Check out this note that my wife DeLynn sent out inviting all ladies to the upcoming 2009 Live the Dream conference at Healing Place Church:

Hello Beautiful Girls,

What an amazing word “HOPE” is…life-giving, wishful and faith-filled. If we all lived with hope, hope in our dreams, hope for our families, hope for our future, hope in God’s promises, how different would our days be? We could truly be joyful, living our lives expecting God to move in our worlds, giving HOPE to the people around us.

My prayer is that through Live The Dream ‘09 you would grab hold of unwavering HOPE, holding on to it for dear life, living every day believing in His promises.

Girls, see yourself captured, embraced and surrounded by Jesus’ relentless HOPE. See it in your children’s eyes, in the people God has placed around you and in the beauty of His creation, it all speaks of the hope and life that He wants for you.

LTD ’09 will be an amazing gathering of women and it won’t be the same without you. Please set aside your busy schedules and invite all the girlfriends in your world and sign up today! I can’t wait to see you! Until then, meditate on this verse and let God speak HOPE to you today!

“…Nothing can shake me; he’s right by my side. I’m glad from the inside out, ecstatic; I’ve pitched my tent in the land of HOPE.” -Acts 2:25b-26 (Message)

I love you,
DeLynn

Registration is open now for the conference, which will be October 22-24 here in Baton Rouge at our Highland campus. DeLynn will be hosting the conference along with Chris Caine, Charlotte Gambil, Natalie Grant, and Bobbie Houston. Check out the website for more details, and to register.

This weekend we got to do something at HPC that I think is one of the coolest things about being a church family. We celebrated the power of God’s grace in about sixty lives as they made a public profession of their faith in Jesus Christ by being baptized. And our celebration with them and their families included free Frito pies for everyone…. Now what else could we ask for? How about dozens more crossing the line of faith during the church services this weekend at our Highland Campus and many more at our other campuses?

It was a great great weekend. God is so good to us and His love and faithfulness are perfect, and His promises are true.

I love being His. What a great time to be alive and serving God!

This has been a great week already for Louisiana. First off, we’ve had some great things happening with outreaches here in Baton Rouge. Check out the post today over at the Servolution Blog:

Serving is not boring. It is something that is fun and exciting, always keeps you on the edge of your seat. One of the best parts is coming up with new outreach ideas and being able to serve a group of people you’ve never served before in a relevant way. Yesterday was an “outreach first” at HPC. At lunchtime team headed out to the Baton Rouge Airport to bring lunches to all the employees that work at the airport. Overall, they served 125 meals to those who work hard to ensure our safety as we travel!

Another exciting part of serving that is also one of the keys to creating a lasting Servolution is partnering with organizations that are already working to bring change in your community. Just today alone, we have had two chances to do just that!

Today a team from The Rock Church in Wilmington, North Carolina mixed in with HPCers went out and helped with the Special Olympics. It is something that we partner with every year, and it is an incredible chance to show the love of God by just loving on and serving the special needs of our community.

The Office of Community Services (OCS) is the state office that is responsible for child services, including foster care. It was through our partnership with this state office that we were able to host our Fun Day for the children in the Foster Care system during Servolution. So today we were given another opportunity to serve with this organization, but this time we served the people that work in the OCS. There are people who are doing what Jesus called us to do by reaching out and loving the orphans. So we reached out and served them lunch and got a chance to thank them for all they do in our community.

We are so glad we get the chance to partner with amazing organizations like the Louisiana Special Olympics & OCS who serve the special needs and orphans in our community daily, and be given the chance to serve alongside them.

All that, and now tonight LSU takes their sixth baseball national championship. Mike Haman said it right tonight at Life University, “God must be an LSU purple and gold fan - purple is the color of royalty and we’ve got gold streets to walk on in Heaven.”

Geaux Tigers! Congrats on the win! And a huge thanks to JP Brumfield and the whole SERVE Team at HPC and the amazing bunch of young people that my friend Bryan McGee sent to us from ROCK Church. What a great week for us in south Louisiana!

—

P.S. Did you know that you can follow @servolution on twitter? Also, check out the live twitter feed for servolution and see what’s going on with servolution all over the place.

Now you know what many of us already knew: Billy Hornsby is such a cool dude.

About the video - I’m really excited that ARC is hosting the Bug Conference. If you are a church planter or ministry leader, this one-day conference is a great way to learn how to use social media and internet communications to get the word out about your church or ministry. Check out the Bug Conference site, and register yourself to be there at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama on July 13.

I can’t wait for this weekend’s services at Healing Place Church as we celebrate Father’s Day and continue in our One Prayer series, with a message titled, “God Is… Wanting To Have A Bar-B-Que” - complete with BBQ chicken and burgers and a whole lot of love for the men and dads in the house, but really just a lot of love for everyone. I really think God has given us a great message for this weekend that will challenge us all - fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers, friends….

Make sure you come ready for some BBQ and ready for God to do something in you.