place of nathan.

Here’s a quick snapshot of New Hope’s new nursery pagers, which we’ll be rolling out in two or three weeks.
It’s the same technology as what they use at restaurants when you’re waiting for a table. But notice the cool little ‘paddles’ on the side of it? We can use it to advertise upcoming events at New Hope.
Pretty Sweet!

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This afternoon I spent some time testing my MacBook Pro on the New Hope network. With the whole Vista thing (resource hog), I’ve been debating for months if I should:
1. Migrate to Vista
2. Stock up on XP and stick with XP until Vista SP3 comes out.
3. Switch to Ubuntu/Linux.
4. Slow (3-4 year) migration to Mac.

Option 3 is out, because our membership database, Roll Call, does not run on a Ubuntu version (yeah, I am well aware there are workarounds for this), and also a big lack of drivers and native software.
Option 2 is probably not the best, because this would require a significant investment in antiquated software technology. And I don’t believe investing in antiquated technology is a wise investment of our limited church funds.

Which leaves me with two viable options:
Migrate to Vista.
Migrate to Mac.

As I explore what I need to migrate to Mac, it seems to look more and more tempting all the time. The biggest issue I may likely face is buy-in. Literally 0% of my users here (myself excluded) use a mac on a regular basis, and I think it would generally scare the majority of my users–which is why I would do a slow migration.

Oh, what to do, what to do…

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This past Easter weekend we presented a 49-minute musical. We sang a couple songs at the start (acoustic guitar and djembe/shaker only)
We had I think a total of 29 people stand. That’s awesome!
We put a load of effort into this weekend, and we saw harvest!

Despite it being Spring Break weekend (which typically lowers attendance due to Spring Break trips), we had our second-highest attendance ever, at 822 (Highest was 834, Easter in 2002).
We had a ton of first-time guests with us, which is awesome, too!
There were also several people who haven’t attended in a while–notably some of my friends! It was good to see them, although I didn’t get to talk much.

It was a great weekend. I’m excited about the coming series, Growing Pains, and I am believing God is going to do a work in people’s lives through this series!

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This Friday at (Quest), New Hope’s informal gathering of 18-29 year olds on a journey to encounter God, we talk about Today.

I just finished watching a clip we’re using as an illustration, and I’m really excited. It spoke to me about Today. God’s speaking to me about Today–I choose this clip randomly, and BAM! it was what I needed! I’m really looking forward to this night. This Friday, 7:47 p.m. at Dave & Pam Cleverly’s–0747 CR 39, north of Waterloo.

If you need directions, please leave a comment and I’ll be sure to shoot you an Email back very shortly.

Seriously…Don’t miss Today.

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God’s been really messing with me lately.

Love, security, finding our purpose–it’s all kinda weird.

Last night Emily and I watched an online church service from this past weekend. Man–it was like the pastor was talking directly to us. It was flipping crazy. Seriously, the whole big idea and the whole message was dealing with what we had just discussed like 30 minutes prior.

This morning, I read a blog post from a pastor who talks about something else God’s been messing with me about. This guy is several months ahead of where we are in the issue, but poignant questions, simply trusting in God when you know he gave you a vision.

Later this morning, I read a friend’s blog that made me think about loving….man, I’ve been dealing with what loving a non-Christian looks like. It’s sometimes hard, but God’s working on me to love. Love, love, love.

It’s crazy…God is using the Internet to confirm his speaking to me. Note I’m not getting vision from God from the Internet, but He is certainly confirming the vision He’s given me through the Internet.

All this stuff is really messing with me…God’s growing me a lot lately.
Not sure where all I’m going, what God’s direction is, but I do know He is not nearly done using me yet. I’ve been called to achieve more than where I’m at. I’m not done. I’m just following the Holy Spirit’s every leading in my life.

How is God messing with you?

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Yeah, it stinks at New Hope today. Physically stinks.

No, I don’t have bad gas.

