Today’s Catalyst post is brought to you by Priscilla Shirer. She started with her encounter with Brian “Head” of Korn (is it with a C…you know the band…that I obviously dont listen to and I am too lazy to google because I’ve got just a few seconds before the 4 month old has a meltdown). Anyhow about how he followed Jesus, left the 20M contract or something ridiculous amount of $$$$ because he wanted to follow what God had in store for him.
Anyhow that’s a modern day example of someone whose life has been interrupted by God…Bibilical example we will invstigate is Joshua- Lead the people into Canaan.
4 Things he did to make an impact:
1- Rose early in the morning- ie he acted immediately in obedience. Oh How I wish me and my children had immediate obedience.
2- Acted fearlessly- somehow we got onto the point here of getting excited about treasure we already had…I’ll revisit this when the CD comes
3-acknowledge the presence of God- if God aint doing it I aint either
4- Consecrate yourself- anticipate good works. Take God out of the box of what we think he can do, stop praying safe prayers
She was the only main stage female and she was very great!
Today’s post is short. Francis Chan spoke about how we should be suffering but through God’ grace we aren’t. He moved on to say as church leaders we are better @ teaching and giving grace to others than experiencing it ourselves. He asked us if we were enjoying our forgiveness?!
Sometimes as church leadership it is so hard to enjoy things because we have so much invested in it. We want it to run smoothly etc and lose focus of what the goal really was.
With that he moved on a little to Do we lack faith in the word that we have to make the resurrection sound better….crazy! They asked his to lead us in the Lord’s Supper (all 13K of us) and just look at Jesus. He said that’s all I have to talk about. But he said how many times do we try to out do everyone and preach the most amazing Easter sermon or describe God’s grace differently to make an impact more than the Word (capital W) of God.
I’ll leave you with those thoughts. I wish we had actually been able to partake of the bread and juice while we were there but they ran out. The leader in me would’ve done it differently…see how hard it is to step away and enjoy.
Okay…bacons in the oven gotta run
Okay I’m going to quickly blog about Matt Chandlers talk before the girls arise. He talked about confession and repentance…something you have to understand about Matt if you listen to his podcasts in general he recaps things he’s been talking about so I had heard that message that those two things dont just happen at the time of salvation, rather they are part of sanctification.
There aren’t sins God is okay with. This is so true because sometimes as we “mature” we might think we aren’t sinning because its just something small but sinning (or breaking communion with God) is clearly a sin no matter what. Immaturity is revealed by God beckoning me to do something and me wanting to run away. His example was about him and his wife saving $$$ for something and then they felt like God was telling them to use it for something else and his immaturity was revealed by wanting to go ahead and spend the $$$ really quickly before they got a clear word from God.
He also spoke of sin for those who want something that isn’t theirs or lack of gratitude for what you do have…this isn’t so much as wanting stuff as it is a pride issue…I want to be the pastor of a large church, or I want to sell platinum albums and travel the country, or I want I a ministry like that when in reality God has not planned us for ministries like those. Be grateful for where you are. We may have a Moses ministry- wandering, complaining people never to enter the promise land only to see it
God has invited us to be a part of what he is doing, but we each play a different role.
Oh how I’m trackin’ on some Chandler!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: catalyst 2009, leadership, parenting, tony dungy
Okay so wrong sport but I’m in a hurry and trying to write the post about Tony Dungy. Granted…I’m not a huge sports fan so I’m glad the world knows that I know that if I make a stupid football reference I’m sorry.
But he said his job as a coach is to have the players be as best as they can…isn’t that a great way to look at the role of a pastor or church leadership? They are there to serve their congregation…ensuring they get “fed”, have proper doctrine, and hopefully discipline all things a coach would do: tend to the “health” of the athletes, teach them, and correct their wrong doing! I could end there and be blessed but wait there is more…
People need leaders when things aren’t going so well…when you’ve just lost the game, players get worried about whose to be fired but thats not what he did…he made them do well what they already know how to do. Sometimes in ministry something goes wrong and we tend to over fix…we just need to step back and say hmmm….where have our basics gone wrong.
