Traffic delay on I-40 West kept us from getting to the church on time in Little Rock, Arkansas. So, we only caught the tail end of the worship service at Mosaic Church, enough to sense the energetic vibe of the shopping mall space that used to be a Wal-Mart. During the worship hour in our Xterra, we listened to Gospel music en route and got engrossed by an impassioned Pentecostal preacher talking about having the faith to believe God for moving mountains.

I spotted a worship attender with a video camera scoping the scene, a probable sign of someone doing church reconnaissance. So I struck up a conversation and turns out they (Jay & Mickey Robison) were visiting from Lexington, Kentucky, taking field trips all over to learn more about multiethnic churches. We did lunch together with the Mosaic pastor Mark DeYmaz and our respective families. We ate at a local Mexican place– Senor Tequila— great food and great prices. While the pastors talked shop with DJ, the women talked about more sociable things, and the children sat at a separate table and ate & played away. The Robisons had a son named Jeremy, and an instant bond combusted with our own Jeremiah, social gaming with their respective Nintendo DS. The girls got a spontaneous art class when Rachelle pulled our her collage kit to share.

Mark DeYmaz has a new book coming out in October, Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments and Practices of a Diverse Congregation, published via Leadership Network (for which I work) and Jossey-Bass. Linda DeYmaz (Mark’s wife) is an author in her own right, with her best-selling book, Mommy, Please Don’t Cry, which competed head-to-head for an award right up against one of Rick Warren’s titles. Invigorating conversations since we all have a big heart for multiethnic churches. And, yes, we talked about blogging, for which I highly recommended The Blogging Church as a quick read and primer.

Oh, and Jay, we’ve racked up over 1,750 miles on our cross-country drive so far at the time of this writing.

[update 8/10] Mark DeYmaz is now blogging over at http://markdeymaz.typepad.com/

We’re staying in Atlanta for 2 nights courtesy the southern hospitality of Jeff & Andre Shinabarger. Thank you Jeff & Andre!! I met Jeff at the Q boutique experience, which was an incredibly inspirational time for me as an ideator and all (I had live-blogged it over at the L2 Foundation blog). What’s great is that the inspiration can be had all year round (though you do have to be there at Q to get the 24/7 live experience) now with Fermi Words.

Last night’s dinner was at the Watershed, and while they’re (supposedly) famous for fried chicken, they only serve fried chicken on Tuesdays, and they don’t serve sweet tea. Other than these 2 quirky things, the Southern dining was delightful, peppered with good conversations. BTW, we tooled around in a Toyota Prius, and we’re hooked! So we’ve got to get one of those as a 2nd car when we get to Cali — it’s got a built-in viral conversational piece called the energy monitor. Way cool.

And to wind down the evening, we played a couple rounds of “Speed Scrabble”. Jeremiah had a blast along with our hosts!

Today (Friday’s) family agenda is the Georgia Aquarium, touted as the largest aquarium in the world. We ordered 9:00am tickets online last night, so we’ve gots to skedaddle. Dinner will be with David Park and Danny Yang — anticipating some conversations about moving from a generic Gospel to a contextualized Gospel…