This past weekend was filled with beautiful music. Friday night, I had a reunion of sorts with one very good friend and another friend I haven’t seen since the days of playing baseball as adolescents - one whom I hope becomes a great friend again. It was brilliant getting to not only visit with truly amazing singer/songwriters, but was even better spending time with amazing people.

At one point in the evening, Miller and another ex-musician were chatting about doing what you love. Attempting to add my two cents, I threw out the word passion. Miller took it one step further by stressing the need for executable passion. Touchè my friend, touchè.

It is one thing to get fired up about a topic about which you feel strongly, whether it be religion, music, web standards or health food. It only truly becomes a passion when you are able to execute that in which you believe. I find myself failing in this regard.

Do what you love. Love what you do.

Jon Hicks asks the following question via this post:

Friday Question: Can you get Great Design on a budget?

Simple question, right? Not really. Design is a four-letter word for me. It is used in such a variety of ways, it makes it very hard to discuss without a clear definition or context. To start, here’s what Mirriam-Webster has to say:

Function: noun

1. a: particular purpose held in view by an individual or group b: deliberate purposive planning
2. a mental project or scheme in which means to an end are laid down
3. a: a deliberate undercover project or scheme : PLOT b plural : aggressive or evil intent — used with on or against
4. a preliminary sketch or outline showing the main features of something to be executed : DELINEATION
5. a: an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding : PATTERN, MOTIF b: a plan or protocol for carrying out or accomplishing something (as a scientific experiment); also : the process of preparing this
6. the arrangement of elements or details in a product or work of art
7. a decorative pattern
8. the creative art of executing aesthetic or functional designs

Now, throw in a dash of context - The Web - and we’re ready to go.

Most people, when asked, will probably relate design to the style or aesthetic of a website. However, design goes much deeper than style. Even in traditional art, design goes much deeper than the aesthetic. There is an intended purpose in the work - a function or message that the artist hopes to convey to the viewer.

Andy Rutledge does a tremendous job of summing up the process of design by breaking it into layers via his emphasis on the style layer. My favorite quote from this article is this

Each layer is important and, done well, contributes to the wholeness of the design. Leave out one layer and the design will fail to reach its potential.

Especially in regards to that last point, there are a few classic examples used when rebutting the necessity of style in web design. One could even argue fairly strongly that each of those examples is missing other elements of design as well (solid IA, layout, etc). Each of those examples overcomes the failings in design with other factors - community, functionality and usefulness (I didn’t say ease of use). Acceptance does not success make. And success does not reflect potential. Sure, the vocal opponents to changing the “design” may say they’ll leave if it changes, but they’ll easily be replaced as the site nears its potential.

So where does that get us? Design is not about aesthetics. Design is not about function. Design is not about ease of use or acheiving business goals. Design is about all of those things combined. A solid designer is capable of understanding how they all relate in order to convey a message.

In standard Easter fashion, we at FBCE pulled out all the stops and built a service around extraordinary music. We have some exceptional talent in our church and as volunteer Technical Director (that’s a self-proclaimed title), I absolutely love to be a part of it. In addition to a solo performance of “Arise my Love” by Woodchuck (a.k.a. Bryan) that gave me chills and received a standing ovation (I know you missed that last note, man, but it didn’t matter. Really. It didn’t), we experienced a time of worship kicked off by one of the most energetic tunes I think we’ve ever done.Besides the fact that it really gave us the opportunity to stretch our new sound system to its limits, we challenged ourselves to get out of our comfort zone. So much so that our guest drummer for the day (a great friend of mine and long-time member of our church) said “are we allowed to play this one?” He said it half in jest and half sincerely, as it was really something we haven’t done in a while, if ever.

We challenged ourselves to leave the “churchy stuff” behind and hopefully shake up the view some may have of our church. This is where we’re headed. Hop on and enjoy the ride.

Remember, when I talk about relevance or creating an environment comfortable to those not familiar with church, I don’t mean that we sugar coat anything. We don’t change the fundamental message. That HAS to remain the same. What we’re doing is presenting that exact same message (fire, brimstone and all that) in a way that people understand, can relate to, and are willing to get up at 8am on a Sunday to come hear.

This brings up a few questions for you:

If you don’t attend church and you did yesterday, why? If you didn’t, why not? Is your “expectation” of church what keeps you away? If a church in your area blew that expectation out of the water and met you right in your comfort zone, would it make a difference? Is it the environment or the message that is given? Does the environment affect the message?

If you’re a church staff member or even just a regular attender, what was different about your Easter Sunday? Was it just another regular service? Was it just another Easter Sunday where you present some drama, give the Gospel presentation and sing the standard hymns? Did you build it with the visitors in mind?

