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Are You More Like Martha or Mary?

By Uncategorized

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, Luke 10:41 NIV

I’m confident that wasn’t the response Martha was looking for. Didn’t Jesus care that Mary refused to cut the pies or set the table? Couldn’t He see that Martha had so much to do if they were still going to eat by noon? Shouldn’t Jesus have told Mary to get up and get busy?

There was work to be done. If Jesus was going to get His fill of fried chicken, someone had to fry it! Martha was tasked with everything. The Lord was coming to dinner. Didn’t He deserve the best? Poor Martha! Left to do it all!

Do you ever feel like that?

Mary was just ‘hanging out’ with Jesus! Sitting at His feet, listening to His teaching, she had forgotten all about making the iced tea. She was busy, too!

Was Jesus saying that we shouldn’t prepare for our family and friends? Was He saying that we shouldn’t have a complete meal, because we need to invest all our time into meditating on His word? Is He asking Martha not to finish rolling out the biscuits?

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Help Me Define My Voice

By Church, Family, Leadership, Uncategorized

I need your help. If you regularly read this blog I’d love to hear from you. Even if you’ve never commented before, consider doing so on this post.

I’ve been active online for over 15 years now and I see what I do here as an extension of my calling in ministry I’m consistently encouraged by the professionals…bloggers, pastor friends and book publishers…to define my life focus. Supposedly if I do I can write a book about it. Currently I simply post what’s most current on my mind or heart, but I always want to improve.

I can look at the analytics of the posts I write, but honestly they don’t tell me much, as there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to any certain theme of posts I write and page views.

So, I need your help. Could you answer a few questions for me?

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This Week in Chicago: Bible, Blizzard and Son

By Culture, Uncategorized

I’m in Chicago this week. What a week to come to Moody Founder’s Week! I’ve been numerous times before, but this is a unique week.

Each service is different than what I experience each Sunday now, serving in a more contemporary setting, but I love the Bible teaching and even the traditional worship. This conference is especially appealing to me these days, because I have a son who attends Moody Bible College. Nate is a sophomore here and studying to be a pastor. I love attending the events this week with him.

This week is unusual also, because

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Common Struggles

By Culture, Encouragement, Uncategorized

The first sermon of the new year was a difficult one, because I encouraged our people to let go of some of the burdens they had been carrying in 2010. We wanted to start 2011 with a clean slate and make it a better year. I challenged people to write the one issue they wanted to leave behind on an index card. We captured those, and though they didn’t have names on them, we recorded the general issue to see what people in our church were dealing with this year. For me personally this is helping to shape the way I preach.

Here is a graph of the over 1,000 cards we collected:

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We Wrote a Story Together

By Culture, Funny, Innovation, Organizational Leadership, Uncategorized

If you follow this blog, then you may remember that a couple weeks ago we wrote a story together. You can read how it started HERE, but basically different commenters each added a line to continue the story. Today I’m providing the completed story. It’s “different”, but reading it shows me how different our minds work. I began the first sentence, but never would I have imagined taking the story in the direction it went.

Here is our story:

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