, I’m okay with that. The reason I’m here is because I felt cooped up in my house, and needed a new scene. One of my favorite bloggers, Mark Batterson, famously says: “Change of place + change of pace = Change of perspective”. I try to live this our in small bits daily, and in large chunks yearly (through retreat weekends, etc…)
• I’m through the first 3 chapters of Crazy Love by Francis Chan. So far it has definitely not disappointed. Francis has laid out some common things in these first three chapters that we all “know”, but don’t “know”. Things about God, life, death, and love. Good stuff! My only regret is that I’m reading it alone… any blog readers out there want to step up and work through the book with me?
• The Journey Church adult small group that Jenessa and I host at our home kicks off tonight. I’m excited to see who walks through the doors… if there is not an influx of new blood into our group from last season, I plan to make sure that’s the case by next Thursday! If you need a place to hang/learn/grow tonight, stop by our place from 7-8:30.
• This might be the last year that I can handle not being at Catalyst! Catalyst has become the premier conference for church leaders across the country. I’m following all of the action as best I can at the following sites: Catalyst Backstage, Tony Morgan’s Blog, Various Twitter Accounts. My favorite quote so far comes from Andy Stanley, talking about moral authority, he said: “As leaders you need moral authority with forgiveness, family & finances…. Give, save, live on the rest…. No one cares how smart you are as a leader. They want to know if you have the moral authority to lead”. 
• A friend of mine tells me that there are cops on all of the local interstate entrance/exit ramps, and in each of the median turnarounds. Wonder if that has something to do with this?
• That’s all… My plan now is to devote some more time preparing for the topic of Fear, and the kickoff of the Monsters, Myths & Masks series at Journey Church & BIG Student Ministries.

In 2003, Seth Godin wrote a now infamous book entitled: Purple Cow. Below is a summary of the book: 

Cows, after you’ve seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though…now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won’t forget a Purple Cow. And it’s not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It’s built right in, or it’s not there. Period.

So here is my question: After dozens of speeches, hours of conventions, and endless debates, will either of these candidates/parties/tickets arise and be a Purple Cow? Come November, will we be able to say: “I’m voting for candidate X because he/she brings something unique to the table. Something that no one else does… something that is phenomenal, counterintuitive and exciting”.

I wish we could get past all of the rhetoric, party loyalty, and brown bag speeches. I wish a candidate would stand up and say: “I’m a Purple Cow, and I deserve your vote because I bring this to the table, and no one else does, nor ever has…”