Out of Office Autoreply

You’ve reached the desk of Emily Monts De Oca. She is currently out of her mind and will be returning Monday, February 18th.

Projects she is working on this week include:

• MarriedLife Live (Thursday, Feb 14th)
• Filming a series of commercials (For GroupLink -April 18th)
• Getting ready for Sunday (Sunday, February 17th)
• Not being at church on Sunday (day off with Mike for some R&R)
• Planning for Easter (holy crap it’s early this year.)
• Researching web site hosts (loooong story)

So, to my friends and family: if I am short with your or completely incognito this week, don’t hold it against me. It’s MarriedLife Live week. It’s not because I don’t love you.

It’s because I love you enough to protect you from my craziness

Christmas Eve Service

When you see the word “service”, you might think we’re planning a candle-lit ceremony in the sanctuary to sit and reflect on the baby Jesus. While there isn’t anything wrong with that, we thought we might try something different this Christmas at RPC.

Go figure.

We are giving you the opportunity to minister to 11 EMS, Fire Station, and Police Departments in the Auburndale/Winter Haven area. These people spend their Christmas Eve working so we don’t have to. It’s time we told them that we appreciate them.

We’ve done all the prep work. We’ll give you a packet with the name of the station or department, driving directions and a map, and a CD for each person working that night. The CD’s have a little word from Timm explaining why we’re reaching out to them and basically just telling them thanks.

All you have to do for prep work is bake cookies to take to your station–the packet will tell you how many dozen you’ll need to make depending on the number of folks working that evening.

The rest is simple. Drop off the cookies and CD’s and tell them to listen to their CD in their car on the way home that night. It’ll do all the talking for you.

It’s time we reach out more. It’s time to get uncomfortable. It’s time for RPC to make a mark on the community.

The first 11 people to e-mail me will get to participate. emily@ridgepointchurch.org

Merry Christmas

heroes

I’ve heard there’s a good show about them on TV. Lots of people have heroes. Usually they are people who are larger than life: Martin Luther King, Jesus, Buddha, etc. The famous, the interesting, the controversial.

Yesterday was a horrible day for me. I came to work on 3 hours sleep because I was behind from being sick. I was crying all day because of a family situation.  I had appointments set up to decorate the sanctuary (although I had no real plan). It had to get done, and I needed to be here, and I was miserable.

This is where the heroes come in. The following pictures show my co-workers and some amazing volunteers (that don’t even attend all the time) stepping up to help. They really came through for me and it’s one of those things that I can’t really describe, you just had to be here.

 

  

Come see the final product. It is freaking phenomenal and it wouldn’t have happened without all the help.

PS– you get a preview if you come to night of worship this Friday at 7!!!

what the heck am I doing here?

Some of you have no idea what the heck I do at RidgePoint. That’s OK…it took me a really long time to figure it out myself. Lots of people think I am the secretary, and while that is a very important and fun job, that is not what I do.

My title is “Programming Director.” Gee, that’s helpful, isn’t it?

Here’s what I do in a nutshell: I create a worship experience. Well, actually my team does. I do walk-throughs of the Sanctuary and make sure things look like they should. I talk with Timm and Justin and try and get them things that they need. I help with music stuff, I co-ordinate the lighting, my team runs the lyrics you see so you can sing with us, and they help the band and Timm. So with me overseeing stuff and my team busting their butts, we try to create a worship experience for you so you can come in, relax, and focus on God.

Pretty cool, huh?

There’s a guy named Los Whittaker who does this for Buckhead Church in Georgia, and he’s a lot better at it than I am. I’ve been reading his blog and studying him, hoping to learn a thing or two. He posted the following video today…it’s the opening of a service at his church. I am blown away, my jaw dropped when I saw it. It is so beautifully done, so classy, so moving. It made me want to quit! (Kidding)

Anyway, turn your volume up and check it out. It might make you uncomfortable.

humorisms

Yeah, I think I made that word up. I Googled it and it took me to a Wickipedia page about the 4 humors.

If my lame joke didn’t tickle your funny bone, I hope this will. I was in Target looking for a birthday card for Mike’s mom. They had this really cool Halloween card section so I was checking it out (trying to figure who I could send a Halloween card to without looking completely ridiculous). Now, I know you know the system for separating cards: labels like “Mom” “Dad” “Mom from both of us” “Grandmother” “Grandmother Humorous” etc.

