I saw an awesome billboard yesterday while driving down the interstate.  The message was clear, but the material could have been better.

The board read “Trees Trees Houses Trees“ in big bold letters.  It was for a new housing development. Instantly I knew what kind of neighborhood it would be.  It would be one with more trees than houses, rather than all houses and a couple of trees.  What a powerful picture. Espeically for new neighborhoods. Most new neighborhoods are cleared, cookie-cutter homes are stamped out, and a few “trees” are planted in the end. But this neighborhood was proclaiming a different message.  The status quo was changing.

I was thinking about what that message would look like for the church.  Here are some ideas:

Judge   Judge   Me   Judge

Fake   Rude   Everyone   Judgemental

Racist   Rich   Members   Selfish

What if they looked like this:

Love    Love You     Love

Acceptance   Forgiveness   Neighbor   Grace

Help   Help    Me    Help

Food   Shelter  Billions  Hope

You see, the status quo has got to change. The church has lived up to the expectations that society has set for us.  It is time to change that. My heart is to see the Church be the hands and feet of Jesus.  If people saw our churches and their mind went to the “billboard” like mentioned above, we’d have to knock the walls out to make more room.

This is a main goal of World Causes and our Free Chains campaign.  The Church should be leading the fight against issues like child sex slavery.  If we did, think about the impact we make.  Not only for the innocent girls, but also on those around that have missed the point.

Some friends of mine are making this very impact in the heart of Columbia, SC.  Midtown Fellowship is beginning to be known as the leader in the community when it comes to loving and helping the homeless. They are invited to city meetings about the issue.  This is monumental and I commend Dustin, Lee, Alan and the entire team.

As a side note, I’ve been thinking about what my billboard looks like to others and what I want it to look like. What would your’s say?

Do you think there is such thing as ultimate truth? Would you say that you could know truth? What about a definition of right and wrong?

At the end of the day will mark the first full week of our Free Chains campaign to end child sex trafficking. It has been a great week. Let me give you a few updates:

• 71 people have joined the Facebook Cause.
• 364 people have joined the Facebook Group.
• Numerous people have blogged about the campaign. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.
• We’ve sold a dozen “All Should Be Free” t-shirts with proceeds benefiting our safe house in Nepal.
• We’ve sold 2 dozen Free Chain key chains with proceeds benefiting our safe house as well.

We’re off to a great start. Thank you to everyone who is playing a part. So everyone knows…our initial goal is to raise $65,000.  This is the amount needed to operate the safe house and all of their programs.  This will help upwards of 65 girls and children to have a safe place to sleep, a place to recover, to learn job skills, to receive education and a place to feel loved.

Please consider becoming a monthly donor to support them!

After months of work, it is awesome to see some fruits of our labor. The Free Chains Campaign to end child sex trafficking officially started today. Our goal is to raise awareness and money to help prevent and rescue those suffering from this evil.

Our goal is to raise $65,000 to full fund our safe house for a year. Everyone doing their part will enable this to happen fairly quickly.

I’d like to thank everyone who has helped with this, including and in no specific order: Kirk for the cards, Joel for help with t-shirts, Chris for design, Dan for help with so much, Andrew for help on site, Betsey for encouragement, Chris for huge support, Colette for connections, Jeff for photo help, Trey, Kristen, Sarah, Jeff, and Betsey for great pictures, Dickson for support, Christine for passion, all team captains for help, Aaaron for design help, and everyone who is spreading the word.

Love all of you.

ALL SHOULD BE FREE

I finished up “Loving God” by Chuck Colson while on our trip.  Chuck has had a great influence in my life.

Chuck quoted John Calvin in one chapter and it has stood out to me in  huge way.  He said, “It is the first duty of the Christian to make the invisible Kingdom visible.”

WOW!  That is awesome.  What would it look like if all Christians made this their first duty?  How would the world be changed?  How different would culture look?

What are the ways that you see Christians doing this?

Here are a few that I’ll bring up:

Free Chains.  Project we started through World Causes trying to stop child sex trafficking.

Eleho: Organization by a friend in San Diego making a difference for the Karen People.

Innocence Atlanta: Friend in Atlanta trying to end sex trafficking within the city.

Fermi Project: A group trying to help Christians impact and influence culture

Prison Fellowship: organization by Chuck trying to bring truth into prisons.

Ethur: creative group dealing with issues like character and consumerism.

What are some ways or people you know trying to make the invisible kingdom known?

Sorry for the delay. Let me catch you up with the past few weeks and why I haven’t written much.

My wife and I had the opportunity to leave the country a few weeks ago. My cousin works for an airline and got us stand-by tickets to Australia for a fraction of the actual cost. The only problem is, you never know what flight you can catch and how long you’ll be in the airport. Well, we craved the adventure so we accepted.

This is a quick run down:

-3 hours before driving to ATL to fly to LA, a teenage driver hit my wife and totaled our car. Awesome. Get it towed and leave it for 2 weeks.

-Make first flight to LA (we were the last 2 seats available)

-Wait in LAX for 7 hours and do not make flight. We are told we will probably not make one for the next 2.5 days. So, we rent a car, drive to San Diego to catch flight in morning.

-Arrive San Diego at 1 am, not rooms at any hotel b/c of 22,000 person convention in town. We “sleep” in rental car in Avis parking lot

-Make flight to Honolulu in morning.

-Get one of the best hook-ups in history from friend that lives in Honolulu. He’s out of town and let us use his beach front condo on Waikiki beach and his truck with free parking!

-Hawaii highlights: hit the beach, go to luau, body surf the North Shore, see where LOST is filmed, eat lots of pig, snorkel, eat the best cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory.

