A Day Off

I'm going to try really hard today to do this...take the whole day off. No work (blogging is not work). I'm not answering the phone (although I may return a message), I'm not planning, preparing, meeting, brainstorming or otherwise even thinking about anything but doing school with my kids and spending time with my wife and family. I've tried this before and frankly I'm not very good at it. In fact, when we went for Tanner's birthday last week, I was with my family most of the day and watched a movie with them that night, but Lora figured it out and I still managed to put in about 7 hours of time to doing work for Discovery Church. That's got to change...even when I'm home, my mind is somewhere else. Bad Dad. Bad husband. Bad Pastor.

So, school's almost done here and so am I.

Tanner's Birthday

The Whole Family @ Green Springs & Tanner diving from the second level


Go IRISH!!

Tanner's Birthday was yesterday and we had a great time (so did he of course) He decided he wanted to go to Green Springs which is pretty much one of the coolest places around. It's a huge playground over the water with diving boards, rope swings, high platforms, a zip line, and tons of stuff to climb. There's five different levels that people can jump/dive off of and each is about 7-10 feet higher than the next so by the time you get to the fifth, you're 50 feet up in the air. I've just got to brag on my little men because 9 year old Tyler jumped off the fifth 5 times and Tanner (on his eighth birthday) jumped from the fifth too. Daddy won't even go to the fourth (I'd be too embarassed to climb back down the ladder because I was too scared to jump off)

His uncle Nate got him a new Notre Dame jersey so he's ready for Notre Dame's Championship Season to begin. I just look at Tanner and he's growing up so quick. He's so much better at controlling himself and over the past couple months we've noticed a real change in his attitude. It must be because he's spending daily time reading his Bible and allowing the Lord to work in his life. When he got $10 as part of his birthday yesterday, he immediately said, "OK, so that means I give $1 to God...cool" Let's just say I couldn't have been prouder.

Smile!!!

Lora just came and showed me this picture that she got of Hannah so I decided to share it with you. She's smiling!! Must be because she's got the coolest Daddy in the world (and the Mom is pretty wonderful too). By the way, in less than an hour, Lora and I get to go on a "date night" (with this cute little tag-a-long)...only the second time out since Hannah was born.

The Bigger Picture

There are times when I wonder if I'm doing a good job of communicating the big picture and other times when it seems pretty obvious that I am. It's just something that I struggle with as the "guy in charge". For instance, just yesterday, I asked all the people who were at church early to set up if they could please move their cars to the front parking lot instead of the side (better reflects our attendance to people who drive by or drive up). Well, rather than saving the "best" spots for guests, all the close spots ended up with cars parked there. It's a little thing, but I gathered people's keys and moved their cars further away (like 5 or 6 spaces) to give any guests preferential treatment and went back in wondering if they understood how important first-timers are.

Maybe some people did, because as guests started coming, I was able to sit back and watch as people at Discovery went into action. Not one person got by without being greeted. They all got nametags. First-timers got welcome packs and I didn't see anybody left "alone". Maybe they do get it.

Then again, it's not just about one Sunday morning. It's about the future. Where thousands of people are serving, living, growing and connecting at Discovery Church because hundreds are choosing to follow this radical named Jesus. Where you can't drive through a neighborhood without being able to pass an AC Outlet. Where community needs are being met by people who really do care and aren't just out trying to 'earn' a Christian merit badge. Where leaders are developed, lives are changed and marriages and families are strengthened. That's a little bigger picture.

Group or Team

Today I was at a gathering of other church leaders called ICC or Innovative Church Community and we were talking about the difference between a group and a team. I heard something that made me think and reevaluate my approach. It was a stupid little rhyming thing, but I think it's a good way to remember that there are stages people need to go through to move from a group to a team. First is the forming - where people just come together for whatever reason and form a group. The next stage is norming and during this stage people in the group learn what to expect and how to behave (in other words, what is acceptable and not acceptable). After that, the group moves through a storming stage which is most likely where they really begin to become a team that owns and shares the vision or team goal. Finally, there's the performing stage which is where everyone on the team understands their specific role, how it contributes to the team, and how to step up and help other members perform to the best of their ability.

