my RSS feeds in Apple Mail aren’t updating!

usually every morning i have at least 10 or 12 new posts on certain blogs that i follow using the built-in RSS reader in Apple Mail. well, for a little while now, i haven’t gotten any updates.

i’m off to see what is going on with the stupid thing.

has this happened to anyone else? anybody got a fix? (besides “get a PC” – that’s the dumbest solution there has ever been on the planet.)

2. FreedomChurch infiltrated Elevation Church Sunday and Monday of this week and we learned A LOT. seriously, think about how much information you can process in 24 hours and then multiply that by like 800,000.

3. i totally re-worked the system for FreedomGroups in 2 days. instead of the system being 3 pages, it is now 8 pages and oh, so much better.

4. BIG changes are coming to FreedomChurch. and they’re coming sooner rather than later. i can’t tell you much about what is going on, but i guarantee it will take us all to the next level.

5. i’m testing out MobileMe for my email and iPhone right now and it seems to be working pretty well. i think Apple has worked through all the bugs they were having when they launched it and it works pretty well. i have 60 days to try it out so we’ll see if i keep it at the end of September.

6. Family Night Downtown!!! tonight from 6:00-9:00pm in downtown Acworth. it’s gonna be a great night. we’ll have jumpy things for the kids and prizes and Blake and the FreedomLive band is going to be rocking it out on stage! it’s gonna be hot! everything except what you might buy in the stores or purchase from a food vendor will be free so bring your family out tonight! do it!

2. upgraded to iPhone 2.0 firmware last night. no problems yet. i LOVE the App Store.

3. i also LOVE the guys at LifeChurch.tv. here’s why ::

a. they give away resources for FREE
b. they are crazy good at coming up with new and innovative ways to reach people
c. they created this YouVersion thing that i am absolutely obsessed with
d. they are giving away a YouVersion App for the iPhone (which i’ve already downloaded)

and as a side note, i was listening to Craig Groeschel’s One Prayer message from the Elevation Church podcast this morning (confusing right? i know.) and i have a whole new idea of what “CG” does all day. i think he just goes into work and makes videos. seriously, in the 30 minutes that it took me to drive to work, CG had three videos in his message PLUS a special video personal welcome opening to Elevation Church.

i wonder if his wife (and six kids) get tired of hearing “so we went out and made a video today…”

4. we got FreedomChurch bumper stickers in this week! i put mine on my truck slightly askew – but i like it that way. come to Freedom on Sunday to get yours! FreedomGroups are launching on August 24. sign ups will start next week!

*EXTRA* FreedomChurch softball won the league championship this past Tuesday night. JR told Coach Rick when we were talking of starting the league that if we were gonna have a softball team that we had better win the thing. and so we did.

personally, i’ve already downloaded the new version of iTunes (7.7) and downloaded a few of the Free Apps from the App Store.

there are talks that you can download the Apple 2.0 Firmware upgrade from an Apple server and do a bunch of work manually to get it on your iPhone, but i think i might just wait until it can be updated through iTunes tomorrow.

who’s getting the new iPhone?

2. today is Friday the 13th and i ain’t scared. it is also 11 weeks (give or take a day) until the start of College Football season and i am PUMPED!

3. i’m looking forward to big weekend of doing NOTHING. don’t call me.

4. Freedom is going to be rockin on Father’s Day! bring your dad to Freedom. oh, your dad wants a day to himself where he can just stay home and watch a classic car show or sports and drink a root beer float? well, he won’t be disappointed if he comes to FreedomChurch this Sunday – i can guarantee that.

IMPACT was great. we all had a really good time. God showed up and showed off so you know it’s good whenever that happens. Mike brought it during the evening sessions and even threw out a little plug for his blog. nice touch. he told a story about a mutual friend of ours that did some pretty amazing things when she was in high school. i wanted to call her and tell her that Mike used her as an illustration during IMPACT, but i didn’t. coming back to work after being off for a week is pretty rough. especially when you go on “vacation” from work, but you’re not really vacating. it’s tough. anyway, i’m glad to be back though and especially with this new iPhone thing coming out, my plate will be pretty full the next couple of weeks.

we’re putting the final touches on some curriculum for our small groups at Freedom. we’re going to start with a first-half, pre-determined set of curriculum and then we will probably move to curriculum based on JR’s messages on Sunday. i’ve been able to pick curriculum for the first half that partially coincides with the series we’re doing so we’ve been pretty lucky there. i can’t wait to start pegging leaders and feeling out their interest. i still need to come up with a cool, catchy, hip name for our small groups. got any ideas?

anyway, on to the Friday Four…

1. today is payday. i love when payday comes on a friday. actually, i’ll take payday any day, but i especially love friday paydays.

2. i leave for IMPACT on Sunday and i’m pumped. still don’t know what our theme is. makes for an interesting time packing.

3. my boss just came back from a 16-day trip from Israel. i think today will be filled with stories and pictures.

4. didn’t get much sleep last night. maybe tonight/tomorrow morning will be better. lots to do tomorrow before i leave Sunday. got to wash clothes, mow the grass, pack my clothes, clean my room, gas up the truck… man, i’m tired just thinking about all of that…

here we go.

1 :: read this post this morning. one word. WOW.

2 :: my iPhone was 8 hours off this morning when i got to work. instead of it saying 8:22am it said 12:22am. really weird. i just shut it off and turned it back on and it fixed itself. that’s what we like to call “Shut Up and Reboot”

3 :: going to hang out with some guys from Freedom tonight at this guy’s house. he thinks it’s too quiet with his wife and kids gone so he wants us to come hang out. i think he’s just scared…

4 :: the more i listen to Gavin Degraw’s new album, the more i like it. i didn’t like it at first and frankly, i was a little disappointed because i expected more. but now, i’m kind of digging it.

4.5 :: if you saw the comments on yesterday’s post, you know that this guy got a new garbage can!

what are you doing tonight?

anyway, the first creative idea we had at Freedom is to break up the creative team. do what? i know, crazy right? well, we do things a little differently anyway. we now have two separate teams that combine to form the “Creative” team. there is a message team that helps JR with his message every week. Todd and Corey do a great job of helping focus the message down to one nugget that people can walk away with. on the flipside, we have a production team (consisting of me, Blake, Ian and Tyler for now) who take the message for the upcoming week and figure out the flow of the service and how we can creatively expand on the message and attempt to make it stick in people’s minds for longer than the following week.

and then there was two… number two.
i think i stole this idea from another church but it’s all good. i figure if i steal it, the least i can do is give it out to other people as well. anyway, we had our first parent call to FreedomKidz this past week. Dawn had to come into the auditorium and get my attention and put up a number on the screens to notify the parents of a kid. everything went off fine and JR didn’t even know we had done that until staff meeting Monday night. however, Dawn and i decided that this week, since we both have macs, we could open iChat and if she needed to send us a number to alert a parent, she could iChat it to us and then she wouldn’t have to leave FreedomKidz to give us a number for a parent.

there you go…