I realize some of those questions are loaded, but I’m really curious. This is something I’m building my life around and I really want to know what people are doing, and what people expect from Church.

Searching for the perfect device, I was hoping to fall in love with the Treo 700w enough that I would be able to wait for Cingular to carry it. Alas, I wasn’t pleased with the few I played with and decided that smartphones have a long way to go before they’ll be useful to me. So, realizing that I was destined to carry multiple devices, I purchased a Dell Axim a couple weeks ago to help organize my busy schedule. I carried a dayplanner for about 3 days, but it did me no good because it didn’t remind me of the things I put in it. The Axim has helped.

The problem? I played solitaire more than I actually used it for the reasons I bought it. Well, yesterday my third iPod (yes, third) crashed. I bought a 20GB 4G iPod shortly after they came out and luckily invested in the AppleCare program. Each time it crashed (twice for those counting - hence the third iPod), the nice folks at the Apple Store graciously replaced it with a new 20GB. Well, yesterday I took the latest casualty in and they explained the “three strike rule” and handed me a brand new shiny iPod with video.

I sat down tonight to start realigning this blog. I was inspired recently when Terry Storch redesigned using the Hemingway theme for Wordpress. I’m basing my new design on this theme, with a little Veerle’s Blog mixed in. So yeah, once again I’m promising much more than I know I can deliver. Stay tuned anyway, we’ll see what comes of it. For now, enjoy this slightly modified Hemingway. Why do I love this green and brown combo so much?

Update: Wow, I really need to get a CRT at home for testing purposes.  Those. Colors. Are. Dark. They looked great at home on my laptop and Dell LCD, but here at the office, they look too subdued on the CRT (granted, it’s a crappy CRT, but it needs some work).

Looks like things are moving along nicely. We got to see the heartbeat yesterday. Pretty amazing what technology can do these days.

Ummm, yeah. So we’re having a little one. It’s still pretty early, so we’re still well within “The Danger Zone” but with solid prayers, we’re confident everything will go smoothly and in about 7.5 months (two days before my birthday) we’ll have a little stinker.

Jeff Croft had a run-in with 1 & 1 Internet recently that yielded a sadly humorous letter “to the CEO” of the company. Having written a similar “letter to the CEO” of a local restaurant chain just yesterday, I feel I can sympathize with lack-of-service.

Considering my page rank ain’t all that high, and my referral will probably not boost his traffic, nor page rank over .00000001%, here’s my attempt to help Jeff “use [his] Google juice for evil.”

1&1 Internet is the devil.

The Minister of Worship and Arts at church sent me an email very similar to that yesterday. Well, that’s how I read it. It really just said “can you do lunch?” My reply simply asked for more information so I could better be prepared for the reaming I was expecting to receive. He wanted to talk about an upcoming worship concert, the band, our technical ministry team, and lastly, dealing with criticism from church members. So we met at California Pizza Kitchen for lunch.
It ended up being an amazing discussion about passion, worship and ministry. My respect for this guy went up considerably. You see, we’re fighting a not-so-unique battle in our church. The church is a pretty strict Southern Baptist congregation, founded in 1959 and has a pretty fair number of charter members still around. We serve up two services, a traditional and a contemporary to try to minister to those charter members as well as the community in which we live. It’s a very delicate balance.

There have been very few times in my life that I’ve felt a very strong calling from God to do something. The most recent (besides starting The Company), was marrying The Wife. Here’s what I’ve learned about myself during those times. I’m an idiot. I say “okay, God, cool. Now you’ve called me, I’ll take it from here.” See the problem?

Here’s what else I’ve learned. If I get out of the way, step out of the boat, and let God do His thing with me, success is inevitable. I can’t fail.

How does this relate to my lunch? Part of what he wanted to do was simply encourage me (something I desperately needed). He knows the struggles we’re facing there financially, gaining acceptance, and finding passionate servants to help us lead. My response to him went something like this, “I know God is leading every thing that I do as part of our ministry. The criticism is one of two things - constructive or Satan - and I turn it over to God to help me discern. If we are going to truly make a difference in our community, we must step out our comfort zone as a church and follow His lead.” This is the only way I can stay in my current position, put in the hours I do, and take the criticism I do - because He is calling me to do so.

I can’t say that I’ve ever been more confident of what it is I’m supposed to be doing with my life.

This is probably worse than not launching at all, but I figured I’d jump on the preemptive marketing bandwagon since we’re about a month behind schedule on getting the EMG website live. So, we launched a hokey little splash page over at Evermind Media Group dot com today. Feel free to add your email address to the list to be notified of the official launch and to receive our (hopefully) monthly newsletters.

Update: There were some annoying layout bugs that were fixed this morning. So much for thorough testing at 2am.