Churchpunk

Tonight we kicked off the AWE series at The Vineyard.  It is about the Awesomeness of God.  Tonight we focused on God’s authority and how we should have faith in that authority.  Real power and authority terrifies us and we become fearful and takes us the opposite direction of faith.

How often do you find yourself asking God, “Don’t you care?”  The disciples did in Mark 4:38.  I find myself asking the same thing often when things don’t seem to be going my way.  As if God is not paying attention and I am looking for Him to bail me out.  Sometimes a father has to let his child cut himself so that he will learn that the knife is sharp.

Worship was different tonight.  The band stayed behind the curtain and a very large screen.  They played while we watched video of God’s creation.  Very cool stuff.  Everyone started out in their seats and a few stood up a few minutes into it.  And then as if it were choreographed, most everyone else stood up during the chorus of ‘Awesome God.’  I enjoyed sitting and tried not to sing, but just to focus completely on worship besides noticing when people stood up.  What I thought was really funny was that everyone who came in late were more obvious than normal because they were standing in front of everyone sitting.  I don’t understand why so many people always come in late.

I am looking forward to the rest of the series.  I will miss Joe while he is on vacation, but he deserves a nice break.

I love to eat popcorn that requires a napkin.  I have a pair of pants that are permanently stained from the bottom of a popcorn bag at the movie theater.  Now I buy the buckets.  Of course it has probably been a year since I have been to see a movie at the Theater.  Netflix has been my best friend for movies.  Unfortunately, that means that I am 1 of the few people that I know that has not seen ‘The Dark Knight.’  Yes, it hurts, but I will get over it.

So, I am blogging right now while enjoying a good old bag of Act II Butter Lovers Microwave Popcorn.  And this post is more of a, ‘Hey I am still here’ post.  My daily routine has drastically changed at my job and I find very little time to think about blogging let alone actually sit down and type something.  I do get some free time in the evening after the kids are in bed, but it get divied out pretty quickly to chores at home, putting kids back in bed, paying bills, putting kids back in bed, and checking email.  And when Faith is not working, I want to spend all of my free time in the evening with her.

Pause to lick butter off of my fingers so that I can type.

Anyways, here is a quick update on things:

Job Update:  I am not sure if I posted about the unexpected change or not, but here it goes.  I was in a client engineering position for about a month, but I was not being trained or directed at all.  I spent most of my time studying and preparing for whatever the job would throw at me.  At this point, CompuCom became in need of someone to take ownership of the Lifecycle Replacement Program for GE’s Remote Users.  For everyone who doesn’t speak geek, each employee gets a new laptop every 3 years and I am now in charge of the replacement process.  I am extremely busy right now because about 3 years ago, CompuCom took over computer support fo the GE Energy Business.  So a lot of computers were shipped out.  Now they are all due for replacement.  I deal specifically with scheduling a day for the users to send in their old laptops so that I can transfer the data to the new laptop and ship them the new one.  Currently there are about 150 Laptops sitting in the warehouse.  About half of them are around my desk.  I have a Cardboard Box Cubicle.  Anyways, I am extremely busy doing transfers and dealing with all of the scheduling with end users.

Pause to tell my children to go to sleep.  They have been in bed for 2 hours now.

Family Updates:  Things at home are good, but very busy.  I don’t know why or how we let our schedules fill up so quickly.  We have things going on just about every weekend.  It is sometimes a stretch for me to squeeze in doing yard work many weeks.  The Monkey turns ‘2′ officially on Saturday.  She has been acting like a 2-year old for about 9 months now and will be turning 25 on her next birthday.  Captain Jack is progressing with his speech therapy.  He is now repeating a lot more than he used to and in many cases responds appropriately when we talk to him.  He has begun initiating communication a lot more as well.  It is sometimes hard for us to see the changes because we see him everyday, but outsiders have noticed a big difference.  Faith has applied for a new opportunity through her work to finish her education and obtain her RN.  We are still waiting to hear back on the acceptance into the program, but we are very hopeful as this program will work around her work schedule and the cost is covered up front by her work.  Please pray about that for her.  Summer has been good.  We have spent a lot of time outside at the park and in a little pool that Faith’s parents bought for the kidos.  They would spend all day outside playing in the water if we would let them.

Pause to talk to Faith on the phone for a few minutes.

Church Update:  Nothing really new to report here.  Our Small Group takes a break for the summer because scheduling is tough.  The women are meeting once a week still and the men meet every other week on Saturday morning for breakfast.  Yes, I get up early on those mornings and drive to Panera by 8 AM.  Thats not really a problem after getting up at 5:30 AM all week.  Right now we are doing a series on the Kingdom of God.  I am getting tired of saying the ‘Our Father’ everyday, but the series at church has been very good.  I am back on a Bible Reading plan that works for my schedule right now and my prayer time could use a little help in the focus department.  I am still finding that there is more to learn about God no matter how long I have been following Him.  It is good to find myself being challenged again as a follower of Jesus.  I spent a long time feeling as if I wasn’t growing spiritually, but in reality I think that it just took me a long time to learn some hard lessons.  Too much to get into in this already extremely long blog post.  I am pushing 1000 words.

