What a weekend . . .

Just to let you know, in some ways I had a great weekend and in some ways I would have been better off staying in bed most of the weekend. I jsut trying to be honest and transparent to those that read this blog. I am far from perfect and I have bad weekends.

Friday was a great day. I met with one of the guys from The Journey and we had lunch and went to Woodcraft and hung out a little while. Then Irene and I closed on the refinancing on our house.

Saturday started as a problem. Everything that I touched I either dropped, broke, or had to fix to be able to use. I went to Lowes and evidently so did every other oerson in the eastern seaboard. There were no parking places and the walkways were clogged with people. If I had not known better I would have bet I was at the Mall at Christmas time. Saturday evening got better as we met two friends for bar-b-que and later a trip to see the Greenville Drive play baseball. The game was supposed to start at 7:00 pm. There was a rain delay and the first pitch wasn’t thrown until after 9:00 pm. We still had fun jsut being at the part and fellowshipping with our friends. When we left to come home, Greenville was ahead 2 to 0. We checked the paper the next day and they had lost 7 to 2. We should have stayed. Their luck ran out when we left.

Sunday was great. We went to First Baptist Church Fountain Inn and listened to Mike preach a great sermon. After lunch it was nap time and then out again for Bible Study with The Journey. This week we had (23) come to our Bible Study. We had a family offer their home to meet until we ran out of room. We also had someone offer to work with our children during the adult discussion of the Bible Study. God is answering prayers.

Today, I was in the first of a two day training class for work on holding Crucial Conversations. It is a little more that humbling when you realize that you are not as good a communicator as you think you are. But that is OK. I want to get better and this is going to help me do that.

Next weekend Irene and I are heading out of town to Pigeon Forge TN and I can’t wait. I need a couple of days to kick my head out of gear and see if I can get my perspective back.

Tomorrow will be another all day class and then it is back to work on Wednesday. Until next time - keep your eyes on Jesus and let’s see what the Lord has in store for us in the future.

Things that I am looking forward to . . .

• There are a few things that are coming up soon that I am really looking forward to:
  
  

• Irene and I are closing on the refinancing of our house tomorrow. I am loving it. That will be one step closer to nothing outside of normal household bills.
• Irene and I are celebrating the closing by going to a Greenville Drive baseball game Saturday evening with two of our best friends.
• I am really looking forward to Bible study with The Journey Sunday evening. We had (22) at our house last week. I am praying that it gets more crowded this Sunday.
• Next Monday and Tuesday I will be out of the office at a training session on Crucial Conversations. I am hoping that this will help me with my conversation skills. Especially in those tough conversations.
• Mike is on his way back with a list of things that we need to tackle to begin to move The Journey forward. I look forward to seeing what he has learned at Exponential in Orlando.
• A chance to get back to reading “Church is a Team Sport” by Jim Putman. If you have not read this book yet, get a copy. It is a course changing read.
• Possibly spending a weekend out of town with my beautiful wife in the next coupe of weeks.
• Disney in October. That’s right. Irene and I will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary at Disney. I can’t wait. I haven’t been there since the park was (2) years old.

What are some things that you are looking forward to? Until next time – keep your eyes on Jesus and where’s Mickey? I want my picture taken with him.

God is so good . . .

God is so good. I just was thinking about how blessed I am. I turned 49 years old a couple of weeks ago and it has me thinking about how God has blessed me.

I have a beautiful wife that pretty much puts up with all of my nonsense.

I have great friends and family that love me and care about me.

I have a great job at a greta company - Devita and Associates, Inc.

My wife and I are closing on refinancing our home and rolling in a couple of bills that we have been trying to get paid off. If all goes as expected, our mortgage payment will go down from what we are paying right now and we are going from a 30 year loan to a 20 year loan.

My wife just called and said that she had discovered some moeny that she had coming to her from a past job that she had when we first met.

I am helpping a friend of mine plant a church here in Greenville.

I could go on and on, but for now that will do. How has God blessed you. Take a few minutes and make a list. Until next time - keep your eyes on Jesus and count your blessings, name tehm one by one.

A book that I am reading right now . . .

I am reading a book called Crucial Conversations right now. This is something that I would not normally pick up, but maybe I should have earlier in life. You see I have to read this book for a two day class/training session that my job is sending me to next Monday and Tuesday. I am actually looking forward to going. I really hope that it helps me with my communication skills, especially in tuff conversations.

I hate those types of conversations. I had to have a couple of those conversations last week with some guys on my team. I guess that the reason that I hate them is that I don’t think that I do them very well. In fact I now I don’t do them well at all. I probably hate being ion the receiving end of one of those conversations more than the one conducting the conversation. Mostly because I don’t process things very quickly and it is hard for me to know how to respond. Reading this book has caused me to look at the way I communicate and have communicated in the past, especially when I feel threatened.

One thing that it has triggered, unexpectedly, is to look at the way Jesus communicated in tough conversations. He always had the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes asking questions and starting crucial conversations with Him. I like the book that is required for the class. I like the example that Jesus set for us even better. I’ll let you know how they mess after the class next week.

How do you handle crucial (tough) conversations? Let me know. I really am interested. Until next time – keep your eyes on Jesus and your ears open more than your mouth.

A Great Weekend . . .

