Words to Live By

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children.”

- Deuteronomy 4:9

That verse means a lot to me right now. I have spent the better part of my parenting life deciding many things for my kids, but more importantly teaching them, or at least attempting to, the lessons I have learned growing up.

It’s a very interesting dynamic to live through as a parent and adult. You see and experience your childhood through faint memories, storytelling, and photos slapped in a book that are rarely ever opened. It’s ironic I can’t remember most of my childhood, but I can remember specific times when my parents taught me something or anknowledged me in figuring out a mystery in life. For example:

1. When I was 11 or so I had a bad sore throat due to allergies. I asked Dad if blowing my nose was a good way to relieve my sore throat since your throat and nose are connected. He applauded and praised me for figuring that out.

Those times are fun to think about, but the reality is this. What memories are my kids going to remember about their childhood? I pray daily that God would allow those teachable moments to creep in so that maybe one day my children will grow up and be able to pass down to the next generation the values and life lessons I’m teaching them now.

Frustration

Recently I have become increasingly frustrated with one thing and I’ve been asking God to walk me through this…and He has. It is VERY frustrating to realize as a friend, family member, leader, servant or any other capacity I am in a relationship with someone right now…I cannot make people receive Jesus. It’s frustrating when you see the potential in someone if they would just receive Christ or if they would just let Christ have complete control over their lives but they just hold back.

You see people can list and give you many reasons they won’t ever “convert” or become a Christ Follower. For some, it’s where they say their spiritual life has taken them too. Others say spiritual thing are no longer an issue for them because there is no God to begin with. Whatever the excuse or arguement for putting Jesus Christ on the back burner and replacing Him with their own “religious” outlook, stepping back is a hard thing for me to do.

If I could count how many friends and family I know who claimed to be Christ followers and then have checked out for one reason or another later on in life, I’d be typing all night. Ultimately it comes down to the fact they were NEVER Christ followers to begin with. There was never a point in their lives when Jesus so radically changed them. It bothers me when you see parents of kids who have left the church and they will look at their kids and say, “I remember when you walked down the isle and got saved as a kid. I’m praying God will bring you back.”

WAKE UP and stop enabling your kids. I have a news flash for you parents…your kid was never “saved” to begin with! The Bible clearly states, where there is no fruit in the life of a believer, then there was no conversion to speak of in the first place!

I continue to pray for specific people in my life and realize that I can only do just that, pray. I can talk to them, love them, share the gospel with them when the opportunity comes…but ultimately all I can do is consistently declare truth and pray that God will remove the calluses from their hearts so that they can receive Christ and allow Him to be preeminent in their lives.

What Have You Let Die?

That sounds pretty bold, but it’s really a cheap attempt to flatter the concept of this post. It really should be stated as, what passion or hobby have you let fall by the waste side over the course of years or decades?

Let me start off this conversation by being first in line…

There were days when I would go out to Shelby Farms (a local conservatory of land) and just sit for hours and hours searching for the right words to express a segmented experience in my life that I wanted to put pen to paper and write about. Sometimes the end result was poetry or lyric for a song. Categories ranging from friendship, to relationships or maybe a statement about the fact we should have something to say about politics.

Regardless the topic, I knew that this was a daily practice that I made a point to craft, if for no other reason but to look back upon at some point years removed from these experiences. To be able to connect the dots of life through words, when my memory failed to recall the names and places I created memories with. Some with laughter, some with irony, and some with distaste. This is not to look back and long for ‘the good ole days,’ but rather to appreciate how far I’ve come from those times.

What have you let die over time? Was it music, painting, relationships, freedom from something?

Are You An Enabler?

Being an enabler has been a BIG thing for me and has been for a long time. I once was on the staff of a church plant in Georgia and I learned a ton of things while going through that process to the extent I did. We would have various meetings and interviews with Pastors and staff from other churches locally and regionally. The point of all of these sit downs was simply to learn from the experience of others and find ideas, innovation from the mistakes and success that these churches and individuals had.

Some of the questions asked were questions like, “What has been your biggest failure as a Pastor?” That not an easy question to vocalize or answer, still each Pastor or staff member would answer in an honest way.

One of the biggest things that stuck with me from my time and experience during this process was a statement made by my Pastor at the time. He said,

“Because these churches and Pastors have bent over backwards to help us out and teach us, I never want to hear that one of my staff has not replied to an email, not returned a phone call, or denied an opportunity from someone to learn from what we are doing at our church.”

That has stuck with me here at Crosspointe now years away from those conversations and that experience. If you are not enabling other people and churches through the leadership, confession of failures, triumphs, and guidance you have received yourself…then you are not fulfilling your role in ministry the way you should. Instead there is a deeper issue at play, and that attitude of pride will lead you to being burnt out, stressed out and standing alone.

The Beginning Is the End of the Beginning…

Today I have spent a majority of my time researching various CMS’ or Content Management Systems. Up to this point I have been handcoding every website I have ever built. This has been fine until you get into an area like a church that is representative of so many subsets of ministries you need a library to keep things straight. In comes a CMS to rescue the confused, but I have a confession to make…

I’m a graphic snob. I mean, I just finished 12 hours of Drupal essential training, and it’s a great CMS for what it does. BUT the ability to customize the ‘themes’ is limited to the box it comes in. This may be acceptable to most, but something inside of me keeps saying…”Really? That’s it?”

