I needed the laugh this morning…

I got this off Greg Atkinson’s blog this morning and I got a kick out of it… don’t be surprised if you get automated replies from me from now on…

Best Out of Office Replies by Jeremy Wright

1. I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

3. I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from holiday on 4 April. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.

4. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged £5.99 for the first ten words and £1.99 for each additional word in your message.

5. The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and trysending again. (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see how many in-duh-viduals did this over and over).

6. Thank you for your message, which has been adde d to a queuing system… You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

7. I’ve run away to join a different circus.

8. I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons… When I return, please refer to me as “Margaret” instead of “Steve”.

*** I don’t know about you, but I’ve needed a laugh lately. I thank Eric for always having a smile and a joke ready. Number 1 is my personal favorite. So what can you come up with? Got a number 9 and 10 reply?

Stories and statistics

I couldn’t tell you where I stole this line from, but I’m fairly confident I didn’t come up with it myself… for now I’ll give credit to the unknown source, but eventually I’ll get to the point where I’ll take credit for this expression, but here it is.

Behind every statistic is a story

Looking at the church overall, and speaking from personal experience, I know that all too often people look at easily track-able numbers like attendance when it comes to looking at our statistics as a church to see “How we’re doing”. While this isn’t the case at Lifepoint, I do know at churches I have been to in the past the focus seemed to be on attendance, and in force of habit, on occasion I have found myself regressing to see how we did on a Sunday by attendance, instead of focusing on things like that are nowhere near as easy to track such as salvations, baptisms, and/or as how we like to put it, Life Change.

But if you look at it even with attendance, how often do we really pay attention to what those numbers actually mean?

Every one of those “numbers” is a person with a story, that person? you know the one who was number four hundred ninety nine, do you know their story? do you know that their family was in discord before they started coming to Church and that it’s made such a huge impact in their lives? What about person number four? They’re the one who didn’t want anything to do with God or church before a friend dragged them in (kicking and screaming) and now after encountering God their life has turned around and they’re not only here every week, but helping with setup and now, bringing their friends!

What about volunteer number 49? They’re the one who had been burned by “Religion” and was done with church, who never knew a church like this could exist, where the purpose is to reach people far from Christ, and now are back on fire for the Lord?

Or Kid number 87, who’s parents brought them to kidspoint for the first time, who finally was told the gospel in a way that made sense to a 3rd grader and changed their life forever…

Those kind of stories go WAY beyond simple numbers, and this post is more of a mental reminder to myself than to anyone else and really help to drive that point home, maybe you’re the Pastor of a Megachurch with over 3k in weekly attendance, or maybe your the choir director of a church that has more people in the choir then on the pews… is Life change happening at your church? What are the stories behind some of your statistics?

Got RSS?

If you follow more than one blog regularly (or in my case if you read like over 3 dozen blogs), then you might find using an rss reader very handy… there are quite a few out there, but the one I’ve found that seems to work for me is google reader, it’s nicely tied into google, (which I use for a variety of things, ironically not so much for searching).

How it works:
Well it does take some time to set up, you have to add the blogs you follow, you can search by accounts if you know them, or do search strings for certain ones… or if you’re lucky the blog you read has a “RSS” feed button…

Once it’s set up, it pulls feeds (articles) directly from the blogs you’ve set it up with in one hand y to read from spot so you don’ have to go hopping from website to website.

For example, before I started using google reader I had a small cycle… I’d first open my own blog (occasionally to update it) and then from there I’d hit the links to jump over to Pastor’s blog, from his I went to Jeremy’s from pick’s Id go to josh’s then from Josh I’d jump back to mine to hit either Northpoints, or Wade’s.

Now I open up google reader and if there any new posts from any of the above mentioned plus 30 or so more there all in one centralized location.

if anyone has some questions on rss readers feel free to post them here.

~Matt

We Don’t need no stinking measuring spoon…

If you spend enough time in the kitchen, you eventually arrive at the point where you can “eyeball” certain measurements, (watch any cooking show, unless it’s Alton Brown, odds are you won’t see a measuring soon). (For the record I’m nowhere near that point). r

Well I found this little nifty game, for those who like to “eyeball” certain angles and such…, enjoy, as for me I’ll stick with the spoons.

