Bible passage – Haggai
I really dig this book and have enjoyed reading it over and over. Not to mention looking into the history of the Jewish prophet.  Can you pronounce his name?

Book – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Ever wonder why Two people can have an equal amount of intellectual brilliance or have an equal portion of athletic prowess, yet, one is “successful” in their careers and one is not?  Read this book and find out.

Music – Mike Dunn and the Kings of New England
I heard about this band from my boy in Atlanta (ironically enough) Dave Huey, and love their sound!  Good stuff.

Times of solitude
If you know me, you know I like to be around people and entertainment.  This little storm we’ve gone through in Massachusetts has allowed me to learn the value of getting away from the noise and spending lots of time in solitude.

Carie
There’s nobody cooler in the whole world than my wife Carie.  She’s amazing!

I saved the best for last.

Hola!  I hope you’re having an amazing Columbus Day.  You can read why we celebrate this explorer/adventurer here.

I have recently returned from the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta and here was my schedule for the weekend:

Friday, 5:30 pm – Catalyst Conference ends.  Begin drive home of 1100 miles.
Saturday, 12:00 pm – Arrive home from long drive with Steve, Al, Billy, and Steve Bramlett.
Saturday, 1:00 pm – After unpacking and chatting with Carie for a bit, I began preparing for a 6:00 pm wedding I was officiating.
Saturday, 2:00 pm – Began searching for my message for Sunday morning @ Fellowship.  It was nowhere to be found on my computer.  So I wrote down a few thoughts I had and prayed a lot.
Saturday, 4:00 pm – began to prepare for the wedding (ironing clothes, polishing shoes, etc…)
Saturday, 4:30 pm – Nap time.
Saturday, 5:15 pm – wake up and finish dressing.
Saturday, 5:20 pm – drive to the wedding.
Saturday, 6:00 pm – Wedding time!
Saturday, 10:00 pm – Leaving the wedding reception.
Saturday, 10:30 pm – Sweet sleep.  I was about to drop.
Sunday, 4:14 am – Wakie, wakie, eggs and bacie!  And immediately begin preparing for Sunday morning @ Fellowship.
Sunday, 10:30 am – Sunday Morning @ Fellowship!
Sunday, 1:30 pm – Drive to Malta, NY to celebrate Tina’s Birthday
Sunday, 4:30 pm – Party with Carie, Jessica, Tom, Tina, Ray, Joanna, Steve, Amy, and several others.
Sunday, 8:00 pm – Watched The Patriots get their world rocked.
Sunday, 12:00 am – Finally get to go to bed!

It’s been such a crazy last several days.  I love it!  And today is relax day, enjoying my wife and a few friends in New York!  Tomorrow I have a great idea I’ll be blogging about. At least to me it’s a great idea.  You can judge for yourself.

What are you doing to celebrate Christipher?

So today is my last day of blogging, because I’m going on vacation tomorrow, and I’ve decided not to bring my computer with me for the festivity of rest.  This will be the first time I haven’t blogged for more than a week since I started blogging in early October 2007, so it will be a welcome break.  Who knows, maybe I’ll come up with some fresh ideas for the blog. 
Thank you to all of you who read, subscribe, or just take a looksy at Martyholman.com.  I love writing stuff, and sharing back and forth.
Todays Friday afteroon at the Internet Video will be my last blog until Monday, August 25th. 
Until then, a few thoughts:

My height is not 5-2, It’s actually 6’3″. 5-2 is my people/week ratio.
Wanna help Claire?  Some crazy awesome people already have!
I will be microblogging using Twitter, which connects to my Facebook account.  You can follow me here.
I want to read two books, though I don’t know which ones yet, on vacation.  Any suggestions?
I’m so excited to be a part of Fellowship Church in Holden, Massachusetts!  I believe this fall is going to be one of the most amazing seasons we’ve ever seen at our church.  Just like I believe this summer has been.  We’ve been building community like never before, seeing people growing in their relationship with Jesus Christ, and I believe God is preparing us for something big.
My cousin, Jake is going to be playing at our church on Sunday, September 7th.  You will want to be here for that!

So that’s all for now. Thanks for reading and enjoying or not enjoying my written communication via the internet. 

Live Different!

Today is the last day of July.

The Passage of Scripture I’m preaching on this week:  1 Corinthians 9

I would love to follow each other on Twitter:  How about it?

My two favorite posts of the day can be found here and here.

Mike Burns is in the house from Germany and can be found at Fellowship Church playing the drums this weekend!

Our lead team worked our tails off this morning to prepare for the future!

Happy Tuesday!

