jasonackerman.com

just picked up john legend’s new record yesterday. dude. that guy is a frickin’ genius. not even really my style of music, by and large, but wow. great record.

i was at the coffeeshop secluded from a decent wifi signal this morning, so i pounded out this update on notepad, i hope you enjoy it:

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I don’t do very long updates anymore. I also don’t do very frequent updates anymore. So I’m going to attempt to bore you by dumping a whole FREAKING lot of stuff out all at once. Please forgive me for that.

That being said…

The moving process has been catalyst for all different sorts of things, some expected, some unexpected. Among the unexpected is the health issues. I’m pretty certain I’m experiencing the random physical manifestations of stress, and my doctor agrees, for the most part. From intense neck/shoulder/arms muscle tension, to heartburn, to various other random things, I’ve felt over the last few weeks worse than I’ve consistently felt in my life, barring identifiable illnesses.

So I’m on a bit of a crusade to begin treating my body more like a 30-year-old body than a 20-year-old body. I know, it’s a startling revelation, that one should be aware of one’s own body and treat it accordingly… but I’ve pretty much had the same dietary habits since college… I eat what I want, whenever it’s convenient. I’ve never been overweight, so the ‘what I want’ part isn’t a big deal, it’s the ‘whenever’ part that is bad… I rarely eat anything before noon, and then when I eat, I eat a lot. I’m starting by actually (gasp!) eating at normal intervals, rather than sucking down coffee and calling it breakfast. I’m also on a bit of a ‘caffeine hiatus’… just for a week or two to reset the system, then back to caffeine, but in a more moderated form.

The owner of our house elected to sell it when we move out, rather than continue renting it out. So if you have an extra $319,900 laying about, it’s a great little house. But before we go, rest assured it will play host to at least one big ol’ freaking poker tournament.

Which reminds me, I gave up online poker for lent. Mostly because online poker doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t play for money, and the free games don’t do anything to help me improve as a poker player, so all it became was a giant time-sucker. It’s good to have one less thing to waste time with, since we’re trying to prep for a cross-country move in a truck one size too small for our stuff…

Yeah, you heard it. One size too small. We’re taking hardly ANY furniture, and getting rid of many pounds of stuff. Come about April 20, it’s going to be a free-for-all on our stuff. Come take it. We still have lots of really neat stuff just waiting to head out of here at CRAZY prices.

I feel disconnected, like this is a quick-hit-bullet style post, only without the bullets. I’m 96 hours removed from my last caffeine consumption…

I’ve got a couple articles I’ve written that I’ll be submitting to a couple ‘e-zines’ on new-wave churchy stuff. I’d like to submit them for publication in a place that will pay me, but for now I just want to see how they land. It’s part of my secret plan to never have an office job again.

I’m applying for a part-time worship leader gig in Denver. 10 hours per week, and the church meets at a middle school so there is no office to go to. Just show up and bring the rock, week in, week out. Sounds like a dream job.

In the meantime, I’ll be meandering about the Denver metro area, looking for the best places, coffeeshop and otherwise, to sit with the laptop and design websites until I’m blue in the face, all so we can live in our little corner of suburbia.

….

oy. I think that’s all I have. I guess it wasn’t a FREAKING lot of stuff… but more than I normally write. Until next time… take a few minutes to pick up a copy of David Crowder’s book “Praise Habit”… it’s pretty sweet, and just in the introduction pages does a great job of articulating the concept of worship as a lifestyle, rather than as a singular act.

peace out.

here is the audio from our announcement to compass. you can’t hear any wailing or gnashing of teeth in the background, we’ll just have to do this whole process without the hysterics. enjoy.

my apologies to those who have already heard this news via the Livejournal friendslist, or some other connection.

the beautiful city of denver, colorado, is soon to become our home. this will be a return for me, the first time residing outside the northwest for the rest of my family. this is a very exciting event in our lives, and doesn’t come without some nerves and trepidation.

please stay tuned to this blog, where tomorrow i will be posting the audio recording from compass yesterday, where we made our announcement about this new step in our journey. i think i stated it as well as i could have, thankfully, and i would rather you hear those words than read yet another written capsulization of the story.

very soon, i will also be merging back from a three-blog life (mv2.jasonackerman.com, jasonackerman.com, livejournal) to a two-blog life. circumstances required me to keep some things separate. sorry for that.

so, once we got over the week long plague, things settled down pretty nicely at the monster house. things that happened, in no particular order:

- hosted a poker game, in which i got thoroughly trashed. it sucks to start the year in the hole, even if it is only $20.
- watched boise state pull off the win in one of the best college football games i’ve ever seen. the trick plays were the oldest in the book and were executed to perfection. big win for the little guy.
- ‘celebrated’ new year by watching great performances with garrison keillor on pbs. seriously. it made me feel old and mellow, but it was awesome. so much better than the rowdy noisy seacrest/philbin/clark garbage on the other channels.
- made some progress on a super-secret mission. if i tell you any more, i’ll have to kill you. you know how it is. sorry about that.
- took a sunday off from compass. this was nice… i missed being at church, but when church is work you need a break every now and then, and it was a refreshing one.
- drove to bandon to spend a couple days relaxing. it was entirely uneventful, and that was perfect.

