I have become kind of the "Announcement Guy" at our Church recently.
And can I tell you something?
I love it and I hate it.
I love doing announcements because:
A) It becomes my act of worship in the Worship Service.
B) I really try to create the feel of announcements to be worshipful and inspiring to our Church.
C) I get to share with people from our Church all the cool things God is up to around our campus and beyond
I hate doing announcements because:
A) I get super nervous right before hand!
B) I have a terrible memory and there are usually tons of dates, times and taglines I must remember
C) The Audience always looked angry!
Now I know the audience is for me and not in fact angry, but have you ever considered what your face looks like as you hear announcements at your Church? Picture a combination of the look you get when you discover you just swigged a gulp of spoiled milk and the look on your face when you are 17th in line at the DMV. That is the face that looks out at me each week as I go through announcements.
Now the best way to describe the success of the Announcement Guy is to relate this task to a NBA Referee.
An NBA referee is at his best when no one notices the job he is doing. My job in announcements is to try to get people to forget what I am doing and hear and get excited about the event I am describing.
So to evaluate my announcements at Church from now on I will use the NBA Foul system to evaluate my job.
Today in my Announcements, I had several infractions.
I had a couple of awkward transitions = 3 Second Violation
I also added announcements not on our schedule or slides = illegal Defense
2 of my 3 jokes bombed completely = Traveling
So if you are keeping score at home, I had (2) 3 second violations, (2) illegal defenses and (2) traveling calls in my announcement job today. Basically, I was Andrew Bynum at announcements today.
Apparently a home Bible Study with 15 people (pictured above) has come under fire from a City Official for not having the proper use permits. San Diego, Really?
One of my favorite Pastors to listen to on the ol' i-Tunes Podcast is Mark Driscoll. I listen to his weekly sermons on my day off as I clean the backyard pool, rake leaves and putter around the garage.
I just found out that Driscoll is coming to speak Sunday, June 14th at the Crystal Cathedral's "Hour of Power" (no joke!).
I wonder if I can escape my duties at Calvary that morning to sneak over there?
Other Pastors I regularly Podcast: 1. Matt Chandler, The Village Church (Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX) 2. Francis Chan, Cornerstone Church (Simi Valley, Ca) 3. Andy Stanley, North Point Community Church (Atlanta, GA) 4. Rene Schlaepfer, Twin Lakes Church (Santa Cruz, Ca) 5. The Guys at my Church, Calvary Church Santa Ana (Santa Ana, Ca)
I came across an interesting article in the Christian Post (via the Catalyst Blog) about an Orange County Church which traded their traditional building for a Home Church Model. Very Interesting to hear what happened next. Read about it here.
This Summer I am leading our Young Adult Group through the Book of Proverbs.
Proverbs is an incredibly poetic book filled with powerfully wise sayings.
In my attempt to understand this book, I have been going through some commentaries on the Book of Proverbs and I found a great read by a guy named Anthony Selvaggio called, "A Proverbs Driven Life."
Selvaggio breaks down the Book of Proverbs into 4 categories:
1. Words
2. Work
3. Wealth
4. Relationships
I have been sitting on the Words section this week and have come across a powerful Proverb found in Proverbs 25, verse 11: "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver."
I so badly want my words to be like "Apples of Gold," words that impact people like valued treasures. Selvaggio notes that the key to saying treasured words is making sure they are said in the right setting. Notice the Proverb says, "aptly spoken...in settings of silver."
He than asks:
How many times have you said the wrong thing at the wrong time?
Or
How many times have you said the right thing at the wrong time?
This is my life!!! I feel like my words are often said with poor timing and discerment.
Words of treasure are saying the right thing at the right time.
My Prayer
God, forgive me for my loose lips.
Forgive me for the countless times, my words have torn someone down rather than built someone up. Give me wisdom in my words. Give me the wisdom to say the right things at the right times to the people I interact with. Thank you Jesus, that you are the perfect Word the Word that became flesh. The right Word at the right time.
We are having a Baptism Sunday at Calvary Church, celebrating what God is doing among the people of Calvary. I have the HUGE honor of baptizing 8 people as part of the morning.
I have to share with you though, it is the strangest feeling, being up in our baptismal. I am wearing board shorts and black t-shirt standing in lukewarm water up to my waist staring out at 1,000 people, trying to remember the names of each person getting baptized, trying to remember the verbiage of how we do baptisms...it is a nerve wracking experience! But such a cool experience at the same time, as I have a front row seat in a hugely significant moment in a person's life. I pray that I can simply get out of the way and let God be glorified as our Church celebrates the transformational stories that will be shared from those getting baptized.
