Coffee

For those who know me well, they know that I am a huge coffee drinker. Over the past year, I have been introduced to the Keurig Single Cup Coffee Maker. I was leery at first to try this, but I now love it. In fact, my mother-in-law gave me a coffee maker for Christmas and now I wouldn't know what to do without it. Stop in my office sometime and will make you a cup of the sweet sweet goodness!

Church Unique

This book has rocked my world the past few days!

Friendship Registry

Yesterday we started something new at Heritage (I know it is crazy...something new in a baptist church). We presented to our people a new way of managing our Sunday Morning attendance...we call this the "Friendship Registry." Everyone who attends the Sunday Morning service will need to write their name in a folder and pass the folder down their row.

To our amazement, "most" people took the time to fill out the sheet in the folder. Because of the Friendship Registry, we had a record number of guests give us their information. This can only help us as our church continues to grow and as we strive for great organization.

This process will only be effective if we do the necessary follow-up on these people and stop making excuses of why we don't do the necessary follow-up that is needed to take our church to the next level.

Too much is on the line!

Life Stories

There is truly something special about hearing from others what God is doing in their lives. Last night at the gathering, we had the unique opportunity to hear from several college/young adults of what God is doing in their lives and how the gathering has played a vital role. I believe that last night was a defining moment for this ministry and as I said last night, "greater things are still to be done." I can't wait to see where God will take this ministry in the next few months.

Later this week (hopefully), I will upload the video so we can share together the greatness of God as we watch "Life Stories."

Purpose VS. Process

Ministries and Churches come up with catchy "purpose" or "mission" statements all the time. They think that if they make these fancy statements that the ministry will take care of itself, and volunteers will gladly follow the purpose and there will be no issues and everyone will be in unity. I know of ministries that are struggling, and they decide to come up with one of these purpose statements and they are excited to do a sermon series based around their purpose because they think it will solve the problems...but in three months, the pastors are just as frustrated as they were before.

Why are the pastors still frustrated, after all, didn't they come up with a great purpose statement? The reason why these leaders are still frustrated is because the ministry is doing the exact same things as it was before. The only thing that has changed is now they have a fancy purpose statement on the wall. They have a great purpose statement but they have no clearly defined process on how to fulfill the purpose.

In seminary and even my first few months on staff at a church, I was the one who thought that the purpose/mission was the means to the end, and once the purpose was clearly defined, the ministry will take care of itself. Don't get me wrong....the purpose (the what) is important, but we cannot neglect the process (the how)...and this is where ministries fall miserably short.

We have created our nice statements with never clearly defining how we are going to fulfill the purpose. How do we know this to be true? Because nothing has changed, we are doing the same exact things we were doing before the purpose statement was ever written and we are seeing the same results.

It is time to create the process, because the process (the how) is more important than the purpose (the what)!

the gathering

Many have wanted to see pictures of our college/young adult ministry, "the gathering." Here is a glimpse of our new ministry. God is blessing and we are seeing some amazing things happen each and every weekend!

Continue to pray that we would see new people each weekend cross the line of faith and trust Christ with their life. Many young adults in our community need to hear the life-changing message of Christ.

Being Lazy

Tomorrow I am bringing a talk to our college ministry (the gathering) on Slothfulness. I have had a difficult time preparing this talk because if I was to ask a group of people if they are lazy, I highly doubt I would get any takers. Most Americans are dedicated to our work and dedicated to our recreation, and at the end of the day or week, we are lucky if we have any free time.

In my opinion, slothfulness has little to do with work or with how crazy full our schedules are. Slothfulness has everything to do with whether we are lazy with the important things of life. Here (in my opinion) are important things of life: Our relationships with God, our marriages, our children, and our church. We can be so busy with everything else in life that we become slothful with the important things.

When I hear people say, "I am just so busy during the day that when I come home all I want to do is relax and watch TV," I think to myself, "You are slothful!" Nobody denies that we all are busy with work, but when we say we are too busy to spend quality time with God daily, to have meaningful conversations with our spouses, and to not serve in our local churches, we have sure signs of sloth.

What say you? Are we a people of sloth?