Disciplines for the Inner Life

February 9, 2011 in Personal Preference with 3 Comments

If you are like me instilling your devotions/time with God/Scripture reflection and prayer…or whatever you call it with freshness is a challenge.  The basics are simple.  Read Scripture, pray and work to apply what God tells you.  As with any routine however, it can become quite monotonous.  I’ve used all kinds of resources over the years.  One of my favorites is Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest.  I just went through that again last year.  There are tons of “devotionals” on the market on just about every topic.  Very few provoke deep enough thought.

Disciplines for the Inner Life by Bob Benson and Michael Benson is a fascinating guide to cultivating the inner life.  The strength of this book is that it not only suggests a different Scripture for each day, it also has passages from some of the best writings from the Spiritual classics.  Here’s a sample of the kind of “meat” this guide provides:

Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself.
From A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly

We cannot make Him visible to us, but we can make ourselves visible to Him.  So we open our thoughts to Him – feeble our tongues, but sensitve our hearts.
From Man’s Quest for God by Abraham Joshua Heschel

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Yesterday’s writers speak from a depth that I long to have.

I’m working my way through it for the third time.  The first time was in college after a prof recommended it.  I’d highly recommend it if you are looking for something fresh.  You can find it on Amazon but it looks to be a bit pricey so shop around.

My go to books on relationships

February 8, 2011 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

At Suncrest we are in a message series on relationships called “The Rules of Engagement.”  It got me thinking of my “go to” books on relationships.  These are the books I refer to and refer others to more than all others.  These books are not just about marriage either.  All three can be applied with any relationship.  The list is short.  The books are life changing.

The 5 Love Languanges by Gary Chapman
This book changed the way I looked at my wife.  I’ve used it to counsel dozens of couples and always recommend it as a must read for any couple getting married.

Boundaries by  Henry Cloud and John Townsend

The subtitle says it all:  When to say Yes, When to say No – to take control of your life.  This is a huge area for most relationships.

Integrity by Henry Cloud

My second book on the list by Henry Cloud. This guy is really smart.  The title doesn’t exactly give away what this book is about until you read his explanation for the title.  Not all the book is about relationships but the few sections that are make the book worth the cover price.  The most helpful part of this book is the section on establishing trust.  Specifically he talks about how to create connection with others.  That may sound boring but I’ve seen the lack of creating connection to be the source of may problems in relationships.

That’s my list.  What is yours?  What books and/or resources do you recommend on the subject of relationships?

6 years at Suncrest

February 7, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments

Yesterday was the 6 year mark for me at Suncrest.  This is an important milestone for me and my family for one simple reason:  This is the longest we have served any church.  There are lots of reasons for this:

  • I’ve said it before and feels weird to say it as one of the leaders but Suncrest truly is one of the most healthy churches I have ever seen.  Thanks John Wasem for starting it!
  • Great people to work with.  Certainly the staff has grown since I came on board and some have left the staff but along the way I have been so blessed to serve with an amazing group of people sold out to God’s kingdom.
  • Great elders with servants hearts.
  • Great friends.  Our best friends now live here.
  • A great boss.  Talking with others who serve other churches along the way always reminds me how good of a leader Greg is.  Not perfect, just real, honest, open and desiring God’s best.

I have a ton of memories that have been created in these 6 years.  Here’s a few that stand out this morning:

  • Preaching the 2nd Sunday I was here on the topic of…wait for it…LUST.  That’s right.  I have never forgiven Greg for that one.
  • Jumping into a group almost immediately and meeting Dan, Lara, Kay, James, Christine, Terry and Anna.  We would continue to do life together in group for another 3 years.
  • Driving Jared from the airport on his interview weekend thinking, “I don’t really like this guy.”  He grew on me.  :)
  • Being known as the “loud one” when I preached.
  • Having someone pass out during a wedding.  Guess I talked too long…
  • Developing a friendship with Mike, Julie, Larry, Kelly, Don, Chrissy, Mike, Stephanie,  Aaron and Suzie.  Having them be among the core of the launch team for Hobart Campus and starting an annual Father/Son camping trip with the guys.
  • Running the 2006 Chicago Marathon with Don.
  • Baptizing Don a few months after we ran the marathon.
  • Leading 3 trips to Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  The work we did and the friendships that were forged in the wake of that destruction are priceless to me.
  • Driving Bobby to the airport on his interview weekend thinking, “I really like this guy.”
  • Starting a new group and having Jack, Gail and Lynn stick with us through another 3 years of life together.
  • Helping Suncrest go from one site to two.  Launching Hobart campus is about 50 blog posts worth of memories by itself.
  • Seeing new life in the baptisms, sharing in the celebration of the weddings and shedding tears at the funerals I have officiated.
  • Seeing my family grow by 2 while living here and being blessed by so many surrogate grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles for my kids.