So you can imagine my surprise and pleasure when I saw this label:

Now that’s freakin’ sweet. Finally, a card with my favorite kind of humor.

I keep looking around, and the titles got kind of funny. They have all types of humor, and they get very specific. For all you guys with 13 year old boy humor, they had this:

And, for those of you who hear things flying over your head all day long, they had this:

How wonderful. Card categories that just might insult you. I love Halloween.

stop.

collaborate and listen.

And when you’re done singing the rest of the lyrics to that song (’cause I know all you nerds know it), go to the website: www.xxxchurch.com.

It will blow your mind and make you uncomfortable. Listen to their podcast if you have time. These guys have such compassion, it’s remarkable.

i feel so important!

So, I had my first ever e-mail that said, “Hey! Update your blog! I’m addicted.” (so what if it was a blood relative?) That was pretty exciting to me because unless you leave me comments, I don’t know you’re reading this, and no one likes typing to themselves…

That being said, I have a confession to make. I have a jealousy problem. A big one. I mean, look at me, I’m green.

I am jealous because my boss and 2 of his cronies are at a really cool leadership conference in Georgia called Catalyst. The speakers alone would make it worth the trip, but that’s not really what I’d go for (although I’d love to see Andy Stanley,  Craig Groeschel, Mark Batterson, Reggie Joiner, Rick Warren, and John Maxwell). I want to see the venue, walk around and figure out who’s in charge, and pick their brains. How many workers are there? Are they volunteers or paid? How do they orchestrate everything? Who’s taking care of Andy Stanley? Does he get a fruit basket or something extra special (I’m guessing his rider demands are a banana and a treadmill)? Does each speaker have an assistant that’s provided by Catalyst? What’s the worship like? What’s the time line like? How long have they been planning for this? What’s the cost involved?

I just have a lot of questions. I’m nosy and I like to know things that other people don’t necessarily get to know.  I would also like to go and worship, ’cause it’s hard to find a band better than ours, and when you’re comparing bands (sorry, but I am a musician) you can’t get lost in the worship. That might be a personal thing that I just need to work on.

Anyway, we’re in the middle of a series called RidgePoint Rocks, and when it’s over we’ll move on to our next series called ‘Comfortable.’ I’m working on graphics now, and I would love your feedback and/or ideas for cool things to do.

Here’s what I have so far:
 

I thought it would be fun for this series to fill the sanctuary with LaZboy Recliners and give out popcorn and soda, but there were some budget issues with that. Oh well. TITHE. Oh wait, you are. Our offerings are way up these past 2 weeks.  YAY RPC-ers. Go on with your bad selves.  Still, I don’t think we’ll ever have the budget to fill a sanctuary with lazboys. It was a nice thought though.

So, give me your ideas.

I hope you’re here

this Sunday. It is going to be insanely cool. I can’t even talk about it, it’s so cool.

It’s like top secret super cool super duper. I’d give you a clue but…I don’t want to.

If you’ve never been to RPC, this is the Sunday to try it. It will show our personality like nothing else.

New staff pics…

So my wonderful friend Tabitha drove up from Tampa to do a photo shoot with the staff so we could get some cool pics up on the new website. The pictures turned out pretty awesome, you can take a look at them here. While you’re there look around the website. It’s got some cool new features and I’m pretty excited about it…

Well said Tony Morgan.

So I follow a lot of blogs that Timm made me aware of. One of the guys who is “intering me” (internet mentoring = intering) is Tony Morgan, a pastor and Chief Strategic Officer at New Spring Church. They just did this really in your face series about hell, and I thought they did a bang up job, but apparantely one of the local area churches disagreed and said some very nasty things about New Spring. Tony’s response made me cheer and jump. It is exacly how I feel about RidgePoint. Here’s what he said:

“You want to know a little secret. We love controversy at NewSpring. Frankly, it’s our hope that lots of people love what we do. And, it’s our hope that at least a few people hate what we do. If we don’t experience those extreme reactions, then we’re probably not truly fulfilling God’s mission for our church. Don’t forget. God despises “lukewarm.” We are a church for those who are unchurched or given up on church. If we are fully aligned with God’s mission for our ministry, we are going to offend people who love the institution or their version of “the truth” more than than they love the people the Truth was intended to reach.

So, love us or hate us, we love you.”

Well said, Tony Morgan.