happy halloween

 This should set the mood for a great halloween… 

I can’t wait to see Bella in her costume!

urgent vs. important

In the ministry world, and I’m sure its this way across the board, I find that every day I get distracted from important task by urgent “emergency” type problems that need to be solved.  I have found that I prefer to come in on the days that everyone else in the office is off simply because its less distractions.  Just a couple of weeks ago I had an unusually heavy week full of deadlines and by the end of that week when I looked back I realized I put out more fires than completing all the important stuff I had going on.  Its easy to let urgent matters consume my time to the point that nothing important gets accomplished.  So how do I balance the prioritizing of important task with the spontaneousness of urgent task? While combing through one of my favorite sites (behance.com) I came across an article that offered a few solutions or best practices to consider in managing the important and urgent.

• Prioritize and recognize what doesn’t make the cut. Recognize that compromise is a necessity. Some people narrow their list of important items to just five specific things. Family is often one of the five, along with a few other specific projects or passions that require everyday attention. The most important use of this list is to recognize what’s NOT on it. When urgent matters come up, the “important” stuff you are working on that didn’t make the list should be dropped. You will be surprised to see how much energy is spent on off-list items…
• Compartmentalize urgent matters as soon as they arise. As fearsome humans, we tend to dwell on problems and conflicts. Dwelling takes time and distracts us from resolving the urgent items and returning to the important stuff. When it come to urgency, strive for a bias-to-action.
• Don’t hoard urgent items. Despite how medial an urgent item might be, we have a desire to handle it ourselves. You might think, “Oh this thing is a quick fix, I’ll just do it myself.” Challenge yourself to delegate urgent items to others. Urgent does not mean complex.
• Take advantage of “windows of non-stimulation.” Late nights and early mornings are precious opportunities to make progress on important items with little risk of urgent matters popping up.

running leopard

I upgraded to Leopard yesterday and I am loving it.  I haven’t had that much time to play around and see everything and already I can say its amazing.  I love when you get something new and you find all the features slowly… I hate it when you get a new gadget and all the features are right there in front of you and there’s no surprise later, the newness wears off quick.  But not Leopard (at least so far), its like everything I do I’m finding new little upgrades or surprises that are just making life better. Anyway, I’m sure later on I’ll post more details about how I’m using all these nifty new features.  

the coolest thing in mobile

I love the arts, and I’ve always complained about the lack of arts and culture my city has to offer, but last night I saw a little hope in my unartsy city.  Last night I went to an arts festival downtown called Arts Alive, and it was quite good (for Mobile).  There were lots of great stuff to talk about but the main reason I went was to see a showing of the 1927 silent film Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang.   The score was played live with the film (not the original score though coz they rocked it hard) by the band The Western Lands.  It was outstanding.  I have wanted to see this film since studying it in my Film History class back in school.  Metropolis was the first big budget Sci-Fi movie with an original and controversial budget of 7 million dollars (which is the equivalent to around $200 million now).  Watching it last night in that atmosphere was amazing, I realized just how far ahead of its time it was.  The camera shots, the camera movements, the lighting and especially the set design were so much more progressive than its contemporaries.  I was surprised to see (although I shouldn’t have been) that the overall theme had a very spiritual metaphor beneath the surface which I won’t get into in detail here.  It was by far the coolest thing I’ve every done in Mobile.

I love how throughout history we see that risk takers win (maybe not immediately), and risk takers set the bar for everyone else that will follow.   

i am a recovering practical athiest

A few weeks ago at Catalyst, Craig Groeschel of lifechurch.tv gave a talk entitled Practical Atheist that is still on my mind and it has truly disturbed me in a good way (which was his prayer as he started his talk).  Here are some highlights that have rocked my world a bit… 

• My prayer for you… that God will disturb you so much that you can’t sleep, that you are so hungry to seek the heart of God, that you repent for everything unclean in your life.
• A practical atheist is one who believes in God but behaves as though he does not.
• As pastors, sometimes we believe God exists but we do ministry as though he does not.
• I was a full-time pastor and part-time follower of Christ.
• We believe that our private life doesn’t affect our public life.
• In the story of Samson, when it says that he did not know that the Lord had left him… That phrase freaks me out.
• I think there is way too much starting with the culture and finding what the Bible says, rather than asking what does the Bible say and applying it to the culture.
• At times I’ve asked, “What can I preach to bring people in rather than what can I preach that will bring glory to God?”
• Isaiah 29:13-14 – we honor Him with our mouth but our hearts are far from him

what kind of friend are you

I have been disconnected from blogworld the last few weeks (due to a crazy schedule), so today I’ve been trying to play catch up on my reader and man is there a lot to catch up on… anyway, in my reading I came across this quote… 

“There are some friends who will help you move.There are some friends that will help you move a body.   

What kind of friend are you?

agape

Sunday night we had an Agape, which is a huge worship concert we have every 3 to 4 months.  It was awesome, the band played about 10 songs (includeing Yes You Have by Leeland, which was flippin’ amazing)  and we incorporated several videos and a short talk.  The offerings at Agape always go to missions, and for this one we chose to give it to an orphanage that we work very close with in Zambia.  Below is a video that I put together after our trip earlier this year, we used it Sunday night during Agape…

   

kids krusade

Kids Krusade was a huge success! We had roughly 2000 people here between the two nights, and the best number of all, over 100 kids gave there hearts to Christ. Wow! It’s amazing that every year we pull these off with only a few weeks of preparation, and every year tons of people show up.  A good friend of mine, who’s in marketing, told me that he thinks that outreaches like this are the best way to get the word out about your church, and I think he’s right.   It’s so true, you can have a great website, great direct mail pieces, and even great pulpit ministry, but there is nothing like ministering to the kids and families of your community.  Kids Krusade breaks down to an extremely high energy, action packed service and then about an hour and a half of inflatables (10), food, hot air balloon rides, rock wall, train rides, face painting and who knows what else.  What a way to reach the community, by serving the community by providing a positive environment for families to be together and play together.  Anyway, here’s some great pics my boy Marcus took…          Check out the rest here.