Nurturing my Son’s Gifts

· Categories Family, Personal

Long time, no write. Like some of you we went home for the holidays last week. Corrie and I took the boys to my parents house in Baton Rouge, LA where we hung out with my parents, my brother Jason and his wife Andrea. It was a great couple of days with the exception of mom getting the stomach flu at the end.

One of the highlights of the week was celebrating Cooper’s 3rd birthday. All he wanted and ever talked about were drums. I’m not talking about some kind of little kid set, he wanted real drums, and the kid is actually pretty good. I’m going to upload a video to youtube and I’ll link it here. So we bought him some drums off of Craigslist and gave them to him. He’s played non-stop since last Wednesday night.

I know it’s a little crazy to give a 3 year old drums and there have been times the last 7 days when I’m reading or watching a game, where I’ve wondered what we were thinking. But the drums are symbolic of what Corrie and I hope we can always do. We want to always put our children in a place to develop and expand their giftedness and ability. I don’t know if Cooper will be a drummer when he grows up. But God entrusted these 2 boys (and maybe a little girl in the future) to us, and we want to do everything within our power to provide them the means to try out their passions. Right now Cooper’s passionate about the drums, it’s just about the only thing he talks about. Next year it might be computers. The year after that it might be writing. Who knows?

We may not always be financially able to buy the things they want, but we want to continually position them to dream. I don’t want my kids to grow up and say “If I had the chance, I might have been a great drummer.” I want them to say, “I’ve had the opportunity to try other things, but I’m doing what I was created to do.” We’re probably a long way from that day, but I can’t wait to walk this path with my children.

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Yesterday and Tomorrow

· Categories Family, Personal

My oldest son Cooper will turn 3 the day after Thanksgiving next week. He is without a doubt the smartest, best looking, most talented almost 3 year old on the planet. Anybody that thinks differently just needs to spend about 10 minutes with him. He says things like, “That’s fantastic”, “Branson (his little 9 month old brother) watch me play the drums, I’m awesome”, and “Dad, I’m freakin’ freezing”. His mom must have taught him that last one.

One of the cool things that I’ve noticed about Cooper the last few days is that everything that happened in the past happened “yesterday”. He was talking about our beach vacation which happened in August and he said, “you remember when we played that game at the beach with Mimi yesterday?” He talks about playing the drums at the church “yesterday” when in actuality it was last Wednesday. The same is true of anything that will happen in the future, it’s going to happen “tomorrow”. He’ll say “when we have my birthday tomorrow I want drums”, or “when we go to the church tomorrow I need to take my toy to show Ms. Tamara (his teacher).”

I wish I had this ability. It keeps things in perspective. I’m not really sure how. I just think it would be great to feel like every cool thing you’ve ever experienced happened yesterday, and all of the amazing things you will accomplish in your life will happen in the next 24 hours. At least in Cooper’s mind anyway. There is a sermon illustration somewhere in here, I just can’t find it yet. I’ll let you know when I do.

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The Difference in Men and Women

· Categories Family, Humor, Personal

A few nights ago Cooper was sick and came to our bed (he doesn’t do this much anymore, he’s doing better). During the night he threw up on me, my pillow, and our sheets. I’ll spare you the nasty details. Eventually we got him calmed down, me cleaned up, and we changed the sheets.

After the sheets were changed we laid down, and I went to sleep. The next day Corrie said, “you didn’t say anything about the new way I’m doing the sheets. You weren’t impressed?” Mind you, the time in question was 3:30 IN THE MORNING. I recovered by actually being able to tell her that I did in fact notice how she was storing the sheet set in one of the matching pillow cases to keep them all together. Thank the Lord I remembered her telling me about the Martha Stewart Show episode where they talked about it.

It was at that moment that I realized that while she is not a needy person at all, it doesn’t matter what time of the day OR NIGHT, my wife needs and wants my affirmation and appreciation. It goes both ways, because I need and want her to affirm and appreciate me…just at a reasonable hour of the day.

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Vision pt. 2

· Categories Church, Leadership, Student Ministry

Vision is one of those buzz words floating around the church right now, but I think that’s because it’s really important. Andy Stanley recently wrote a great little book called, “Making Vision Stick”. I encourage every leader to read this book. It’s only about 75 pages, and can be finished in 1 or 2 sittings.

One of the problems with vision is that we tend to change it when we run across something we like better. For example, we say “our church is about communicating to, caring for, and connecting people.” And then 6 months later we are about “loving Jesus, loving people, serving the world.” Especially within Student Ministry, but within ministry in general I think that we sometimes fall into the trap of creating a vision that we can sell. We want it to sound good, we want to be able to put it on a banner, and we want it to roll off the tongue so that people will “buy in”. That’s not vision. That’s a slogan for ministry.

Vision should be the underlying force that drives what you do. It doesn’t deal with the particulars of how you accomplish it. It doesn’t even really worry with the details of making it happen. Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in Charlotte has written a lot recently about the vision being the same but strategy changing. In accomplishing their vision he is not concerned with whether or not they own a building, meeting in schools, or 3 or 4 warehouses, because that’s just strategy. But the vision is specific and is the constant throughout.

What are your thoughts?

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Vision

· Categories Christianity, Leadership, Personal, Student Ministry

When was the last time you felt like God was telling you to do something, and you replied, “no way God, that’s too much” or “I can’t do that”? As I’m writing this, God has been stirring something in my heart for our entire Student Ministry department for this next year, and IT SCARES ME TO DEATH! In my heart, I know that’s a good thing. If I felt like I could accomplish it on my own, or even if it was just an easily attainable thing, I might be tempted to take the credit in the end.

My dad wrote a book a few years ago entitled “Invited to the Deep End”. I’m biased, but it is a great book. You can buy it HERE. He talks about living life in the deep end of the pool, where you are over your head, and don’t have the comfort of just standing up on the bottom when you get uncomfortable.

When was the last time you were over your head? What do you do when God tells you to do something that scares you?

We are going to talk about this over the next few days. As always, I welcome your comments.

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My Pastor is a Cool Dude

· Categories Church, Leadership, Student Ministry

I think I’m safe to assume that my Pastor doesn’t read this blog. Pastor Mark if you are, please click the back arrow and leave now. There’s no way to write what I want to write without it coming across as sucking up, which I try to leave up to Kirk and Ed on our Executive Ministry Team.

Sunday night I was reminded of how cool my Pastor is, and I hope our college students understood it as well. Sunday nights we have Crave, which is a college age Bible Study. We usually have 30-40 students in attendance. Starting back in May Pastor Mark and his wife Udella took the lead for Crave and had college students to their house on Sunday nights for a while, until they could find someone to take over. This fall we have been meeting at the church, and I have been assisting him in the teaching/leading each week. This past Sunday, he didn’t have a role in the teaching, as I was concluding our series, and I encouraged him to just take the night off and stay home. Instead, he showed up in sweats and hat and joined one of the small groups breaking a part what Jesus meant when He said, “eat my flesh and drink my blood.”

After preaching twice on Sunday morning, and just for the plain fact that he is the Pastor of 2000+ people, he could have just stayed home, and yet here he was in a small group with 10 college students. It was a refreshing reminder of leadership. There is no denying to those students that he values their ministry, and more importantly he values them.

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