While the number 6 isn’t a big deal like 10 or 25 or 50, let me just say thank you Suncrest for 6 really great years.  For embracing me and my family and allowing me to serve God along side you.

Canned goods, cardboard boxes and changed lives

February 4, 2011 in Stories of life change with 0 Comments

I was so excited to hear recently a few stories from the Children’s Hunger Fund.  We had partnered with them in 2010 by doing a Food Pak Campaign as well as going to their warehouse to pack some of the Food Paks.

I first heard about them via a friend and was immediately impressed with their operation.  Not only did they have a big mission, they also had the operations in place to run it efficiently and effectively.  Essentially in the Food Pak Campaign they gave us empty boxes and then we sent them home with our families to fill up with non-perishable supplies.  These boxes were then given back to CHF to distribute to families in need in our local area.  One of the distinctive qualities about CHF is that they don’t just randomly give away food.  They actually partner with churches whom they train on how to identify people in need and then to deliver the food paks as an opportunity to reach out to them.

We were able to fill over 60 boxes and below are some stories from families who received Food Paks.

  • A church in Chicago began delivering Food Paks to a woman and over a period of time she began attending church, gave her life to Christ, got baptized, and is now delivering Food Paks to other needy families in her neighborhood.
  • “I met Irena at the clothing outlet over a year ago and she had told me that she had signed up for the food paks and that she really needed them so I looked into it and that same week I started meeting with her. She started coming to ESL and her daughter started coming to AWANA. Soon after Irena made a profession of faith… We received answered prayer and things got better with her husband’s job and she was so thankful that we were there for her in her time of need as well as her getting to know the Lord through the Word.”
  • Through the Food Pak ministry, a church in the chicagoland area was able to begin a relationship with a family made up of father, mother, 2 sons, a girlfriend of one son and their two young children. Family was on government aid and had to heat to the house with the stove because electricity was often shut off. Throughout the visits, the family became receptive to the gospel and the Bible studies being shared with them. The whole family would gather in the kitchen as the pastor would share from the Word during the Food Pak visit. After a while they became regular attenders at the church and began serving in various outreach events. The church was also able to help them move into a smaller house with a more manageable rent, and help them purchase a minivan.

I love seeing the kingdom of God at work!

How do you know if you are successful?

February 3, 2011 in Leadership with 4 Comments

How do you know if you are successful as a church?

That’s a question we are asking a lot around Suncrest.  We have had the conversation a lot and developed a few metrics, but have never focused on it as much as we are now.

2011 is a year of focusing on infrastructure, alignment and leadership development for us.  Greg has described recent seasons as a rubber band being stretched to the limit.  This year is about releasing the tension long enough to prepare for the next season.  Another way to look at it is to say we are letting off the gas pedal a little, sometimes even pulling into the garage to get some upgrades to prepare for the next race.  It does not mean we are not pursuing our mission with fervor but rather focusing on some foundational issues that will allow us to go even further and faster in the next season.

One of the outcomes we hope to achieve is a better dashboard to know how we are doing.  We have long measured the basics of “butts in the seats” and “coin in the plate,” but we want to look at a variety of angles of our ministry.  Reggie McNeal says that we need to change our scorecard to measure more effectively our vitality.  Some of these metrics (our scorecard) will undoubtedly include groups and leaders, but one of my favorites is hard to quantify.  It’s stories of changed lives and the mission being accomplished.    Stories help uncover what’s really taking place through a church’s ministry.

I love stories of life change and especially those that show God’s kingdom at work.  Stories where God wins.  Stories where we see God at work through our church.  And stories about churches and Christ-followers working together to make a difference.  I try to do that even on this blog as I encounter them and tomorrow I want to share a few stories that were passed on to me from an organization we partnered with last year, Children’s Hunger Fund.

The Brilliance – amazing worship music

February 2, 2011 in Personal Preference with 0 Comments

Only listen to The Brilliance if you want to hear fresh music that leads you to worship.  The Brilliance is a group I ran across via a podcast.  The recommendation was to check out this album if you wanted to find a different way of approaching worship music.  Much like the lead of the band describes below, I too get tired of worship music sounding all the same.  I love music. I love worship music.  I love to sing on Sundays when we are together as Christ-followers.  But a ton of songs tend to sound all the same.  In fact I was joking around with a potential artist recently who said he didn’t know if was ready to play or not.  I remarked that you really only need to know 3 chords.  I was half-joking.  I’m not a musician and I totally respect the art and skill that worship artists have to have to lead worship.  It just strikes me as odd that a genre of music that celebrates the creativity of our God often is not very creative.

