I usually find a place to hide out of the office on Wednesdays so I can study without interruption. While I was diligently working on my message for this Sunday today my office was ravaged at the hand of our children’s pastor. Here is proof of how abusive a church staff can be towards its pastor. Please pray for me as I deal with this trauma.
Tweet Are you planning yet for a better year? Now is a great time to start evaluating the year and planning for a better new year. I don’t know about…
A couple times a year we do an extended weekend retreat. This weekend we are headed to Nashville for an all staff planning retreat. An added twist is that our spouses will join us on Friday night for fellowship and then on Saturday morning for a special brainstorming session. (We think they may have better ideas than we do!)
It started like this. Years ago I was explaining to a friend that I was at one of those “trying to discover God’s will†points in my life. I have been there many times before and will be again. His advice was something like, “Maybe you need to start with a blank piece of paper and give God ample space to plan out the rest of your life. Make yourself completely available to Him.†That made a lot of sense. I left our meeting, however, with a very probing question for myself. Did I really have blank piece of paper?
On November 10, 2009, the longest running children’s television show will be 40 years old. You can read more about it HERE. The fictional neighborhood characters have been engaging and teaching children most of my life. I was 5 years old when Sesame Street hit our black and white, rabbit-eared television for the first time.
I was honored this week when Jesse Phillips with CatalystSpace blog called me a “seasoned leaderâ€. I feel I still have more to learn than I have learned, but it did cause me to reflect on some of the experiences I have had and people that have influenced me in my leadership ability.
In our series “Hot Topics”, where our people were able to text in their greatest questions about God, the Bible, life, etc., one of the biggest areas of questions centered around the issue of the afterlife. Apparently people want to know what’s next….imagine that. In this message I tried to address some of the most repeated questions we received.
My father-in-law was one of the strongest men I know. Into his late 70’s he could outwork most men in their 20’s. He learned to work hard the old fashioned way. He had to in order to survive. He is truly a rags-to-riches story, rising from the poverty of a single mother’s home to the prominence of International President of Civitan International and the Dean of Business at Austin Peay State University.
In the four years Grace Community Church has been a church we have received much praise from people that love what we do. Hundreds of lost, hurting people have chosen to unite with us. We have had some previously churched people join us who felt we were a better fit for them or their family, but mostly we have reached people who previously did not attend church. Most exciting to us is that we have baptized more adults than children in our four years, indicating to us that we are truly evangelizing and not just helping people swap churches. It has been a wild, exciting, thrilling time watching God shape us over these first few years.
As we announced Sunday, Grace Community Church has purchased 58 acres of land just a couple miles from our current meeting location. We are excited about the future. To answer some of the questions we did not have time to share Sunday, I wanted to share some details about this process.
Don’t say no to opportunities…say yes to an organized plan…
People always ask me how I do it all…
The truth is I don’t…
I just have a plan for my life…
Now, I really think there is more to this than just a good trivia stumper. I think the fact that David, the one who “killed the lion and the bear” could be afraid, means that I too will have times that I am afraid. The fact that the one who “approached Goliath” could become terrified means that surely times will shake my confidence. The reality that the one who was “anointed to be king”, could become so afraid that he would act like an idiot to avoid being found out, means that you and I, who may be of lesser stature in our faith, should not be surprised when we have fear and doubts.
Here are 10 lessons it took me years to understand:
For years, I resisted a call to ministry, partly because of this advice. The simple fact was that I could do some things besides ministry. I had some success in business. In fact, at one point I was extremely successful in my field. In my own strength, I found I could do many things.
I enjoyed meeting some of the people that I admire online this week at Cultivate Conference in Chicago. Names that appear bigger than life to me, because I enjoy their blogs and work so much, were up close and personal. I shook the hands of people like, Jon Acuff, Kem Meyer, Scott McClellan, Kent Shaffer, Tony Steward and Rhett Smith.
