For those of you who don’t know, my wife is nine months pregnant and having all of the tell-tale signs of an imminent labor. However, as uncomfortably low as our unborn daughter is choosing to settle, she is not giving in to our constant barrage of requests that she go the extra 8 inches and just come out. Both of us being huge “What about Bob?” fans, I was sitting down just a few minutes ago and the metaphor hit. Waiting for our baby Junia, is kind of like this wonderful scene in this funny film:

No matter how hard we try, this labor thing will just happen when and how it should…exactly when she’s ready to come. However, being Dr. Leo’s in this whole thing makes that difficult to accept.

We’ll keep you posted.

I was recently on CSS Mania looking for design inspiration, and I came across a site for a web 2.0 product called Gist. Although still in closed beta, the product seems really cool. It allows you to create a digest for important information and new related items (blog posts, news articles, emails, attachments, etc) for important clients you’re working with. In a sense, it’s one-stop-shopping in keeping up with your clients business and the business you’re doing with your clients.

I asked for an invitation to the private beta and I really hope that they will let me in. I use Base Camp right now for project management, but Gist would provide something that it doesn’t: a tool for client involvement. It allows me to stay on top of my client’s business - not just my own. However the cookie crumbles with the private beta invite, I’ll be interested in seeing Gist whenever I can.

I had the pleasure of working with Alice Sundstrom over the past few months to develop and deploy a site for her firm. As principle of Sundstrom Marketing Design, Alice wanted a site which featured her companies commitment to marketing communications for higher education. Sundstrom Marketing Design offers three central services for it’s clients: strategic planning, project management, and design services.

The largest section of the site is the portfolio section which features many pieces of work honored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Innovative, professional, clean and effective would be words I would use to describe many of the pieces in the portfolio section.

Specializing in marketing communication efforts for institutions of higher education, Sundstrom Marketing Design is very well positioned to help colleges and universities engage students, propects, and potential donors. Alice’s experience at the University of Oregon and her background in fine arts really makes her an excellent resource for many departments and university marketing offices seeking to solidify their brand and meet their marketing goals.

As mentioned in my pithy bio, I’m not only a graphic designer, but also a Church Planter. My wife and I pastor a small church plant in Springfield, OR and we are currently working of a document to help secure funding from our denomination. In that document we talk about our methodology. Along with our commitment to the Christian Community Development ideals of Relocation, Redistribution, and Reconciliation we also are committed to the concept of organic church growth.

Now this word organic, does tend to be a trendy word these days - especially in the emerging church world. But I feel after nearly nine months of church planting this is exactly a part of us. Over the summer, Karlene and I have attempted - albeit it a feeble attempt - to grow a garden. We planted tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, yellow squash, corn, peas, and beans. After planting them, we watered them, and waited for them to come up. Some of them did, and some didn’t. Some bore fruit right away and others still haven’t. Some of it grew and then died.

As we’ve been “planting” the church, I feel kind of like the same thing is happening. Some of the things that we were expecting to pop it’s head up out of the ground, never really materialized. Other times, some of the people who were walking alongside us didn’t find the soil nourishing for them, so they had to leave before bearing any fruit.

But the best part of the whole thing is being surprised at the most inopportune times at the sweet fruit which is growing among us. The other day, when I had just about given up on the summer squash I went out out found the start of five or six fruit. Similarly, this week one of our “congregants” had been talking about the tenuous (at best) relationship between the street kids and downtown Eugene business owners. We talked about it for awhile but didn’t really come up with a plan to help the situation. However, she planted a seed by writing a letter to the Eugene Weekly inviting street kids to prove business owners wrong through kind acts. That letter appeared Thursday on a huge piece of paper hanging from the Eugene public library with a colorful mosaic border. Seed of change produced a message of hope and fruit in our community.

As we continue to venture in this world of church planting, I’m continually amazed at the organic nature of this endeavor. As gardeners, we can prune and create conditions of growth, but only to be continually amazed at the beauty of the fruit - unexpected at times - that comes at the most opportune moments.