Today is my day with Christy and Paige. This is new for my world. I used to think that more and more and more work produced more and more and more results. But instead, it just created more ropes for me to trip over.
I'm relearning the art of simplifying...focusing...and completing. Tis better to be efficient with some than to be inefficient with much.
I'm relearning the art of being balanced.
I'm relearning the art of shepherding my home before the church.
I'm relearning that in order to an effective leader, you HAVE to be marching forward, forward, forward...people have a tendency to want their emergencies to rule you...leaders CANNOT let that happen. FORWARD.
This brings me to...go figure...church. The Vista is 2 years old by official start date, 1 year old by my standards...last year we moved from nights to mornings....changed locations...changed pretty much everything. We spent SO MUCH TIME working on the internal aspects of our church, that we became what God rebukes in the entire O.T. and N.T. We became so concerned with self, that we stopped impacting (or didn't even start) the world around us. Us. Us. Us. Us.
Here are some quotes from Erwin McManus' "An Unstoppable Force" (The book that every church planters says they have read but most just bought it and added it to their endless library of unread but really, really need to read items).
" Once survival has become our supreme goal, we have lost our way."
" The purpose of the church cannot be to survive or even to thriv but to serve."
"The church is not called to survive history but to serve humanity."
"The life of the church is the heart of God. The heart of God is to serve a broken world."
"You cannot wash the feet of a dirty world if you refuse to touch it. There is a sense of mystery to this, but it is in serving that the church finds her strngth. When she ceases to serve the world around her, she begins to atrophy."
Seriously, need I say more?
* I'm stoked for Sunday...this is all coming out through and from the message on Sunday!
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