Pranking to bless…

Lifepoint Staff Retreat Prank from Matthew Furukawa on Vimeo.

So a little bit of explanation… about the video you just saw, or are now watching, is the work of a small group of us who wanted to both uplift, and prank the staff of Lifepoint church… the cans in front of the office doors are the preferred soda of each occupant, and who doesn’t like candy? The one thing that didn’t translate to video well was the smell… something like five pounds of double bubble gum was scattered about and the scent hits you right at the door.

Sorry about the poor quality of the video, all I had was my litle cannon sure shot digital camera which shoots 30 seconds of video at a time.

Aggravation…

Is there actually anyone out there stupid enough for to fall for this? And if there is do you feel sorry for them, or feel like they got what they deserved for falling for something like this…

First off, the typos… (though to be fair this one has far less then the ones that normally arrive in my inbox)

Second of all, if it were to be true (it’s not, bear in mind) than by accepting this you would be guilty of some massive tax fraud/evasion/etc… keep in mind that They didn’t bag Al Capone for murder, racketeering or any kind of crime syndication, but they nailed him for tax violations… (That’s where the IRS gets it’s fearsome reputation).

By the way if you read this blog and you’ve actually tried to do one of these things…. please don’t tell me, I will think less of you.

Hello Dear,

I have Paid the fee for your Cheque Draft.but the manager of Eko Bankn
Benin told me that before the check will get to you that it will expire.So
i told him to cash $2 Million USA DOLLar all the necessary arrangement
of delivering the
$2 Million USA DOLLar in cash was made with FEDEX COURIER COMPANY.

This is the information they need to delivery your package to you.with
FEDEX COURIER COMPANY, contact them now.

NAME: FEDEX COURIER COMPANY.
ATTENTION: PERSON: JIMI ANDERSON.
POSITION: FOREIGN DELIVERY DEPARTMENT.
ADDRESS: COTONOU BENIN REPUBLIC
E-MAIL:fedexcouriercompany432@gmail.com
PHONE NUMBER: +229-9317-8953

Please, Send them your contacts information to able them locate you
immediately they arrived in your country with your BOX .This is what they
need from you.

1.YOUR FULL NAME
2.YOUR HOME ADDRESS.
3.YOUR CURRENT HOME TELEPHONE NUMBER.
4.YOUR CURRENT OFFICE TELEPHONE.
5.YOUR CURRENT HOME TELEPHONE NUMBER.
6.A COPY OF YOUR PICTURE

Note that this is there E-mail contact is (fedexcouriercompany432@gmail.com)

Please make sure you send this needed info’s to the Director general of
FEDEX COURIER COMPANY BENIN REPUBLIC,DR.JERRY COOK with the address given
to you.

Note. The FEDEX COURIER COMPANY don’t know the contents of the Box. I
registered it as a Box of an African cloths. They don’t know it contents
money, this is to avoid them delaying with the Box.don’t let them know
that is money that is in that Box.

Thanks and Remain Blessed.
MARK ROBERT(ESQ)

Has anyone seen?

I was thinking about going to watch an American Carol tonight, has anyone seen it? Is it worth the ticket price?

Missing Set lists:

Sorry I’ve been rather busy as of late and I’m afraid I’ve got a spot of catching up to do, so here’s our set lists from the last few weeks:

Set List Sept 14″
We Shine
Salvation’s Chorus
How He Loves
Performance song opener: Not My time by 3 doors down

We had an interesting day this day, due to a medical emergency we had to switch worship leaders last minute (like the night before) and the team did an awesome job dealing any problems that might have cropped up as a result.
Band: Tom(WL), John(D), Ronnie (EG), Dave(K), Elizabeth(P), Ricky(B)

Set list: Sept 21
Point of Difference
Everlasting God
Let me Sing
Performance Song opener: 100 years by Five for fighting

