betterthanblank

Here’s some posts I’ve found that I think are worth your time:

• Perry Noble’s Top Six Temptations that Senior Pastors Face
  
• John Woolsey’s Church Admin | Team Communication
• John Woolsey’s Church Admin | Calendars
• Tim Steven’s What I Learned from a Church of 300
• Benjamin Hunt’s Anatomy of a Set #2

By the way I spent a couple hours renaming and organizing my Google Reader.

Popularity: unranked [?]

This is a quote sent to me by Peter. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it.

.. Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is MOVED to COMPASSION. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it annonces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humaness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which dares to act upon the concern against the entire numbness of his social context.

- From The Prophetic Imaginiation by Walter Brueggemann

Popularity: 5% [?]

Yesterday I emailed these questions to our staff - just to get the juices flowing:

TEN MINISTRY QUESTIONS:
1. Are the people closest to me in ministry lifting me higher or dragging me down?
2. How have I intentionally developed the leaders around me in the past week?
3. Am I speaking transparently with at least two other close trusted friends on a weekly basis?
4. Am I submitting myself to the correction and coaching of at least two mentors?
5. Am I holding a grudge against someone?
6. Am I speaking well of other ministers?
7. Am I falling for the temptation of comparing, complaining, criticizing or gossiping?
8. Are my words and relationships characterized by words of faith or negativity?
9. Do people enjoy being around me or am I often down?
10. Have a made at least three new ministry friends in the last year?

TEN LEADERSHIP QUESTIONS:
1. What did I learn in Gods word this week?
2. Is my burden for prayer growing or diminishing?
3. Does my heart break for the things that break the heart of God?
4. Have I grown accustomed to or accepted sin in my life?
5. Am I doing ministry out of an overflow of Gods work in my heart or out of my own strength?
6. Has my teaching and ministry deepened, changed, or evolved in a positive way in the last year?
7. Do I have a sincere peace that Im living an authentic life of spiritual integrity?
8. Is my heart growing larger for people and God or is it shrinking?
9. Am I closer to God today than I was a year ago?
10. Do others comment that they can clearly see evidence of Gods work in my life?
from swerve.lifechurch.tv

Today (actually last week) I’m at Jury Duty & brought Andy Stanleys Next Generation Leader with me in the hopes to complete it. Got to page 36 and am now doing some reflection.

Check out these Questions:

1. What do you do that is almost effortless from your perspective but seems like a daunting task to others?
2. In what arenas do people consider you the “go to” person?
3. What do you enjoy about your current job?
4. What do you wish you could delegate?
5. What do you do that elicits the most praise and recognition from others?
6. What environments do you look forward to working in?
7. What environments do you avoid?
8. What kind of advice do people seek from you?
9. If you could focus more of your time and attention on one or two aspects of your job, what would they be?

Anyway, I’m at Staff Advance tonight and we’ve asked a couple of these questions of ourselves… Very interesting conversations…

Popularity: 3% [?]

Thanks to Peter, I’ve got a slew of reading to do, added to my current reading. Here’s the list:

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni
• Next Generation Leader - Andy Stanley
• Managing the Congregation - Shawchuck & Heuser
• A Primer for Management - Dumler & Skinner
• (Not Pictured) Man: The Dwelling Place of God - Tozer

Much blogging shall ensue from these books I am sure.

Popularity: 7% [?]

We don’t get “taken” to dinner often, so last Friday was a little out of the ordinary because our friends Peter & Jamie took us out for an amazing night at “Elephant Bar” in San Marcos. There was much fun to be had, excellent food & drink. We also hit up the Nordstrums Rack across the parking lot where we window shopped for about an extra hour. I found some crazy sweet shoes but my wife said “no”.

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is Steven - I think his phone is cool.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Hope this doesn’t get me in trouble withe the LifeChurch.tv guys. We are doing their TXT series for the next couple weeks. We’re also doing this thing called “Friend Day 1000″ - I know the name blows, but no one could come up with anything better. The idea is that we want to challenge our church to invite their friends and neighbors over the next 4 weeks and we believe that God will bring 1000 people to LifeChurch by the last week in April. I’m excited to see what happens!

So we needed an invite card, which we normally do for every series as a business card size. As I started messing around with LifeChurch supplied TXT graphic (thank you very much!), I thought of doing something a little different this time. We had a lot of information trying to fit on a very small amount of space, plus the TXT graphic was so subtle and simple. So I decided to create a bookmark that could also be folded in half as an invite card. It worked out better than I thought, plus we folded a ton of them and put them all around the church - it really looks like we had planned this months ago instead of last week.

Again, I’d love feedback from anyone with constructive criticism or anything. I’m supplying the Photoshop file (2.3MB) as well if anyone wants to use it for anything.

Popularity: 3% [?]

My protoge, Karl (read: much sarcasm), is putting on a Guitar Workshop at LifeChurch this Monday night, April 7th at 7pm. (Karl, you should have called it 7 & 7 night!). If you play guitar for worship environments or are aspiring to, or just want to know what the h*ll all those pedals are on stage for - then you’ll want to be there.

(and yes, that’s a Digitech Whammy pedal - if I could afford to I’d buy one for Karl just to make him go, ‘huh’?)

Popularity: unranked [?]

Access Elevation had a interesting post on their ‘office journey’ as a church plant, saying:

one of my strongest recommendations I can give is to get some offices ASAP

…spend some time finding a place for all the boxes you want to hire and fill to actually work.

I’ve been in church planting for about 12 years now in 2 churches. Neither had offices, until now. We’ve been in our offices for about 3 months now and it’s been quite a change of lifestyle. For example:

• My wife & kids are used to their dad being around, even though I did a lot of running around and meeting
• I spent a lot more time out in the community meeting with people, doing lunches, etc.
• I don’t feel like I get as much ‘work’ done at the office, but I do spend a considerable amount of valuable time with our staff now (maybe that’s my new ‘work’)
• I get pulled in multiple directions when I am at the office
• I feel like I’m always cleaning my desk/office!
• If I can get some marked out ‘alone’ time at the office I can get an amazing amount accomplished

Those are just a couple things that have been awkward in the transition. But what I really want to know, is do you agree with the Elevation guys? I mean their church is kickin’ butt all over NC! How do you feel about offices & office hours? How does this play out in your church?

Your thoughts?

Popularity: 11% [?]

I don’t get to create logos very often anymore, so this was a treat. It’s our women’s conference. It’s late so I won’t say much, but any feedback would be appreciated.

Popularity: 7% [?]