We have an issue with our ejection pump, that when the wind blows from the east, it pushes the smell (poop mixed with pee mixed with toilet paper) up into the air. It’s pretty nasty.
So twice today, I have gone on Lysol duty to deodorize the culprit room. Here’s the low-down:
1. Grab a can of Lysol.
2. Stand outside the culprit closet.
3. Take a deep breathe.
4. Open door 2″, insert Lysol, spray for 30 seconds.
5. Close door, quickly run away.
6. Resume normal breathing pattern.

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This week I’ve been slowly working on implementing some upgrades to our network. This includes a couple new pieces of software I’m pretty proud of, including a new 24-port Gigabit switch and a new 1.5 TB Network Attached Storage Device. I’ve included a couple photos here for your enjoyment.

I am in the process of converting from a mixed ethernet/fast ethernet network to full gigabit ethernet. Just a couple of our machines currently even have a gigabit ethernet card in them, so I need to install some new cards in the coming weeks.

The NAS device, which provides 1.5 TB (that’s 1,500 GB) of redundant storage plus automatic backups of all our client machines. I am excited about this device because we will never have to worry about loosing a bunch of data ever again (this has happened before–what a nightmare!)
This 1.5 TB should be enough for our network for the next 24 months or so. At that time, I plan on buying an additional NAS device to run alongside the existing. Of course, by that time it should be hundreds of TB, if not petabytes (PB)

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Last week, I posted about New Hope’s website getting all-time high traffic due to last weekend’s icy weather.

Well, this week the website set all new records, BIG TIME records, yet again!

• Traffic was up 469% from the previous week’s daily average (which includes last week’s previous all-time high)
• Traffic was 127% higher than last week’s all-time high.
• 40% of all traffic was returning visitors, 60% of traffic checked only once.

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Last night we had a great marriage conference, as we showed Part 1 of Mark Gungor’s Laughing Your Way to a Better Marriage Marriage Conference. Gungor is funny. If you weren’t there, you missed out! Perhaps you’ll be able to make it next time!
We served catered desserts, and Emily and I made coffee for the night. In all, we served more than 120 cups of coffee in about a 30-minute span. We were well prepared this time. In our previous attempt at making coffee, we weren’t ready for the rush, and got caught unable to produce more coffee quickly enough (the coffee makers take about 10 minutes to heat back up after making an 11-cup pot.
We have 6 pumpers on hand, and served those 6 a total of 11 times. we started off with 4 house and 2 decaf, and had the coffee makers heated up and ready to go for when there was an empty pumper. Because we were prepared well in advance, we had no problem keeping up with demand this time. We were down to close to one pumper of house for a moment before we could produce two more, so we didn’t have a shortage this time (we did have a major shortage last time!)

Emily and I reserved our seats before anyone else got there, and we ended up getting to sit with some really cool people! Lloyd and Janet, Guy and Jody, and our new friends Justin and Bobbie. Guy and Justin play on an indoor soccer league, and I’m looking forward to playing with them! It will be a load of fun and good exercise!

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This weekend New Hope is celebrating our Conference on Global Evangelism.

Let me just say…this comes with SO much work for me. You wouldn’t believe the last minute stuff I have to get accomplished–Too much for comfort! I am a planner, and I don’t much like last-minute stuff which throws a wrench into everything I’ve already planned. (And don’t misunderstand–I’m not complaining about the work I get to do!)

But I am excited for the conference. As I recently posted about, our Beautiful Feet Network has produced its first convert in the previously 100% Muslim tribe of Berani, who are now 99.998% Muslim. We are making historic progress, and that is flipping awesome! Which is why I say we are ‘celebrating’ the conference. I’m looking forward to it!

Have you considered going on a short-term trip to visit the Berani? Perhaps you may consider that. Let’s talk…

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We (New Hope) started our new weekend service times six weekends ago, and I wanted to share with you some exciting stats…

Over the last six weeks, we have averaged 9.3 guest families per week. The same six-week period last year averaged 3.8 families per week. That is 257% of the guest families for the same 6-week period from 2006 to 2007.

Over the six weeks, overall attendance is up 12.0% from the same six-week period a year ago.

The recent launch of our new children’s program, High Point, has been met with much success, and we’ve heard a ton of great comments from parents. I know if I was a kid, I would want to be in High Point–it’s sweet action!

God is flipping awesome, isn’t he?

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