it's been crazy...

...finalizing our catalyst worship band policies and procedures, as well as the audition process. we had our first batch of auditions and the process is working well. looking forward to hearing their final auditions at our march 2 practice. if all works out, we'll have 2 complete band rotations which will allow them to serve a month on, month off. it'll give some guys a much needed time of rest, but also allow things to grow beyond just "us" to be inclusive and get to know some incredible folks. can't wait to make music with these new cats.

...trying to man-handle a multiple-church-in-multiple-states series for lent. we had a great planning session with our friends at okcfirst and came up with some very creative, very progressive ideas for the lent series that is beginning next wednesday (ash wednesday in case you didn't know). this has been a lot of fun creating the artwork and dreaming up how to implement our creative response, and i need to give a huge shoutout to my boy david patrick for making the videos. they look great.

...writing some new songs. the iphone recorder is so beneficial to get ideas recorded to reference later. started writing a new song even last night. that's about 4-6 new ideas in the last month. it's exciting. not all of them are winners but at least its something to get the ball rolling and may lead to something great. keep on the lookout for those new ones.

update...

wow. this has been a great last week or so. we started our core values series, wide open. levi is killing it on the teachings. people have been commenting on how they needed to hear it. the music has been fun, we opened with "use somebody" this week. we'll be opening with it again this next sunday. it was so fun!

saturday night, we got to see one of our favorite teachers, rob bell. he was in town on his current tour, "drops like stars." it was all about suffering. not the why of suffering but the "what now?" of suffering. he brought out so many cool moments of what suffering does for us. i can't wait for the dvd so we can share it with others. it was a beautiful night.

sunday night, i led worship at our rowlett community thanksgiving service. brad and ryan played and we invited some good friends, steve luthye and samuel holder, to fill in on keys and electric. it was a blast!

then tuesday night, meagan and i went to see imogen heap. she's an artist from the uk and we love her music. it was great to see her live. she had a few guys that opened for her and then they came out and played as her band. back ted n-ted used ableton live to trigger his back tracks so i was excited about that. tim exile was crazy. he's invited these different programs and contraptions to manipulate and loop audio. you have to see it to understand it, but trust me, it was pretty insane what he did.

pumped about Christmas music. we have our band practice next monday night to go over all the new tunes. we'll be doing some new arrangements of classics that i'm very excited about. i finished up the graphics and designs yesterday for the advent series called "Christmas time is (almost) here." i think it'll have a cool look.

hope this finds you well and i'll talk to you again soon.

a great last week

had a great week last week. got a lot done. i'm pumped about our new series: wide open. it's about our core values love grow and serve. the graphics were fun to make and my buddy david made an awesome sermon bumper with it. we opened yesterdays service with 'all you need is love' by the beatles. it was a blast.

funny story about that: a couple months ago, the beatles rock band game came out, as well as the remastered beatles anthology. i told levi it would be cool to do some of their songs to kinda be current with the pop culture. I forgot about it. when we we were doing the dave ramsey series I found out that they did the original 'the best things in life are free. but you can leave them for the birds and bees. I need money (that's what I want)' I never realized that was them. I just thought it was the 80s version that's more popular. then we did the 'biggest losers' series and I found 'i'm a loser' by them and thought that's cool. then when I was planning for the core values I figured we had to do 'all you need is love'. it completes the trilogy. lol.

I digress. got to meet up with glackey for a writing session for some of the Christmas songs that I'm doing at the liquid lounge. he's gonna run the loops for me so we can have some freedom. It's gonna be a blast and it's on dec 11 at 8pm. we're gonna also do a catalyst Christmas concert on dec 19 at 7pm so if you can't come out to a rock club you can still hear all the songs.

meagan and I have really gotten pumped about tackling our debt which is school loans from north carolina. we've cut back our impulse spending tremendosly and I'm putting all the money I make on the design stuff on the loans and she's doing a couple after school clubs so we can bring in a few more bucks to get out of his debt. this is exciting thanks to dave ramsey's financial peace program. we're having a blast on sunday nights.

hope things are going well for you. wherever this finds you.

(ps- dont try to write a blog on your iPhone. It took me forever and this is the fifth edit. )

upcoming series graphics

ok. so we just started our current teaching series, biggest losers. i was pretty pumped about the design i came up with. it actually was one i created last year but we decided not to do the series. i lost the original when my hard drive failed but i was able to recreate it. you can see it now at thebeakeronline.com

i wanted to get a head start on the next series' graphics because my buddy david is going to be creating some videos to use (bumper, loop, etc). i started today and got a basic idea. then after meagan and i got back from seeing "couples retreat" (really good by the way) i jumped on the ol' mac and worked a bit more on it and came up with a really sweet look (imho). kinda futuristic, sci-fi design. clean and edgy at the same time. can't wait to unveil it.

want a sneek peek? reply to me on twitter (@jlsprang) and i'll send you a link to view it :)

marketing

since we got out here to texas, we have done our best to get the word out that catalyst is here. we first got a web page designed by my good friend will hill at delco. i started working with illustrator to create designs and ads that we placed in various paper deals. we got on myspace, facebook, blogs, youtube, and other things. the list is pretty long. we wanted to be everywhere and have as much web presence as possible.

recently, we have gotten to know a friend of ours at catalyst who works in the advertising field and she said she wanted to help us streamline our presence so that each was working together. we had a meeting with her last week and had an incredible time with learning what our advertising is doing for us and she gave us some advice for how to make those things happen.

it was a priceless conversation and we're excited about making our web presence more efficient.

