In this Photoshop I took a cut up photo with color issues and put it together and cleaned it up and filled in for the missing pieces.

Ok, so I can’t get my stinking site towhere I can get my newly created (by yours truly thank you very much) logo as the top banner, so here you go… until I can get the things working properly you will get to view it here. It’s so Web 2.0-y

Well, Youth Explosion ‘06 was this past weekend and I was there to run video in one of the venues with Mike Land and it was lots of work and fun (nice to get away from work for once). If you don;t know what YE is, well it’s pretty much the biggest annual gathering (I think) of teens for a weekend conference in the Cleveland area. This year was loaded with great speakers and bands, there was Craig Gross and Reggie Dabbs speaking and Jason Morant and Benjamin Payne for worship with the concert being put on by Day of Fire and Jonah 33. The big thing for me this weekend was to be able to meet Craig Gross and possibly pick his brain for a few minutes on some burning questions. Before I get to the good stuff, you might want to know who Craig Gross is. Craig is an ordained pastor and the co-founder of XXXChurch.com, a site to help those who struggle with porn and all of it’s ugly side-effects. I have HUGE respect for the man because of the amount of innovation and courage he has to do what he does and to stare one of the biggest secrets right in the face and let people know that there is help out there for it and that they aren’t alone. Craig also did the Starving Jesus tour which I attended a few months ago and wrote about in a previous entry and has recently moved to Grand Rapids, MI to work at Mars Hill (home of another man I have HUGE respect for…Rob Bell). Well, as for picking his brain, I was mainly doing it while I was running Powerpoint of the worship during the worship while he was letting me know where to bring parts of his DVD’s into the presentation and when he was hanging out while sessions were going on. What I found out was that the question to the burning answer user ajoy asked after the Starving Jesus post “i wonder what happened to Mike foster?” and I’m glad to say I have the answer or maybe I shouldn’t be glad because Craig explained to me that Mike has pretty much stepped down from XXXChurch and no longer is really affiliated with the organization and it’s sad because he helped create the thing and really he invented it (he was in a shower when it happened) and so while I’m sad to be that bearer of bad news, it doesn’t mean that XXChurch will be coming down because I’m quite sure that one of Gross’ main things is to keep it alive and breathing for a very long time. I also received a copy of the XXXChurch documentary entitled “Missionary Positions” and can say I now fully understand the purpose of X3Church. If you haven’t heard of it, take a look at the site and read up on it, all I can say is that I definetely recommend the film for those who want to dig deeper and are mature (it IS rated R). Anyways, that was what happened at Youth Explosion that I thought I’d fill you in on.