Band: Jeremy(WL), Steven(K), Elizabeth(P), Bill(B), Anne(V), Ronnie(EG), Matt(D)

Set list: Sept 28
We Cry Out
Sing to the King
Famous One
Performance Song: Live like you were dying (Vocals by Steven)
This was the week or our Elevation trip, so I sad-to-say missed the service, however I did get to attend the practice so I know it had to be amazing!
Band: Tammie(WL), John(D), Bill(B), Ronnie(EG), Dave(K), Elizabeth(P), Steven(AG), Jeanie(V), Mia(V)

Set List Oct 5:
Happy Day
Breathe on Me
Your Grace is enough
Band: Jeremy(WL), Elizabeth(P), Dave(K), Matt(D), Bill(B)

Set list Oct 12:

Salvation’s Chorus
Let Me Sing
Glorious One
Lift High

I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking Matt it looks like you did a song set from the Louder than Creation CD fro Northpoint… well we did. Why? Two words, multi tracks…. ok perhaps a bit more explanation is required here. We had a scheduling conflict with the drummer who was going o play that day, (and I was out of state for a conference), so I started looking for another drummer to fill in for us, seven people later I had five no’s and two no-call backs, so we re-planned the worship to one that we had multi-tracks for (blog post on those to follow at later point), I was praying that God would provide a drummer, but I wasn’t going to just sit idle at the same time, perhaps it was a lack of faith on my part, I’m not sure.

Anyway to make a long story ever longer… (sorry I’m verbose I know!) He did provide and Glenn Williams? (memo to self, get the name from Jeremy) did an awesome job on the drums last week, Thanks Glenn! Rest of the Band: Jeremy(WL), Bill(B), Ronnie(EG), Elizabeth(P) and Mia(V).

Healing to do healer…

I still distinctly remember how i felt when I first heard the song “Healer” by Mike Guglielmucci, I also (VERY distinctly) remember how disgusted I felt when I heard the truth behind the story. But, as Pick has pointed out to me on more than one occasion (mainly when I’m arguing about doing a performance song) is that Truth is truth, whether it’s coming from an old hymn or a Train song. And after a bit of consideration I’ve come to accept that regardless of the means of promoting the song, there is strong truth to it, and it’s an amazing worship song.

However, with far better words and scriptural backing allow me to share with you an email I received from one of our band members about using this song in worship, I’ve left out name references as i didn’t ask this person permission to share this on the blog, but as awesome as this email was I wanted to share it.

Man you sure know how to make a guy think…

When we were talking about this song at practice that night – about how the Hillsong guy Mike whatshisname lived a lie, promoted the song with his fake illness, the unbelieveable audacity of a very well-known Worship Leader to so distort everything related to the situation, I had no desire to ever do the song at all and said so that night. When I saw the Planning Center notification this morning, I “reviewed” the service to see what we were doing. I saw the song listed and the pit of stomach balled up in a humongous knot. I was getting ready to click the “Decline” button when something (had to be God) told me to wait. I then remembered something in Phillippians I had read before in my personal reading etc. Here’s the passage…

Phillipians 1:15-18 (NIV)
15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.[c] 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

I didn’t remember anything false in the lyrics, but I listened to them again to make sure and yes there is truth in the song.

I went to planning center again and clicked the accept button. I’m just thankful the Lord and the Holy Spirit kept the promise from John 14 about the Comforter (Holy Spirit) being with us to bring to our rememberance everything He has taught us.

The reason I’m spelling all this out for you is in case someone else has doubts about the song feel free to share how God helped me.

Just don’t expect to see the song on my “favorites” playlist

I personally felt “ministered” to by this email and if you’re a worship leader out there, or someone who’s job is to find new worship music and you’ve been struggling with this song as much as I have I hope this helps you out.

God bless,
~Matt

Momentum….

Tonight’s the momentum meeting for some of our Volunteer leaders and coordinators. Having been off yesterday I had the chance to spend some time in the office while they were planing part of the meeting, It’s going to be an awesome night, full of inspiration and information to help us invest in our teams so that we can reach this community.