Dave Gibbons the Lead Pastor at NewSong Church in Irvine, California recently said, "When darkness occurs, that’s when the church can shine. The church is never brighter than when it’s darkest."
I think Gibbons is saying is, when people lose hope in the enviroment, circumstances, government or the economy, the true source of hope, found in Jesus can be clearly seen.
The economical stress our Culture is feeling has lead to closed businesses all over our Country. It is strange feeling for me driving around crowded Orange County and observing abandoned restaurants and buildings in every direction.
One positive of empty buildings is the Church has more opportunites than ever to plant Churches and shine the love of Jesus to more people. There are open and empty buildings in every neighborhood for Churches to move into.
I read this week about the interesting new trend for Churches to move into abandoned car dealership and Circuit City Stores. Check out the article here.
This may sounds strange (because it is) but one thing I am passionate about is summarizing things. People (mainly Marie) make fun of me all the time for my ability to debrief, rehash and summarize events. For me, a good summary of something helps cement it into my memory and helps me evaluate the events impact on my life.
So I was excited When our Church Planning Team was up for the task of summarizing our recent 4 month Sunday morning Sermon Series called: "Parables: Mysteries of the Kingdom" Tammy Harris, our Church's Final Cut Pro Mac-Genius listened to hours of Parables Sermons (God Bless you Tammy), used art created from a team of Church Volunteers and produced this wrap-up video of our sermon series. Listen real carefully and you may even catch 3 seconds of a familiar voice.
I am really excited for Day #4 down here in Baton Rouge, La.
In the morning we get to go hang with Streams of Life Ministries and help pass out boxes of food to over 5,000 people in the city. Streams of Life is an incredible ministry. They have about 35 Church members, yet somehow by faith, they feed thousands of people each week. Each week they have no idea who will donate next to their ministry and each week God provides. Amazing.
Then at night we are going to a special BBQ, cajun style with Gator, Frog Legs and of course some Gumbo.
The family and I continued our May mini-vacation run with a 2 night stay in Palm Springs at Marie's Uncle's house. We had a great time, playing in the pool, drinking strawberry smoothies and for me watching ESPN'sSportsCenter for the one and only time of the year(Yes, we are the only family in America without Cable).
This afternoon I boarded a plane with 4 great guys from Calvary: Todd Yates, Chris Gniffke, Ben Harris and Matt Davis and journeyed to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to visit an incredible ministry called Living Streams.
We are here to do some filming for a summer VBS Video and learn all we can about what God is doing at Living Streams Ministries. I will try to tell more of their story in the days ahead, but basically Living Streams feeds over 5,000 people a week, played a huge role in the disaster relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina and is run by the coolest, Godliest people around in Steve and Dianne Adcock.
"30I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. 31Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there, 32so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed. 33The God of peace be with you all. Amen." -Paul in Romans 15
Discipleship is messy. What I mean is, encouraging people to grow in their knowledge and love for Jesus is not an easy task. It is a high calling for each of us, but a calling that is filled with struggles, highs, lows, disappointments, failures, victories, unimaginable joys and then even more struggles. Discipling others is never predictable, never over, always a process.
I have been discipling one particular guy for the last 4 years. I first met this guy when he was a sophomore in high school and I was his high school pastor. He was part of an Olive Crest group home and at the age of 15, he had already lived a tough, long life. Yet his love for life and for our youth group was contagious on the other kids in our group. He used to wake up at 5:30am and ride the bus for an hour just to show up to our Tuesday Morning breakfast club at a local Starbucks. At times in the last 4 years, he has broken my heart making terrible decisions. At other times, he has made me proud, living for Jesus with boldness. After his junior year of high school, he was reunited with his Mom, who was a single Mom.
Tragically, 2 months before he graduated from high school his Mom got sick and suddendly died. So sad. Yet in the midst of tragedy, it was amazing to see the people of God step up. Olive Crest staff members whipped together meals for the memorial service. Students from our youth group showed up in bunches for support. Our Church graciously paid for the burial expenses and for some of the pressing leftover bills.
Anyways, this leads me to 2 weeks ago, the one year anniversary of my friend's Mother's death. He called me up and asked me a question: "Matt will you help me scatter the ashes of my Mom this week?" I somewhat ignorantly agreed not fully comprehending the gravity or complexity of this task.
So on the one year anniversary of her death, I found myself sitting on a crowded beach on a hot sunny day at Huntington Beach holding a brown box of cremated remains!
We didn't really know what to do next.
(they don't teach you the legal or practical technicalities of spreading ashes in seminary).
Should we wade into the ocean and open the box and just dump it and run?
No, too many onlookers, seems too suspicious.
Should we dig a pit and bury them in the sand?
