my texas friend andy piper sent me this cool john wayne quote....
"Life is tough. But it's even tougher if you're stupid."
i have to admit that most of the tough times in my life have been the result of me being stupid. i honestly can't blame much of my tough challenges on anything else.
in that light, i guess i am blessed. now if i could just quit doing the stupid stuff....
my friend bobby lepinay posted this on his blog the other day - a video of a weatherman with a slightly different approach to making weather "interesting" to the viewers.
here's the post on bobby's blog.
watch the video here.
thanks for the laugh, bobby. i needed it today.
just got my copy of launch (by nelson searcy) in today. i can't wait to read it. i'll post something as soon as i do read it. stay tuned.
amazing. in the room where this scene is taking place, there is currently a wii (uncle josh's), an xbox (jd's) and a gamecube (lincoln's). there are countless toys. there is a big screen tv.
but what do my kids want? they wanna shed their clothes (the little boys do anyway) and play on a cardboard box like it's a train. (the blurry lincoln is due to the "choo choo" arm motion taking place during the shot.)
think about it. you can't strip down to your diaper and sit on a wii - not easily anyway. and xbox and gamecube never had a game that put three little kids on a big ol' train quite like this old cardboard box from mimi's new desk.
thank God for cardboard trains.
check this out... i got this email from a great friend of mine planting a church in bulawayo, zimbabwe with the help of a bunch of folks here in the usa - particularly those over at celebration church of jacksonville (they're also starting a new children's cup carepoint there.)
wooohooo!
Friends,
We had our first service on Sunday!! It was wonderful. The atmosphere was charged with God’s love and presence. The worship was awesome. We held the meeting in a home. We had 45 people in all. After the service we all shared some lunch. God is truly up to some really great stuff. What a privilege to be chosen by Him to be a part of all this. We just want to love Jesus Christ and these wonderful people. Thanks for being a part of what God is doing right here right now. This is indeed kairos time.
go get 'em pastor dixon.
cool book that every church planter oughtta check out. every pastor, for that matter. not just saying that cuz my church is in it, either. really.
innovation 2007
just saw this note i made for myself at staff retreat last month - it was part of an interpretation of a message in tongues during the worship time the first night of the retreat:"it's not about what you do or what you have done. it's about being with Me."
so easy to get caught up and forget that simple truth.
my friend geoff surratt just spent some time in kenya. he's a writer anyway, but what he just posted on his blog about his trip will give you a good sense of what africa will do to you when you go there.
now, understand... geoff is a veteran in ministry, a pastor at seacoast (a great church in south carolina) and he has been supporting missions in africa for quite some time. this was his first visit to the place he's been supporting for so long.
check out his post here: geoffsurratt.typepad.com
here's a piece of it:
"So, how was Kenya?" I've been trying for two weeks to frame an answer to that question, I still don't have an adequate response. As we were walking on a dirt path between walls of tangled vegetation, stepping carefully to avoid the cow dung that was scattered everywhere we went, dodging a donkey running at us from opposite direction, we came upon two small children. They were dressed in rags, they seemed to be about four or five years of age. The older boy was carrying a yellow container apparently sent to fetch water for their family. There were no parents or siblings anywhere in sight and we hadn't seen any kind of house for quite some time. Just two nearly naked toddlers carrying contaminated water to their mud hut or metal shack or concrete bunker or whatever passed for shelter for whatever passed for a family.
isaac and carol just posted this from their visit to the children's cup carepoint/healing place church campus at nkobe mozambique.
check it out. the lady standing up is celeste - great lady doing a great job.
if you're not tracking isaac and carol's blog, you oughtta be. isaacandcarol.blogspot.com - gonna be some cool stuff there in the coming weeks and months.
he's about to turn 7 tomorrow. the real sign of aging is that he is already dressing with the shorts and black dress socks.
"what, dad.....?"
we didn't let him go out like that.
he did give me a cool birthday card today (my birthday is today, his is tomorrow). it was printed on the outside saying "today is your special day." then on the inside it was printed, "tomorrow is not." then he wrote in on his own - "IT'S MINE."
today is your special day.
tomorrow is not.
it's mine.
thought that was pretty creative.
one of the healing place church vans parked in front of "kittens" (a strip club) while a team from the church wsa inside giving roses to the workers.
a picture of the roses being given to each one of the workers.
the rizzo family christmas card placed on each lady's mirror. (this is a picture they took on their phone and sent to pastor dino in the middle of the night to wake him up.)
check out these cool hpc outreach pictures. they're the ones pastor dino rizzo referred to in his message a couple weekends ago. about six weeks ago, right after christmas, a team from hpc went out in the church van to some of the strip clubs and gave out roses to the strippers in the changing room. the manager let them in and they put roses at each worker's mirror and they included a christmas card from the rizzo family (the ones we gave out at church). you talk about rocking the world of some people who are not used to being shown love by Christians.
here's the story as told by those who went (from the serve team blog):
Last Friday night HPC had a Christmas party. It wasn’t at the church, more of a ‘Midnight Outreach take-out party’. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Midnight, this is an outreach where we go to the streets, strip clubs and hangouts that are frequented by people who are currently losing the battle to darkness. Our goal is to bring hope to the hopeless and to demonstrate the love of God to the lost and hurting. At one of the strip clubs a dancer looked at a volunteer and said, “Thank y’all so much. This is the only present I’ll be getting for Christmas.” The volunteer smiled at her, told her she was welcome and reminded her that God knew where she was at.
Midnight Outreach is another effort at being a healing place for a hurting world. Between 7pm and 1am we handed out 96 roses, a few cases of chocolates and 87 HPC Chick bags. We took these items into forgotten places, scary places, into places where sin normally has full control. The love of Christ, His hope and forgiveness, at least momentarily, shone very bright in those dark places.
you want a good book to sink your teeth into? especially if you're on a team - whether it's a church or ministry or secular job - doesn't matter. the thoughts dave ferguson gives in his new book the big idea aer phenomenal help.
i think the coolest stuff in it for me is how he presents the concept of team creativity. it's not always easy for a team leader to do, but allowing creativity to be a team-based thing can produce some outrageously cool results.
the fact of the matter is that to allow a team to help you create as a leader will only expand your capacity to communicate and to lead. check out this quote - one of my favorite in the book:
"you have to be willing to trust the team more than you trust yourself."
oof. hard to admit, but how true it is.
kristen young sent me this a little while ago. it's a video of my niece trinity (ben and susan's youngest daughter) over in swaziland.
here's the little short video: 070207unfairsweettrinity.avi
mush mush.
okay, so i'm a sucker for kids. you'd melt too, wouldn't you?
i offered my soon-to-be-7-year-old son lincoln a five dollar bill i thought i had in my pocket to clean the living room last night. he complied happily, worked hard (ingeniously employed the free services of his soon-to-be-3-year-old twin brothers) and when he was done, i realized that the only bill in my pocket was actually a ten.
don't scoff - you'd have given it to him too. look at the face.