so as you can see, nothing too crazy, just settling back into routine. the week long flu thingy was brutal… i haven’t been sick enough to be in bed for multiple days in a long time. so now, it’s going back to work, getting back into that swing, and some early spring cleaning to try to rid our house of extraneous junk.

visit my wife’s blog – scillymonster.livejournal.com – for pictures from our trip to the beach.

a couple weeks back, the entire staff at compass attended a four-day class taught by dr. don sunukjian (that’s him right above – [ edit - dude's picture was irritating me, so i took it down. google the guy, i promise i spelled his name right, and you can see what he looks like ]). the class was officially titled “transformed communication”, and was basically a compressed, break-neck speed version of a seminary course on expository preaching.

some of the basic principles i’ve already learned just in being coached through the few talks i’ve given at compass. this was a lot more detailed an in-depth. like any class teaching a skill, there was one particular method being taught, and everything was run through the filter of that method. and like any method teacher, don (i’ll call him don, he said it was ok) was fixed on the method so much, that anything that didn’t fit the method was “wrong”. to be fair, that’s his job, and his method is well developed and in practice is quite effective. what’s funny is that what i found as the most important principles were simply basic communication skills, both interpersonal and mass communication. the bible study component obviously won’t be found in a ‘communication’ course, but everything else was speech 101 and so forth.

overall, it was a pretty cool experience. i don’t get a ton of chances to put it into practice, but it was cool to get some good concrete methods down for communicating, because the loosey-goosey thing just doesn’t work real well. it takes an amazing natural communicator to make loosey-goosey work, and even then, it’s difficult to get a group to track with that.

something of a rant below the jump.

Continue reading…

i wanted to write something of a reflective post, because this has been a quite momentous year for our family. this photo really just makes me smile. one of the biggest things is watching my son grow from a newborn to the edge of toddler-dom. as any parent of more than one child will understand, i’m continually amazed by how a person is able to be so head-over-heels in love with a child, and then to have it happen 2 more times. i love each of my kids, completely and differently.

this year completes my first full year working at compass. this was a change that was a long time coming, and God’s timing in the execution was perfect. i’ve learned a lot, both in terms of who i am and how i work, and in terms of new skills for a new career. it’s hard to believe that this is really my third career… but each of the previous two, while i could have stayed in and developed them as life-long pursuits, did so much to prepare me for where i am now.

the rest of this post will come down in categories and notes, list-style.

Concert of the Year: Katy Bowser and Kenny Hutson, at our house. To have a musician that graced our living room and then opened for Allison Krause within the same 90 days… this blows my mind.

Emotional Moment of the Year: Drew left Compass. This felt like a kick in the gut, because it really came out of the blue for me. Everything has worked out, and of course God is bigger than any of that, but the way it all went down was a hard thing, and really changed the face of Compass in a dramatic way.

And the Grammy goes to… OK, so I won’t win a Grammy, but I put some serious effort into playing out, and am now only days away from completing my first solo CD. It’s not something I’m trying to get a record deal with, just an accomplishment I’ve been dodging for a long time now.

I left my heart… in San Francisco. Cliche? Yes. But it was so much fun to take the family to SF this summer. It was our first major roadtrip, and all 3 kids fared magnificently. I hope we can do it again soon. While we already knew we dug the area, we really found ourselves feeling very at home there. Will we be called to plant a church there someday? If so, I won’t complain.

Can I get an amen? Had my first shot at preaching this fall. I enjoyed it, and look forward to doing it again this January. It was certainly a stretching experience.

So that’s the short list of things that stood out about this year. Here’s the quick hits, without much explanation, so don’t complain if you don’t get it, this is for personal reflection, remember?

- new friends – Ray & Ruth, Brian & Mandie, Tracie, Max, Connie…
- reconnecting with old friends – Brian & Julie, Mike
- new obsession: poker. don’t mess with me.
- camping trips: 2
- major computer crashes: 2
- instances of worrying excessively over fundraising: 209388
- website redesigns for compass: 4
- freelance web design projects: 5
- podcasts subscribed to: 4
- podcasts created: none, yet
- hours spent playing poker: approx 100, and all in the last 2 months. i told you, it’s a new obsession. for my wife too.
- the year in sports, uberquick summary: Broncos – looking good. Mariners – awful. Avalanche – decent team, victim of new salary cap. Winterhawks – not that good, but fun as always.

and to top it off, WordPress 2.0 came out this week. i’ll be working on that install next week.

that’s it. this is my last post of the year. what will next year bring? i don’t know. that’s the fun of it, isn’t it? i’m sure i missed a ton of stuff, but it’s evening time, and i’m tired of typing. i’ve got some poker to play.

don’t get too drunk, have a good party, stay off the roads, and have a fabulous new year.