I thought about this and realized that our staff isn't perfoming the way I'd like because we're not to that stage yet...we're working towards it, but for all practical purposes we're still mostly defining the norms. The church is the same way. I'd like us to be functioning better, but we're still hammering out our identity and defining what is and isn't acceptable. I'm ok with that. I can be more intentional now about moving this group we call a staff and our church through some of these stages. So in actuality, we're still building our team.

Getting Dumped On

Ever feel like everybody is just dumping on you? Well, I do sometimes. With so much going on, so much that's new and so much that isn't quite where I want it to be, there's a lot of potential dumping material. I like hearing people's comments, suggestions and critiques because I really want to do the best job we can at Discovery. Let's just say that there's always room for improvement from my speaking to our music, from student ministry to children's ministry. But that's not what precipitated this entry. Yesterday I actually got dumped on - no really, I got pooped on.

It's no big deal if you've had kids before. In fact, Lora and I laughed because we were suprised at how forcefully a little one month old infant could expel excrement. We were getting ready to go for a walk and I had Hannah strapped in to a baby carrier. Suddenly, she just let it rip and blew out her diaper. In the process she sprayed Tanner who was sitting on the couch three feet away, got Lora who was a bit closer and loaded my toes and sandals with hot wet pooh. The best part was she didn't get any on her outfit or the baby carrier. Here's a pic (a little blurry) of my "pooh shoe" without my toes (and Lora with her toes in her "pooh shoe")



Let's just say I'd rather be dumped on by people with problems and stuff like that than by babies with hot warm pooh.

Learning New Stuff

It can be fun and frustrating . . . often within minutes of each other. I'm talking about learning new stuff, particularly computer stuff. I tried this new program for making simple flash files called mix-fx. It's simple, almost too simple because I haven't figured out how to edit a file you've already made...just start over is all I could come up with. It's also just about 20 preprogrammed effects for text and for the background with no combining multiple effects. Frustrating. I used Swish a few years back but they don't offer it for free anymore and I hate paying...plus, the learning curve for that was considerably higher than mix-fx. Here's a sample - it's the theme design for the series that we're doing for the rest of August.



See, even to make that work, I had to find the HTML code and insert it here. Fun, but I'm such a novice it's frustrating. Oh well, that's how you get better I guess.

The one thing I wish is that there were someone who had the desire and skills to learn and create this kind of stuff for the church...I'm no graphic artist, not a web developer, and even the baptism videos probably take me twice as long as someone else. But to get where I want this church to be, somebody needs to do it....it's about "excellence" - doing the best you can with what you've got.

What a Weekend

I've got to tell you that it was great finally being back on stage as the speaker this past Sunday. It felt good. And then to have a baptism scheduled right after the service - that made it even better. But to top it off, when God shows up and moves in people's lives - that's the best. We had five people scheduled for our first baptism, but after the message, four more decided it was time to take that next step and publically identify themselves with Christ through baptism.

I won't tell you what we used to baptize people in, but I will let you go and watch it. We had the people being baptized make a short video of their story and played it before we baptized them. We had a great time. Almost everybody who came stayed for the baptism including almost two dozen first time guests! Then we fed everyone a BBQ chicken dinner. I can't stop thinking about it.

I wasn't the only one who thought it was a good day though. I've gotten a couple emails back from some of the first time guests that we emailed. Here's a sampling of what they had to say...

After we left [my husband] could not stop thinking and talking about how he felt so welcome at the church. Besides the fact that I made him wear a shirt and tie, but he got over that really fast..
We are looking forward to coming back this Sunday, we are just excited to learn more.

AND

With a young family, work stressors and other challenges we realized the need for spiritual balance in our life. The first step is terribly intimidating, but we finally did it, and were very excited about our find.
Discovery was totally different from past experiences, but completely matched who were are. We look forward to attending next Sunday. I am thankful we did take this step and can't wait to see where it's going to lead us.

Isn't that encouraging? It's days like that which make it easy and exciting to get up and go to 'work'. (I won't tell you about the days that make you want to stay in bed and cry - at least I won't tell you right now). You can get any of the videos from here.