barenaked ladies, weezer, and being rich @ Ridge

Having fun is a big deal at Ridge Church. Maybe "fun" isn't what you think of when you think of "church", but we're doing our best to change that.

Last week we opened up with the Barenaked Ladies hit "If I had $1,000,000" to kick off our brand new series "How to Be Rich". It was awesome. Maybe better than the original. It was really funny too.

Continuing in that vein we rocked some Weezer as the opener this week. You know which song right? "Beverly Hills" of course! C'mon, when you hear that you just can't help but belt it out right. Go ahead, have some fun here on renown too - I won't judge you... just go ahead and shout it out. here, I'll sing it with you...
"Beverly Hills, THAT'S   WHERE  I   WANNA BE!" haha, nice...
Then at 1 point during the song Rusty rigged a machine to blow money out into the crowd in the seats! It was pretty awesome! Really cool and really fun!

There are several reasons we do that kind of stuff. I've probably talked about them before and/or will again in the future. I don't have a whole lot of time now, but I'll share maybe the most beautiful reason why = it is at least a little bit disarming for people sitting in our seats who don't go to church (and there always are lots of these peeps!).

*In fact, someone came to Ridge for the 1st time this Sunday. He doesn't go to church. at all. I think he used to when he was little, but didn't want to go back after that. He probably thinks he doesn't "belong" at church. Someone from Ridge had been investing in him for over a year and invited him. He came to Ridge carrying whatever church baggage and reasons why he didn't like church... or why church didn't like him.
He commented to the friend who invited him later - "As soon as I heard your band open up with Weezer I knew that I would be ok." That's beautiful. He knew that this would not be another place that didn't like him. Maybe he started to feel like he could belong at church?

anyway, that was a rabbit trail...

I'm pretty stoked about the series even though I haven't gotten to listen to it all yet. Again, it's "How to Be Rich". We just figured since "Ridge Church" is often confused with "Rich Church" we may as well do a series telling people how to be rich! Seriously, for some reason when we say the name of our church people are like "Rich Church?"

Anyway, the series probably isn't about what you think it's about. It's on THIS passage. And I've written some thoughts about it before HERE. It's about really being rich! Not the kind of rich where you just have a whole crapload of money and spend it on houses and cars and crap like that. You can listen to the 1st 2 parts of the series HERE!

Again, I'm pretty stoked about hearing the whole thing... and about the fun we're having during this series. "BEVERLY HILLS..."
"money, money, money..."