KATU 2 – Portland, Oregon

It’s not the same as most areas of the country… around here, it doesn’t take much to trigger WINTERBLAST2005 wall-to-wall coverage. The storm team jumps into action to point out every minute detail of a storm that can mostly be assessed by staring out your window. But, so it is, and the ice and a thin layer of snow on top of it shuts down the city. We’ll take the break.

We’ve fared fine so far… haven’t lost power, but according to the KATU Storm Blog (are you kidding me?), several thousand customers have lost power and more are expected to. We’ll have the blankets and candles ready to go at a moments notice.

Church was good today. Something about the day has just had a dark mood though… I haven’t been able to place it, I just woke up in a kinda spiritual sort of funk, and it’s hung around all day. It was still nice to see how regardless of how I’m feeling, God shows up at Compass each and every Sunday and does something amazing.

So, the monthly thing appears to be working. I’d like to think I could be more ambitious than this, I mean, Lord knows I waste enough time on other websites, I should be able to throw something down here at least weekly, if not better.

Here is the capsule of where I’ve been, and I’ll elaborate further in the next several days:

It’s been almost a month since my last update. I’m not too thrilled about that, but the month has been that crazy. August was supposed to be the easiest of the summer months. It hasn’t been, in many ways.

I’m not going to go back and recap the whole month. That would be silly, and approaching impossible. I will recap the major events of the week, however.

The reality of going to work at the church without Drew present set in this week. It was an absence I felt very clearly, but there was no time to wallow. The task list covered an entire page of my legal pad, two columns. I had some help… which was nice. I’ll be finding a way to have regular help every week.

The Uptown Village Festival turned Main Street into a giant festival this weekend. I’m baked– too many hours in the sun. Had some interesting interactions with people, as we managed the stages for the festival… the “organizers” pretty much did little to no organizing, which meant we were ill-equipped on sound gear, and had no real idea what the heck was going on, which only served to frustrate everyone involved. All turned out well… but not without some bumps along the way.

This morning, as the festival was getting up and rolling for day 2, we had a preview service. At least for today, I was the worship leader. And all in all… I think the set was great. The sound system was mostly functioning, the monitoring system was excellent, and everything just felt high-energy, fun, and engaging. For my first time leading worship from the main stage, with the full band… it was pretty cool. I look forward to doing it again.

This next week looks to be completely different. I have a talk to prepare for the “service” at the campground, we have a memorial service to attend 2 hours away, and overall, I intend to take the week pretty easy. I need the downtime, it only gets busier from here on out.

September has on the plate 4 gigs, the Compass Launch, and who knows what else. I can say this… it will be an adventure. That’s the way it’s been for the past several months. I don’t see that stopping anytime soon.

Compass Stuff
Long night ahead at Compass, including but not limited to finishing on-screen media, reassembling sound system, leading worship, and quite possibly doing something else entirely.

Other Work Stuff
This week we begin the several week process of setting up an office in the house, and taking on some serious projects. I’ve agreed to take on a contract basis the customer service of one huge customer at the fence company. This will take any extra time effort I have (after a major realignment of my schedule) as well as some part-time effort from my wife and brother. It’s a big deal, and it will be a ton of work, but the financial rewards are rather promising. It’s the getting it set up that is going to be time consuming.

Gordon Shumway Stuff
I’m feeling the need to write some more material. I have several little pieces of songs bubbling in my head, I’m just so terrible at tying them up into finished pieces. I really ought to stay up late one night, me and my guitar, and just force some stuff out… just to see what happens. I can always rewrite the parts that suck. Getting out and gigging though is like a giant steak dinner for my performance-hungry soul.

Just Stuff
I feel like I spend too much time trying to measure up. Am I as good of a dad as this guy? Am I as good of a husband as this other guy? I wish I could write a song like that guy. Why am I trying to become a pastor when there’s all these others that are already so good at it… better than I could ever hope to be? It’s hard for me to believe that when God looks at me, I’m not standing next to a giant cosmic yellow measuring tape, stretching out onto my toes trying to reach the next little dashmark that tells Him I’m good enough, that I’m better than I was yesterday, and that maybe tomorrow I’ll sprout up another couple inches and prove that all the work being done on me is worth the effort.

Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean it’s easy to disbelieve.

Tomorrow is our anniversary.

7 years. I don’t have a 7-year itch, though, unless you count that spot on my head where I got a mosquito bite the other night. That’s kinda itchy. We’re not going out for some big fancy dinner, and we’re really not doing anything that terribly special, since we just got back from SF, and we’re going to be heading to the San Juan islands in a couple weeks… but we still oughta do something nice for the occasion. Any suggestions?

This post is double-posted, at jasonackerman.com and LiveJournal. I do this by hand because the automated plugin is broke, and I’m too lazy to work on it.