Hey everyone. What a great month. Hard to believe that BLDG D launched about a month ago. It's been encouraging to me to see the volunteers step in and serve in Tech. I have enjoyed serving alongside you, watching you all discover talents you never knew you had and hopefully helping you to develop your skills to take Austin Ridge to the next level. Thanks for being flexible, and willing to learn!

More than a skill or a "thing that you do", I pray that serving in Tech becomes worship for you. During the times when you gently fade the key lights up... or click on a lyric... or tweak the EQ on a vocal... or get critical focus on the teacher... in that moment, more than serving Austin Ridge members you are worshiping God.

Romans 12:1 || Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship. - http://bible.us/Rom12.1.NIV84

I hope you see it that way, and I pray that your desire to serve at Tech is a God-centerd desire. Gadgets and gizmos, while awesome, are fleeting. Brad Thomas has mentioned that we don't "celebrate the launching of a building." Similarly, we don't celebrate Tech for Tech-sake. We celebrate, we work, we serve Him, and pray that He in turn will work through us.

Colossians 1:28-29 || Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. - http://bible.us/Col1.28.ESV

It is an honor to serve alongside you each week. Let's hold each other accountable. We're not serving for Tech's sake, but for God's.

Appreciate you all.

Steadfast in Christ,

Jeff "JD" Reed
Austin Ridge Bible Church

@onballoons, being a faithful SBCer and a current student at SEBTS, sent me several recommendations: Great Commission Convention, Global Baptist Conv, Int'l Baptist Conv

These are all nice and pretty. What a good boy @onballoons is.
Probably a good thing he left Miami before I had a chance to totally corrupt him.

To that end, I give you my Top 10 potential Southern Baptist Convention names...

10) Southern Baptist Convention 2.0: SBC doesn't need a new name. Just slap a 2.0 suffix on it. Create a social media portal for your members to hang out in. You know, like a Baptist version of Facebook... You'll be set. Your denomination is fine. Just needs a little 2.0 love.

9) SBC.tv: Facebook's not enough. If only there were a way to be trendy, multi-technological, relevant... oh, we'll slap a .tv on the end. This will also help connect people with the rich history of televangelists that have worked so tirelessly in the past to contribute to your denomination. 

8) BRU: I never really understood Campus Crusade for Christ ended up changing the name to CRU... but hey, we should totally do that. BRU! Oh, I see CRU is the first three letters of CRUsade. Forget BRU. Then let's call ourselves BAP. Our logo could totally look like the GAP logo. I'm sure they wouldn't mind.

7) "_____": The denomination who's name we do not speak. Ironically there's a movement among SBC churches to leave the word Baptist out of the name. Instead of shunning this practice, embrace it! Name? What's in a name?

6) Mega-convention: Following the NCAA College trend to mega-conferences, SBC & Presbyterian Church of United States of America (PCUSA) will announce a merger. This Mega-convention will be ground-breaking, and will cause for new rivalries among churches as they face off against new opponents each Saturday night on the field. Theological issues? It'll be a slugfest each week.

5) Simple Convention: Hey, if Simple Church (by Eric Geiger) can revolutionize the church, why not see if it can make a dent in your denomination? If Simple Convention doesn't work, try Purpose Driven Convention, Sticky Convention, Your Best Convention Now, Teach me how to love your Convention...

4) Lifeway: SBC already has a perfectly good secondary brand. Just bring it over to the church. Large sections of Christian Culture buy books from Lifeway Stores... if it becomes the name of the denomination, does that mean we can get tithe credit for buying copies of Love Wins? Or is Lifeway allowed to carry Love Wins? Oh, wait, was I not supposed to ask that? #badtheology #myfault

3) CC (Conservative Convention): It's common knowledge that Baptists are one of the more conservative denominations. Embrace that. Call yourself the Conservative Denomination. Ironically, the abbreviations CC may be too forward for the denomination to tolerate. (Think Email humor). 

2) Bapster: Sources recently reported that Netflix is spinning off it's DVD-rental service, starting a second company called Qwikster. In that vein I give you Bapster! It's trendy, it's illogical, and it's bound to fail! Bapster... when your have major conceptual flaws, just spin off the company, give it a second name and pretend everything will work out!

1) Southern Baptist Convention: or... just keep the name and work hard to change your reputation. Change the culture of the convention by changing the culture within... not be filing some governmental form to rename non-profit orgs or filing a DBA for your organization.

Honorable Mention: iBaptist (since that did so well for Apple/Steve Jobs) it would HAVE to work for us!

I joke. Kinda. To the SBC out there, good luck in redefining who you are. Be wise in your steps, and be sure that your name matches your actions... and your actions match your name.

Been re-reading Bill Hybel's Volunteer Revolution. What a great book! As church staff so often we find our individual identity, our purpose, or stability in our own personal "do". In Live Production, I confess, I found much joy in programming VJ for a worship service, or Camera Directing, or mixing FOH audio.

As great as that joy is, though, I found more joy seeing someone that I had trained fulfill their purpose by serving. As much fun as it is for me to do things I do in Media/Tech, I find my kingdom-impact more powerful if instead of me "doing" I lead, I equip, I train. I let go of my own "selfish" joy of doing things myself and instead watch as volunteers discover skills and talents they never knew they had only to use them to further His Kingom.

Kinda cool, ain't it? Ridge Tech Staff and Vol Leadership will be focusing on this in the coming months. 

Those of you in ministry, what are you selfishly holding onto, preventing a volunteer who from being fulfilled by serving?

Don't even know where to start. Last time I blogged was over a year ago. A lot has happened in that year.

God provides. I look back on the chapters of my life. The times where things didn't make sense. I see now that they were all prologue for what He has before me now. Thank You, God, for being smarter than I. Thank You for giving me exactly what I needed (and not what I wanted).

For those of you that do not know, Amy and I have moved the kids to Austin, Texas. Several months ago I accepted a position at Austin Ridge Bible Church, a healthy growing soon-to-be multisite church. We moved out here about 4 weeks ago.

My position is very similar to what I was doing previously. Truthfully, it's almost identical. I love the building process. I believe in the multisite model. The potential of Austin Ridge is phenomenal. I cannot wait to see what God brings about...

The hard part with leaving has been being separated from our friends, family, and volunteers that I worked alongside for so many years. I don't know why I separated vols from friends... You all were my closest friends while we served alongside each other in service to God. Know that you are missed, and there's this great thing called "social media" that allows us to stay in touch. (sarcasm implied and hopefully understood).

I'm going to get back to blogging regularly. There's something cleansing to me about blogging. I love Twitter's 140characters... sometimes you just need more though... like for example in this blog I needed exactly 322 words.

Pray for Amy and I as we transition ourselves and the kids into the #nextchapter. More coming soon.

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
http://bible.us/Eccl1.9.ESV