I was sitting here at the computer on Sunday afternoon, which I normally do not do, and I decided to get off a quick hits list from the weekend. This weekend was great for several reasons, and some of them are as follows:

• Friday evening we clowned at Greenbrier elementary school for their spring fling. We tied balloons for 3.5 hours straight with no breaks. The kids were great as always. My hands have hurt me for two days now. I stand in awe of anyone that can do that everyday.
• Had to work at the office yesterday morning. I am blessed that I have a great job and a great company to work for. I am also blessed that I don’t have to go into the office on Saturdays very often. This was the first time in over a year.
• Last night we had a gathering here at the house to celebrate my birthday. We fired up the charcoal grill for the first time this year and cooked hamburgers and hotdogs. The only thing better than the food was the family and friends that were here at the house to help me celebrate my birthday. I am truly blessed.
• Today was awesome. We had a Sunday morning Bible study for The Journey here in mine and Irene’s home. We had no idea how many would show up. All we knew going in was that we would make contacts and see what happened. God is so good - we had (17) adults, (1) teenager and (4) children show up for Bible study. We worshiped together - Jonathan Whitten led us in some music. Mike brought us a lesson from God’s word that was great and we are going to seek to apply it this week. We had lunch together - baked spaghetti, salad and bread prepare by Irene and Karen (you to girls are da’ bomb). Some desserts were brought and enjoyed. The fellowship was great. One of our first time families even stepped up and offered their home for next weeks meeting.

This weekend was over the top incredible. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us in the upcoming week. Until next time - keep your eyes on Jesus and what did we do with the left overs from lunch, I’m hungry again.

Why I do what I do . . .

Do you ever just look at your life and think – there must be an easier way of life than this? Why do I do what I do? Well, as someone who can now be consider as a church planter – that question does pop into my mind. I guess that he has for a long time even prior to helping plant a church. That question I guess surfaces in all lines of work, especially if you work with people. But I think that I have stumbled upon the answer and it is not that I am simply a glutton for punishment.

I was reading in Matthew yesterday morning in my Blackaby study bible and came to the scripture where Jesus is talking about being yoked with Him. Blackaby talked about if our work is just wearing us out and beating us down, then chances are we are not yoked with Jesus. To be yoked with Jesus does not mean that our work will not be messy. Dealing with peoples lives will always be messy. What it does mean is that Jesus will ease the work load through His spirit within us. As our relationship with Jesus grows, our passion for working along side Him grows and with passion comes energy. We do not need to work out of a sense of duty but out of a sense of relationship.

I find it funny – since I started helping plant this church, it has been confirmed in my life that all that I have taught is the past about relationships was dead on the money. Our relationship with Christ and relationships with the people that we are surrounded with are tantamount (wow – big word – where did that come from) to doing the work of a disciple. What do you think?

Until next time – keep your eyes on Jesus and let’s put on His yoke. To quote Blackaby – “God does not reward our duty; He blesses our relationship with His Son Jesus.”

A conference fully worth the time . . .

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week at a conference at White Oak Conference Center and I can say that it was fully worth the time spent there. Now, I have been to conferences in the past and generally always came away with some little tid-bit that I could use in some way. This conference was different!! I came away with several pages of notes in my journal and excitement in my heart. You may ask what breeds this excitement. I finally see a working model of a way to do discipleship that I have been talking about for years.

We had the opportunity to hear Jim Putman and several of his staff talk about a discipleship method (notice I did not say program) that produces disciples that re-produce themselves. It is done in small groups of people and is based in relationships that are built. It is the most biblical model that I have ever seen.

I also was able to see a method of teaching that is probably the most effective way of teaching that I have seen in a long time and it revolves around telling stories. Avery Willis brought this part of the conference. Something that was pointed out and I have recognized for a long time is that people will remember a story and repeat it far more often that they will remember teaching in its other forms. It hit home in a mighty way when one of the speakers asked us to tell him the second point of his talk that he had given just one hour before and we could not, but we could all repeat the story that he led into that point with.

The main excitement that I carry within me right now is because this is the skeleton that we have been trying to put meat on since we started The Journey. I have so much information that I need to process now into a form that we can use in what we seek to join the Lord doing here in Greenville and there is a definite direction to move in now.

Keep watch in the future for updates and information as I get it processed, until then – keep your eyes on Jesus and I do truly love to tell the story.

Mental Picture . . .

Do you ever get a mental picture when someone says a name or you get that passing fragrance that triggers a memory from your past or maybe a song that triggers a thought or a memory? I think that we all do. For me there are certain things that trigger those pictures almost instantly. The name of a school mate and I’m back in school. The smell of sun tan oil that has cocoa butter in it and suddenly I am just out of high school again. Although I am getting a little age on me now, there are times that I am still 21 in my mind.

Now that we all have the same foundation for this thought process, I have a question that I have been kicking around in my mind for a couple of weeks now. When someone says the name Jesus - what picture do you get in your mind? I am going to spend some time, maybe a long time, in various posts talking about a portrait of Jesus. Some times we get part of a picture in our heads, but we leave our other aspects of the picture. To give you an example – we understand that Jesus was fully human. We can see that in birth and death, but do we see him as fully God?

For now, I am going to leave this post with another question that has been kicking around in my head – when people that do not have a relationship with Jesus hear His name used, what mental picture do they have?

Until next time – keep your eyes on Jesus.