the 40 dollar lesson

I don’t know where to start this story or how to sum it up, but I will try my best:

Characters(names not changed and this is used without permission : Bill – the chief, Scott – my boss, me -me

Bill walks in to my work area and says “hey whats going on”  Me: “Not much, just working”  Bill: “hows Jamie?”  Me: “Well I think she is upset with me”  Bill: “I can understand that, anything specific”  Me: “I won’t let her get a Christmas tree”  Bill: “are you crazy, do you know what will happen if you don’t;  you’ll hear about it for years to come” Bill forecasts the possible years to come “Remember our first married Christmas how you didn’t let me get a Christmas tree”  Me: “Jamie is not like that, but I get what you are saying.”  Bill: “They(women, wives more specifically) keep lists, why don’t you want to get a tree” Me: “Because it is like throwing money in the garbage.”

At which time Scott; who has been listening to this comes in and says something to the effect of “what is going on”  Bill: “Bryan doesn’t want to get a Christmas tree for Jamie.  I was telling him about ‘the list.”

A brief conversation continues about ‘the list.’  Of which I won’t repeat, possibly to protect everyone, or possibly because it isn’t relevant to the story.

Anyway after a short time, Scott pulls out his cash and slams down 40$ on my desk: “Get her a tree” Me:”I don’t need your money.  It’s not about that.  It’s about the fact that you are throwing your money away for a tree”  Scott: “You better use that money on a tree. I want a receipt.”

So, whats the lesson that Scott is trying to bang into my thick head?

He had to learn this lesson the hard way, but the important part is that he is learning and willing to pass his wisdom on to a knuckle head like me.  The lesson is fairly simple, but hard to word:

Your wives feelings toward spending money are very important, is one way to put it.  You see I am like Scott and the rest of us knuckle heads.  We derive little to no ‘utility’ or value in having items that aren’t needs.    For those of you that don’t know what needs are; they are food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and other tools that you need to get the job done.  This means that spending money on items that are for decoration, like a tree, are well, stupid.  But how we feel about these useless items, isn’t the complete story.  Our wives derive high utility from these items.  So, if they feel strongly for getting an item that is useless, then we should get it for them.  That is the lesson.

There is another utility that I didn’t account for.  The utility that a husband derives from his happy wife and well that utility isn’t priceless, but it is higher than 40 bucks .

Thank you Scott, for showing me that when it comes to my wife I need to at times, let her get things that I deem useless(or close to).  It is a lesson that I am glad I learned sooner, rather than later.

Scott, sincerely grateful, Thank You!

Advertising

So, my best friend and I had a great discussion the other night.  It was probably mostly a waste of valuable time, but I am rather passionate about it.

Should churches advertise?

I stand on the far right or left on this.  I am an extreme-ist. I think advertising should be an absolute no go for churches.

My first stance is that we, the people, are the church, therefore we should not try to brand us.  When you advertise, branding is what occurs.  People now see your, whatever, and associate it with what you are advertising.  We are the church, Christ’s bride, His body.  You shouldn’t brand that.  Grace Fellowship isn’t the identity Grace Fellowship.  It is the living breathing organism of people.  When people start seeing Grace Fellowship as the identity of Grace Fellowship, we have lost.  People need to see that the people are Grace Fellowship, that they are The Body.

Secondly point.  Advertising is the easy way out.  It is a lot easier to throw an ad up on the radio or tv or newspaper than it is to actually go out and invite someone to join you.  Advertising will bring more people in.  No doubt about it.  Know what else would bring more people in, the church(believers) inviting more people and I believe if we were doing our part we wouldn’t have to even think about advertising.  Just because the church isn’t doing what it needs to doesn’t mean that the church(the identity) should take it on it’s self to bring more people to it.  The people need to bring more people.

There are many more points, but I am not sure I want to type that much.  I do want to touch on this point though; well what if both were occurring?  Well one major thing is opportunity cost.  The opportunity would be the time, energy, money, and any other resources applied to advertising vs what could have been done with those resource.  Now opportunity cost should be a bit less weighted, but that is another story.  Anyway, there any isn’t any amount of resources that couldn’t be better focused else where.

For example lets just say you do a direct mailing.  You send out 10,000 post cards.  Now of those 10,000 cards, two people show up and one of them stays long term and gets plugged in.  Now you can’t place a value on that life, but you can place a value on the cost it took to develop the and send the cards.  Could those resources have been applied differently to be better off?  No doubt, all you have to do is have the person that developed the card mentor one person.  Simple enough.