So my search begins to find a more suitable candidate for my CMS query. Expression Engine? Nope, too much money and a steep learning curb. Drupal? Just went there….Joolma? Haha….seriously. WordPress? Ehh.

So I’m at the end of the day, back at the beginning. Anyone know a good CMS that fits ‘into’ a custom design instead of ‘customizing a theme’ to fit your CMS?

Losing Focus, Means Losing Impact…

I’ve heard it a million times from various church leaders and business leaders on the edge of BIG things…

“Once you lose your focus, you lose your impact.”

This is true more now than ever before when it comes to the church’s responsibility to be the leader in the community. So what does that mean for the media guy?

Before we can jump into an honest conversation about this, you have to know where I’m coming from. I think if you were to survey the top leading churches in this country, when it comes to having the most impact in their sphere of influence you would find one common thread. Each one of those churches has the ability to take the vision that is guided by the leadership team and translate that into a form of visual media whether it’s the web, video, or some other form. A lot of pastors still look at visual media as a great option to have. That mindset is what is killing the church’s ability to communicate the gospel and the vision they are offering.

If you walk into an office setting and the furniture is from the 1970’s, all of  the brochures are black and white with a handwritten address and phone number scratched in on the back, and the receptionist explains how they are the best thing going…what goes through your head? The same is true for the visual media at your local church. Whether it’s the signage, the bulletins, magazine, brochures or video, all of that is a mirrored reflection to most guests of the quality of the message you are giving. Visual media IS ministry.

So, what does that have to do with losing your focus? It’s not hard to get side-tracked when your in a fast paced church ministry. More often than not, the most common word thrown around in a ministry atmosphere is the word “change.” That is, if your ministry is alive and vibrant to begin with. When we begin to lose our focus about our direction, our job, our tasks and goals, then we completely lose our ability to have an impact through our leadership and our ministry. You can’t go five directions at once and still end up at the destination your were originally heading.

How long does it take before you put everything on cruise control during your work week? There’s another word for that, it’s called ‘plateauing.’

Proud of My Wife

My wife, Jesscia and our Pastor’s wife, Stephanie, just finished their first 5k race tonight. This is a big accomplishment for them and I couldn’t be more proud of Jess for sticking with the training involved to get to this point. Especially when it wasn’t on her list of favorite things to do that day!

Both of the boys loved seeing their mom cross the finish line and it was a good night for everyone. Way to go babe, we’re all so proud of you!

Three Things I Realized Today…

1. If I had all the money and resources to do whatever I wanted to do when it came to my job and it’s capacity at the church..I would be a complete failure. There are churches with budgets four times bigger than our’s at Crosspointe and their not getting it done when it comes to media. Resources and money only get you so far.

2. I have along way to go. The more progress I make in designing and the more people pat me on the back cause me to overhaul the way I do things. Some would say that is ridiculous. I shouldn’t change things for the sake of change, and while I would agree, I would also add to that. If you’re not re-evaulating how you do things on a consistant basis and then make the effort to change process or philosophy in order to accomplish excellence and better your ministry, then you’ll become stagnant.

3. Is my ministry ready for next year or next month? God has blessed our church with continued and steady growth. What am I doing to prepare for that growth? What could I be doing to reach more people with the message of Jesus Christ through my ministry?

Since I Last Blogged..

Following up on the last post I made, if you would like to view the magazine for this past quarter I was working on, you can do so  here.

At church there has been plenty to keep me busy…

1. We just decided to start packaging various sermon series from both our Sunday morning worship services and our Wednesday night services, Worship at the Pointe. This means designing artwork, custom DVD menus and DVD authoring and that means I have been working on mastering our chroma and alpha keying ability for our DVD’s. Basically, when the Pastor comes to a point in his sermon it is then overlayed on the screen. Sounds simple and for the most part is, but it’s very time consuming. Especially on a 10 week series like our prophecy series that just ended. Incredible series though..

2. For the second year we’re going to be introducing a 40 day study. Last year we did a series entitled, Unite: 40 Days of Life-Changing Prayer. During that series, those 40 days, we as a church saw more people come to Christ, more baptisms, more unity and more movement of God in our church than we had the entire year to that point. It’s our prayer as a staff that this is the case this year with our series, Unstoppable: 40 Days of Faith. All of that to say, the booklet we design that correlates with this study is a task in and of itself. It’s a devotional book that goes along with the sermon series, etc. Roughly 44 pages long and requires a lot of designing, editing, proofing, and labor involved. Much like a magazine is, which I’ll be putting together at the same time as this booklet.

3. One area I’ve really been enjoying and stretching myself in is video lately. Whether it’s an interview or promo for an upcoming event, each one presents it’s own set of challenges, which is great. I’m coming to really enjoy it! Below are just a few examples…

The Pointe

No, it’s not just a play on words, The Pointe is our new magazine that Crosspointe issues every 3 or 4 months depending on the push of the events. This is a huge collaborate effort between our ministries for their articles, input, proofing, and myself on the design side. This has been an enriching experience for me simply because I do not come from a print background. The opportunity to try something new and suceed in it has been an incredible feeling.

All that to say it begins today, the design aspect of the magazine. Even though we’re a month out from actually shipping this issue, this week will begin the layout structure to go back and plugin design on top of. I’ll post the completed design once it is finished.