Category Archives: General
National Pastor’s Conference
One of my good friends has sung the praises of the National Pastor’s Conference for years. Since I’m not there and you probably aren’t either, you can follow some of the summaries of the keynote talks here. I really enjoyed the summary of Rob Bell’s talk on the essential nature of forgiveness for those of us who serve as pastors.
A Week in the Life
It’s been yet another busy week. We’ve started Servant Walk, our Sunday morning video curriculum, again after a couple weeks off of filming for Christmas and New Year. If you’re really interested in looking at some of the early attempts at video teaching by yours truly, hop over to YouTube and check out what we’ve done.
Next week, I’ll get back to teaching my two large group bible studies. We’ll finish up with the women’s study of Romans, and the men will be beginning studying Acts of the Apostles. Since our director of missions just took a new position as the director of mission for the Alabama West-Florida conference, I’ve been getting more of the assistance calls in the missions area, sometimes as many as three or four a day. We’ll have our first mission council meeting of the new year on Tuesday.
I’m also beginning preparations for my D.Min. project which begins the first week of Lent (a virtual classroom for the Servant Walk curriculum), getting ready to develop the parents class for confirmation in my spare time, and leading a Service of Death and Resurrection (Funeral) on Monday.
Since I don’t have anything else going on, I’ve also switched to a Mac! I was given a 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4 awhile back, and I finally upgraded the RAM to 2GB and a friend installed Leopard on it. It’s pretty darn fast now, and I’m loving it. I look forward to using Keynote instead of Powerpoint and see how that goes.
So, that’s what’s going on in my world! Anything going on in yours?
Faith and Forgiveness
Just a few days ago, I read about the jet crashing into a home in San Diego. It turns out that the crash killed four members of a Korean-American family: a grandmother, mother, and two young daughters.
I just found this article about Yoon Dong-yun, the husband, who was working nearby and rushed home to see the devestation. Yoon, a United Methodist Christian, has already offered forgiveness to the pilot, and is concerned for his well-being, “Please pray that the pilot will not anguish over the accident. I don’t blame him for it. He is the one who did his best in order to prevent the crash…”
May we all demonstrate that kind of faith and forgiveness in our own lives.
Techno For Granted
During a discussion of my upcoming Doctor of Ministry project, someone reminded me of a helpful distinction. They described the difference between digital natives and digital immigrants. My six year old daughter will never remember a time before iPhones. She has known about the internet her entire life. She is a digital native. Even though I consider myself technologically savvy, I remember a time before DVD players and VCRs. I even existed without cable or satellite as a child. We had three channels and you had to go outside to turn the antenna to get a different station.
Even though I’ve learned DSL (digital as a second language – haha), for the most part I’m still fairly fluent in our digital culture. However, sometimes I assume people know things that I take for granted because I’ve been speaking this language for several years.
One of the questions I sometimes am asked is, “How can you keep up with the content on blogs?” It would be exhausting to click through “favorites” from blog to blog to blog. I follow 100 blogs via an RSS feeder that I check about once a day. If you’re a digital immigrant, you would greatly benefit from learning how to do this! Jay Voorhees (at his his technopastor address) pointed to a good summary of RSS in simple language some time back, so I’ll just point you to that.
Click here if you follow blogs but have no idea what RSS is. What you’ll find is basically a quick way to get a ton of information. For me that means I can check 100 blogs in no time at all. I use Google Reader to manage all of this.
I’d list my top 100, but its constantly changing. I’ve sort of made a point to take one off every time I add a new one, so it stays manageable. So, I hope this helps you digital immigrants out there and gives you yet another shortcut for navigating a whole new world!
How to be a Finisher
One of the real challenges I’ve faced is moving from being the sole staff member, pastor, preacher, leader in two congregations to being a member of a larger team. As a result, I’ve been on the lookout for great information about how to better function on a team.
Kem Meyer is the author of one of my favorite blogs, and in a recent post she pointed me to this article by her husband Mark Meyer (whose blog I just subscribed to) that really provides some great information on “how to be a finisher.”
- Look for an opportunity to take an initiative that has been stalling out or hanging incomplete at work. Take it, and in your mind make yourself 100% responsible. Do what it takes to get it done and done well. Want to be normal? Be cynical and roll your eyes at how the project is just another company objective that will never get done…
- In meetings and conversations, be the best note taker- pay attention and get the details of what needs to be done whether it’s your responsibility or not. Help remind people of the tasks to do, priorities at hand, and assist people by reminding then what needs to get done. Normal is people on your team missing details leaving projects incomplete, clients unhappy, and money uncollected. Fill in the cracks for your team so your team finishes strong.