Now the other side of the cards, now you have branded your church.  I can see it now: “Grace Fellowship, ooo yea thats the church that sends those stupid post cards.”  People now identify the church as an identity.  That’s shouldn’t be our goal.

Anyway, this is a bit too long and I am bored with it.  Let me sum it up.

Churches using media as adverting is in my opinion, well stupid. If you have a faint heart please replace ‘well stupid’ with ‘an absolute no no.’

But then again, what do I know.

My Wife

My wife is amazing. She absolutely is terrific. She does, so much for us. I can’t believe God would put somebody like her in my life. She is gorgeous, intelligent, loving, compassionate, and everything else that is opposite of me.

She takes care of me/us. She makes breakfast for us almost everyday, lunches, dinner, almost everyday! She makes an income. She cleans and takes care of the general house hold stuff. I am a ‘acts of love’ kind of language and she exceeds the needs. Most days I wonder how and why she does it.

I am so blessed! Thank you Jamie. I love you!

dont know

it has been a while …

here’s some valuable info:

Fred the Butcher has a 10lbs bad of chicken (good chicken too) for 16.90!  That’s 1.69/lbs – nobody beats that deal.  They also have amazing prices on USDA certified angus beef.

Now that is valuable info.

don’t know where i am going to take this, but i think there may be some big changes coming.

Bunch’a Ole Farts

I am sure I am not the only one bothered by this, but I want to get this said.

Our church(Grace Fellowship) is a bunch’a ole farts!  That sounds like a bad statement, but I am not trying to be negative here and I know that we have it a lot better than other churches, but still, we old.

I have thought about this many times, but a few things recently have resparked it.  When I worked for the church I realized that there is only 2 people in their 20’s and this is out of probably 20+ staff!  Those two are under Frank on the org. chart.  I am baffled by this!  First of all; WOW.  Second, do we realize what this means?  This mean we aren’t raising people up.  We aren’t mentoring people that are young in ministry and ‘raising’ them.  It is very sad!  Could you imagine if a company that had 1600 customers a week and had a staff that consisted of 2 20 year olds(that business wouldn’t last).  There is no company that does that, instead what they do is recruit, invite and invest.  Why aren’t we?

The other thing that sparked this is the First Impressions seminar.  Besides my wife and myself, there were 2 other 20 year olds, totalling 4!  There is 4 20 somethings dedicating-ly serving in first impressions?!!? WOW! That is nuts, first of all I think it is a area we need to improve, but beyond that.  I am shocked that I am in this age group and I don’t have more peers.  I mean these are the years that we are the most ambition, supposedly.  These are the ‘go-getter’ years.  Where are you (my peers)?  Are you simply addicted to the cultural apathy?  Are you sucked into those things called carreers(do you realize that you won’t take your carreer with you)?  Are you simply selfish in these years?Anyway..

My conclusion would be that we need to lower the age of the church, otherwise we will die(pun intended).  Where does that start and how does that start?  Well it is always my general opinion that it starts with leadership… so perhaps it starts with staff and getting some ‘green-horns’ in there.  Just a thought …

I know that people are with ‘younger people’ some what.  Rex has his small group of young’ins.  Frank has a small group of young ones and has continued to hire young.  I knew at one time that Bill had a leadership group that was for younger people, but I believe the average age was still around 35ish, but I could be wrong.

who knows maybe it’s just my generation …or maybe it’s us …

My Disclaimer:

I am ignorant! I don’t know everything that is going on everywhere in our church.  I don’t know what all the statistics say about our age, etc, all i know is my perspective.  I see 2 20 somethings as staff and 4 20 somethings at First Impressions seminar.

Enlighten me.

Disclaimer II:

Like I said earlier I am not trying to be negative, I am just conversing about thoughts and possible improvements. I am trying to help improve everything just like you(i am in the trenches with you), don’t get your panties in a bunch.

Simple Model

Recently I have fully put together the model of a church, at least in my head, so I am going to simply put it on paper.

I think that the ‘big’ service is mainly for connection.  Connection to other people and to God.  Connecting should be the number one goal of the large group meeting.  I believe the message should be focused on the “immature believer” and the nonbelievers.  The message should be life applicable and filled with the Word.  Also included in this part would be serving.  The “mature believer” focus should be on serving those that aren’t.  In other words they should be focused on connecting with them and with helping them connect to both others and God(this includes eliminating distractions).

