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Today my first-born girl turns 4. I heard it said once that the decision to have a child is to understand from that point on your heart will now forever walk outside your body.
When it comes to Emma, I couldn't agree more.
I love you my girl.
The danger in many messages today is being exposed by its’ fruit. We hear about, "A God without wrath, bringing men without sin, into a kingdom without judgment, through a Christ without a cross."
I have an older 20" iMac G5 in the shop. It needs a new logic board. While there I decided to upgrade the hard drive from 250GB to 500GB. It is the computer I use to store all my home movies, music, & photos.
Here is the kicker.
1 hour labour = $85.00 (no problem)
I proceeded to ask them about the current files on the existing hard drive. Although I do have them backed up on an external drive, what would be the charge to transfer them onto the new drive and put them all where they go?
Another $85 dollars.
Followed up with, what good is my old internal drive, with all my data stored with no way to access it?
The response - useless.
The labour is double the cost of the hard drive.
Sigh.
Pretty excited about something launching here and here on Monday, February 4th. For the rest of the month, Lori and I are going to be tag team blogging as an extension of what we are discussing during our Love Life Series.
Rather than leave it with the Sunday experience, we are going to take it one more step...
Here are the topics we will be digging into:
Sometimes you can be more candid in text than talk. Yet our heart isn't that this be a read only endeavor. So join the discussion through comments, feel free to push back, share your experience.
You don't have to wait until Monday to get started. Look over the list of topics and fire off any question you like - no question is out of bounds (yikes, will I regret that one?)
Had a great chat with this guy about top secret stuff today :-) Just another reminder of how the blogging world puts you in touch with people that you would never have connected with before.
If you haven't started...get blogging.
Consider this your kick in the seat of your pants.
Well...we leave tomorrow for our first offsite as a team under my leadership. I am as excited as Scott Hodge hooked up to his new Starbucks iv :-)
See you in 48 hours...if not sooner :-)
A couple in our church is dealing with the loss of a father and the pain of the actions and subsequent consequences of a brother. I ask you to take a few minutes today and lift them up in prayer.
First - there are no easy formulas (a good place to start).
Second - there are principles.
Third - there is passion.
Fourth - there should be planning.
Passion is good.
Principles are to be adhered to.
Plans needs to be executed.
But principles + passion + planning does not always = success. There are many other variables.
Here is to an era where everything isn't over-simplified and dumbed down into an a + b always = c type of thing.
My head buried in facts and stats today. Just taking a breather to remind myself that facts are my friend. I can honestly say that there we are seeing some great trends at Lifecentre (and some not so great ones).
For example, as a monthly average, in 2006 we broke the "800" number in attendance twice. In 2007 we broke the "800" number in attendance eight times and in the past six months we have broken it consistently with us breaking the "900" barrier on three occasions outside of Christmas and Easter.
If our vision is to grow people with Jesus and others, then we must be ruthless in finding the inefficient systems that block and limit growth. Not only am I hitting the numbers, but the health indicators that we have set up to assess our relational strength and health.
I know this may seem like a duh, but when we are effective at developing leaders - we grow. In other words, while putting on a great service is a constant goal, if we truly want to grow and sustain that growth, those keys are found in our systems and leadership development - not just in putting on a relevant service on Sunday.
Make sense?
Back to my friends...the facts.
PS. Spiritual strengths and discipines are being taken as a given (ie. prayer etc...) Save the "if you as a church prayed more you would grow emails for another day :-)
