On a day when most people have cookouts and pool parties my family and I spent the day recovering from a monster weekend. We traveled home for family gatherings, church meetings, and my youngest brother’s graduation. It was a great weekend, but by today we were all whipped. So, we basically just slept in and watched TV in our PJs all day.

To make sure we weren’t too, pathetic we went out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, and of course had to top the evening off with a quick trip to Wal-Mart. Because we were all so tired and zoned we just tried to get in and out, but ended up staying for over an hour.

We played with toys in the isle, talked to complete strangers, and ended up having a great time. I wouldn’t redesign our memorial day weekend even if I had a chance. It was great!

Last Friday I took my wife out for our once-a-month-smokin’-hot-date-night. We went to Louisville’s 4th street live to eat some great food, play some pool, and take in a good country music concert. The night was great, but at the very onset of our night something happened that really threw me.

We parked the car and when I inserted my $20 bill into the parking ticket machine it proceeded to spit 17 gold coins back at me for my change. I didn’t know whether to scream with joy like I just hit the jackpot or cry; because for the remainder of the evening I had to carry a 2 lb. chunk of change around in my pocket!

My humble opinion is that the government should remove the dollar coin from circulation. They are bulky, stupid, and as I learned later that night, no one really wants to take them. How annoying.

Despite this mishap we still had a great time, and my wife only said that she missed her little boy, our 8 month old son, once on the ride home. We’re making progress.

This Sunday night Horizon’s pre-launch group is continuing to meet. We meet every Sunday night at 6:00pm at the Silverwoods Landing Clubhouse in Cold Spring, KY. It’s very casual so you won’t need to do anything special, but show up! So, if you want to be a part of a revolutionary new church that is bent on turning Northern Kentucky upside down for Christ then join us this week and become a part of this thing.

Get directions here.

Last night we had our first pre-launch community group for Horizon and it was awesome. Just to finally have most of our group together in one place for a couple hours was very encouraging. As most church groups do we had food to eat and a time to just hung out before we jumped into some study. We are starting to study the book of John, and last night we spent close to an hour studying and discussing the first chapter.

Things went well, and I thought that our group really got into some great study and discussion, but on the way home my wife and I both felt the same way about the study time. We both felt like it was a time that would have been really hard for a non-Christian to jump into. We couldn’t pin point a specific problem, but it just felt like a very typical situation to the both of us. We really didn’t use an abundance of confusing “church” words or anything like that, but it still felt very “churchey” and neither one of us could really figure out how to make it true Bible study and yet still appealing to non-believers.

As a church, we want to do everything that we can to reach out to the lost and broken of the community; so here’s the question I am posing. What kind of elements would a Bible study that targeted non-Christians have? To me, making simple Bible study appealing and relevant to non-Christians is probably one of the true keys to reaching a community and growing a church. Thoughts?

I am very excited to announce the official launch of Horizon’s website:horizonchurchonline.com. This site will be a great tool that will connect us with more people online than we could ever meet face to face. You can sign up for our weekly E-Newsletter, find out about our pre-launch group that is meeting now, and get more information on how to donate to the church and its mission. Once we are launched it will also be a place where you can listen to our weekly sermons and download resources.

Huge props to my brother Josh for helping me get the site set up!