Our second round of direct mail for LifePoint will hit mailboxes this week. We did our first round before our grand opening last year. We did the design in-house and have been working with Rush Printing to handle the printing and mail services. We will be mailing four different postcards to the same 25,000 households over the next four weeks.Here are the final proofs (click the thumbnail to see a larger picture):Card OneCard TwoCard ThreeCard Four

Have you ever felt like you were in a movie? I had that feeling yesterday as I was walking into the Wal-Mart at Parkway Plaza. As I approached the outside entry, I noticed there were streams of people coming from all directions -- just to get in Wal-Mart. We were all walking in single file and no one was talking. It made me think that Wal-Mart has become the pied piper of capitalism ... only it draws us in, rather than leading us out.

LifePoint sponsored a booth at CityFest yesterday. Matt Tuggle did a great job helping unload and setup everything ... at the bright and early time of 7:30. After eating a muffin together, I left Matt to bolt over to Mission Valley in time to do a few things before our worship gathering started. After that, Jonathan and I headed back over to CityFest to relieve Matt, Charles, and Cory. I told Jonathan that working at CityFest revived my days of working at the Heart of Illinois Fair in Peoria. For three summers during high school, I had a job selling t-shirts at the fair. I worked for one of those rolling booths that travelled the fair and festival circuit. We had about 50 or so different iron designs and I learned how to crank out t-shirts as quickly as possible. I also learned how to shout out at people walking…

We've been preparing for LifePoint's booth at CityFest for about three weeks. Our creative team has done a great job of designing a low-cost booth that is still very attractive. We are displaying various posters with scenes from around LifePoint. These include our worship gatherings, teaching times, KidPoint, and our LifePoint Cafe. I'm especially pleased that several of our featured artists are allowing us to have their CD's for sale at our booth.Having a booth at CityFest is part of an intentional strategy of interacting face-to-face with our neighbors. We'll see how this one goes ... and then maybe we'll tackle Octoberfest in La Mesa!

I met this afternoon with one of the musicians who has played at our LifePoint Cafe. She was bringing me a stack of CD's for us to put out at our CityFest booth on August 13. We had a wonderful little visit, catching up on how things are going with her career.After she left, I reflected on something that has long been a passion of mine -- creating an artist-friendly environment at LifePoint. I would love to see LifePoint become a place where artists are not only welcomed but where they take up residence. A place where they return to draw spiritual strength and support. A place where their creativity is encouraged and challenged to have redemptive value.I think of what the Belmont Church was in the 1970s and 1980s as artists from the Nashville area began attending. A more recent example would be Mosaic in Los Angeles. Both seemed…