-Leave for Sydney at 1 pm on Saturday and arrive at 9pm Sunday. We lost an entire day.

-Spend 1 day in Sydney seeing all the sights. Harbor Bridge, Opera House, Darling Harbor, Circular Quay, walk 30 miles through out the city, say Hamlet in the Opera House, fell asleep during Hamlet in the Opera House because we were so tired, go to China town, eat McDonald’s.

-Fly to Christ Church, New Zealand at 8am. Stay downtown at Stonehurst hostel. Nice and quiet. Its absolutely freezing there. We buy hats. Get some food at the local store. Have ice cream bar called “Big Bikki” (freaking awesome). Try to go snowboarding but fail twice b/c the mountain was closed due to wind conditions and second day because the brilliant driver forgot us! Went to Hanmer Springs, a natural hot spring. Very nice! Next day go to the Lord of the Rings film spot for the town of Edoras in the second film. Absolutely beautiful. Absolutely freezing! Next day, we go to the botanical gardens, do some gift shopping, tour downtown and then fly back to Sydney.

-Get back to Sydney and have worst night sleep ever b/c of loud people at hostel. That was our only bad hostel experience. Next day we hang out at Darling Harbour, check out local shops, visit the Market, I found my chess set, try to go to Hillsong but can’t find bus pick up. Our friend Nathan comes down and hangs out for next 2 days. We go to the rugby match at Olympic stadium. Crazy and awesome. Learned that “the wave” is called “the Mexican wave” for some unknown reason. We then drive the city at night.

-Last day in Sydney, we go to Hillsong church. That was awesome. They are doing amazing things. They started a new church in Cape Town 2 weeks ago and had 3000 people show up on week one! We then go to Boni beach for lunch. (aussie’s do not use ketchup on their fish and chips for those who want to save themselves from embarrassment) Had a great seats at a cafe overlooking the bay and watched tons of surfers ride the waves. (we did not have wet suits nor surf boards or we would have joined them!). We then drove the coast and admired all the other beautiful beaches, then to the city, took the ferry to Manly beach, hung out with Jess, a friend of Nathans, watched a guy search for buried treasure on the beach, planted coins on the beach in front of the treasure hunter, watched as he walked right over them with his metal detector, ate a “meat pie”, had a $.30 ice cream from McDonalds (cheapest thing in Australia), took the ferry back to Sydney, watched the sun set behind the bridge and opera house, tired to go to the Sydney tower but ran out of time, went to airport, said good bye to Nathan, got on plane at 9 pm Sunday night.

-Arrive back in Honolulu at 10 am SUNDAY morning. We arrived before we left. Crazy!

-Hang out for another day at the beach. Have more cheesecake. Saw a huge sea turtle, get sun burned, leave for LA.

-Arrive in LA. They tell us we will not make a flight for 3 more days (sound familiar?). Rent a car and drive to San Diego (sound familiar?) Catch the flight from San Diego to ATL. Mom picks us up from airport and then off to home.

The most adventuresome 2 weeks we’ve had.

Pictures coming soon!

So our good friends at Apple revealed the new iphone yesterday. The slogan is “twice the speed for half the price“. For $200 less, you can have a faster, sleeker, better version. That is good news for us that have held out this long.

It really got me thinking though about our culture and tendencies with stuff in general. When the latest and greatest comes out, how quick are you to jump on it? This could be the latest gadget, newest designer jeans, book, church, church philosophy, sports teams, whatever. I’m not saying that being an early adapter is bad. I’m thankful for everyone who bought an iphone before me and now, they’ve made it better and cheaper. I’m just thinking out loud here that there are major tendencies to jump to the “next thing” in hopes of more connection, hope, fulfillment, etc. Sometimes we need to keep the “older” version, stay focused, stay disciplined and not be distracted. Because this has got to be one of (if not the) greatest downfall of leaders is getting off course. Staying focused on the vision and goal is a must do for success. When the latest and greatest comes around, it is easy to think “I must do this” and go flailing off course. But the reality a lot of times is, you already know the vision, don’t get distracted. Stay focused. Listen for new ideas, but make sure they are vision-centric.

July 11th is just around the corner.

-The IRS has been so gracious to us and approved World Causes as a 501c3 tax exempt organization!  This is the first of hopefully many milestones.  All gifts to World Causes (Free Chains) are now tax deductible.

-Free Chains shirts are selling quickly.  If you want one, shoot me an email. 100% organic cotton. $20. Proceeds benefit out child sex trafficking campaign.

-I came 2 inches from eagling the same hole on the same day this past weekend.  I played in tournament with my dad and brother.  We eagled a par 5 and then we played another 9 after the tournament. After hitting the green in 2, I rolled my putt with in inches of another eagle.

Had the opportunity to have lunch with Brad Lomenick today.  If you haven’t heard of Brad, you have heard of his organization and their event.  Brad is the puppet master behind the Catalyst Conference…the cutting edge leadership conference held in Atlanta each year.  I had a great time and got to ask a lot of questions and got posed some tough, but needed questions.  What I really enjoyed about the time with Brad was the fact that he was focused on our conversation.  This is a guy that gets to hang out with the best leaders in the country. Take a look at this year’s speakers for the conference for proof.  He didn’t rush our time and take phone calls and things like that.

It showed a lot about his character and his belief in reaching young leaders. I was challenged but at the same time encouraged.

Thanks Brad for the time and I look forward to hopefully more in the future.

Growing too fast has its downsides.

The up and coming Twitter seems to be over tweeting right now.

Can you plan for something like this?