We get a little stir crazy in the Docusen home. Being inside continuously with three kids is enough to...well...make you want to get outside :-)We took the kids to Frank Liske Park on Thursday. We had so much fun! It's so cute to see Jack trying to hang with Max and Mary. He was climbing up the slide and going down all by himself. So so so cute. We spotted a little league field across the park and took the kids to play "imaginary baseball". Imagine the scene of me throwing the imaginary baseball to the kids with their imaginary bats. They would then take off (all three of them) and run the...

Can a person be surprised by something that they expect? I'm sure to find out...let me explain.I have been privileged to be on a journey like I've never known over the last 6 months. I remember stating over and again that I was so glad that God never called me to be a missionary because I would hate to have to go around the country asking people for money. Funny how things come around.Dara and I have been on a faith walk for the past 6 months. We have seen God's provision pour out like never before as we are raising our salary. We have also seen him stretch our faith in a way that only this...

This picture is from Gilchrist, TX. Hurricane Ike leveled the whole town. Except one house:

I feel like I should throw a party for myself.After two days of wrestling the world of converting files and doing web video stuff, our videos now officially play on our website. Praise the LORD!!!!Humor me and just click here and watch this video to celebrate with me.

DON'T BE AFRAID TO FAKE IT.I have a confession to make. I'm not very good at all at graphic design. That being said, I do all of our graphics for the week to week things we do around Hope. To give myself a smidgen of credit, I do believe I have an eye for what looks good, but I don't really know how to make it happen.Church planting forces you to creatively find solutions. My solution to graphic design is quite simple. I FAKE IT.I found a great website (thanks to Ginny Peterson) called Shutterstock. It's a pay-per-month subscription to get pictures and graphics. For $250 you can get 25...

After a couple of days of reflection, I really believe that this weekend went about as good as we could have dreamed. The lobby of the theater was buzzing with energy pre-service, the people were engaged during service, all of our tech stuff went well (a video in the middle of worship, another video to intro the sermon and then our video annoucements) and then people stuck around for a long while post-service. All in all a really, really good day.A couple of things that we collaborated on that really went well on Sunday:1. T-Shirts - We designed shirts with our series title "BELIEVE" on the...

I have spent HOURS today trying to figure out how to format our new graphics for our website and convert video files to make them compatible on our website. I'm such a hack when it comes to this stuff. HOWEVER...this is also one of the things I LOVE about church planting...no two days are the same :-)Oh my spinning head...

I absolutely love this.My Monday has consisted of following up with people that came out yesterday and inviting more new faces to Hope for the coming weeks. There is something so very special happening at Hope. I can't put my finger on it, but God has trusted us with a great opportunity.I can't say it enough...I just absolutely love what I do...

Today was the realization of so many dreams for Dara and I. God placed a dream in our hearts five years ago to plant a church. Today - September 14, 2008 - we opened our doors to the Charlotte community. 142 people showed up today to share the experience with us!The moment was so much bigger than any one person. So many people came together to make this happen. I am so honored to be a part of this team. Today was the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. The foundation of Hope has been laid. Now we build up and out and let God lead us to what the future of Hope looks...

We designed a Facebook advertising campaign for this first time this week. It was SO easy and really inexpensive. Dayne "the Intern" Shope was a great help in researching this. We were able to target Charlotte and the surrounding cities, pick the demographic (18-35 year olds) and set a time table for the campaign (4 days leading up to the launch).We have had 35,000 impressions (that's internet advertising lingo for how many times the ad shows up on someone's screen) in the past 3 days. This is a great tool to market to specific groups of people.