The Brilliance reaches into some fresh territory.  It’s not new because the basis of their sound is more classical in approach using primarily the piano and a string quartet.  Lyrically it is a breath of fresh air.

My favorite songs with a few lyrics:

Breathe

Say
Say what you Will
Show us Your Will as we breathe in the very breath of God

Breathe
Breathe on us now
Fill us with us with your Love
Send us with your Power
Spirit of God.

Hands and Feet

We want to be your hands and feet
Without words we’ll let our actions speak
For every broken heart
For every widow
For those without shelter from the rain
We lift our eyes to you
Looking for answers
We have been called to ease the pain.

We want to be your hands, your feet
Without words we’ll let our actions speak


Our God Alone

Who formed the mountains
and filled the oceans
Our God alone

Who took the dust
breathed life in us
Our God alone
Our God alone

We will worship
Our God alone

These are not love songs to Jesus.  These are powerful songs that drive us to worship.  I’ve been using the album quite a bit in my morning time of reading Scripture, prayer and reflection.  It has made the perfect soundtrack for time with the Father.

You can check them out at thebrilliancemusic.com, on Facebook and sample songs on Itunes.  Also, check out the video below where David Gungor, the lead of the band, talks a little more about the foundation of the band.

How to pray for your boss

February 1, 2011 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments

This one is awkward to write since my boss actually reads my blog but thought this was worth writing about.  Jeff Henderson, campus pastor of Buckhead church in Atlanta first got me thinking on this.  I’ve grown in my conviction over the last several years that the best way to support your leader is to pray for them.  This is true in the church world but it is as true in the business world.  It doesn’t matter if your boss is the CEO, the Lead Pastor or the assembly line manager, praying for your boss helps them AND it helps you.  It changes your attitude toward them when you disagree.  It allows you to look at them through God’s eyes.  It helps you keep a bigger picture in mind.

Here’s how I’m praying for  my boss:

1.  Spiritual Protection – they are human and as leaders face all kinds of pressure every day.

2.  Wisdom and creative insight – they make decisions everyday for which they need God’s wisdom and then they have to communicate those decisions for which they need creativity.

3.  Help me help them – this one is about helping me be the kind of follower that makes their leadership better.

Give Me Faith

January 31, 2011 in Personal Growth with 0 Comments

When it comes to giving, we NEED faith.  I’m going to say that our giving ranks in the top 3 of areas where faith is required.  In giving as the Bible talks about it, we trust that God will make up the difference.  At least that has been my experience.

Giving has always been a faith decision because starting out we had nothing.  And now even though I make much more than I did then, we have five kids and a lot more bills than we did then too.  So it is still a faith decision.

For a lighthearted look at giving check out this video called the “Tithe Rap.”  We showed it as a coundown at Suncrest // Hobart and actually had someone walk out saying, “I don’t like rap.  I’ll wait until it is over.”  I think he might have missed the point…

I think there are 3 questions we need to spend some time reflecting on when we struggle with giving:

1. Do I trust God to make up the difference? This could be trusting him to make up the difference with the 90% we have left after giving 10 (or whatever percentages you want to put in there) or it could be trusting that he will make up the difference when you retire.
2. Do I believe in the mission? If we don’t really believe that the mission of the organization is worth it, we will struggle to give to it.
3. Do I trust the leadership? Here many tele-evangelists and corporate leaders have made it hard on church leaders. The trust for leadership that used to be natural is much harder to establish and keep.  As a leader I recognize and embrace this reality.  I have made it my philosophy that I have to go first when it comes to sacrifice and setting the example.

At Suncrest, we are sensitive to the challenges that people face when it comes to giving. Greg said it best that giving is something we want FOR people not FROM them. There are blessings that come from giving and we want that for people. We are less concerned with WHERE you give and more concerned THAT you give. We are sensitive to the subject of giving but working to be even more direct on this topic that Jesus seemed to say a lot about it.

My wife and I have made some very specific giving goals for this year. I felt prompted by the Spirit in December that God was challenging us to give in 2011 in a way that would be a step of faith once again. We have started giving at this new level and already are experiencing blessing from it. It’s hard to talk about this and NOT have people interpret this as me saying God’s blessing is always a “give monetarily and you will receive monetarily” thing.  I’m not saying that.  I’m just saying that it is does work that way sometimes and other times it is different. Let me quote Greg again from what he tweeted on Sunday:

“Don’t believe those who say God promises you cash if you give. AND don’t believe those who say there is NO blessing.”