No, didn't seem reverent enough.
We sat on the beach for 45 minutes, wondering what to do.
I was beginning to forsee the next day's headlines:
"Pastor and college kid arrested for dumping human remains at beach, murder investigation to follow."
Finally, we both agreed, let's just be honest and go tell the lifeguard driving up and down the beach what we are up to and see what he says.
So we flagged down the lifeguard and told him our crazy situation.
It turned out the lifeguard was a Christian and had just lost his sister a month earlier to cancer.
He had such a compassionate heart towards us and said, "Hey I have a better idea than scattering the ashes here on the beach. Go up onto the Pier and scatter them off the end of the pier."
Is that legal we asked?
He told us, "sure, go do what you need to do."
So that is what we did. We carried our little brown box to the end of the pier, found a good spot, read some Bible passages and prayed.
My friend wanted me to spread the ashes for him, and I agreed to do it.
At that moment, an unforseeable situation occurred.
A gust of wind came blowing right at us. As I dumped the ashes, the wind took them and slammed them back into my face and across the pier. Ashes all over me.
Talk about messy discipleship.
About 2/3rds of the ashes however ended up making it into the water some 30 feet below.
I was about to puke from the ash dust all over me and then I looked over at my friend. There he was crying and having a once-in-a-lifetime moment of grieving and saying a final goodbye to his Mom.
At that moment, it was worth it.
It was worth it as I realized that the Lord had allowed me to be involved in this moment as part of the process of discipleship in this guy's life.
Been going over Colossians 3 (again) this week. I am loving this chapter from the Bible.
Have you read Colossians 3 lately? Click here to read it in the ESV translation.
Here are a few of my thoughts after reflecting on the Chapter. 1. I must forgive others, because Jesus has forgiven me. 2. I am called to love my wife today and encourage my children. 3. Worship must be my lifestyle not just my Sunday routine. 4. My thoughts need to be on Jesus today. 5. I am a new person as a Christian: anger, lust, impatience, greed do not own me. 6. I am called to be thankful because I am new in Christ. 7. Jesus Christ is everything.
I resisted up to this point because I already feel overwhelmed by "in-boxes."
Every day I check my blog, my facebook, my e-mail, my phone texts, my cell phone messages, my office messages, our home messages. If someone could invent a universal in-box they would make millions (or at least $19.95 a month from me).
Over the last couple of weeks I have seen the benefit of Twitter:
1. Real time interactions at conferences, meetings, etc.
2. Quick updates on friend's lives without the need to text back or stop what I am doing
We might have an idea based on Jesus' first public teaching as recorded in the Gospels.
In Luke 4, Jesus opens the scrolls to Isaiah 61 and in 140 words or less states:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
I love a good underdog story. Saturday, the Kentucky Derby offered a compelling one. At 50 to 1 odds, "Mine that Bird" was not expected to compete in this year's Kentucky Derby. Not only did he win, he won after starting the race in last place and ending up winning by almost 7 lengths (the biggest victory in Derby history since 1946.) Mine that Bird was purchased for $9,500 by David Cotey in 2008 and today he is worth millions. Incredible!
Day 2 (April 24th) was actually more incredible than Day 1 (which set a high standard). Click here for Day 1 Catalyst West Coast Notes.
Out of the gates was a forum on sex trafficking. Pretty intense. 2 Things I came away with from this conversation were:
#1 - Most US cities have anti-trafficking task forces (why am I not on one and why aren't Churches lining up to support these forces?)
#2 - Well Spring International, a ministry of Ravi Zacharias led by his daughter, Naomi is doing some amazing things to bring Jesus and justice to this issue.
After some worship the line-up of Conference speakers for Day 2 began:
#1 - Erwin McManus - Erwin is a pastor at Mosaic in Los Angeles. I have visited this Church and it is filling such an important need in the city. Reaching the highly educated, highly creative 20 to 30 year old crowd in Los Angeles. Erwin is a creative genuis and this talk was packed full of more creativity than a Chipotle burrito. The biggest takeaway I received from the talk was: *Leaders, call out the heroic in people and help remove the obstacles that hinder people from fulfilling the heroic calling God has placed on them.
#2 - Rick Warren interviewed on stage by Andy Stanley
This was easily the most interesting and entertaining moment of the conference.
Warren was met with a fairly tepid response by the crowd (why do we as Christians insist on exhalting leaders and then jumping to tear them down?). Andy Stanley even acknowlged this at one point in the interview. Here are some of the quotables from Warren's rants, er... interview:
When asked by Stanley how to avoid burnout in ministry, He replied,
Withdraw weekly (if you don't take a day off weekly you are breaking one of the 10 commandments),
Divert daily (He recommends doing something with your hands or a physical activity since so much of pastoring is a mental and emotional grind)
Abandon yearly (The world can get on without you)
Other Warren thoughts: "Forget time management, do energy management with your day." "Never stop learning, never compare yourself (but learn from others), never give up."
