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Today we finally went live with version 3.0 of the freshlife website! It has been in the works for a LONG time. Pretty much since the last version was rolled out. It was a team effort and as always they did a great job. Way to go freshlife creative! It is an honor to partner with you in the gospel.

It is, in my opinion, a major improvement over the old site, but the biggest change you will notice is the teaching archive portal. When you pick a series it loads up the first message in the HD player window and you can see all the different messages below. There is also a brand new feature that will tell you which messages are the most popular based on other people’s clicks. (unfortunately, it’s not retroactive so it is which is the most popular from here on out.) Once people start viewing messages it will be interesting to see what gets watched the most.

I also love the way they have made it super easy to tweet or post a status update about a whole series, or any message you are watching and it will preload your status update with the album artwork as well as the link. The online store is pretty epic too, there is some never-before-sold-online merch available now. (hint–awesome skull church stuff)

Anyhow, check it out. We are praying that God will continue to reach many who are stranded in sin with the life and liberty in Christ through our site. We see people come to Christ online all the time and it is a thrill to fish in such a big pond as the web. Even though we have been bug checking for a long time, feel free to post a comment if you find a glitch. You can also leave a comment on this post and tell the creative team how awesome they are. It’ll make their day.

Here is the link.

If you can’t make it to Skull Church you can make the commitment to not TXT & Drive and request a Skull Church Thumb Band BY CLICKING HERE. The Thumb Band is our gift to you, free of charge. If you would like to make a donation to cover the Shipping & Handling that would be rad.

Read an article about this initiative that was in the newspaper today HERE.

Below is a picture of me committing to not text while driving. I was the first to put my thumb in ink and make my mark on the giant phone screen. I want to lead by example. Even though I sometimes forget and grab for my phone when it buzzes I am dead serious about giving it up.

I brought my oldest daughter, Alivia, with me as I took the pledge. She is a powerful reminder of what is at stake if I foolishly choose to text and drive. No text (or tweet or email or status update) is worth missing out on her life!

For those of you who don’t live in Montana, Take the pledge here!

This weekend at fresh life we announced a new campus that we will be launching in Whitefish, Montana at the beginning of 2011. We are stoked on this venture in faith that the Lord has us taking and are praying that many people meet Jesus through it!

Please join with us praying:
For many people, who live in the North end of the valley and attend fresh life, to view this as their home church and be apart of the mission and community of this campus.

For many to find life and liberty in Christ as we seek to make Jesus famous!

I am excited to announce that last night we officially launched a brand new Skull Church/Fresh Life webcast experience. Although we have been webcasting for almost 3 years and have seen God use it in amazing ways (we see decisions for Christ registered online each week) it has been as lofi as you can possibly get.

After working for months on an overhaul of our video infrastructure and systems we now are able to offer a webcast that we are excited about (and not bummed out by–though you should never despise the days of small things…) One of the great new features is that it is now streaming in HD! And in addition to computers you can watch the live feed on iOS devices like iPhones, iPod Touchs, and iPads. And if you own a Droid you can listen to live services through the Fresh Life Radio app that is available in the Droid Market. I want to give props to our creative and technical team for this epic win.

Check it out! The live webcast occurs during all of our weekly services. Details here.

Last week was one for the books at fresh life. By that I mean the record book of how many technical things can possibly go wrong in a week. I think it was written by a dude named Murphy. I hate that guy. It would be hard to try and come up with more things that could have gone wrong.

Here is a snapshot:
While preaching at skull church my mic went out briefly and came back on with some terrible feedback that continued for what seemed like forever. What I didn’t know was that whatever had happened also took out the live radio broadcast. The webcast also crashed at some point in the night as well. And our system that sends txt msg questions, that come to my skulpit, to the screen went down. This weekend, I was supposed to preach the 11 o’clock at the Strand but, due to a series of events, they moved me to the Liberty at the last minute. I was supposed to be piped live into the Strand but they had to resort to a video backup because, for the second time ever, our fiber optic feed freaked out. When the video backup was fired it first came up with only audio before (fortunately) coming on correctly and playing all the way through. Man, just reading that list stresses me out.

Stuff like this makes the hair on the back of my team’s neck stand up. Excellence is something that we value highly. I can’t see how we really have a choice about that. Our mission is to see those who are stranded in sin find life and liberty in Christ. Eternity literally hangs in the balance. Like it or not, that injects importance into everything. We simply don’t have the luxury of dismissing even the smallest detail as being trivial. The stakes are too high. Hell plays for keeps and forever is a long time. Even small things deserve our very best effort.

Coming out of a week like we have had there is definitely the temptation to be upset, to be bummed, to beat ourselves up and only focus on every single thing that went wrong. But we won’t. You can’t live that way. If you do, eventually you will end up in the fetal position under your desk mumbling, “Laces out, Laces out, the Laces were supposed to be facing out...” And that’s not good for anyone. You have to accept that if you are are committed to thinking outside the box and pushing the envelope; there are going to be bad days. Things happen. Computers crash. People make mistakes. That’s life. Deal with it; don’t dwell on it.

Instead you have to learn to focus on all the good that happened in spite of the problems. The people who gave their lives to Christ listening to a message with feedback coming out of the speakers. The fact that people were blessed who were ministered to by the Bible study and felt God as they took communion even though according to our runsheets everything took way too long to come out of the meet and greet. The hundreds and hundreds of people who signed up for small groups even though at two of the services the amazing small group promo video never even played. And above all, the fact that the Word of God cannot be chained! (2 Timothy 2:9)

I think it’s also important to be thankful for the hundreds of services a year that have gone by without major meltdown. All the webcasts that didn’t go whack, all the times the fibre hasn’t failed and the projectors didn’t show the blue screen of death. Thank God for the other thousand times that your mouse didn’t turn into a beach-ball.

I’m not saying that you are supposed to just be ok with things that go wrong. You shouldn’t be. We aren’t. I can assure you there will be meetings where the glitches will be analyzed and assessed. We will ask: Why did this happen? Has it ever happened before? What could have prevented it? Was it human error or just a freak–the devil is in the details– kind of a thing? Do we need to upgrade a system? buy new equipment? Retrain someone? Conduct an exorcism? And we will do our best in the future to learn from our mistakes and move forward. We will pursue perfection and seek after seamlessness. As I said, I believe that the urgency of the gospel requires nothing less than our very best efforts.

But at the end of the day if anything eternal is going to be accomplished it’s not because of us, it’s because of Him. It’s all about Jesus and what He did for us at the place of the skull. In our weaknesses His strength is made perfect. If you keep that in mind, you can keep your eyes set on heaven even in the midst of a technological week from hell.