I had this thought today…scary I know….but as I watching the morning news, the story of another earthquake, this time in Hawaii came across.  My first thought, was, “Wow! That’s a lot of earthquakes.”  My second thought was, “Creation is groaning.”

Romans 8:19-22 says….

“19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

So this thought of creation crying out came to me.  Now, don’t get me wrong or take me out of context.  I’m not telling you Jesus is coming back in the next few days because of these quakes.  He could come back in the next minute…we don’t know.  But what I am saying is that isn’t it an interesting thought in light of Romans 8 to think that God…through creation…the earthquakes and everything else….is crying out and groaning that we be reconciled back to Himself.  Calling His sons and daughters back to himself.  Creation is groaning.

Then I ran across THIS jewel.  The title of this article was the “Earth’s Hum Sounds More Mysterious Than Ever”.  The article says….

The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn’t shaking from an earthquake. (It does not cause the ringing in the ear linked with tinnitus.) This sound, first discovered a decade ago, is one that only scientific instruments — seismometers — can detect. Researchers call it Earth’s hum.

Funny how they only discovered it a decade ago.  All they had to do was read the bible to see that creation has been “humming” for thousands of years.

Creation has been groaning since the fall took place and will continue to groan and “hum” until the “adoption” is final.

What a day God eagerly waits for.

• I’m still trying to process all that I learned from Velocity and also from Unleash last week.  You can read some of my notes from Velocity here on the blog, watch the replay main sessions HERE and you can see some of Unleash HERE
• Speaking of Unleash, it gets better and better every year.  I really love heading to Anderson and Newspring to spend that time with our team.  I encourage you to get to Unleash next year and take as many of your team as you can.  You really can’t afford NOT to.
• Also, they announced THIS at Unleash.  Here’s a little secret….those of us in the coaching network have known about it since last year.  And YES…we are taking our team!
• The Newspring Church volunteers and staff take caring for pastors and church staffs/teams to another level
• Maybe I’ll post notes from Unleash later…we’ll see
• This past Sunday, we continued our series You Asked For It by answering the question, “I have a little jingle in my pocket, a few nice things, but does God want me to be poor?”
• The answer….?  That’s up to God.  The point for all of us…wealthy, poor, in the middle…it’s generosity.
• We announced Sunday that we want to buy you a drink on Tuesday night, March 23rd.  Yup, drinks are on us…at Starbucks…from 6:30pm to 8pm.  Come hang with us! We’re really buying your drink…caffeine drink that is!
• Also announced that March 28th and April 4th we’ll be meeting at Oak Ridge High School due to some scheduling issues at the Doubletree Hotel.  No worries, cause we’re going all out on Easter.
• Easter at the Ridge will be super special several reasons…1) It’s Easter. Nuff said.  2) It’s our FIRST Easter as a church. 3) We’re taking over the auditorium at Oak Ridge High School.  It’s up to YOU to get the word out and get THERE! Let’s fill it up!
• God continues to send new people our way every week.  We’re so blessed to be growing and seeing God change lives.  That’s why we do what we do.
• I know I say it every week, but we really do have some super HUGE things coming in the coming weeks that I can’t wait to share with you.  We’re letting the vision for these things “marinate” right now.  When the time is right…we’ll let you know!
• Next week for part 3 of You Asked For It we’re answering questions about the end times.  I gotta be honest…it’s stretching me as I’ve been studying for this one.  The subject isn’t my strong suite so I hope I can do it justice.
• In two weeks, we’re answering your questions LIVE! Yup that’s right…anything goes…ok…well ALMOST anything.  But we’ll answer all we can!

Via Steven Furtick…

-Pray out loud.
-Write your prayer out.
-Read your Bible out loud. Start here.
-Apologize to someone. Even if it’s not primarily your fault.
-Talk to someone you trust. If you don’t have someone, hire a professional.
-Rest.
-Exercise.
-Start eating better.
-Drive around listening to a sermon.
-Turn up some worship music really loud. Shut the door. Sing along.
-Go back and do the thing you know you were supposed to do.
-Get organized.
-Repent.
-Encourage somebody who would never expect it.
-Get back in church. Serve somewhere.
-Quit complaining.
-Go on a date with your wife.
-Tell somebody thank you.
-Give some money away.
-Call on the name of Jesus.
-Remember how far He’s brought you.
-Realize that He’ll never ever leave you.

