Recently in Show Updates Category

We're right in the middle of the show in Manhattan. Doug is delivering his monologue at this moment.

We arrived in Secaucus, NJ last night at 3am and parked in a Walmart parking lot. Around 10:30am we got up and started the logistics. We picked up a rental truck and got a tire changed on the trailer. Then, back at Walmart, we moved a bunch of equipment from the trailer to the truck.

Around noon, we climbed into the cab of the rental truck (yes, all four of us in a two-seat cab). We journeyed through the Lincoln Tunnel and fought Manhattan traffic to get to Marble Church at 5th Avenue and 29th Street. It's an awesome church, dating back to the 1780s. But it's surely most famous for the 52-year tenure of Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking.

Well, it's a great show (so far) and a great crowd. I gotta run and do my monologue!

Tomorrow, Friday, at 4:45 PM Central Time we will hold a drawing for the "door prizes" from the West coast leg of the tour.
Prizes include a Nano preloaded with reading and writing from our books, and a load of TNIV items including The Bible Experience.
Tune in live tomorrow.

Live Videos provided by Ustream.TV

Update -

We have a location for the Show Sunday July 20 - Copperfield Church, 8350 Hwy 6 N. Houston.
Thanks J.T. for taking us in.

After the first 12 shows, which went great, we have learned a few things about our schedule and work flow.
Part of what we have learned is that we need a certain amount of set-up time before the show. This means that shows we have scheduled in places where they have a church meeting just before our show does not work very well.
So, we are making some adjustments to the schedule or locations in those instances.

This has presented itself in Houston. We are still being supported by Ekklecia Houston but we will not be in their building on Sunday night.

If you are interested in hosting the show July 20 email me.

For Info and Tour Dates

Show update from Fresno, California

After a lovely day off (our only one of this leg of the tour) we rolled into Fresno, California to University Presbyterian church. The people were friendly, helpful and encouraging. This is a really great church. Chris Erdman, who is a great guy, is the pastor, but as in all churches the quality of the community comes from the people. We certainly met the cream of the crop during our stay. Chet, a man about 65 years old made us a most tasty dinner of organic greens, chicken and scrumptious heirloom tomatoes.

The show went really well. The crowd, our largest yet at 163, was enthusiastic.
We had our first technical problem at the start of the show and Preacher Withee stepped up and started the show with no sound support.

People are truly enjoying the show - we hear regularly that people are surprised at both how much they enjoy it and how much meaning they find the message of the show

The show is running a solid 95 minutes at this point. We are working to get it to 90 minutes on the button. Part of the show includes an invitation for people to sponsor a child through the group Compassion International. We have a goal of 150 child sponsorships over the course of the tour. We currently have seen 32. If you are planning to come to the show start thinking now about the possibility of becoming a sponsor.

Life in the RV is good (despite our lesson on the range of a ¼ tank). We have traveled 1084 miles at the time of this writing. We are only marginally getting on each others nerves. To this point in the trip there have been five of us in the RV -Tony, Mark, Dave (who is our prime driving, sound tech and video editor) and Michael (owner of the RV and all around terrific helper and decal applicator) and me. To this point we have spent most of the time debriefing the show, re-working parts, writing blog posts and editing pictures and video. Hopefully that will lessen a bit as we go.

We have utilized host homes each night in addition to some sleeping in the RV which has really helped.

We are few hours from Sacramento - so let's keep rollin'.

View Tour Schedule HERE - Come and Join us.

The Rollin' Gospel Revival officially began Friday night, June 13 at Risen Church in Santa Monica California.
We launched the show with two rehearsals under our belts and great wonderment in our hearts about how it would go.
We had questions about the timing of the show, the transitions, the technical aspects and most importantly, if people would "get the show".
The Rollin' Gospel revival is a concepts show. It involves two time periods, 1908 and 2008; six characters; a revival song; balm of Gilead; and hopeful invitations from our three books. So you can see that there is a lot riding on people "getting" the show.

The good news is that people did get it, and loved it.

I could tell that the show was going to work in the middle of the singing of the first
chorus (the show starts with a rousing singing of the theme song). People popped to their feet and started clapping along. It was such a relief. I had a suspicion that people were going to be into it when there was laughter during the opening introductory video. But it wasn't until the song that I was sure.

The show includes a monloge from Tony, Mark and me which went really well. To great relief.

Fortunately it was a small, intimate crowd so the feel was tight and close. As I type we are making our way toward our second show in Granada Hills, where the crowed, we were told could be in the hundreds. So that will be the next test of the shows connection.

But for now we are buoyed by the statements made by people at the first show - "It was so good", "I wish I knew how fun this was going to be so I could have told people about it", that kind of thing.

And now as you can imagine we are spending time going through each part and refining.

We had to spend the day on Saturday loading the trailer, for the first time, and getting on the road - which went well but will become a drag of the 32 citis.

On another encouraging note we had five people register to sponsor kids through Compassion. We are hoping to have 150 children sponsored through the tour.

So, if you are planning to come to one of the shows, be encouraged. And if you are up for it, dress 1908, bring and instrument and join in. We are hoping the word will spread that this show has a hootenanny feel to it.

View Tour Schedule HERE - Come and Join us.