Tony Wheeler dot Net

Well since everyone else is blogging on day one already, I had better get cracking as day two starts in about 3.5 hours. By everyone else I mean: Gary Lamb, Ben Arment, Mark Batterson, Tony Morgan, Tally Wilgis, Scott Hodge…just to name a few guys that I read when I can. I might be able to make the bloggers breakfast today, so we shall see. I am at the mercy of my driver. Oh yeah, I just checked in with the hardest working man at NCC, Tim Elzea. He wrote a little bit, apparently while Mark was praying? Whats up with that? haha! Tim, didn’t want to bug you while you were running your tail off! Keep up the good work man!

Day 1 Buzz was awesome. It is just too bad Joel Osteen couldn’t make it.

I am sure I will have some fresh thoughts and ideas after this weekend, I just need to process them and go through a whole bunch of pages of notes. I was digging the mind mapping software that some of the guys had there..pretty stinkin sweet.

The Theater Church forum was rocking and like many people said I felt like we were just starting to cook when the gas got turned off. Like Gary, I think that there is enough support to have a theater church conference. I had a thought yesterday while sitting there listening to some of the dudes talk about space limitations and creative service staggering, now mind you there was a representative from National Cinemedia there…..What if theaters had to start building bigger theaters for churches to meet in them? How stinkin cool would that be? It truly does seem like this theater church thing is a revolution indeed. Will there be a point when it becomes ineffective and obselete? Maybe. But what if churches caused a revitalization of the local cinema? Production companies are already talking about direct to DVD or DVD released on the same day as the movie, but what if there was reason for them to keep shipping out platters of movies? Revolution indeed.

Looking forward to day 2…Defining Moment is for sure happening for me. Up at 4 am this morning for whatever reason. I can’t say that I heard an audible voice from God, but I can say that the Holy Spirit was there. Good times. Praise the Lord and Pass the Popcorn. (Or Redbull this morning, 4 hours of sleep is too beautiful for me!)

Anyone reading this at Buzz…look me up if you see me, I would love to meet you. Its a little hard to tell what people really look like in real life! ha.

Blessings….

I am checking out of the blogosphere for a few days….probably won’t even get around to reading anyone’s blog either, since about 3/4 of the blogs I read will be live and in person with me!

I am heading out in a few hours for the Buzz Conference in D.C. If you haven’t heard of the Buzz…check out the link. Be cool to hear from people have been where I want to go. Mark Batterson in one of his recent eVotionals said that, “I think everybody will be challenged and encouraged by the conference, but I’m really praying that it is a defining moment for some of the attendees.” (emphasis his) I have been praying that I am one of them. I need more defining moments in my life. They are what make life so grand!

So, as I embark on this rockin adventure this weekend I covet your prayers for not only safety in travel but some serious God moments. I also ask for just a nice relaxing time with two of the coolest people I know, Curtis and Amy McGinnis. Hopefully they don’t get sick of me after a couple of days, I don’t come home til Tuesday.

Blessings friends. If you are going to Buzz, see you there! If you’re not going to Buzz…well, my mom always said if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all….So I’ll just not say anything!

Shalom in the home.

On Friday, March 24th our church undertook 24 hours of prayer in partnership with Team Rochester. Team Rochester has the prayer vigil set up so that each church commits to an entire day of prayer. Being that our church is mostly dechurched/unchurched and recovering Catholics (in their words) and our numbers are smaller than most other Team Rochester Churches, this was no small undertaking.

Participants were encouraged to sign up for an hour to pray. Bless those of you who signed up for the wee hours, even if you didn’t mean to! We were encouraged to offer up the city as whole in prayer, as this was the whole point of the day. Also, our church and its people, the leadership especially. I got the sense through this excercise and also just overall from the time that I have spent at Journey that God is preparing each of us as individuals and the church as a whole for some amazing things that we cannot even comprehend. It is hard to be quiet during prayer times because I tend to want to pray for the whole time, but I did try to just be still and listen. I actually ran out of time for all the stuff that I wanted to do/pray for during that hour. Just now as I am writing I decided that I think it would be cool to do this every Friday morning at 7 (my time that I signed up for). Not that I don’t pray daily, but to have a time set aside that I pray specifically for the city is something that is exciting. I have a core conviction that God loves the city…it is where most of the people are, it is where decisions are made, it is where laws and regulations are made, it is where centers of learning are. I am not saying that people who do not live in the city don’t need Jesus, but you can’t argue with population density.

On a side, but related note: For my class that started this week one of my assignments was to devise an evangelistic prayer list. That was an interesting excercise…I have tried to have daily prayer lists in the past, but this one is actually for a grade. haha. It was good to examine my life and the people in it to see who I can share Jesus with. One of Journey’s big goals this year is to develop one on one relationships. I think that this assignment goes hand in hand with that goal. I am excited about where it will lead.

So Far, So God.