Surprised and Blessed

Today was my birthday (one shy of the big 4-0) and it was a pretty amazing day. It was a day full of surprises and blessings:

1. I woke up in the morning to about 5-6 inches of snow (in Dallas, in March, on the first day of spring!). We had a white Christmas this year and now a white birthday! Hoping that I don’t get any white hairs though.

2. My kids all gave me cards and each of…

Try Not to Cry …

If you don’t cry or get a little teary watching this, you better go to the tear doctor and check your tear ducts. I remember watching this live as they were streaming the 2009 Catalyst Conference back in October and I just couldn’t hold back. It’s a touching moment and even more an amazing story.

Seth Godin’s Linchpin

Last Sunday, I said that I like to read secular business leadership and marketing books, as well as the Bible and other Christian books. The book that I mentioned was a marketing book by Seth Godin, who received his MBA from Stanford Business School and is the top marketing guy right now. His newest book is called “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” There seemed to be some interested in the book, so I’m posting an interview with him about…

Tiger Woods’ Front Row

I read this from a blog yesterday:

I know we could stir up a lot of debate around what happened at Tiger Woods’ press conference. Especially if we discussed whether he meant it, the format, and all the other juicy details that the public seems to be so obsessed with these days.

But we aren’t TMZ or The View who profit from trashing, analyzing, and questioning everything. And we don’t exploit the pain of others.

So here are

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Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday. What is Ash Wednesday? It’s the first day of Lent. That means there are 40 days before Easter Sunday (not counting Sundays).

Traditionally, churches have a service on Ash Wednesday and the participants are “imposed” with ashes marked on their forehead (in the form of a cross). Usually a Scripture is used from Ecclesiastes 3:20: “You’ve come from dust, and to dust you will return.” It’s a day that we remember that we…

A Prayer

This is a prayer that I have been praying for a week or so now. Maybe you’ll resonate with it and pray it as well:

My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean

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God Chose You!

I read an incredible quote this morning by Charles H. Spurgeon that really resonated with me:

“I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself

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Loving People When They Least Expect It

There are some leadership blogs that I follow on a regular basis and one of them is Mark Batterson, who is the pastor of National Community Church in DC. This week, he wrote a post about one of their core values and thought we could all learn from it:

We have a core value at NCC: love people when they least expect it and least deserve. Go ahead and love people when they expect it and deserve, but

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Become a Facebook Fan!

This year, we want to use all social media to really connect our congregation members together. That means, twitter, facebook, and even this blog. So, if you have a facebook, become a fan of our page and invite others to as well!

Haiti Relief Donations

When the news hit on January 12th that Haiti had a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake, we knew that we needed to respond as a church. As there were so many organizations that were starting Haiti Relief funds, we prayerfully found a great organization called OneDaysWages. They are an organization that raises awareness and funds and partners with great existing organizations. The thing that we really liked about them was their transparency. As we began to talk…