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Thirty years ago, on the first Sunday of April 1978, I became part of a church pastoral staff for the first time. (This is me about 10 years later, in 1988.) Yesterday the awesome people I get to do life with every week made a special day even more special by surprising me with a gift clock.
Over the last 30 years, the Lord has been a very faithful teacher, even when I wasn’t being faithful to him. Here’s a sampling what I have learned, and continue to learn – listed in reverse order of impact.
30. There is nothing on God’s green earth like a seventh or eighth-grade girl.
29. To be effective in youth ministry, kids should see you as an advocate, and adults should see you as an authority. When that gets reversed, it’s time to get out of youth ministry… maybe be a senior pastor.
28. Age, young or otherwise, does not dictate your effectiveness in ministry.
27. The truth of God’s word and a love for people transcends culture and location.
26. Like Jonah, you can’t run from your calling for very long.
Kinetic Church was robbed. I don’t mean by the refs in the church league basketball tournament. I mean a thief (or thieves) stole a trailer containing 75% of the Charlotte area congregation’s equipment in early March, leaving the portable church with virtually nothing.
What would you do? How would you respond? How would you define your life if you discovered that three-fourths of your tangible assets – to say nothing of the hundreds of man-hours invested in labor – were instantly gone?
Can’t relate? How about the time somebody stole your dreams or your hope? Or your reputation? Or your innocence? Or your marriage?
You won’t believe what these guys did.
They went on the offensive. They started a billboard campaign with five different messages, as well as a YouTube video aimed directly at the thief. Check out the video below.
Kinetic Church’s response illustrates some powerful lessons in transforming painful experiences into remarkable opportunities:
“I can shoot straight, if I don’t have to shoot too far.”
“I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
-Scarlett O’Hara, “Gone With the Wind”
Everybody is fascinated with Scarlett. But nobody wants to admit how much like her we can be.
One way to understand LifeVesting is to define it in terms of what it isn’t. LifeVestors have four alter-egos: consumers, hoarders, gamblers, and codependents. Today I’d like to introduce you to the first.
While in the purest economic sense everyone is a spender, the Consumers I’m talking about are takers. They spend their money, their time, their relationships on today’s wants and needs. Their primary focus is on themselves – though not always in an intentionally selfish way. They come to church for what they can get out of it. They spend their time and money in ways that, when spent, are gone forever. For them, there is no other moment but now. Tomorrow will take care of itself.
“If the best you can offer up at the moment is a Post-it Note to God, by all means, offer it up. Just recognize that He's ultimately offering something much greater.” source: Post-it Notes to God
Thirty years ago, on the first Sunday of April 1978, I became part of a church pastoral staff for the first time. (This is me about 10 years later, in 1988.) Yesterday the awesome people I get to do life with every week made a special day even more special by surprising me with a gift clock.
