I’m so excited about HPC’s new men’s bible study series “Man-Rated” starting next week. There’s a lot of different opportunities each week for you to attend - check out the website for the full schedule and locations.

This will be a great way to kick off our new year - hanging out with some great men, studying God’s word and learning what He has to say about being the men He intended us to be. We’ll be talking about overcoming some of the challenges men face in today’s world - discussions that are rated FOR MEN ONLY. That’s why we’re calling it…

Just a heads up - I’m going to be on a live web interview with the guys from Leadership Network today at 3:00 CST - talking about a lot of stuff, including my upcoming session (“Lovin’ Every Minute of It”) at the Innovation Cubed gathering. It’s free to attend the web interview at www.innovation3gathering.com/live. I’d love to see you there!

Gosh I’ve been waiting on you, mighty fine ‘09! Where have you been? Couldn’t wait to see ya - come on in - sit down and stay a while. This year, 2009, if God wills it:

We will participate with Awakening.

We will host some great friends.

We will release Servolution the book - not yet a movie, but don’t tempt me!

We will share Jesus with the world. Yeah Go Global!

We will participate with One Prayer.

We will have a Men’s Conference, do some camps, VBS and enjoy Easter one last time in our small box.

We will help plant HPC campuses, network churches, see ARC get close to 100 church plants and put some interns from Healing Place School of Ministry in the mix around the planet.

We will host Live the Dream ‘09 - no more peacocks, but it will soar BIG time!

AND AND AND - we will open our new church house, the HPC Arena!

Yeah 2009! It will be a big year for reaching people. Man, I’m all fired up now! Brother ‘09, glad to see ya.

I got up early on this last day of ole’ 2008. Saying goodbye to a pretty good year today as it becomes a memory, I have a couple random thoughts about my 2008 friend:

He (I need to refer to 2008, so I like “He” - is that ok?) was a year of faith - just like so many of them we have lived around here.

He was a year of storms. The weather channel has been my friend. (Gustav and Ike were ones that we had to go through.)

He was a year of tempting fear. With the financial news, presidential election craziness and other global events that speak of uncertainty you have got to watch your fear level - keep it low.

He was a year of souls. Watching the church at its best, reaching and preaching to win people to Jesus. Love it, love it, love it.

He was a year of new friends, church plants, one prayers, shared ideas, serve days, tears, laughs, pasta jambalaya, coffee - or for me lately, hot chocolate with a shot of espresso!

He was another banner year of generosity. Yep - giving - and you know who you are.

So long. Adios. Ciao. God bless. Watch the door. Thank you, 2008. You served God’s purpose well for us all.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and we invited everyone to come to our home for some food and just to hang out if they wanted to after our Christmas Eve services - a ton of people showed up for church, and then at our house. The neat thing about it was that after a few minutes, the power went out at the house! An unexpected twist for us to say the least… but we played ping pong in the garage with someone’s headlights shining in on the table. And we ate and had a blast anyway.

Then the next morning, some of the incredible volunteers who do a breakfast for the homeless on Thursday mornings decided not to cancel the breakfast for Christmas Day, but went ahead and did it! Franco Bellipanni and Vince Bellipanni and the Turners and several other Jesus-lovers went out early on Christmas morning and served it up Jesus-style. Here’s what Carole Turner posted on her blog about it:

This morning we were up at 5:30am, had Christmas with the kids done by 6:30am, got to the outreach at 7:00am and arrived back home by 11:30am. I then promptly took a two hour nap with Steele and now we are cooking Christmas dinner.

THIS has been a great Christmas so far!!

Last night at 8pm we got a call from Tyler Tullos and Pastor Johnny Green letting us know that there was four huge containers of soup left over from the party at Pastor Dino’s house. So not only did we have socks, muffins, cookies, PB&J but we also had really good Shrimp and Corn soup and Chicken Tortilla soup!

All the soup was completely given out by 9:00am this morning!!

One older homeless gentleman came up to us and through tears he said “you guys could be with your family instead ya’ll out here with us poor people”. I think everyone that was there this morning would say THE POOR ARE OUR family.

None of us were trying to be spiritual or do anything great, we all just knew that these homeless people know that we cook for them every Thursday morning, and especially at Christmas, we knew the pain and loneliness of their lives would be more magnified. We also know that we get as much if not more of a blessing from doing what we did today then the homeless do.

It’s all about Jesus getting the glory, we are just trying to be His hands and feet and we had a great time doing it.

Check out her entire post here (includes a couple videos you really should see).