- Be willing to make a decision. Everyday there are scores of emails and conversations filled with questions, hurdles, and excuses. Bring clarity and be solution oriented… take those things that are spinning and bring them to a finish line. What’s normal? Add to the confusion, be vague, ask questions that seem really smart but just keep things undone, offer more reasons why something can’t be done and how you don’t have enough information. Hide in the multitudes of 80%.
Great stuff, eh? I love his thoughts on how to “be normal,” and the way he points to exceptional ministry by avoiding those traps. I look forward to reading more of Mark’s thoughts in the future.
Hitting the Ground Running
I’m settling into my new position, but I’m also still learning something new everday. Right I’ve taken over several of the major teaching duties that I’ll do each week. For instance every Tuesday morning I am teaching through Romans. It’s interesting because I took on this mid-stream, so I am starting with the men’s group in chapter 14, and the women’s group in chapter 10. I’m spending quite a bit of time each week immersed in Romans getting prepared to teach these classes.
Another large chunk of my time is spent preparing to teach Sunday School classes. However, I have yet to step foot in a classroom. How, you might ask? Each week I prepare a teaching vdeo and then meet with a group who gathers to study and discuss the scripture that corresponds with the Sunday morning sermon (right now we’re in Luke). They then help me go deeper into the passage and prepare a series of questions to go along with the lesson.
One thing I’ve learned in all of this is how difficult it is to do high quality video teaching. It looks so easy to see Rob Bell doing Nooma or when I’ve watched other folks doing video teaching, but in reality it’s ridiculously hard to look natural and deliver high quality content at the same time. It also takes quite a bit of time to do this. I’m definitely blessed to have tons of help from people who know far more about video and editing than I ever will, so that makes a difference. However, I really think that this is a great means of being in several places at once to teach on a Sunday morning. In fact, last week I printed off over 200 lessons for people using this curriculum.
There’s a lot going on with missions at our church too, but I’ll save that post for another time!
Know Your Strengths
I just picked Emma up from Warm World, and once again, we have exciting news. She’s going to be in her first play! The conversation went a little like this:
“We’re gonna have a play and I’m gonna to be in it.” “Cool,” I said, “what are you going to be?” “I get to be the horse!!” “That’s great, is that what you wanted to be?” “Of course,” she said, “at first I wanted to be the black cat, but I didn’t know there was a horse. So, after I knew there was a horse, I asked to be the horse, and my teacher said I could be the horse.” “You’ll make a good horse…” “Yep, ’cause I neigh good.”
It’s a great thing to know your strengths and work with them!
Minister of Discipleship
My official title is “Minister of Discipleship,” and when I share this with friends, family, and colleagues I am often asked, “So what do you do?” I try to explain by saying I’m sort of like a teaching pastor crossed with a missions pastor.
As a staff, we are reading Len Sweet’s Aquachurch 2.0: Piloting Your Church in Today’s Fluid Culture. This morning, as I was reading, I came across an insight that helps me define my position. Len reminded me, “…the very word disciple means “learner.” In Greek, mathetes (which we translate as disciple) comes from mathano, which literally means “student” or “learner.”
In a sense then, I’m the Minister of “Learners.” That means that I’m not only responsibile for sharing information or knowledge in the teaching aspect of my position, but for helping people integrate that into concrete acts of mission and love of neighbor. In other words, I think the multiple aspects of my position will help me remember that true knowledge is not just a “head thing,” but a “whole life thing.”
Biblical Translations
If you have ever wondered about the many translations floating around out there, check out Brian D. Russell’s recent article on his blog: Moving through the Maze. It is very clear, and I will probably look back to it as a reference in the future.
Settling In
Things are still going well after our move, even though it’s hard to get my mind wrapped around the fact that we’re not going to be traveling back to finish anything up in Quinton or Canadian.
Emma is still loving her new Kindergarten at Warm World, and Caleb is excited to have had me at home for a few days. This morning he went with me to the bank and to get haircuts. One thing I never missed about the city is paying fourteen bucks for a haircut!! I think I’m going to buy clippers or a flowbee (to my surprise they still exist!) and do Caleb’s hair myself!
Nanci has been working hard to finish getting the house together, and we’re really pretty much moved in at this point. We still need to do a few minor things, but it’s definitely coming together. Before you think I’ve just been sitting in my chair drinking Diet Coke, I’ve been doing whatever has been asked of me! I’m thinking about heading in and trying to get my office arranged a bit this afternoon, but I may just do it first thing in the morning. We’ll see what happens. Tonight is the big Hot Dog Happening at Warm World, so we’ll be going to that too.
OK, the girls are home with groceries and an office chair. Caleb and I have been at home cleaning the garage and breaking down boxes. I’ve got to run.
