Today is my wife’s birthday. I really wanted to treat Annabelle to a special day however we could not really afford going overboard with expensive gifts. I feel that I must invest in my marriage. Relationships need investment, and like all investments, the greater your investment in them the greater the dividend will be. For her birthday then I decided that I was going to surprise her with several “treats”. Without further ado……. herewith follows the anthology of a pampering frugal romantic:
1. The day was started by serving-up breakfast in bed. Nothing too fancy but just preparing something for her was special in itself. This also included my making-up earlier and preparing the boys’ breakfast and their lunches so that Annabelle would not have to rush and do it herself. We gave her a couple of birthday cards and sang “Happy Birthday”, waking-up the baby in the process (my bad).
2. Halfway through the morning I called her to check-up on her….. and told her where she could find a secret letter that I had written to her and hidden. The letter just simply was a little “pause” to reflect on what she means to me.
3. We had originally planned to have lunch together at a fabulous but reasonably priced Moroccan restaurant that we both love, but circumstances conspired to make it impossible to eat out. No worries I had it the meal prepared to go and I went home for lunch and treated her to a nice meal.
4. I had some flowers delivered to her at home during the afternoon – my babe loves flowers.
5. When I went home (early!!!) I gave her another little surprise – I had researched all of the Billboard No. 1 best-selling songs of each year, for every year since she was born right up to last year, and had downloaded them and made a compilation of the “music of [her] life”
6. …..I think that is all that you need to know
The point is this: Make every effort to invest in your marriage – it is THE most important relationship that you have with another human being.
I am being challenged to continue to do this, to continue to find creative ways to improve my relationship, improve my communication with her, my intimacy with her – well, I guess you get the picture. A great relationship does not just “happen” - it is made. In a society where you can rejoice simply when a marriage is surviving, I want to have a marriage that thrives, that is not just good but great – a marriage where we do not just tolerate each other, but celebrate each other.
Just finished reading this really interesting book written by prominent Pakistani author and journalist Ahmed Rashid. I seriously recommend this book to anyone who wants to go behind the simplistic portrayal of the Taliban issue often presented by the mainstream media. The only drawback is that it was written before 9/11 and the author simply wrote a new preface post-terrorist attacks. I would have personally gone for a complete re-writing of the book – indeed maybe I would have gone for a sequel!
If I take anything away from this book it is the notion, from a Western perspective, that one must be very careful with whom we go to bed with – we may end up with an unplanned child down the road. That seems to be the moral of the story for all the parties involved either directly or covertly in this saga. A terrible sin of omission has been created by the western powers who were invested in Afghanistan only whilst their overriding interest was to secure a defeat of the Soviet Union. Once the Cold War was over, Afghanistan was allowed to slip off everyone’s radar, descend into chaos, and into the vacuum left by the lack of good governance the Taliban rose up as, frankly, the only alternative to anarchy in their country. This is now coming back to haunt regional and international powers big time.
When I look at what decisions are being taken with regards to Iraq, the problem in Sudan, Somalia and other forgotten hot spots and war zones around the world, I am seeing Afghanistan replayed all over again. We do not seem to learn our lessons well.
I have been seeing imaginative and creative ways of using technologies lately. Rather than being threatened by new technologies, Scott Hodge, Lead Pastor at The Orchard embraces technology both to galvanize his faith community, and also during their actual services. I was really impressed when they follow-through a teaching on rhythms of prayer with an experiment using Twitter where their church members were encouraged to sign-up on Twitter and then follow their church Tweets. Then as part of this exercise they would post tweets periodically that would prompt their church to stop what they were doing a few times a day and just pray. This was a throwback to monastic practices of fixed-hour prayer and according to Scott Hodge it seems to have gone down really well with their congregation.
Another example of The Orchard being really creative with technology is in their use of SMS during church services. They held a Q&A session recently that encouraged people to txt their questions with the use of Jarbyco – they found that people would readily txt questions that they would never ask by raising a hand in public. That’s awesome!!!!
Also from Scott’s bog comes this video about a really cool way to capitalize on Twitter by Kogi, a Korean BQ Taco truck in L.A. – check it out:
Just finished reading through Brennan Manning’s“The Ragamuffin Gospel” for the second time round. This book grips me as being an account that comes from a man who has experienced the deep reserves of grace – a man who has had to look deeply into the eyes of a loving father, and has seen the depths of mercy, compassion and forgiveness that are there to be received.