I just returned from an amazing weekend in New Hampshire with our church lead team, and we’re ready to take on the summer time to fulfill God’s purpose for Fellowship Church.  We started off this excellent weekend on Sunday morning at FC in Holden.  I’m pleased to report that for the first time in the history of our church (or at least in the ten years that I’ve been there), we did not decrease in attendance on Memorial Day weekend.  We started off a new series called, “Something old, something new”, and the whole morning was absolutely phenomonal.
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but if you need a reminder – I love our church!
Afterward the service, which focused on Baptism, blogs, and the announcement of our new series coming in June called “One Prayer,” 12 of us took off for Waterville Valley, NH for a time of relaxation and dreaming.  I’ll write more about the actual trip tomorrow, but I wanted to share with you what an outstanding weekend Carie and I had.

Also, you may remember this post where I asked if there was any pastors in New England who blogged.  I found very few in my search on google that I would read regularly, but I did find a few and I’ve been  diligently reading their posts.  This morning getting caught up in my posts, I found that I received a shout out from this guy who’s a pastor in Hopkinton, MA.  Thanks Mike for your kind words,and I’ll be communicating with you very shortly.

As many of you know from this post, and from other places, tragedy struck the family of Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman when his 5 year old adopted daughter was struck down by a vehicle in Tennessee.  This morning I watched this video and it brought me to tears. 

Absolutely no words.

So I’ll start off with the bad news today.  One of my heroes in the late 80′s and the 90′s was Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman.  His songs were and are always so honest and contemplative, sometimes cheesy and refreshingly honest.  I admit recently I haven’t been into his current music much, but I appreciate the musical influence he’s put into my life.
Yesterday afternoon, Maria Chapman, 5 years old, was struck by a car on the property of the Chapmans house.  You can see the details here or at the first link in this post.
Our prayers our with the Chapman family during this really hard time they are going through.  If you read what they’ve done for the Kingdom of God, you will get a better understanding of how amazing they are by reputation.

I don’t want to minimize the aforementioned news with unimportant news, but I was really happy for Mr. David Cook last night as he went through 5 or more grueling months of work and became this year’s American Idol.   This has been the first season ever that I’ve watched, and I really thought it was done right and that the right person won in the end.  At the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy and poppy, this year’s show show inspired me to take a step, go out on a limb, and work hard to fulfill the vision God has given me.

And lastly, for those of you who attend Fellowship Church in Holden, Massachusetts, this Sunday, we’ll be starting a new series called “Something old, something new.”  The purpose of this 2 week series is to look at 3 things that every follower of Christ must go through along their walk with God – To identify, to Act, and to Remember.
How are we going to fit 3 items into 2? 

On Sunday morning, you’ll find out!

Sunday Morning @ Fellowship (10:30 am)
325 Bullard St
Holden, Massachusetts 01520
info@fellowshipholden.com

I’m not feeling very well so now I sit uncomfortably on my bed confined to my room while my life group gets to hang out without me. Oh well, I hope they’re having a good time down there.  Sounds like there’s a boatload of them tonight.  So while I’m up here, I’ll share a few random thoughts:

*I changed my software version of WordPress to 2.5 recently, and my stats plugin stopped working.  This has gone on for about 3 weeks, and then yesterday, randomly, it starts working.

*Mariah Carey – Doing good again,huh?

*Today, I told the guy that influenced me to be a Pittsburgh fan (Steelers, Pirates, Panthers) that I would be switching baseball loyalties to the Red Sox Nation.  He took it surprisingly well.

*I found this guys blog today because of this guys blog.  I think I’ll be a fan.

*Tonight Carie and I celebrate a new episode of “Lost“.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that I haven’t been this excited for a TV show in a while.

*I can’t wait until I started feeling better.   I look like a wreck.

Your thoughts please?

Although rambling rarely gets me anywhere, this morning will be more of a rambling post, because I have so much on my mind.

We’ll start our morning with a shout out to my Savior Jesus Christ, who loved me with amazing love and grace, and proved that love by taking the penalty for my sins by sacrificing himself as an atonement for the world.  I have believed and trusted (and failed many times over), and so this motivates me to do all of the things I do, including blog.

Also, yesterday, I was privileged enough to be on this list of growing blogs in WordPress.  I’m not on the list today yet, but I was yesterday, and that was pretty cool.  Thanks to those who read my blog and gain some value from the thoughts that flow through my head.

I wanted to give a shout out to two new friends who blog.  I’ve wanted to do this for a week now, but every day I’ve forgotten in the daily grind of things.  But you should really check out Steve and Garrett’s blogs.  They don’t blog on a daily basis yet, but when they do blog, it’s usually pretty interesting.