3d software

a good friend of mine told me about this free google software called sketchup that enables you to create 3d designs of anything. so i downloaded it and started messing around.

we're getting close to getting in our building and i wanted to give people a taste of what it would look like to walk into our worship area. so here it is...

old friends, pt 3

so i'm sitting at starbucks and i jump on to facebook real quick to reply to a friend and i get a chat that says, "hey man!" i had no idea who it was because his display wasn't his name. so i jumped on his page and saw his email and some pics and remembered who it was.

he was a year younger than me in middle school thru high school and we played basketball together on jv and varsity (and of course gym class). he just launched his new clothing line and is designing so we chatted a little bit.

i can't believe that this is possible. to not talk to someone for years, 10 years in fact, and find them and make connection again. with all the craziness that comes with facebook and myspace (or spacebook as some one called it) it still is such an awesome thing to find those people you've lost touch with.

be sure to stop by his site so he can get some hits. the stuff is pretty sweet:

kickboard kouture
www.kickboardking.com

thx guys

shirts and stuff

so a bunch of people were excited about the new t-shirt designs. so much so that we decided to order 2 different styles. the shield in long sleeve and spikes in short sleeve. thanks for all of your kind words about the designs. i had a lot of fun designing them. i sent the numbers for how many we want of each shirt and then i'll get the artwork to him. we should have them printing within the next few days.

the past few weeks at church have been awesome. God has been present in a real and unique way. you can see the music from last week here and i'll have the music from this past week up in a few days.

my hard drive is full and i've ordered an external but it hasn't arrived yet. everything's running pretty slow.

tshirts

so i've been doing some designs for a new catalyst tshirt.

i'll put them up on my design blog and you can comment on which ones you like.

got a little creative...

with some desktop wallpapers. jules asked me if i could make her one so that it would be cooler than just having our catalyst (C) logo by itself. so i designed a few and put them at thebeaker.online.

check them out and download them to show your catalyst support!

t-shirt poll

hey guys

jump on over to my design blog and vote on which fusion t-shirt design you like the most.

unLONE: unPLUGGED

this weekend our worship band, fusion, is going simple with only my guitar, meagan's keys and b-rad on djimbe. throw in heather, meagan and myself on vocals and it's gonna get super fly. i made a slide for our announcements so people could be prepared (as if walking in to an entirely different set up won't be clue enough).

design.jsprang.com is live

hey everyone

thanks so much for your support of my design work. the response has been so overwhelming that i have set up a seperate blog for me to highlight my portfolio. i will be posting all of the work that i've done. if you know anyone that needs anything, let them know about my new design site.

graphics

i was able to do some graphics for a couple of people and they seemed to really like it. 2 logos and a banner. they've actually asked me to do some more work for them. hope you like.

The Park Source (logo)


The River Church (logo)


saintkarla (banner)


thanks for checking this out.
see ya soon.

been working on logos

i got a couple jobs to do logos for a church and a local business. i hope they work out. it sounds like the business is going to go with it and i think the pastor is digging my work on his so we'll see how that goes. when they are final, i'll post them.

if you know anyone that needs some logo or layout work (brochures, programs, pamphlets, etc.) for real cheap, send them my way.

happy trunks

have you ever wondered what a white elephant would look like with a santa hat on? it would look like a very happy elephant.

long time no see...

hey everyone

it's been a while. sorry but i've been busy. my last post talked about all the printing we're doing and we haven't stopped. it just keeps coming. we've got posters coming, brochures on the way, and some more banners too. in the mean time our website went live and we've had some good action on it. shout out to will at DELCOdesigns for the website, and to greg lackey of cornerstone rockwall for the graphics.




the first cafe banner ended up being messed up so we had to get it re-done. we got the new one in and levi says it looks great.

our c-vites look great and we've been giving out bunches.

then we have our new logo for the kid's area, "The Lab"

we just got back from a crazy week in chicago. we were there for a seminar on church-planting and it was pretty much a roller coaster ride the entire week. we got there and were bummed then we got pumped and felt kicked to the ground and then we ended up getting some great affirmation from an awesome guy. shout-out to paul johnson, former pastor of real life community church in nampa, ID.

we've got a crazy couple of weeks coming up. our doorhanger-palooza this saturday and then next saturday is the family day: harvest fun, followed by our first preview service on sunday. keep us in your prayers.

peace

catalyst logos

well, here we are with all of the logos finalized, save our children's area logo ("The Lab") and we are very excited. let me show you what all the hubub is about.

here is the Catalyst Cafe' logo. this where we will have all of the refreshments on sunday mornings. we'll have free coffee, donuts, and water for people to enjoy as they talk and hangout before the service. i love it!




this is where people go to find out about how to get more connected to Catalyst Rowlett through small groups and service opportunities.


our kids department will be called C-Kids. and, as i mentioned earlier, our kids area will be called "The Lab," pulling from the chemistry theme of catalyst.


and finally, thebeaker. this is going to be the source of all important information that you'll need to know.






from week-to-week happenings in thebeaker.mini...








to the monthly newsletter...



to our informational website



i hope you are as excited as we are about these logos. we are definitely going to have a sharp, crisp and clean look.

thanks need to go out to greg lackey from cornerstone rockwall for his work on the logos. he did an awesome job.

enjoy

temporary website

hey everyone

i just wanted to let you all know that we have a temporary website in place that has some basic info on it. you can now direct people to the website so they can see that we're legit. check it out when you get a chance, set it as your home page, and talk it up.

we're coming baby!

any of these websites will work:
catalystrowlett.org
catalystrowlett.com
catalystrowlett.info
catalystrowlett.net

happy surfing!