Living the New Life

One of the things that I constantly struggle with is my ability to communicate to my leaders my total concept.  I am a dreamer.  It is that simple.  If I am not careful, I fail to accurately portray my dream to the very ones who handle the nuts and bolts of putting my dream into action.  This is still a work in progress for me as I struggle with this constantly.

Communication should always be a two way street.  I hear a lot of leaders say that we need better communication.  The problem is that when people do communicate and it is not what we want to hear, then we get upset and make them either scared or uncomfortable.  This effectively ends real, honest, and truthful communication.  As leaders we have to have thick skin even though it is hard sometimes.  This is the only way that we can ever have meaningful dialogue.

I struggle with this and I tell my workers that what they say may get me upset, it may hurts my feelings, and it may even be wrong— but it may be right.  I have to have honest and forthright people around me so that we stay balanced as a church leadership team.

This has been quite an eventful week.  I have been trying to play catch up since I was gone for on vacation.  Yesterday, I recieved a huge honor for me that blew me away.  I have been invited to speak at a morning Campmeeting service for the Congregational Holiness in July.  I am very honored at the opportunity to speak to this body.  I was raised in the CH Church and in many ways it is still home.

To give a quick update on my diet, I have now lost 38.5 lbs.  This morning was a new weight low-so I am very happy with the progress made so far.  I have to leave now for a meeting of Pastors at Red Lobster—pray for me hard saints!

If you are wondering what has taken me so long to recap Sunday’s service it is because I really had no idea what happened.  I wasn’t there.  I was on vacation in Florida.  Well now I am back and better than ever-I hope. 

I know that Danny Joiner spoke and did a really good job.  We had 128 in attendance on a holiday weekend so I am very happy with that.  Last year, Memorial Day weekend was our lowest attended service of the year.  God is so good and faithful! 

I plan on sharing a good bit of the things that God has been dealing with me the last few weeks in the coming days.  I also will have some guest bloggers visiting later in the week.  Next week, I am going to be at our denomonations campmeeting in Tifton, GA.  Our State Bishop has really put together a great list of speakers for this year.  I am really looking forward to hearing Tommy Bates.  I have never heard him, but his reputation is outstanding.  I am believing God to do great and mighty things at this years campmeeting.  If you are going to be in the area show up and give me a shout.

I have started doing a leadership class once a month here at New Life for all of our leaders and volunteers.  Since my assistant went ahead and prepared it, I thought that I would go ahead and upload it.  If you take the time to listen, please give me some feedback.  If enough like, I will keep doing it and also upload the fill in the pdf file as well.  Here you go.

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Once a month we host a Senior Adult luncheon at the church.  We have different community leaders come and speak to the gathering.  Yesterday we had an outstanding lady named Rhonda Nobles share her story on her fight and victory with cancer.  My only regret is that I did not record her message.  I had several people ask if we did.

The Senior luncheon is led by Dock and Helen Churchwell and also by Danny and Rhonda Joiner.  New Life does not have an extremely large Senior Adult presence in our body like a lot of our sister churches.  At this month’s luncheon we had an all-time record attendance of 57.  I was very excited with the turnout.  We must be doing something right—it probably is the cooking.

Last night at church I could feel the summertime feeling settling in.  We had 93 in attendance last night and I feel real good about it going into the summer.  God definitely has blessed me.  We had the youth lead the music last night–they called it amateur night.  When I went to speak, I told them that I was the biggest amateur of them all.  If not for God’s help, I know that I would fall on my face each and every week.

I began a series last night on Relationships.  I am excited about this series because it is different from what we normally hear.  I am taking different people from the Bible and showing how they prepared and mentored the next generation.

Last night I shared on how David used words of affirmation, words of direction, words of trust, and words of remembrance to help guide Solomon as a man and King.  You can study it in 1 Kings 2.  To see the results look at Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kings 3.

This is the audio from this Sunday morning message.  I hope that you enjoy and are blessed.

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Yesterday was my birthday so I spent most of the day doing some much needed homework.  I spent several hours in my office at the house just catching up on my filing.  It was a good day.

I began to think about weights and pressures that we all have.  I feel them.  You feel weights as well.  One of the primary weights that I feel is the pressure to perform.  What that means is that I feel that I must always be there, always make a call, always say the right thing.  What I have come to realize is that it is impossible for me to do everything.  Yes, I want to be able to do it all- but I can’t.  The weight, I believe that most pastors struggle with is the weight of balance.  The balance between our families and our church.  How much is too much, and how much is too little.  There are happy mediums in everything and we must find that happy medium.  You have to find them or you will lose everything. 

I have always struggled with one pressure in particular.  I put a certain amount of pressure on myself.  I realize that if I fail or if I do not achieve success in whatever it is that I am trying– then I have let myself down.  I constantly worry about letting people down- God, myself, my family, my church- the list goes on and on for me.

If we stay focused on the weights and pressures in our life, we miss out on the goals and dreams that God has for us.  The Bible tells us to “lay aside every weight and sin that does so easily beset us”.  I never want to be so focused on letting others down, that I let up on the dreams and victories that God has for me.

I will be completely honest and tell you that I am spent.  I am wiped out.  I am so tired that when I laid down to take a nap this afternoon, I couldn’t sleep.  It was like my mind was going through a whirlwind.

This morning as a whole went well.  I started this morning speaking to a group of men at a Church here in town called Grace Chapel.  They have asked me to come back in a few weeks and preach a revival.  I am looking forward to it.  After I finished at Grace, I drove across town and spoke at New Life. 

We had 151 in attendance this morning and there was a sweet spirit present during the service.  I spoke on “Are you listening?”  My heart is broken at the scripture found in 1 Samuel 3.  I am afraid that too many Pastors are like Eli, who even though the lamp was growing dim, was not worried enough that He couldn’t  go to sleep.  Pastors, we have a responsibility to watch over the sheep, but we are also the keepers of the flame.  May the fire of the Lord never go out!

I am looking forward to a regular week.  Praise the Lord!

I have been trying to learn how to create a website the last couple of weeks and it has really taken a toll on my blog updates.  I have realized through this that making a website is very difficult.  It will take some time, but in the end I will have some knowledge of another area.

The church has been going really well as we have seen so many new people come into the congregation these last couple of months.  It is very exciting, but I also get nervous because when things happen like this you know that God is up to something.  It is a cool nervous feeling—almost like going on a first date.

This Sunday we are going to be recognizing our graduates.  This is always a special time, so we are doing our best to make it a special day.  Here is what we are doing:  Giving them each a personalized Bible, a grad book, we are doing a full color program with their grad pictures, and also a video production of each of them.  After service, we are taking all of their families out to a private meal.

In closing, I have had the opportunity this week to speak somewhere every night but Monday.  Sunday morning I am going to be speaking at a men’s fellowship at a church called Grace Chapel at 8:30.  Then we are going to come back and rock it at New Life with the beginning of a new series called “Are you listening”.

Thought for the week:  God will do the super, but we must still do the natural.