Judah Trying to Crawl

This was a video I shot with my iPhone while spending the 4th of July weekend at my parent's house. Judah is about 6 months old here. Julie thought I was mean when I kept taking his toys away but I would just call it motivation to crawl.

His Yoke Is Perfect

These past couple weeks of Identity Youth have just been AMAZING. I know I haven't blogged in quite a while because of the crazy pace of my life lately but I just wanted to get on blogger and give God some glory for what he has been doing in and through the Identity Student Ministries. Last week we had a whole night of worship with the ID Band. We changed it up a bit and kind of did an acoustic set. I say kind of because we did some acoustic guitar stuff with a box drum and we did some electric stuff too. The presence of God was so strong!

This past week's service was just as anointed. I spoke to the youth at Identity on the subject of "Who Are You?" It was based off the scripture Matthew 11:30 For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light (NLT). We talked about how God's plan (yoke) for our life fits perfectly and we need to take ownership of the call that God has on our life. He's called each and everyone of us to something and no one can fulfill that call except us (the one He called). His yoke fits US perfectly.

One of Identity's youth, Garrett, has just started heading in the direction God is calling him and is beginning to realize that his life must first be yoked to God before he can ever step into the calling God has for him. Here is his testimony that was shown last night at Identity.

Lang on Leno

I guess I am in the video mood because here comes another one. Jonny Lang was on Jay Leno and rocked the house. If you haven't heard of Jonny Lang then do yourself a favor and get his CD. He is an amazing blues musician that got saved and now rocks some blues style music for Jesus. God is so good! You can read more about Lang's story by clicking HERE and downloading the article Radiant Magazine did on Lang and his music during his amazing conversion to Christianity. Another amazing song that depicts his recent decision to follow Christ is "Only A Man" and it can also be heard by clicking HERE.

God Bless You...

I came across this little gem of a video when I visited my family this past weekend in Tampa. My brother Jason showed me this off of the break.com website. Maybe this will cause you to cover your mouth next time.

Create Your Own Countdowns

If you are in youth ministry then you probably use countdowns to start your services. After buying multiple countdowns from various media websites and youth leadership conferences I came across a handy little tool that allows me to create my own custom countdowns. It has been very useful. You are able to set whatever time limit you desire, add your own background images or movies, and make changes to your fonts. I even created a 30 day countdown for a series my Pastor is teaching that runs throughout the service while he preaches. The countdown program that I found is produced by a company called TRIMONIX. You can see a lot of their work on the website Stufficanuse.com. TRIMONIX is relatively inexpensive for what you get. By the time you purchase a few countdowns from the usual church media sites you could end up paying for this program. The only draw back to TRIMONIX is that it only works on a MAC computer and it doesn't export audio. So if your video background already has music on it, when you export your final countdown product, it will not have any audio. You will have to use another program like Final Cut Pro or iMovie to add your audio. Here is an example of a countdown that I created with TRIMONIX in conjunction with FINAL CUT PRO and LIVETYPE as well as a video background that I downloaded from VIMEO.com.



If you have a PC then there is still hope. Since the rest of the staff at our church have PCs they found an alternative program called COUNTDOWN CREATOR. I know it's not an original name but this program is just as impressive and it does allow you to add your own audio as well as images, videos, fonts, and etc. Here is a video that gives you a brief demo of what it can do.

Jesus is my friend

I couldn't help the title of this blog...this past weekend we went to see our friend Lester's show "The Last Adam" with our friends Erin, Mike, and Holly. It was a really great show and it was such great weather, considering that it was an outside theater. This was also the second week of Christ Church of Orlando's three service times. God is so good! It all started on Easter and a high attendance is always expected on a holiday like Easter. Our staff were all curious to see what a typical Sunday's service attendance would be like. We were all very excited to see the church full this morning in all three services. Later on Sunday night we had our church business meeting and our church got to reflect back on the year and see the accomplishments of our church and to catch our Pastor's vision for our church in the days ahead. Even looking back on some of this past year's video footage, while editing a promo video for our church wide outreach campaign "WE CARE", it made me realize how amazing our church is. You can view the video I made HERE or by scrolling through the Vimeo video widget at the top right hand corner of this page. After getting home, Julie and I both were beaming with pride and we had our own little reflection time by ourselves. We both just went on and on about how blessed we are to be apart of what is going on here in Orlando. We truly know that JESUS is our friend! And as a tribute to this post here is an oldie but a goodie "Jesus Is My Friend."

and then there were 3...

Yet, another crazy 3 day weekend for the Johnson clan....

DAY 1
We started with Friday night as we drove to Tampa to drop Judah off at Gammy and Papa's house so that they could watch him (which they never argue about doing) while we went to a concert. My lifelong friend Jerad Griffin was playing a show at his sister's church, Element Church. I was so excited to see him play a show since he just joined the band High Flight Society. If you haven't heard of them you should definitely check out by going to their MySpace page and buying their CD. Jerad never ceases to amaze me in his talents. He is currently singing backup vocals and playing guitar. It was so good to see Jerad, his wife, and some of the old Riverhills youth group crew from back in the day. After leaving the show it just seemed too late to drive home and so we had an impromptu sleepover at my parents house.