"Most Churches are either a 'Come and See' Church (Attractional, seeker sensitive) or a 'Come and Die' Church (discipleship, missions, count the cost). What type of Church is yours? It needs to be both! Sadly most Churches are either one or the other. What is your intentional plan to take people from 'come and see' to 'come and die."
Jud Wilhite - Actually Jud spoke the first day, but I unintentionally left him out of my summary of Day. I had never heard of Jud before this conference and I walked away a HUGE fan of his leadership style after observing him MC the conference for 2 days and speak at a session. Jud is the pastor of Central Christian Church in Las Vegas (yes there are Churches in Vegas). He is a man of humility, of authenticity and seems to really know how to connect with his audience. He gave a powerful talk, here are the highlights:
"Success in Ministry is like the Hollywood. Where is Hollywood? There is no central place in Hollywood that actually feels like Hollywood. That is kind of like success in ministry (never feel like you arrive at success destination)."
"When I look in the mirror I see: Guilty Ugly Small Alone Not Enough Christ is Enough."
"We did 21 services on Easter Weekend and you know what? I still didn't feel like it was good enough." You know what? It was enough when Jesus said, "It is finished."
Francis Chan - The pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, Ca, Francis is often referred to as the "Holiness" Pastor because he is so focused on speaking about the Holiness and Greateness of God. I love it. I have had the honor of hearing Francis speak on dozens of occasions and each time, the Lord uses this guy to speak straight to my guts. This time was no different. Here is some of what he said:
"I am a baseball snob. Everything has to be just right for me to want to attend a Dodgers game. Where are the tickets? Who is going? Do I have to drive? Are the Dodgers having a winning season? There are a lot of people like in the Church. Who is speaking? What time is the service? Is the childcare good? Do I like the worship music?"
'The Church is Acts was unstoppable. Today, all it takes it a bad worship leader, or a service time change to stop the Church."
"If you build your Church on doing what the Scriptures exactly say would it look like it does now?"
"I was taught to preach exegetically, was I taught to live exegetically?"
"No wonder we are scared believers, we don't pray for boldness."
I missed the impacting your city forum with Luis and Kevin Palua and John Bishop. I was busy talking to Josh Fox, the lead pastor at Vintage Faith in my hometown of Santa Cruz, Ca and a family friend. I love this guy. Such humility and really loves the people of Santa Cruz. If anyone has notes from this forum, I would appreciate it as being the local reach guy at Calvary, I am sure I could have learned something from the talk.
The final speaker of Day 2 was Perry Noble. Perry feels like a friend although I have never met him. I have followed his blog daily for the past year and have really benefited from his thoughts on Jesus and leadership. Perry is a Pastor in South Carolina. He is a hilarious guy and his time at Catalyst had people rolling. Here are his highlights in my opinion:
"The size of the vision God is going to give me is related to the amount of pain and suffering I am willing to endure."
"We love to teach on the sovereignty of God, we have a hard time living it/believing it." "When you fell stuck in a ministry position, be more interested in being developed than discovered."
On Finishing Well: "Honor God, finish what you started."
On Leadership: "Leadership is as easy as listening to God."
A "Constructive" Comment for Catalyst Creators: Eliminate the Green Room Please Eliminate the Green Room and VIP Lunches. I really appreciated the humility and honesty of each person on stage, but it kind of felt like there were 2 conferences going on...one for the attendees and one for the speakers/leaders. Before each session, we would see an video interview from the Green Room which only highlighted the fact that there was something really cool going on that we couldn't be a part of as a conference attendee. Next year, no green room! (or at least give me a pass to the green room).
Final Thoughts on Catalyst West Coast: I am so grateful this conference happened out here! A week has passed and I am still so fired up about the things I heard and was challenged by! I really desire to be a leader of humility and integrity and I so desire to be a man who is passionate in my love for Jesus Christ. It was so inspiring to be in a room where 3,000 other people seemed to share that desire. Thank you Catalyst! Finally, here is a classic video 2 of the guys who hosted Catalyst put together:
Abraham Piper has an incredibly entertaining and insightful blog called 22 words. I came across this article he posted on the site Desiring God listing 6 reasons every Pastor should blog.
Here are the 6 reasons he lists (check out the full article here.) 1. To Write 2. To Teach 3. To Recommend 4. To Interact 5. To develop an eye for what is meaningful 6. To be Known
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