Just a few ideas to get you started.

You can take it from here…

My next post in this bad boy will be from Unleash at Newspring Church in Anderson SC.  If you’ve never been to Unleash, heard of it, or are now currently thinking, “why would I go to Anderson South Carolina?” then you need to go HERE to the Unleash site and watch last year’s main sessions.  I’m expecting more of the same this year, but bigger, badder ( I don’t think that’s a word, but oh well…) and better.

If you can’t make it to Unleash this year, be sure to log on anyway because they will be streaming the main sessions LIVE.  So tune in!  I’ll probably be live tweeting too, so you can follow that feed by following me on Twitter (twitter.com/bobbywilliams or @bobbywilliams) or searching hashtag #Unleash on Twitter.

• What’s been poured into you is what will pour out of you
• Real creativity comes out when your budget says $0.00 (know this one all too well)
• Ideas for creating on a budget….
• #1 Recycle Ideas
• Send your team out with $5 each to purchase something creative @ yard sales and thrift stores just to create conversation
• Read Thinking For A Living
• #2  Create a space and time to THINK
• #3  Brainstorm with your team for sole purpose of brainstorming.  Work out the details later
• Making creative meetings work…
• #1 Exploration Phase….
• a) Have teams “explore” and plan before the meeting ever happens
• Collect ideas constantly and file them (Evernote is a great tool) to use
• b) Make meetings as short as they can be
• Don’t lead the meetings…influence it
• Take chairs out of the room if you want the meetings to be shorter
• Bring magazines for good ideas…search them and file them
• #2 Implementation phase….
• Take a pause after meetings to make sure the ideas are good and stick

• Change the locations for meetings so that it will inspire creativity
• Play games and make the meetings FUN
• Inspire creativity however possible
• Try to plan out 8 weeks in advance
• As a pastor/communicator…let them know the Bid Ideas of the messages
• Pre production happens 6 weeks out…this is the details
• Not much should change within 3 weeks out
• Be sure to review series
• Don’t be tied to looking JUST online for ideas

• I say it all the time, but I’m so thankful for all the volunteers that show up early and stay late to make the Ridge it happen!
• I’ve talked to other planters and we are very blessed to have an organized system for setting up.  An unorganized set up process is chaos.
• We switched up our worship format from what most of us would say is “normal” format.  We used to have all our worship up front before the message.  Now we have two songs and announcements, message, then a few songs at the end to worship in response to the preached Word.
• We’ll try it and rework it for a few weeks and see how it goes.
• The thought here is that it makes things fresh, and gives people a chance to worship in response to the word and to celebrate or respond to how God dealt with them during the message.
• Programming wise it’s a little tricky, so we’ll have to make some adjustments along the way.
• This week’s message title was You Think You Know, But You Have No Idea (Knowing God’s Will)
• We could had done an entire series on this topic, but we stuck with the cliff notes
• To sum it up, if you want to know God’s will for your life, KNOW JESUS.  End of message
• Unfortunately we sometimes trust decisions in our life to horoscopes, coin flips and Magic 8 Balls
• You’ll never know anything about God’s personal will for your life if you don’t get to know the author of it
• Im going to try and post a little extra background on knowing God’s will here on the blog this week
• If you want the notes for this weeks, message, leave me your email address in the comments
• Love, love, love seeing first time guests. And love to see them enjoy being at the Ridge!
• There’s a buzz going around town about a new church doing great things in the name of Gospel and word is starting to get out. I won’t complain
• God has been sending us amazing leaders over the last few weeks.  He’s supplying gifted, talented, charasmatic people so we can take the Gospel to Oak Ridge and beyond! Pretty excited about that!
• Taking some of our team to Unleash at Newspring Church in SC on Thursday.  It’s one of my favorite times of the year and I’m pumped to be there with our team!