I get the impression from Manning that it is far more important to get a grip on God’s heart for me than it is to “stop sinning”. Indeed, it may very well be that the former is the precursor and condition for the latter – the man whose foundation is the love of Father God towards him is a man who will be extremely motivated to live an upright and righteous life.
In my own strength I fully feel like a ragamuffin – beat-up, discouraged, unqualified – I am even learning to embrace my weaknesses knowing that when I am weak then I am strong. When I do this I stop trying to “make it” on the merits of willpower, my own strength, or even my own obedience. I simply surrender to the grace of God and begin to experience a release of power that comes from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit that empowers me as a child of God to do things that I could never have done on my own.
I recommend this book to anyone who thinks he knows what Grace is…… read and learn bro., read and learn.
There are glimpses of the age to come in the bible – a harmless age of peace, where a little child will lead both a calf and a lion, an age where the wolf and the lamb graze together.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. – Isaiah 11:6
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. – Isaiah 65:25
I believe that I have caught a glimpse of this in two moving video clips. The first one is the moving story of “Christian the lion” an all-time favourite in YouTube, and the second is the story of Kevin Richardson, the man they are calling “The Lion King of South Africa”.
Is this what the world to come will look like? Check out the videos below…….
Christian the Lion….
Kevin Richardson – The Lion King of South Africa…….
Reading “On the Lasting Evangelical Survival” by Christianity Today Online. Whereas sometimes I have to ask myself if there is such a thing as an “evangelical movement”, it has been said that such a “movement” is in danger of dying out. I would certainly contend that rather than evangelical faith dying out (indeed, charismatic evangelical Christianity is probably the one segment of Christianity that is experiencing exponential growth) what is dying is a certain “project” that resembled a politico-evangelical faith, especially in the USA. Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today has written about this online, and has these comments to offer:
What I will do, to my dying day, is work with anyone who knows he was lost but now is found, whose Bible is worn because she repeatedly looks there for God to speak, who finds the Cross the most meaningful of symbols, for whom the Resurrection is not just a doctrine but a power, and who wants nothing more than to find new and creative ways to share the evangel of Jesus in word and deed. I’ll work with these people no matter what scholars decide to call them.
WOW – awesome words Mark! I wish they were really heard by many evangelicals and then shouted from the rooftops!!
In this podcast, Chip Heath draws on the psychology behind Urban Legends to examine why some ideas become memorable. Urban legends are a really useful prototype for this research because by nature Urban legends tend to be very persistent and durable and they also tend to cross boundaries easily. This is manna from Heaven for any serious marketer or influencer. Within the Church, we have to be honest enough with ourselves about the fact that given the degree of “information noise” that people in our societies are bombarded with, we do want to influence people, we do want our message to be credible and memorable, and we do want our message to cut through the “noise” and “stick”.
There are six basic attributes that will allow an urban legend, or your idea, to “stick” and be a SUCCESS. They must be:
A couple of the things really stuck (pun intended) with me from the talk. One of them was that he described how Saddleback Church were really concrete about who their target person was that they were trying to reach. Saddleback Sam, and Saddleback Samantha were two fictional characters that represent the profile of the typical person that they as a church want to reach.
Because they have this “person” identified and profiled in such a concrete way, decisions happen automatically in order to further their organization’s mission to reach such a person. Does my organization have a “Saddleback Sam” identified?:
“Saddleback Sam” is a well educated young urban professional. He is self-satisfied, and comfortable with his life. He likes his job and where he lives. He is affluent, recreation conscious, and prefers the casual and informal over the formal. He is interested in health and fitness, and he thinks he is enjoying life more than 5 years ago, but he is overextended in time and money, and is stressed out. He has some religious background from childhood, but he hasn’t been to church for 15 or 20 years, and he is sceptical of “organized religion.” He doesn’t want to be recognized when he comes to church. (Hunter, 1992, 155)
The other issue was that sticky messages have to be emotional. The most successful anti-litter campaign in Texas occurred when they identified that male truck drivers were the ones causing the most litter. Rather than raising fines, or having to police more, the organizers of this very successful anti-litter campaign capitalized on the Texan male’s sense of Texan patriotism by launching the “Don’t mess with Texas!” campaign. By playing on their hearers sense of identity they managed to secure a much better outcome than by playing on people’s fear of retribution or punishment. He makes the statement that identity is far more powerful than consequences and that it is far better to appeal to the hearers’ sense of identity and who they want to be than to threaten them with consequences. WOW – what a message for us as a church. Let the doomsday prophets take note!!!