The second part of the model is the small group.  Small groups are where people connect deeper.  However, I don’t believe it is the intimate group that many believe it should be.  I believe that this group leads you to the most intimate relationships, with possibly only a couple of people.  So, small groups are key to finding those friends that you call family and the ones that keep you accountable, etc.  Contrary to what some might believe that think that small groups should never be closed.  They should always be open and ever fluid.

The third part of the church is the smallest groups.  I don’t know what you would call them, maybe ’smallest groups.’  But this is where it is basically one on one and conversations go very deep, secrets are shared, etc.  I believe that small groups could be this, but in order to go there I think it would take a long time and the group may appear to be closed and not very fluid.  (By the way I added this part because of a conversation that I had with Frank.)

So where is discipleship and training… in small groups. I don’t believe a lot of discipleship happens in small groups, but training can and that is definitely part of becoming a disciple.  However, as I said before these groups should not be closed, they should be open to all especially nonbelievers at any point, with few exceptions. Personally I believe discipleship only happens by living and being with a person for some time.  Discipleship is about being, not knowing.

What about going deeper?  Personally I think this is just a line that believers have that haven’t realized how to get there yet.  Going deeper happens from within.  It happens when you start to serve.  It happens when you consistently read and pray and worship.  It happens when you bring up a topic to another believer and discuss or debate it.  Going deeper shouldn’t necessarily happen from big group or small group.  It happens with you and possibly your smallest group.

Where does life change happen … in all of them!

A constant question we should be asking ourselves:

Are we giving them a fish or teaching them to fish?

Purpose

Whats the purpose of this thing anyway?  Well, I have had a few people tell me that I ‘don’t let people in’ in other words that ‘people don’t know me.’   Personally I think this crap.  I actually think that if people would listen more, ask more questions, and shut their own mouth they might know more about the people around them.  You can easily come to know people by what they say, or don’t.

So the purpose of this blog is so that you can hear what I am saying a little bit more.  So that you can hear some of my inner thoughts.  (you should probably stop reading)  … ironically we generally only remember 10 percent of what we read, but 20% of what we hear … hmm

idiot

Most days i realize what an idiot i am, the other days i affirm it.

wow

i’m excited

Nothing Really

So I don’t have anything to really say, but thought I might just start writing and then post it:

Jamie and I just got back from watching our first theather movie since our honeymoon.  We picked a winner, Wolverine.  Definitely go see the movie.  I think it was better than the other three.  If you wanted to be cinical the graphics weren’t  perfect, but absolutely amazing.  Makes me wonder though, what are graphics going to be like in 5 to 10 years?

I recently have listened to a book titled, basically ‘the truth about Jesus, is he myth?’  It is a phenonmal book.  If you really care i can get you the title and the author.  The book is about proving Jesus historically.  By the way this book is written from an athiest, so obviously he thinks he proves Jesus is a myth.  Crazy that i have heard a book that disproves the Bible and Jesus, before i have heard one that proves them.  I am looking forward to researching many of the points that the author brings up.  There are many people that can stand idol and just believe, sometimes I wonder how blessed they are.  On the other side there are those that think to oblivion and will not be subject to faith.  On another side i think Christ andthe Faith of Christ is a thinking man’s faith.  But of course I realize I stand in my valley and not on others mountains.

To end a bit on leading the crap outta it: … whatever it might be

It amazes me sometimes how leaders are so ’self, me, my, i.’   I understand why it happens.  they are the ‘leader’ it rests on ‘their’ shoulders, they have something to prove.  Totally understandable!  The other thing is I think most people are use to leading followers.  Leading followers is hard, but if you want something really hard lead leaders.  Followers want to be told what to do how to do it, and how to think.  Leaders don’t want any of that, at all.  So, if leading leaders, you have to get them to buy into it.  The best way to get them to buy in is have it be their idea.  So if you are leading leaders one the of best things you can do is ask them what they think.  This cuts out work.  Instead of a leader thinking of the perfect plan all by themself then getting the other leaders to buy in to that plan, expounding all that energy.  It can be quickly cut down in energy by asking them their opinion.  (by the way if you ask and they don’t have an opinion, they arent a leader, or at least not in that area)

****use the law of syllogism and skip a step ****