Slight Edge Nugget #1

I’m catching up on some of my reading, and one of the books I’m in at the moment is The Slight Edge, phenomenal book that I highly recommend, wanted to share something I just read out of it.

And I’m paraphrasing a bit, but the point remains:

Making the right decisions, doing the right actions is easy to do. It’s also easy not to do; It’s the waking up at 5:30 to exercise, or hit snooze and go back to sleep (Guilty), it’s the pack a healthy lunch, or hit a fast food joint at noon (Erp, guilty again), it’s taking 15 minutes to sit down with a good book (besides THE Good Book), or switching on the news for a quick update.

Little things! No big deal right? you won’t see a difference for doing, or not doing anything I just mentioned….

Today.

Probably not tomorrow either, let’s not kid ourselves the obese kid who’s parent are suing McDonalds for him being overweight didn’t eat a single Big Mac and gain 200 pounds, it was little decisions daily about food intake and exercise that compounded over time to bring us to the end result that we now look at today. Just like that, those decisions we make daily compound over time to deliver the life that WE have created for ourselves.

We can make the slight edge work for us or IT WILL work against us.

So there it is, one little nugget out of… well I have no idea how many more, I’m only 5 chapters in and lost count of the amount of places I’ve highlights, or that have made me set the book down for a bit to think about what I just read.

The Slight Edge is written by Jeff Olsen and published by SUCCESS BOOKS.

Cathedrals….

Before I begin, I wanted to say Congrat to Pastor Daniel and Tammie for the arrival of their daughter Faith. (Just in case you’re not on twitter and somehow missed the news).

Having said that, let me begin…

This post is based off one of the talks at the Leadership convention I was at over the weekend, but this is something that stuck with me and reminded me so much about Lifepoint that I had to post it.

Most people I know who tour Europe always mention two things to me. 1) The castles and 2) The cathedrals… which if you read the topic of this post is what I’m going to be talking about.

These monolithic? neolithic? Ginormous structures were massive houses of worship, built in a time where drafting software didn’t exist and heavy equipment was defined as a hammer that weighed more than 10 pounds….

Notre Dame I don’t think anyone would argue with me if I were to say it’s a architectural and artistic marvel… They began construction in 1163, the cathedral was completed in 1345 so that’s a 182 year period, during which time life expectancy was 30 years at best, or over 7 generations of time, the people who began work on the cathedral did so knowing they would never see the completion, but that they were building something that would outlast them.

And yes there were several cathedrals that went up under in under 50 years, but even so that’s beyond life expectancy for any one generation.

And the craftsmanship. There were artist who worked on the structures doing carvings and other touches, in places where people would never see the work their response when asked? God would see it. And they did this work and in some places it’s there for all to see, and in others only God would be able to see their work. They dedicated their lives to build these structures and NO ONE knows their names, they were there to do something great.

People dedicated their lives to the work because they had a vision of greatness, and in their case it was building a location that honored God to worship him.

As I sit here and type this I don’t know where you, the reader is in your life. I don’t know if you’re a member of an awesome church that’s mission is to reach people far from God, or if you don’t even know what this whole Christian thing is about and you look at people like me as if we’re mad, my hope today is that you would understand this, when people grab hold of a dream, a vision that’s bigger than they are, and when they’re willing to sacrifice to see the vision through, then they can accomplish great things.

If you’re a lifepointer and someone pointed you to this blog post I want to tell you a few things, that before the doors open on Sunday morning and people come pouring in, there’s a team who shows up before the sun (though NOT before the Son) arrives and they go about the business of unloading tons of gear off of 3 trailers to build an environment that helps people to focus in on the Word of God that pastor is going to bring.
That during the service there’s a small army of people working making sure that there’s as little to distract someone as possible, they might be holding a baby, it might be pushing a sound knob, it might be teaching a 5 year-old.
That after the service and you’ve gone home, or more likely out to lunch (be honest!) that there’s another group who’ll spend over an hour restoring the school back to how it was before we began (And in some cases even better), including reloading those same three trailers.
That during the week the staff and at least a platoon’s worth of volunteers are working behind the scenes to prepare for the next week,
That pastor is on his knees in desperate prayer to God his heart breaking for the lost that we KNOW is going to be walking into church, possible for the first time, possibly for the only time, and that we have one chance to reach them. That’s a burden of a senior pastor and one that I’ll never be able to fully comprehend. (Sorry off on a tangent).

For the most part, if you just come and go and show up to lifepoint you’ll be blessed, you’ll hear the Word of God preached straight from the Bible, you’ll hear worship music that amplifies and glorifies our amazing God.

And you’ll be just like a tourist walking through a cathedral amazed at the beauty of it all, and never know any of the stories behind the stories.

But if you get your hands on the net, if you decide to get out of the seat and join us in the field, you’ll find your life on an amazing ride with other people, who like those who came before are willing to pour out their lives for a cause a purpose that’s bigger then we are. You’ll be putting your lives into creating something that’s much more amazing than a giant building, it’s seeing life change and we get to see results in our lifetime.