DAY 2
The next day was no less occupied. We started off by driving back to the O-Town to get ready for a wedding that I was scheduled to sing in. The wedding and reception lasted about 6 hours. Our pour little guy, Judah. He must be so tired of going and going and going. We are hoping to slow it down over the next 2 weekends. We'll see how that goes...lol

DAY3
Day three started at 5:30am as we got up early for the start of our new service times at Christ Church of Orlando. We have been toying with the idea of going to 3 services for about a year now and today was the day it all began. It took us a while to pick our actual times but through many discussions, surveys and phone calls to other churches that have 3 services we finally decided on 8:00, 9:45, & 11:30am. It was a scary step of faith but we knew that if we were going to grow any more then we had to do it and so we just trusted in God that He would fill the church and BOY DID HE EVER!!! Today, we packed the place out. 1st service was a full service, 2nd service was so full we had to pull out chairs in the isle, and 3rd service was packed too. If our numbers are right...we think we had 770 people in today's church services. I am so excited with what God is doing in and through Christ Church of Orlando.

Not only did our church have an amazing day but this was also Judah's first Easter celebration with our family. Julie and Gammy (Grandma Johnson) also had a little fun putting together Easter baskets for the little guy and Mimi (Grandma Watson) bought his Easter Outfit. Overall, our Easter weekend was jam packed full of GREATNESS. And if the numbers at church weren't enough to get excited about, many testimonies of God's goodness were shared today in service through Cardboard Testimonies, Song, and Dance and many lives were won to Christ and rededicated. I rustled up some video footage a lady in our church shot (Cynthia) to show some of what took place today at CCO.

Identity Youth Retreat Recap

In the previous post a quickly recapped our youth retreat's success and briefly talked about some of the activities. Well, here a video that one of my youth shot and I edited. Take a look and tell me what you think...

Spring Break Madness

Spring Break has come and gone and it has taken all of my energy with it. I am so beat. Jules and I have been going nonstop since last week. First, we had another amazing opportunity to take our youth band to another youth rally here in Orlando called "Spring Break Free." They made us so proud. They have been allowing God to use them in so many ways and as they make themselves available their talents get better and better. Just this week we got another call to lead worship again at a "To Write Love On Her Arms" venue. God is so good! Without Him, none of this would be possible. For more photos of the ID Band's last worship experience click HERE.

Well, all of that was on Thursday and on Friday our youth group took their 2nd annual youth retreat in Lake Wales, FL at Lake Aurora Christian Camp. Let me just say..."IT WAS AMAZING!" Last year was our first time taking a retreat with our kids and needless to say...the entire youth group wasn't completely sold on the idea and therefore we only had 21 attend. Well, when they came back from the trip last year the impact was definitely evident and our youth were the best advertisement for this year's trip. This year we took 43. We more than doubled our attendees. We take a lot of trips with our youth throughout the year but this is the cheapest and by far the most impacting, in my eyes. This years trip was no different. We tell our kids the whole purpose of the trip up front. It's all about unity and relationship. It's our chance to bring those in from the outer edges and make them feel apart of the group. It's our chance to encourage each other while being encouraged by God in our times of prayer and worship. It's a time for good healthy competition to illustrate that we are all in this together and we need each other to win this race. And it's a time for us to unplug from the world and our electronics (we collect all cell phones a soon as we get there) and just get back to the basics; God and His body of believers.

This year we pulled some new activities out and had a blast with them. They include Cheese IT, Extreme Dodge Ball, Canoe Races, Obstacle Courses, Barrel Brawl, Slip-n-Slide Kickball, Flour Power Capture the Flag, Ropes Courses, Worship, and Baptisms. As you can see with some of the photos below our youth enjoyed every minute of it and seeing them have fun with no complaining, and no cliques or insider clubs was just AMAZING. You can check out more of the photos from our retreat HERE.

















But now that the weekend has come and gone we have to head back to reality and part of that reality is that Judah starts his first week of daycare. It goes without saying that Julie was not that happiest camper...lol...She had already been gone for 2 days away from Judah while my parents babysat during our youth retreat and the last thing she wanted to do was leave him with a complete stranger at daycare. He did great his first day and Momma Jules is learning to cut the umbilical chord...lol...Until next time, HOLLA!

Going and Going and Going...

Wow! I feel like we have been going nonstop. Every weekend we have either been going to Tampa for different reasons (family, etc.), doing church events, or planning youth events and we have barely slowed down to take a breath. Some people have asked how Judah has coped with all of it but I keep telling them, "If all He knows is a busy lifestyle then he won't know any different." Judah has been great. When we get in the car and go...He just rolls with the punches. We are so blessed to have such a good baby boy. Here is our last daddy/son outing to IKEA that we took today. I can't help to take some photos on our trips. Here are some extra photos that we took on our last trip to Tampa. This is in an open field next to an RV dealership off of I-4. They modeled this marketing scheme after the "Cadillac Ranch" in Amarillo, Texas. Here are the photos...