Focus on what’s important- and don’t drop the ball before you store the touchdown. Don’t be rejoicing that the event is going to be pulled off flawlessly if it isn’t over…remember the youth pastors wife can always wake up at 3am on the LAST day of camp with food poisoning and threw a kink into the plans!!!!
He also felt bittersweet about being fired from Tampa and them winning the superbowl the following year-oh how in ministry we dont always reap what we sow! And vice versa for all you over confident peeps!
Something I want to look into is All Pro Dads- deficit in parenting- even though we are technologically connected to our kids we are relationally disconnected. They also have a moms program…Imom.com Go check it out! Off to keep the oldest kiddo from smothering the youngest!
Okay so it’s raining again and yes flooding…not to the extent of 3 weeks ago but whatev…
So I didn’t post yesterday but it would’ve been Shane Hipps and I’m going to skip his message because well I’m still trying to unpack it his whole “everchanging never changing gospel” really has my brain hurting. But I did enjoy his analogy of the gospel being like a garden not a lifeless artifact. If we are a guard (like we guard the gospel like a painting) we are motivated by fear but a gardener is motivated by love. God needs gardeners!
So total I’ll unpack Rob Bell: Is Bigger Better?
He talked about sometimes the crowd thins…I’ve seen this and while it was a little sad to see members leave it often helped reduce stress and dissention amongst the congregation.
He talked about if one gives another has to receive and we should be known for our selfless gift.
He really spoke about taking care of yourself so you don’t get burned out and most of all don’t give your family leftovers. He said church can’t be right if things at home are falling apart. I need to relisten to this to fill in some of my notes I must’ve written to fast and in the dim lighting I can’t read it. Sorry…
Okay so this post is about Malcolm Gladwell’s speech. now I don’t know anything really about him but I am interested in reading his books and we go Outliers as part of our catalyst experience pack! Okay so my sermon notes from him:
His theme around the On your mark theme was Mistakes Experts Make:
He said we overestimate the value of extra information…it doesn’t help us to make better decisions. Also being overconfident he terms miscalibration…we think we know more than we do. Oh how we do this so often!
My fav quote from him was “Incompetence irritates me while overconfidence scares me”. This is true in many different aspects of life not just leaders! We are prisoners of overconfidence and in so many ways it leads to our downfall. He spoke about the Battle of Chancelorsville and Gettesburg during the Civil War and how overconfidence lead to the defeat of the Northern leaders @ Chancelorsville and R.E. Lee @ Gettesburg.
The major sign of overconfidence is when the leader stops listening to those around him. Also church leadership needs to change based on size he said a company @ 120 is much different than a company @ 185 people. Oh how I loved his talk.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Andy Stanley, catalyst 2009, ministry, stay at home mom
Okay so its late but catalyst was AMAZING. We spent about 700bucks after tickets, resources, and food but for everything we got…it’s a steal. Jas and I were talking about why catalyst is so great. So here are my reasons: leaders can STOP leading for 2 days and get “fed and worship”, we get tons of resources, we get to meet new people, we get to see how others are ministering and hearing their stories, we get to see ministries that are making an impact in the world and are invited to join in, we get to be challenged to get involve with different organizations, and yeah and we get to hear about how to be a better leader.
This years theme was on your mark. Are you open? My plan is to blog my session notes…I would love to blog more consistently but being honest I’ve got two precious girls…they are my priority and drain my energy.
Session 1: Andy Stanley began and let me start by saying the Stanley family is blessed with such leadership! But he introduced the theme for the first real time he unpacked it by saying we don’t know what we will do that will leave the best and worst mark…but we need to be available for God to use us to make our mark. He also touched on who as a leader are you for instead of who is for you and who is against you.