May we recognize that we can never out give God but let us try.

I’m in love my with iPhone. Don’t tell my wife.

January 27, 2011 in productivity, Technology/Web with 0 Comments

My wife will accuse me of loving my iPhone more than her but that’s not true.  No really.  I’m serious.  She will also tell you that she’s only seem me giddy about getting something a handful of times in my life and definitely one occurrence was when I got my iPhone.

Most people will skip this post because they hate hearing about the iPhone.  It certainly has become ubiquitous and despite some good competition from the Droid will only continue to grow in popularity.  Alltop had a great post yesterday titled “The 7 types of iPhone owners.”  Regardless if you are a lover or hater of the iPhone you need to read this post for a good laugh.  My favorite type is the Overuser.  He’s

“always on it, to the degree that it’s difficult to hold a conversation.  He dropped $50 on a bulky, toilet-proof case, and down-loads apps out of sheer boredom.  He dressed up as Angry Birds for Halloween.”

Hilarious.  I know a few people like that, don’t you?

I can’t really say I fit into any of those types.  In fact, I’m still rockin the iPhone 3G, from two versions ago.  It’s over 2 years old and I still love it.  I was the fist one on our staff to own one, but now it has become so popular on our staff that other staff get different phones just so they won’t be viewed as conformists.  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.  Actually there is a lot of good banter among our staff since Debby and Greg picked up Droid based phones.  I messed around with one of theirs just to see how they compare and I had flashbacks to windows mobile based phones.  Good effort, but the interface lacked something.  Now the price tag is appealing on some of the Droid phones.  It’s hard to argue with free!  However, in the end you do get what you pay for.  Seth Godin was right when he said that you pay a lot for the iPhone when it is really just a phone.  But he says the genius of it is that you get SO much more than just a phone.  And it is all the extras that make it worth it.

I didn’t get my iPhone because:

  • I wanted to fit in;
  • I wanted to appear cool;
  • I wanted the latest, greatest;

I originally bought mine because I wanted ONE device with which I could do multiple things.  I wrote this post soon after I bought my iPhone and what I wrote then still stands true today.  Beyond the basics of email and phone, I love that I can do everything I used to do with 3 or 4 or 10 things that I can now do with one.  I have about everything I need in one device.  I have:

  • my calendar;
  • my email;
  • my contacts;
  • my task list;
  • access to my financial accounts;
  • access to my budget;
  • my music;
  • my podcasts;
  • my audiobooks;
  • access to my neflix account with viewing capability;
  • a good camera;
  • my bible;
  • voice to text ability;
  • ability to write notes to Evernote;
  • my Google voice account;
  • my alarm clock;
  • a kindle app to read books on;
  • my Dropbox;
  • my Starbucks account with the ability to pay with my gold card;
  • my Facebook and Twitter accounts;
  • ability to find and rent movies from Redbox;
  • access to our church’s database, Fellowship One;
  • my RunKeeper account to track my running;
  • access to our church’s Planning Center Online;
  • my Southwest account.

Well, you get the picture.  I use it in a ton of ways that has not added to my list of things to do but helped me to do things quickly and easily without having to go to my computer or even make a call.  It still amazes me that some still have to go to their computer or office to check their calendar like someone said to me the other day.

What about you?  Do you have an iPhone and feel the same way?  Do you have a Droid and love it as much?  I’d love to hear why.

And now it’s time for random thoughts…

January 26, 2011 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

  • For over 4 years I have been meeting with a group of guys on Tuesday mornings.  Actually I’m the only original member from when I first started this, but it has been such an invaluable source of growth and encouragement.  This week we moved our day to Wednesday.  We are working through the book Love and Respect.  Great book for marriage.  One of my top 3 books that every couple should read.
  • Got to the St. John building and discovered several ladies already setting up for Morning Grace.  That has been a huge hit for our ladies.  Any guesses on who started it?  There’s talk of a Morning Grace – Hobart edition…
  • If you have not heard Brandon Flower’s (of the Killers) Album “Flamingo” you need to.  It is one of the best of last year.  The album is some reflection of growing up as a Mormon in “Sin City.”  Really good soul searching, earthy stuff.
  • I have not tried out Starbuck’s new pay with your iPhone feature yet.  Hoping to tomorrow.  Have you tried it?
  • We found out Sheila’s 20 year class reunion is this July.  We are planning on going.  Man we are old.
  • It’s so exciting right now figuring out new systems and processes to effectively use Hobart’s building and yet efficiently use our central support system.
  • When you are so passionate about a project that it begins to consume your life, when is that unhealthy?

peace.

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