Articles

I've now had three internet articles published, which is kinda cool. However, if I had the time to write five more, these are the subjects I'd choose. I'd write them, but just thinking about them makes my head hurt. They've been whirling around in my brain for a couple of weeks now.
1. Balancing Statements - Be careful how you speak when you can influence how others think.
2. Rebellious Spirit - Recognizing when it rears its ugly head in others and in yourself.
3. Lending People Your Status - We're not so different than India.
4. Everyone needs a coach who believes in them - And when you find yours, it makes all the difference in the world.
5. Women in Ministry - What you need to know about them.

Where did the headlights go?

It was back to the ER tonight. My nieces's heart rate is still elevated four days after the accident. It's in the 120's and 130's just standing up, evidently that's not good. Doc says that her heart is probably bruised and she needs to see a cardiologist. After getting the pic of her car, I could see how that might of happened. The blessing and curse of seatbelts.

There's a Rumble Strips sermon illustration in here somewhere for the Oasis series that starts tomorrow night.

Kenya at the end of the year

So word is getting out that some friends and I are going to Kenya at the end of the year. The weird thing is how many random people want to go with us. Personally, I've had over a dozen requests. We're going to hold off on all that though. It's just gong to be an "exploratory" trip. I think it will be about six or seven that I've been doing life with on Monday nights. It should be pretty amazing - a mix of a whole lot of intense ministry and little bit of safarai. The cool thing is the number of connections we are getting from the oddest places. It's the craziest thing.

Off to the SuperBowl...kinda

Just purchased airline tickets to Florida leaving late Saturday through early Wednesday. My sister is working down in Florida where some of the SuperBowl big dawgs are staying. I'm hoping free tickets are coming. If not, it will be a great three days on the beach.

PURE GOLD

Went to Elkhart Central for the ISMA competition on Saturday. Wow. Didn't realize how many of our students I'd run into there...middle school and high school. I'll have to put this on the calendar from here on out.

A Night in the ER

I was sooo looking forward to it! It's the first chance I had in months to sleep until I can't sleep anymore, but it was not to be. I got the call at 1 a.m. that my niece had been in a pretty serious car accident. They took her by ambulance to Elkhart General where they did x-rays, but it appeared to be just some bruising (thank you Jesus for seatbelts and airbags) and a possible broken nose. They sent her home with prescriptions for muscle relaxers and pain. Unfortunately she passed out in the car on the way home after she and her dad stopped at CVS. It was off to Memorial. I met them there at 2 a.m. and the whole process took until noon. While it took forever, Memorial was good and thorough. Turns out she had elevated muscle enzymes (whatever that means), a pretty rapid heartbeat and a kidney infection she didn't know about. After a boatload of IV bags, she was good to go...sore, but good to go.

THE LESSON: I've talked forever about leaders breathing life into their students and the importance of making them feel comfortable. I haven't been on the other end of it in quite awhile though. The entire staff was great at Memorial and all were friendly...except one (she was great, just not friendly - more like ice). It reminded me that we can have an exceptional program, be really good at the stage stuff, but if we are sub-par when it comes to our "friendliness factor" the stage stuff really doesn't matter so much. I'm grateful for the work the Mark W., Shelly, Julie, Susan and the team do to make our church rank high on the "friendliness factor". I'm grateful for what our Oasis team does as well, but am on a mission to take it to a new level. While the saying is getting kind of old, it really is true that "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

Willow Creek

I'm at Willow for a couple of days with 20+ junior high pastors from around the midwest. It's been pretty amazing. Scott and Jason are hosting and doing a superb job. I love their humility. It's pretty incredible.

We started out yesterday by getting to know each other, sharing info but no ministry numbers (I like that). We ended the first night at New Community with Dr. B. I absolutely loved how Bill Hybels intro'ed his friend. It was "a moment". Dr. B talked about community and oneness. Two random points I wrote down.
1. God's first command to man - go and multiply.
Jesus last command to man - go and multiply.
Church is a human invention if it has no community.
2. It is better for there to be no lighthouse than a lighthouse with no light. Wow.

Today we finished the introductions and decided on three topics to discuss.

The first one, "spiritual formation", was pretty deep - kinda of made my head hurt...in a good way. I came away with more conviction than ever to figure out some quantitative measures - not to determine our success, but our progress. The difficult part will be to determine what the right measurements will be. I need to think about this a whole lot more.

The second topic was on ministering to parents. I got some great ideas and a renewed passion to invest in parents more - both our churched and our unchurched. Good stuff.

We ended tonight at GameWorks were I got lucky and beat a couple of guys in basketball...and then I got smoked.