The Week of the Bird

BTW this is the WEEK OF THE BIRD!

Today was a great Thanksgiving day spent with family and Saturday we will continue to celebrate with family and with a border showdown between the mu tigers and the KANSAS JAYHAWKS.

ROCK CHALK!

I'm a KU fan.

Family and a Movie

"In everything Give Thanks."  Those are tough words. That means in the good, but more importantly, in the bad.

Things that I'm grateful for:

• A gracious God
• A loving wife (who is my best friend)
• Family that we can share the holidays with
• A home that is a gift from God.
• The fact that we have two cars and we own one outright. 
• 2 Good jobs.
• The testimony that we have never been in need. In the years that we've been married we have not missed any bills or gone hungry.  We have remained faithful in our tithe and God has blessed us beyond measure.
• Oh, and 2 dogs, who are outside in the cold and barking because they want in, but since we are at my parents, they have to stay outside and keep the deer away. (or so they think)

Giving thanks is a healthy habit that brings a positive outlook on every situation. When you have a positive outlook, you can influence your tomorrow.  Giving thanks puts life and its situations into perspective. It allows you to understand that you are part of a larger story and that every success and failure is a gift from God.

Yes, failure is a gift. It is through failure that we learn to succeed, and it is through failure that we grow and become the men and women that we are destined to become. 

I saw Disney film, "Meet the Robinsons" tonight and there was a seen that is a great illustration on how we should approach failure. In the scene, the aspiring boy inventor failed at a project and those close to him began to celebrate. The were celebrating his failure. 

They painted the picture that failing is actually good. 

We need to have a healthy view of failure, and giving thanks helps bring us that perspective. Our failures are our gateway to greater things, and when we become grateful of them we can utilize these circumstances to become better today.

Does this mean we give ourselves excuse to sin? No. But this does give us the excuse to try something that we couldn't do without God's help.  Sometimes we stifle our creativity because of our fear of failure.  But when we succumb to our fears, we seal our fate.

Matthew 19:26, "With God, everything is possible." 

businesstry part 1

I read this term a couple of weeks ago and it intrigued me. It was defined s the working of church like a business.

As I thought about this term and what it implied, I debated the argument in my head, "should church be run like a business?"

My conclusion is "no." But church should be run by leaders who lead by solid principles and values.

I believe this is where the confusion begins. We see certain qualitites of leaders in the secular world then see their practices and we assume that its the action that produces the goal.

to be continued.

Great Possibility, Wrong Number, Right Step

My wife and I were walking our dogs, Jackson and Lucy, tonight and we got on the subject of our house. We recalled the process of finding our house.

Our price range wasn't that great and every home that we walked into in our price range turned into discouragement when we walked out. It would look promising on the outside, but we would soon discover the reason each house was still on the market.

We were about to really give-up hope of finding a home that we could afford, when my wife called a gentlemen to ask them their asking price on a home that had some siding and looked nice. Cassie found out that the price was $20,000 over what we could afford, but we decided to drive by it anyway.

As we drove by it we saw another house and got the number. The next day Cassie called to get the price and mentioned that she would talk with me and see if I would like to go see it. Well it sounded good, but we immediately thought, "What's wrong with this one?"

Cassie then called to set-up a showing for 1:3p. the next day. We arrived to the house and saw the gentlemen that was showing the house and he mentioned that he waited for our call but never heard from us, so he set-up another showing with a different couple and that couple had just left.

Bizzarro... we called him yesterday and he's showing it to someone else?

Well, he said that he wanted to stay around just in-case we wanted to show-up, and we did, so great.."Show us the house."

After seeing it, we got in the car and the phone rang. "Why didn't you show-up today?" said the frustrated gentlemen on the line. When Cassie called to set up the showing, she called the wrong person for the wrong house.

We then looked at each other and were puzzled.

