Lostness in Kentucky

There's been a statistic we have been trumpeting hard for the past year in my church, Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Independence, KY (check us out... shameless plug... www.hickorygrove.net).  The stat is this:  85% of our county, Kenton County is completely unchurched.  And we are located in Independence, the thirst largest city by land mass in the state, and one of the fastest growing cities in the state.  This statistic alone has lit a fire under me, our staff, and our church.  We want to push the light of Jesus into that darkness and see that number shrink as we work hard to do whatever it takes to help every person within our reach take their next step (perhaps their first step) with Jesus Christ.  

And now, I've received an even greater impetus for our mission.  Jason Lowe, director of missions for the Pike Association and executive pastor for First Baptist Church in Pikeville, KY, just released a very sobering report on just how unchurched and LOST our fellow citizens of the Commonwealth actually are.  Give this a read, and then hit your knees in prayer, and THEN go invite and invest in the people you see in your city.  Let them see Jesus in you and you get them coming to your church, your small group, your next church event.  It's time we all band together to pierce the lostness with the answer of all answers:  Jesus Christ.  

Click here to read Jason Lowe's report!

Lovin' My Macbook!

It's been forever since I've blogged, so I want to dive back into it.  So for my first blogpost in a  while, I want to give my three cheers for the new Macbook I got for Christmas.  I held out for a LONG time.  Much like I held tightly to my Palm Treo and then my Blackberry before finally crossing over to the "dark side" and getting an iPhone thanks to the urging of my daughter Molly.  Once I started using that iPhone, I started feeling all sorts of regret that it took me this long to cross over.  Now that I have a Macbook, there are three things that really jump out to me that just shocked me...

1. Office for Mac actually runs BETTER on the Mac than it did on my HP G7.  It opens faster, the maintains formatting better.  That was the biggest reason for me holding out and sticking with my PC - the fact that I use Office more than anything else.  It just seemed to make sense that it's better to use a computer whose operating system CREATED the programs you use most.  So I was a little skeptical about my Microsoft Office experience on the Mac.  It did not disappoint.  It's faster and more efficient!
2. Making videos is WAY easier, faster, and AWESOMER!  Yeah, I made up that word because a new word HAD to be made up to express how in awe I am of the Macbook's ability to handle video rendering.  My HP G7, the best laptop I have ever owned, with it's 8GB of RAM and i5 processor, would literally rev up to a noisy tizzy and basically render doing anything else on the laptop impossible, all while rendering a 30 minute video I had created.  On the Macbook, videos are rendered seamlessly and simply.  This has been my favorite discovery about the Macbook.  If I had known, I would have gotten one a long time ago.
3. There really is an app for that.  I was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to find free apps to do things like I was able to do on my PC.  I was wrong. Way wrong.  In fact, it seems the apps for the Mac work even faster and more effective.  From ClipGrap for getting those YouTube videos for off-line viewing, or FileZilla for uploading stuff via FTP, I have discovered an app for everything I did on the PC.

Those are my three cheers for the new Macbook. I have been keeping my HP G7 close by, just in case I have to revert back to it to more accurately create an office document or render a video the way I was always used to rendering a video.  Instead, the PC stayed closed and untouched.  I finally decided to reset it and wipe it clean to give it a fresh start.  Maybe it will be faster and useful for someone in my family or in my office.  But now that I've gone MAC, I won't turn BACK.