With that I will give your reading eyes a rest.  I don’t like to read extremely long blog posts either, but this one warranted a little bit of catch up.  I hope that everyone has an enjoyable weekend.

-c-

Came across this on a fellow Christian blogger today.  Thought that this was very cool.

You can read more about Carlos at Ragamuffin Soul

I have several friends who are followers of Jesus who have tattoos.  I also have a few friends who are followers of Jesus that feel that tattoos are sinful because it desecrates our bodies as the temple of God.  Personally, I don’t think that there is anything sinful about getting a tattoo.  I don’t have one because I am not keen on the whole permanence of a tattoo.  Today, Prodigal Jon addressed this issue in a post on ‘Stuff Christians Like.’ He hits on the point that those against tattoos use Leviticus 19:28 to support their position.  He also points out that it is good to read scripture in context.  Here is a little excerpt from the blog post.

That’s an interesting statement but I think it might be good to see what else chapter 19 of Leviticus says:

32 ‘Rise in the presence of the aged,

19 ‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

27 ‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.

I guess that there are some other rules here that we are neglecting along with the tattoo rule.  I don’t think that my wife would like it if I stopped cutting my hair or shaving.  This being from the old testament law of Moses brings up the question of what rules have changed since Jesus brought the new law.  Do we get to pick and choose, or are we all a bunch of sinners because our shirts are not 100% cotton?

-c-

Dave Workman preached this morning at Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati on leadership.  Here are some of my thoughts from this morning.

“Everyone follows someone, and everyone leads someone.” - D. Workman

Many people do not think of themselves as a leader.  It seems that it is easier to follow someone else.  But in reality there are roles in all of our lives where we take on some form of leadership.  It may be your church, your job, or even at home.  After some thought, I realized that I am a leader in more aspects of my life than I realize.  Many leaders start out very timid.  Even Paul felt under-qualified when he started his ministry.  See 1 Corinthians 2:1-3.  I often find myself facing opportunities to lead, but I know what responsibilities and commitments come with leadership.  I would consider myself a reluctant leader at times.  I get very excited about leading something, but then I delay sometimes in fear and other times to test the waters.

The Triangle of Integrity

Dave shared an illustration of the triangle of integrity to show how integrity is vital to leadership.  A triangle has 3 points.  Each point represents 3 types of integrity that must be present or the structure of the triangle will be incomplete.  The three types of integrity are Personal, Missional, and Organizational.

Personal Integrity - “Are you 1 person?”  Someone with personal integrity is consistent in behavior no matter where they are at or who they are hanging out with.  If you find that you act differently around coworkers then you do with your small group, you may want to examine your personal integrity a little closer.

Missional Integrity - “Are you clear on what you are focused on?”  What is your mission?  Is your mission consistent in your life?

Organizational Integrity - “Do you have things in place to support your mission?”  Make sure you have the right people doing the right job.  Be sure to use your resources wisely.

Jesus had a 3 year plan for ministry.  He was missional and organized.  Luke 4:18-19

The local church and the capital ‘C’ Church will always be in need of leaders.  If you are not learning something new, then you are not leading, you are just practicing skill.  What are you doing to develop your skills as a leader?

There are new pictures up tonight of the kids enjoying their ice cream cones after dinner.  Check out the online album.

I have a confession to make.  Right now, my life feels very out of sync.  I can’t seem to find the groove that helps me to cruise through my day to day routine.  Obviously this is affecting my blogging routine as well.  I used to be able to crank out a post each day unless work was crazy or I didn’t have anything blog-worthy to write about.  Lately, I have only really had time to blog by sending videos or pictures from my cell phone.  My apologies if you have been missing my updates.  If I can get you sign up and follow me on Twitter, you will probably get more updates than you bargained for.  My only excuse for my slacking is that there has been a lot of things going on.  My family understands what the month of May is like with many gatherings for birthdays and all.  I have changed jobs twice in the last month or so.  I am still with the same company, just positional changes.  And everytime things seem to be settling down, something else comes up.  This is commonly known to me as life.

I have been trying to get back into the groove for a few weeks now and I am beginning to think that this is a very lofty goal.  I am not even sure at this point if trying to compartmentalize the different parts of my life into a routine would be a good thing.  I confess again that I have a great desire to have a lot of control of things that happen.  I don’t freak out when things happen that are out of my control, in fact I believe that I deal with changes pretty well, but I don’t like being caught unprepared.

If I have learned anything, it is that you have to leave some wiggle room for the unexpected.  I also find that God tends to show up in the unexpected circumstances as well.  As chaotic as my life seems lately, I have been generally in a spirit of peace and confidence.  I have found much encouragement from the people in my life lately.  Things maybe changing and circumstances can often be frustrating, but there is a calming voice in my heart that says trust me and keep pressing on.  So I go out the door everyday and try to give my best and pray against spiritual pitfalls waiting to derail my progress.

Thank you to everyone in my life who thinks to pray for me and encourages me even if not intentionally.  Thank you also to my faithful blog readers.  It is also encouraging when I get to meet readers and learn that something I shared here has touched their life in some way.  I hope that this blog continues to bless you and I look forward to what God has in store for all of us.

Keep pressing on even if you have to step out of your comfort zone.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;  In all you ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”  –Proverbs 3: 5-6