And should we go on for another seven generations, another 182 years, I doubt seriously that people will know our name.

But if they know the name of Jesus, if they enter a relationship with their Creator, and Savior, than like the amazing artisan ship of centuries past, our lives would have been poured out into something that truly does last.

God Bless
Matt Furukawa June 8, 2009

Does your pastor know that you’ve got his back?

This was actually something that came about during Unleash 09 (Newspring’s Conference) and it’s been sitting in the unfinished pile of my blog (along with about 10 other articles) for the last several months .

Now I occasionally have trouble remembering what I had for dinner yesterday… but I can still remember this part of Perry Noble’s talk like it was… errr… yesterday? Anyway, the part was, “Your senior pastor carries a weight on him that you will never understand or comprehend and needs to know that you’ve got his back.”

I hope, what ever church you go to, what ever organization you belong too, what ever sport you play, your leader knows that you’ve got his back. Because if he(or she) does, then they doesn’t have to worry about things like petty bickering or whats going on behind them, and can concentrate on the task that God has put before him.

More on this later…

So I guess I am a right-wing extremist…

because apparently:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has turned her attention away from acts of Islamic jihad on American soil (which she now refers to as “man-caused disasters”). Instead, her department is sounding the alarm over an unquantified “resurgence” in “right-wing extremism activity.”

On Apr. 7, DHS sent a nine-page warning memo to law enforcement offices across the country entitled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”

The report includes a sweeping definition of the threat:

“Right-wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

(Quoted without permission from http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46640)

But wait doesn’t that make the entire Catholic Church Right-Wing extremists as well? The Baptists too,

Wow with such amazing examples of Leadership in Washington it’s no wonder our Country is doing so great economically…

Socialism for Dummies a case study…

I had this conversation with a co-worker of mine who didn’t understand the whole socialism/capitalism conflict, and was thus educated.

Here’s the example that was used.

Illustration: You are a college student, you work hard, you spend your free time studying the big exam arrives, you spend the entire night before studying, you arrive at the class and take the test. Your roommate is in the same class as you, he arrives late everyday, parties every weekend, spends his nights bar-hopping, and the you find out the night before the final exam he was bowling.
Capitalism: Your efforts pay off and you receive an A for your work, likewise your roommates habits catch up with him and he fails the class.
Socialism: Everyone’s grades are taken in and Averaged, you, your roommate, and everyone else in he class passes with a C.

There, that wasn’t so hard to understand now was it?

Decompression….

How do you relax after stressing yourself out?
Case in point, I love what I do for and with Lifepoint Church, and seeing people come to relationship with Christ is the most meaningful and significant thing I can imagine, but it doesn’t make the morning any less stressful.

So what do you do to decompress? I’ve asked this question to several people, one said they like to relax with beer (no, not someone at Lifepoint), other’s said they like to go and play basketball for a few hours, some read, for one it’s just a nice hot relaxing shower, I knew (well i guess i still know him, though I haven’t seen or talked to him since High School) who’d paint (like throw the paint on the canvas), and I’ve got it on good authority that Chocolate is an excellent stress reliever…

For me it’s always been writing and even more so music, but even the type of music will very by my mood, even in decompressing, sometimes I like to listen to something relaxing, other times I need something driving… tonight’s been rather ecliptic, let me give you the last 10 artists I’ve cycled through in my playlist:

No Doubt
Maroon 5
Mark Schultz
Michelle Branch
Nana Mizuki
Mikuni Shimokawa
New LIfe Worship
New York Voices
New Radicals
Nightwish

So that’s a rather large skip in genre (if you’re wondering, I just grabbed the m and n folders and tossed them into winamp and hit shuffle)

So what do you do to decompress?

New years Revolutions…

It happens every year, you know, I know it. Every January first everyone decides to make some changes in their lives, ie: People decide that their New Year’s Resolution is to loose weight so they go join a gym, two month’s later they’re still paying on their contract and haven’t been there since January 9th.

Let’s face it, it’s part of human nature to fail on our new year’s resolutions, look up the definition of resolution and in regards to how we use for new year’s you’ll read something along the lines of “a formal expression of opinion or intention made“, it’s making a decision to change something in your life, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to do that. To decide to make a change in your life is a great thing, but how’s this for an idea, instead of just deciding to make that change… how about ACTUALLY making that change, why not, instead of making a new years resolution, make a New year’s Revolution?

Looking up the definition of revolution, and sure you’ll find it’s a turn, it’s also a political coup, but more importantly a revolution is a sudden, radical, or complete change. Isn’t that what so many of us need in our lives?

Happy New Years to everyone,
Matt

Check this post out!

Mike Harrison has a good post on giving here.

I guess the subject is at the forefront of my mind having just ready the go-giver, which is an awesome book you should read, yes you, right there, the one in front of the monitor. Go out a get a copy, in fact, get two and then give one away!

More posts to follow later.

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?

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.