Reading and Writing

One of the things about blogging that seems to be true is that the more you read, the more you write. I suppose it’s true for other forms of writing too. I’m certainly finding it to be true myself.
One of the reasons I haven’t blogged much in the past two months is that I haven’t [...]

Reducing Word Count

One of the interesting things about our recent super series titled People Matter was the daily devotional. We asked people to limit their devotions to 500 words or less. Having a cap on the text forced people to get to the point—to trim the fat and leave the meat.
I find that I use lots [...]

Renovating First Trinity

You may or may not know, but we’re in the process of looking at some renovations and repairs for our wonderful campus.  I’m serving on the Renovations Team as much of our work will involve the youth space at church.  One of my major roles on the team is communicating information about the project to [...]

Vigilance

I like this verse about guarding our soul from Joshua 23:11 as paraphrased in The Message:
Now, vigilantly guard your souls: Love God, your God.

Vigilance is so important to our daily lives.  It’s easy to let small things creep into our lives and take over.  I think about it in our financial journey, and how easy [...]

Learning New Emotional Responses

Interesting experience today. A strut went out on my car. Long story short: it cost $900 to repair. I heard the number and immediately panicked. I panicked because that’s been my learned response to unexpected bills for about 10 years. How were we going to pay for this?
It was a silly response I guess. We [...]

Meetings Meetings Everywhere

Seth Godin had an interesting post on meetings yesterday.  I know lots of churches that are drowning in meetings.  I’m thankful we don’t have nearly as many at First Trinity.  It would be interesting to try some of his suggestions.  If you lead meetings, you give it a try and let us know how it [...]

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (or Inappropriate Material)

You’ve probably heard of the cult game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  The game is to start with an actor and try to connect them to Kevin Bacon within six steps.  For example, Humphrey Bogart can be connected to Kevin Bacon in 2 steps.  It’s a fun game to play, especially if you like movies.
I [...]

Personal Spiritual Assessment Tool

I’m involved in an interesting discussion on a DCE email discussion group I participate in.  The discussion started around the question, “How do we measure effectiveness in ministry if not by numbers of people coming?”  Numbers are easy to measure: they are either up or down. 
It’s not a perfect measurement, however.  There could be [...]

Home Sweet Home

Made it home late last night and then spent the day getting ready for preaching this evening.  I’m thankful to be home from Atlanta and enjoyed sleeping in my own bed again.  I don’t sleep so well on the road.  I’ll write more about the conference soon, I’m sure, but for now you can see [...]

Catalyst-Bound

I leave in about 40 minutes for Catalyst.  I’m especially interested in Seth Godin and Craig Groeschel.  I was hoping to hear Mark Batterson, but it seems he’s only doing a lab session, which we aren’t participating in.  Maybe I’ll run into him at the conference sometime.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to blog [...]