It's ok to make mistakes...

if you are trying. It's not okay when you're not paying attention or messing around.

This is my big thought from the yard today.

There were a couple of things that happened behind the scenes of our service this weekend. Friday night we had some issue with the circle. Those that were there know what I'm talking about and I won't go into detail about it here. In any case, we had a brief discussion that if we couldn't get the circle right we shouldn't do it. I commented back that we were doing the circle.

Excellence is a core value for our weekend team. Most of the team that serves on the weekend is made up of volunteers. We have the best volunteers, period! We push them to try new things all the time. Yes, we want the services to go smoothly and we want things to be right, but sometimes as we are stretching and trying new things, something doesn't go as planned. Sometimes it does, and that is great. But when it doesn't, that is ok too. It is from those experiences that we learn and grow. In most cases we figure it out and learn what not to do.

Here are a couple of quotes that I came across that think speak to this:

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." --Erich Fromm, German-American psychologist

"There's a way to do it better -- find it." --Thomas Edison, American inventor

"If you can't accept losing, you can't win." --Vince Lombardi, National Football League coach

"Have fun, always set goals, but never set limits." --Shannon Miller, Olympic gymnast

"We try a bunch of stuff, we see what works, and we call that our strategy." --Dennis Bakke, AES co-founder and former CEO

I miss my grass

I know what you are thinking and shame on you...

Of course, that is one of the things I love about making up blog titles. I've talked to Heather about this post a few times and she thought that I did it already. If I have, please forgive me but I didn't see it so here you go....

I miss the grass that we used to have in the backyard. It wasn't much, but there is something was something about going out to mow what little there was that opened up the floodgates of my thinking. Maybe they weren't really floodgates, but I seemed to get a fresh idea or two. Maybe it was some clarity on a current issue, or a thought from God.



Now that most of the backyard is concrete there is no need to mow. Just keeping co weeds, which is an endless job, thanks Adam, that doesn't take quite as much time as getting the mower plugged in and ready. My friends back east would give me grief when they calledntrol of the and I was mowing. For most of them, mowing is at least a 1/2 days worth of work on a riding mower. No comparison to my 15 minutes or so pushing an electric mower.

Out in the yard today, I had a thought... It's coming next...

One last thought...

I was thinking as I was getting to the end of this book that some of the changes in my thinking have been encouraged by Erwin McManus, Rob Bell, Donald Miller and Scot McKnight just to name a few. Maybe it's that some of the things they say aren't really mainstream. They are fresh and different.

So near the end of the book Erwin discusses the statement that "God wants to keep you safe." Looking at some of the examples that are used in the book I would have to say that may not always be the case. There are tons of examples, and maybe we can discuss this sometime, of just the opposite.

This paragraph bothered me:

"It may seem counterintuitive, but the more civilized we seem to become, the more detached from the pain of others we end up finding ourselves. The most civilized churches have really no practical concern for people outside their congregations. The brokenness of a lost and unbelieving world is not enough to inspire the painful changes necessary to make the church relevant to the world in which we live."

I'm asking myself where do I fit into this? How concerned am I? How relevant? How involved?

By Committee

I've heard that word a lot this week. The way these festivals work is they are run by a local committee. It seems like this week has been one non stop clash between the local committee and BGEA. I mean no disrespect to the local committee or to the local culture. This post really has nothing to do with this local committee, but more of the timing of coming across this little snippet which I found amusing.

I'm just getting to the end of the book and Erwin is talking about groups of different animals. You'll have to read the book to understand how it fits into the book.

I'll set the stage with this:
A group of whales = a pod
A group of cattle = a herd
A group of lions = a pride
A group of fish = a school
A group of flies = a swarm

By now I think you get the point. So I found this to be most interesting. Do you know what a group of buzzards is called?

yes, a committee. A group of buzzards waiting around to feast on leftover carnage is called a committee. Erwin points out "This explains so much of what's going on in churches -- a lot of committees waiting around to live off human carnage."

Hmm.... we'll just leave that there...

We are what we read

I know this is true for me. I tend to jump into whatever my current "project" is with both feet. I tend to get pretty excited about a new thought or idea that is part of what I may be working on. I think a lot of it comes from my lack of really being able to multi-task. Sure, I can be running multiple projects or jobs at one time, but I've discovered that its not really multitasking. I'm really only working on one thing at a time. I watch my wife read a magazine while watching tv and not miss a beat. If I try to do that, I either don't remember what I read or miss something funny that just happened. Thank goodness for digital cable and the ability to rewind!

So I packed 3 books with me for this trip to South Korea with the hopes I would be able to catch up on some self learning. I've actually started in all 3, sorry Rod, I know that is a no-no, but only to see how easy they were to get into. I read a little on the plane on the way over, and that was cool. Today I decided I would really try to make a dent in one of my books. I packed "The Barbarian Way", by Erwin McManus basically because it was the thinest book I had with me. I think that Erwin has some fresh thinking on some topics and the fact that he could be viewed as controversial is good for conversation. One thing jumped off the pages to me today.

pg 45 "God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance. God created you so that your life would count, not so that you could count the days of your life".

Some other things that hit pretty close to home had to do with teaching our children. He asks the question "are you teaching your children about God or how to experience God in their life?" Makes you think, doesn't it?

So I read in between soundchecks and moved from the stage to our production office and back. There was quite a breeze today and it was much cooler. Toward the end of the afternoon just before the service started Paul came by and asked "What would you be doing if you weren't doing this? You seem to read a lot." I told him I was playing catch up on the reading and I really didn't know what I would be doing, other than something that helpes to bring change to peoples lives ...