Church

We've been working on several projects at Blue Haven related to the launch of our holiday catalog. One of the most effective was a recent email blast we sent out to over 54,000 people. It's been really cool to see the results roll in. The email blast was a basic HTML newsletter that I designed, similar to the ones I send out for LifePoint.Another project that has consumed much time has been our Whitehall section. Whitehall is a leading provider of home and garden decorations and accents. They are especially well known for their weathervanes. We created a special landing page that features only Whitehall products. Take a peek and let me know what you think.

Blue Haven Pools & Spas Supplies Direct, my day job, is located in downtown San Diego. As part of the San Diego community, we have decided to offer help to those who suffered loss in the recent fires. We will be scheduling a volunteer work day to assist with clean up. In addition, we've created a page where people can purchase basic pool cleaning supplies that will be donated to homeowners who need them. You can find the page here.

It's official -- I've been trained to make coffee. In order to continue consuming mass quantities of free coffee at work, I had to go to training. That seemed fair enough to me. Now I'm dangerous ...

"Divine appointments." That’s a phrase I first heard several years ago and it immediately made sense. A divine appointment is one that God places in your path. It may be an unexpected phone call, a question from a stranger, or even the reason behind why you went to Coco’s instead of somewhere else to eat.I enjoyed a divine appointment last Friday night as I was leaving work. Our parking deck is less than a block from our building and I had just crossed over Broadway on my way to go home. Looking over my shoulder, I see Steve Denney walking up behind me.Steve is the pastor at CityWalk Christian Church, the downtown church that LifePoint supports with our missions tithe. We’ve had the blessing of helping Steve establish a different type of church for the ever-growing downtown community.Rather than hop in the car and head home, I ended up taking…

Why are most people OK with Jesus but not too hip about the church? That’s a question that modern-day followers of Jesus need to wrestle with. Many pre-Christians and non-church-going folks are attracted to Jesus -- but not his church. In some cases, it stems from a lack of truly understanding Jesus. In my own life, as I’ve learned more about Jesus, it often challenges me to change something I’d rather hold onto. I’ve discovered that Jesus is far from a soft and cuddly action figure. He’s a cultural and moral risk-taker who challenges his followers to do the same.That might be enough to unsettle a few of those who claim to like Jesus but not the church.But that’s only part of the answer. The other part of the answer lies on the inside, not on the outside. It’s a call for the church to practice self-reflection.It’s too easy to…