One of the highlights of the conference for me was his prayer that gave a shoutout to us females. Honestly I don’t remember his words because I was like dude you are so talking to me but it was something along the lines of maybe you are a stay at home mom and feel like your ministry isn’t meaningful…if you know me you know lately I’ve been struggling with ministry and I LOVE LOVE my girls and I’m so blessed to stay home with them but I do feel the need to get involved. Anyhow he said maybe the next big mark will come from your kids or your grandkids. To me it sounded like he was saying the support role is just as important you could be there to nurture. I often think back to maybe it’s to support Jason. I once had a conversation with a pastor who said my calling may very well be to be a pastors wife…there is so much in that calling. Much responsibility and I’ve only been doing it for 18months. Anyone trackin’ with me?
In the batters box for tomorrow Malcolm Gladwell…get excited.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: adultery, Ed Young, Marriage, nightline
Okay so last night I watched Nightline…then I watched the whole thing online. Oh man, people sure are deceived! The panel consisted of a preacher, a recovering sex addict, a guy who runs a website to help married people hook-up, and then a woman who is married but also has a girlfriend. Basically lots was said one of the main points the lady was trying to make was that it isn’t adultery unless emotions are involved…so does that mean a marriage without emotions isn’t really a marriage? She also believes that your truth doesn’t apply to everyone.
Ed Young did a great job of being the Christian spokesman and overall his message was yes we were born to cheat but we aren’t destined to cheat. We were all born sinners so we were born to lie, steal, murder, commit adultery but that doesn’t mean we have to do those things!
As much as it makes me mad to watch those shows I need to be reminded how crazy non-christians are so I can know what I believe and how to defend my truth. Also I need to be aware of what my girls will be exposed to as they grow up!
Okay so I’ve never listened to the referee’s daughter song but whatev…I once again just needed song lyrics. My post today is just an echo of a sermon I listened to last night. I have a love for Matt Chandler, I seriously love how he does church! It’s AMAZING. Okay so part of his sermon was about the 2 types of christians that don’t do anything in church. I’ll start with the second because I want to, They are the leeches…you know the type that go from church to church (multiple ones) not investing themselves in either but just feasting off their buffet. The first type is the referee in a basketball game. They run up and down the court telling others what they are doing wrong and when they retire no one cares…no hall of fame for them. That’s pretty much verbatim because I couldn’t put it any better. Oh how we all have parts of both “people” in us.
If you’ve been in ministry for any length of time we’ve all run into both types, but the referee is extremely hard to deal with because sometimes you just want to say hey come get involved to see how difficult it is. But the problem is these people aren’t involved….they don’t see all the details. I was reading in a book She walked with Jesus about Martha when she questioned Jesus about her sister getting involved in the kitchen. The book nicely pointed about that we would be a mess without the Marthas in our lives, those who keep the details in mind. I often find myself a Martha, but that was free and has nothing to do with my post…so sorry. Great book BTW.
On that note told Jas I feel like a leech and a referee. I don’t have an area of ministry right now to call my own. I love being involved with the youth but I feel that’s Jason’s domain and he does it so well…I’m just his Martha in it sometimes. I helped with VBS and that was fun…but I need something more regular. Childcare isn’t for me…at our old church I got to help out singing and working in the kitchen….I really enjoyed both of those. I guess I just need to get over it that my ministry isn’t always going to look like it has. Although I have given though to teaching some of the moms/daughters cake decorating if they wanted to.
I had tried posting this earlier but I wrote it on my touch and can’t get it to post…and now it has disappeared. I’m rewriting it and my original title/lyrics have been lost. But it was something along the lines of sounding like your mom. I’m turning into my mom and not just in habits and interests but in the way I say things. Lately I’ll say something and Jas will say wow that sounded like your mom! I don’t mind sounding like her she’s pretty cool.
But that doesn’t deal with today’s post. Todays post is about how motherhood gives you confidence. Confidence to do stupid many things like go to wally world with 2 kids in tow even stopping in the toy section?! Hey going to toys is always an adventure but if you had told me 3-4 months ago I would take both of them out in public before they were 15 I would’ve laughed…but now I can do it without too much anxiety! So that’s pretty much all I wanted to say. Today I’m having some friends over and we are going to decorate cupcakes. I’m letting the little girls play with fondant, icing, sprinkles you name it! Fun stuff!