After calling my buddy, Jason Mahurin - who builds houses - to come and look at it, he said it looked in good shape. We then hopped on it and purchased it for $10,000 less that what we were willing to spend.

There is a verse that I have hung on to for a long time. I believe that if I walk in God's will today, I will be in God's will tomorrow.

Proverbs 16:9
We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.

This story is just one of many of how God has done this for us, and for that we are humbled and grateful.

Tradition Addictions

Most churches are gearing up right now for Christmas. Some have been engulfed in the rehearsals and putting many man hours into the holiday season.  When you think about it, when a church puts on a Christmas production, whether children, adult or both, hundreds of cumulative man hours are put into the Sunday.

Everything comes to a halt and all efforts, volunteers and resources are focused on this weekend. In this time of preparing for Christmas and with all resources focused on a service in a couple of months, planning for upcoming services begin to slack and the excellence level drops on the scale for the services leading up to the Christmas production.

Now there are some churches who have great Christmas weekends, experiencing valuable fruit(life change) for their time and preparation. However, most churches put on productions and use the excuse of evangelism to cover for their desire to hang on to tradition. When the service actually comes, no unbelievers show up, just friends from other churches or family who are excited to see their kid.

My fear is that churches use "evangelism" to support their addiction to tradition.  We throw out the "evangelism" word and repeat unproductive event to support our unproductive traditions.

I know churches who will put hundreds of hours and throw thousands of dollars into a Christmas production and not one person will be there who needs to hear the gospel of Jesus. 

So I propose: Do something different this Christmas.

• Take the money you would put into a Christmas production and adopt several families. Then do a series a series on The gift of giving.
• Find a local cause: collecting coats for kids, blankets for the homeless. 
• Do something to effect the community. Instead of telling about the love of God, show the love of God.

Think outside of the box this year. Let God do a God thing and use you and your church to effect a community that needs to see His love as well as hear about it.

One God, Timeless Truth, and a living prophet?

On KMBZ News Radio 980, there was an interesting topic regarding the Morman religion. They were looking for Mormon experts to answer some hard questions regarding their religion. 

One question that struck me was, "What sets your religion a part from every other religion?" The caller promptly replied, "We have a living prophet."

I'm definitely not an expert in the Mormon religion but the claim that you have a living prophet (that is appointed) is not something that would make your religion superior to another.

However, this gave me a good reminder to be ready to give an answer for our faith.  I'm so glad I'm that I serve the one and only God who is Sovereign and exists everywhere and gave up His own Son as the replacement offering for our sins.  And all our God requires of us is to love Him in return. 

I believe that is what sets us apart from other religions.

Christmas already?

An outreach or a waste?

Well, after 30 kids, with the Princess being the most popular costume, and Spiderman and the Skeleton coming in second, I'd consider last night pretty successful. Ok, despite the fact that I have no more resee's, it was successful.

As I reflected on the evening, a couple of thoughts came to mind.

1. There are many Halloween alternatives providing safe venues for kids to trick-or-treat. Why does the church re-invent this wheel? All that ends up coming by are church kids and a few extras while the church expends several hundreds of dollars to see no retention in return.
2. With the kids that come to the church, is it really an outreach? How many of those kids/Parents that show up are unchurched? Most likely they are from another church and they live in the area, or they attend somewhere else but know someone. This just promotes proselytizing, not outreach.
   
3. The people/kids that need to see the church in action aren't at church, so for it to be an outreach, shouldn't the church go to the people.

So in order to criticize by creating:

1. Have churches team-up together and rent out a convention center or large community hall to do something so large that it gains attention.
2. Have your cell groups do a neighborhood party.  After-all, we need to be influencing our neighbors. Maybe a neighborhood party sponsored by a cell-group. You could then have your church buy candy and on the wrappers put your website.
3. Do something for the "less-fortunate" kids, who might be at a home, or whose parents have to work at night and cannot take them out. 

Just some thoughts to challenge the process. Hope this provokes some thought.