Today is the last day of July.
The Passage of Scripture I’m preaching on this week: 1 Corinthians 9
I would love to follow each other on Twitter: How about it?
My two favorite posts of the day can be found here and here.
Mike Burns is in the house from Germany and can be found at Fellowship Church playing the drums this weekend!
Our lead team worked our tails off this morning to prepare for the future!
Looking for some advice on todays post please. Been thinking about this a lot lately, so please don’t just sit back, but participate…Please!
For those of you who in any kind of leadership positions, in the family, in a small group, a church, or a business, I’d like to know what you think the proper balance is between leadership and friendship. Can a person be a friend with someone they lead? How does this affect the leadership role? In what ways do the leadership roles affect the friendship?
If you had all the power in America and decided to ban all of the professional sport leagues except 1, essentially making a US sports power, which 1 would you keep?
I’m from the north, NASCAR doesn’ count.
I told Carie that I may or may not blog about this and her vote was no, but she laughed so hard when I told her I probably would that she basically gave me the desire to write todays post. It’s her fault.
Last night Carie and I had a mini date night. We went to Panera Bread Co. and did some work on our laptops, we ran into ou friends, the McGuiness’, and then we drove home. I had to do a few things at the church when we arrived onto our home property, so she walked into the house and proceeded to do some more work. When I walked in she was working and we started talking about what to do for the rest of the evening.
*Caution: You might find this inappropriate, which of course will encourage you to actually continue to read it.
Eventually we found ourselves on the couch of “the room without the TV” as we like to call it because there doesn’t seem to be a good purpose for the room, and we were talking about things like what to do with this room decoration-wise, and other basic church stuff. And then we did that love bug thing and we kissed. I need to tell you that Carie had left the DirectTV Christian music channel on for background music. I always find this highly offensive. As we kissed (for a long time), Amy Grant came on the radio. At this time, both Carie and I agreed that kssing was not really compatible with the Christian music station DirectTV channel, and more specifically, not with Amy Grant. And although I tried to convince Carie otherwise…
This includes the song “Baby, Baby.”
This post was written with Watercooler Wednesday in mind.
Tonight’s Tuesday. So Carie and I are at Panera Bread Co. with our laptops having a date night/work night. We’ve done this every Tuesday in July, and really appreciate the time together. Usually we start the evening at home with “Pasta Madness” and then drive to Panera, order drinks, and enjoy the evening.
What rituals do you have with the ones you love?
Yesterday I went with a group of guys to what one might call a “guy comedy” type movie. Please forgive me for stereotyping this way, but really it was the exact opposite of a “chick flick” so this is the best way to express what I was seeing. I barrelled over in laughter more than a few times during the film, and though I would not recommend it (not because it wasn’t funny), I must say it did stimulate “an audible expression or appearance of merriment” within me.
MY FAVE LINE IN THE MOVIE: One of the characters was singing (not very good) to the other character, and afterwards, the one who was listening says with tears in his eyes,”Your voice is the combination of Fergie and Jesus.” The way he said it made me laugh so hard I thought something was going to pop inside of me. I now have this as a flair on my facebook account. Thanks Neil.
So the whole point of this post is this: Afterwards the four guys (including me) who saw the film stepped out of the theater laughing mildly and kind of calm. Then one of us reminds us of one of the parts of the movie, then another of us, makes a quote from the movie, and we were off! On our way back to the car, we started laughing. I mean rolling. Uncontrollable laughter. We all jumped in the car, and there was more laughter. I couldn’t even move the car because I was afraid of getting in an accident due to the tears rolling down my face. And when we were about to stop, we would start laughing again.
For five full minutes, four adult men in a car parked at the local movie theater laughed loud without being able to stop. It was one of the most hilarious things that have happened to me in a long time, and I’d like to thank Brandon, Brandon, and Neil for making it all possible.
I’ve never laughed so hard in all of my life.
I have news! Catalystspace.com just featured an email I wrote for them on ministry in New England.
You can check it out here.
I’ll be at the Catalyst Conference in October! Love to see you there in the ATL.
Recently I have been focusing most of my posts on relationships. This is where I believe the most significant amount of change, both spiritual and otherwise, takes place. And specifically In the relationships into which I pour myself. Any relationship I have, I have as a result of the time and energy I’ve put into that relationship. I would never blame other people for my inability to have a relationship with them. I might blame differences in personality (which includes mine) or I might blame life’s circumstances (which also includes mine), but I would never blame someone else for not putting their time into my life. It’s their time. They can use it as they please. It certainly is not anyone’s fault because they are busy or even because they didn’t want to respond.
I think sometimes we get misguided when we’re younger (let’s say 30 and under) because we see how our “infatuations” quickly turn into relationships and then incorrectly believe in some way that all of our relationships will be close and effortless.
But a relationship is hard work, especially if you are not particularly outgoing. No. Change that. Even if you’re outgoing, because you have to put the effort in, and when you get shut down (which you very well may at first, and again, and again), then you have to keep trying – if you really want a relationship with that person. “A man who has friends must himself be friendly” -Proverbs 18:24
I came to Massachusetts as a 23 year old who had a lot of friends in a lot of different places, and I quickly realized this 1 thing. If I was going to have friends here in New England, it was going to be on me. I was going to have to call or show up or send that email. I also spent a lot of nights alone as a single, 20 something pastor who was told by more than one person on a given weekend night that they were busy. But I kept calling and kept writing and kept showing up – response or no response.
This is what a person does if a person wants to have a relationship with someone.
They relate. And they don’t stop relating.
I have this dream. It’s a simple dream really. It starts and ends with people just enjoying being together and growing together. Not under the false pretenses of being a part of a certain status like economic, family, or religious experience, but under something deeper. It doesn’t seem deeper, but it is. By the simple idea that they just really enjoy one anothers company.
To start off, they (the people) might not exactly understand why they would want to be in this community, but they take a chance. A chance to learn, grow, live, influence, and maybe even laugh with their newfound community. Over time they would even use the word “love” to describe their journey with the community they have take a chance on.
Now remember, there is no common sense or special commonality that brings these people together, except maybe a strong desire to love God more, though they might not really understand what that means, and may not even really ever understand fully. So they meet regularly and eventually grow to a place where they can take a chance and influence others in their journey too.
Obstacles (and in some cases tools) to this dream are technology, complacency, prejudice, pride, and comfort. Taking a step towards community can be hard when you have a preconceived notion of what your day looks like,and change is hard to come by, but my dream relies on people all across New England moving out of that notion and connecting with God and people.
My dream is authentic community, and I have a long way to go. But here are 4 ATOMic steps and prayers I’m taking and praying to reach my dream:
1. Authentic community – “God, help us to drop our walls and be authentic.”
2. Transormation – “Transform us as we move toward You together.”
3. Outward reaching – “Help us to not be focused on ourselves, but to make reaching out to others
habit we’ll never take for granted.”
4. Multiplication – “And use us to influence others to move into this journey we’re on.”