Last night my basketball team played a make up game.  It was the first game Carie was able to attend.  As you may recall, our team now has been beaten by 40 points, 20 points and in this post, 1 point.  Our team rallied around one another last night to win in an impressive 11 point game.

I say it was because of Carie.

My friend, Scott put in his usual 15 points, along with an impressive 3 pointer as the opposing team was attempting a comeback in the start of the 2nd half.  I chipped in 13 points, but with the addition of a really tall new guy who didn’t have a great shot but was a great presence in the middle, I was able to play the role of a shooting forward instead of a power forward, which you might say is not my calling.

So we won 46-35!

This weekend will be another great time at Fellowship Church.  I’m excited about what God is doing here on a regular basis, and this week will be Al’s first week being here two weeks in a row.  Woohoo!

Last week we announced that we will be combining our services for Easter Sunday, so be aware Fellowshippers that we’ll have one service at 10:30 am for Easter!  We’ll be announcing our new theme for this year that day as well!

Yesterday I took part in Watercooler Wednesday, an event you might want to look into if you enjoy blogging and culture.  It’s the brain child (I believe) of my new friend Randy Elrod, and it was a lot of fun to check out. I’ll be a regular at the cooler, Randy.

So my mind is now empty for the most part.  This afternoon, I’ll be sharing an idea we’ll be using for our Easter series for the purpose of utilizing and helping someone’s personal vision and potential.  I’ll post it around 2 pm.

Until next time…

Carie has off school today.  Another snow day here in New England.  We’re eating cereal and she’s reading and I’m blogging this morning.  Some early morning apologies  to Dave Huey, avid reader of my blog from my MySpace page.  I forgot to paste it onto MySpace yesterday, and He wrote me this email, which I just had to share.  Nothing like “sharpening the saw.”

“Good afternoon,I am working on developing some daily habits in my state of being unemployed:

But I have some incredible news.  For those of you who are computer savvy, specifically in the form of html, I have finally found a solution to our problem using Fellowship One.  Yes, we had a slight problem.

The problem was that none of us on staff knew anything about html and that was the language that some of the stage 2 implentaitons like event registrations, online giving, small group management and volunteer management was all written in, so it was difficult for us to implement them.

But yesterday I was able to spend some time with Mike Burns, a friend of mine who now lives in Germany.  Mike shared with me some simple html thoughts and showed me correct ways to implement the features and move head with this excellent software known as Fellowship One.

This makes me happy, and it makes me very appreciative of good friends who I can both teach and learn from.  Who are you both teaching and learning from?

Until next time…

I have a little bit of a lot to blog about today so stay with me. 

I love my life group. I think that’s a great place to start.  This has been the strangest mix of small groups I’ve ever been apart of, and its been such a blast.  We have a few couples in there 40′s, a couples in there 30′s, a few couples in there 20′s, and several single people from their 20′s to the 40′s. 

I love the community, and appreciate their patience with me as far as all the changes that have gone on with Carie and I over the last 6 months.

This weekend at Fellowship Church, we’ll be beginning a new series called “The Atom Bomb.”  Frankly, I believe it’s one of the most important series we’ll be doing in 2008 for those of you who attend FC.  Our team is ready to present a great 4 week series, so get ready!

Also, we’ve started a new blog.  It only has two posts right now, but feel free to RSS it.  It’s fellowshipthis.wordpress.com and it will be dedicated to Fellowship Church stuff, and written by our lead tea only.  Check the first few out here.

Today’s Friday, which means yet another meeting with “the guys” at Finders Pub in West Boylston at noon.  I love this day!  For Friday at Finders, and more so, for date night.  But alas, tonight there will be no date night because of Family Fun Night, an event Carie has for Sonlight City, our elementary school age environment.

We did have date night on Wednesday.  We used a gift certificate and went to Ravezzi’s in Rutland.  It was amazing Italian food (of which I ate too much of), and a great environment (of which I would gladly go back again).  It’s a great place, and I hear that there is Ravezzi’s in Shrewsbury and Worcester too.  Check it out sometime.

Happy Birthday to Ian Ferguson!  A man has now made a mention on my blog for two days in a row now.  Here’s his.  You’ll notice he hasn’t blogged for several months, and my advice to you would be to comment and to inquire why.

This leads me to a question:  When’s your birthday? I’d love you to share that info with me, so write me back and let me know and I’ll put it into my giant database and call you on said day.

I feel a game of Monopoly coming on this weekend.  Anybody in?

Until next time…