• Quality community separates happy people from not so happy people
• We are created for deep connection
• We must understand the philosophy of community before the strategy
• The church must understand that EVERYONE should be welcome
• Luke 15:2  Romans 13:8
• Do we have environments where people can belong before they believe?
• People followed Jesus BEFORE they believed (they were thinking he was starting a revolution)
• We must accept that people are NOT perfect
• Pastors are notorious for confessing the “safe” sins- The ones that actually make us look more spiritual
• Luke 18: 10-14
• Comparing is a really nice way of judging
• Everyone is welcome because no one is perfect
• We must believe that anything is possible because God can change any circumstance
• Help people discover their new name ( Saul= Paul….Simon=Peter….Abram=Abraham) When God changed someone’s life, He sometimes changed their names
• Jesus came for the sick…not the healthy

• Knowing what God wants you to do next, the courage to step out and do it, and the ability to get others to do it with you is the most important criteria for a church planter
• Preached from Mark 11:1-10
• You can do a lot/say a lot when Jesus tells you to do it
• If anybody asks who told you to do it, tell them Jesus
• Always make it about Jesus and not YOU
• Let God do his work in you before you put it out in front of others
• It’s the things that no one sees that produces the results everyone else wants- Craig Groeschel
• What personal sacrifice is God calling me to pay?
• There is a cost to our calling that can’t be taken away
• Before  you ask for God’s blessing, count the cost
• Surround yourself with people that have no plan B
• God may be calling you to a CS kind of faith….crack smoking

I’ve had the privelege to hear Darrin a few times before and catch an occasional sermon from time to time. Darrin is one of the champions of the Gospel in my opinion. He has great insight and conviction on why we should preach to the Gospel. His breakout session I attended at Velocity 2010 was on preaching the Gospel to ourselves and to the church. Here are some the highlights from his talk…

• Look for Jesus in all of scripture. He’s there
• Everything in the bible points to Jesus
• Romans 1: 15-17…remember this is what started it all…the Reformation (it’s amazing how many believers know nothing about the Reformation)
• The Gospel is NOT just for the Christians…it’s for all of us
• Paul was in Rome to preach the Gospel to the believers
• Colossians 2:6- “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him”- The same way you received Christ is the same way you grow in Christ….Repent and Believe
• All of life is repentance – This is #1 of the 95 Theses
• How we see scripture comes through our preaching
• 3 Temptations in our preaching: #1 Make yourself the hero #2 Make the church the heroe #3 Make disciplines the hero
• Make JESUS the hero!
• Preach Christ as Savior first before the example
• It’s not what God wants me to do, but what God has done for me
• People can not do what we suggest if the resurrection is not included
• Practice and preach repentance
• The Gospel has to transform YOU before you can preach it to others
• Every message must be tied back to the person and work of Christ
• The Gospel will ruin your life…..let it

Yup…I think that about does it.  See you tomorrow!

Ok…just a few tidbits from day 1 at the Churchplanters.com Velocity Conference….

• I love this conference because it’s all about the church planter.  A lot of conference deal with many things…this one is for the church planter who’s already planted or thinking about planting.  Not a lot of these out there.
• I had attempted to live blog it today but realized two things 1)….the wifi is a bit spotty.  A lot of people using little bandwidth  2)…I don’t soak in as much when I’m typing on a computer and trying to write my own notes.  I miss some stuff.  So towards the end I scaled back a bit.
• The plan tomorrow will be to only post to Twitter (@bobbywilliams) a few good bits of information from the sessions, probably after the sessions.  I’m going to focus on taking better notes so I can post some good stuff for you here on the blog later this week.
• That’s good news….you’ll get more bang for your time.  Notes from Shawn Lovejoy, Alan Hirsch, Steven Furtick, Darrin Patrick, Carlos Whitaker, Pete Wilson and all the main session speakers tomorrow as well as any other interesting and useful tidbits I can offer up for you.
• There are some great live tweets happening during the conference.  Just search on Twitter.com the hashtag #cp10 for all the good stuff.
• Tomorrow I’m going to breakout sessions from Carlos Whitaker and Pete Wilson.  Really looking forward to these.
• There are some other breakouts that I wish I could attend, but I’ll have to make some sacrifices.  Can you say conference CD set?
• I love all that I get from visiting conferences. The information, transformation, revelation, the connecting with old friends.  The one thing I hate: missing my family.
• Not sure what the best moment of the conference was today.  Allan Hirsch killing it with the question, “why are we all fighting over the same 40% of the population that this type of church appeals to when there is another 60% out there that can be reached differently?” Darrin Patrick calling us to make Jesus the hero in our preaching, or Steven Furtick absolutely crushing it and getting the crowd to it’s feet (more on that tomorrow)? I don’t know…just pick one.
• It’s late….I’m tired of God racking my brain, so it’s time to get some sleep.  More tomorrow and hopefully I’ll post the first of my notes from the conference tomorrow as well right here on bobbywilliamslive.com