Where Have You Been?

By Phil Bowdle

June 13, 2015

I’ve answered the same question to dozens of people over the last couple months. The question? “Where have you been?” Fair question. My consistency on social media and blogging has taken quite the dip. Here’s why:

Baby

On December 26th, my wife and I welcomed Ethan Andrew into the world. These last 5 months have been a blur, full of incredible memories. We’ve been soaking up every moment we can with this chunky joy of ours.

New Role at West Ridge

Following Easter 2014, after 4 years as Communications Director, I stepped into the role of leading our Creative Arts team at West Ridge Church. It’s been an amazing and hectic year. We’ve completely reworked the structure of the team and have made 8 new hires. I’ll be sharing more about what this transition has looked like and some things we’re learning in the process, but I can tell you now that I’ve never been more excited about where we’re heading as a team and a church.

Building a house

After 5 years of renting, we’re building a house in Dallas, GA. We’re thrilled to be moving closer to our church community and having a home of our own. We close on July 8th!

Storytelling Trips to Guatemala & Burkina Faso

There are few things I enjoy more than capturing and telling stories. I got to do just that in Guatemala and Burkina Faso Africa. You can check out the stories we shared for Guatemala HERE. The trip to Burkina Faso was more adventurous than we bargained for. In November of 2014 while we were there, we witnessed a coup d’é·tat right in front of us as the people and military of Burkina Faso took over the government. The President was attempting to change the constitution to extend his presidency an additional 4 years (after 27 years in office). With Burkina Faso being one of the 5 poorest nations in the world, the people of Burkina were not going to let that happen.

We were stuck in a house with our hosts for a few days and couldn’t get out of the country. The airport was shut down after some government buildings and politicians homes were being burned down. It was not safe to go anywhere. The USA embassy called and told us to stay where we were at the house, lock the doors and arm yourselves if possible. It was a scary. In the end, we ended up getting to the airport a day later than we were supposed to, and were on one of two flights that got out of the country before the borders and airport were shut down for another week as the government takeover continued. It was a crazy week, but one that God used in a mighty way. We were able to capture and share one of my favorite videos and stories we’ve ever been able to capture.

ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode

Creative Team Featured on SundayMag

Our creative team partnered with the good folks over at SundayMag to follow our prep for Easter at West Ridge. I’ll be sharing some of these articles on the blog in the future, but here’s a link to the full issue.

View SundayMag Feature

Ordination

Last month, I went through the ordination process with our church, and was ordained as a Pastor!

It’s been an incredible year and I can’t wait to share with you some of the resources and concepts I’m learning through this blog. I’ll be broadening the focus of the blog beyond just communications and sharing more practical resources for creatives in the church.

If there’s something you’d like to see covered, please let me know and leave a comment!