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. – John 5:1-3
We seek ways of standardizing the Gospel, of making it mainstream and accessible to all. In typical marketing fashion we concentrate our best efforts in reaching our biggest target group in the most efficient manner. We also invest our greatest efforts in doing this and hope to maximize our returns in doing so.
This thought gripped me: Whereas we take the Gospel mainstream, Jesus invested a great deal of His time, efforts and strengths on the margins. Whereas we would have been seeking out the milieu at the religious feast, Jesus as at the pool where the marginalized were. Maybe, in our efforts to maximize our results, we have overlooked the fact that there is a definite call to the margins in our preaching the Kingdom of God….. and that there is a special dispensation of grace way out there at the edge.
Friend, where are you focusing your energies? Are you living on the edge?
This is a big “shout-out” to my good friends at the Methodist church in Gibraltar who are organising a Church Leadership Course entitled “Equipped to Serve”. Equipped to Serve is a short 6 session course which is a practical approach to developing Christian Leadership. The course covers Biblical Leadership, Personal Devotion, Developing Vision, Organisation, Communication and Managing Criticism.
Rob and Gaynor Jones have used this course to help train and equip many people among the churches across Wales over the last 10 years.
Some feedback from a recent Equipped to Serve Course:
Thank you for making yourselves available in equipping saints for kingdom business here on earth – may God bless you so richly.
Thank you for making such teaching so accessible. I enjoyed every moment of it.
I enjoyed the course immensely. The presentation was full of life and passion. The course content was excellent.
Every word counted and made me think about where I fit into the corporate vision. This course has undergirded our church leadership in such a positive way.
It promises to be quite interesting and I am hoping to be able to make it to some of the sessions myself.
For further information please contact Superintendent Minister Fidel Patron here.
Well, the Millers are now in Madrid and I am in full hangover reflection mode after their visit. I always end up receiving so much more than what is actually ministered during meetings that I make it a point of really reflecting upon every word and every conversation in order to extract as much benefit for my life as possible. Quentin is a person that has that effect on me. A couple of things are really resonating in a deep, deep place within after this visit that deserve a mention here:
The power of the tongue. We really do have the power to build up or to tear down…. to create life or to destroy it….through speech. Lets start living like it. The opportunity we have is only matched by the huge omission that we would be guilty of if we proceeded through life ignoring this awesome truth.
The power of grace is SO MUCH greater than the power of sin. WOW that never ceases to shock impress me.
The power of stories. I probably brought this one up in conversation with Quentin but nevertheless, as humans stories have the power to transform our lives. As humans one of our distinctive features is that although all of our cultures and tribes may not have a written alphabet, all of them have stories. Jesus consistently used proverb as a medium of teaching. We even need to return to the Bible as stories that carry power beyond the written letter – when we reduce the bible to a text book or an instruction manual or a series of systematic doctrines we reduce the Word of God to something far lower than the “authoritative place” we, as evangelicals, claim to give it.
Anyway that’s all for now. I am chewing on this stuff right now so lets see what comes out if it all.
Quentin and Docia Miller are in Gibraltar for a series of meetings at Living Waters Church. These guys have poured themselves out in such a way over the years that it blows me away. Quentin has been and continues to be a huge influence in my life, and also in Living Waters as a church. These guys are some of our favourite people in the world!!!!! Church meetings are always a bomb with Quentin and Docia in the house. Guys, welcome to Gibraltar, welcome to Living Waters Church…. now lets go rock this joint!!!!!
Hi friends, the above video(link) shows an awesome presentation that describes the current rate of growth in the world as measured by certain metrics. It is a Brave New World indeed. I doubt that Aldous Huxley would have envisioned that growth in the world would happen at an exponential rate. Futurism tends to extrapolate current reality in a linear fashion.
When faced with an exponentially growing world, we must ensure that our message and our walk (theory and praxis) also grow exponentially. How often do we convey a message in linear terms to an audience that is embracing accelerating flux and change? If we do this, then we run the risk of appearing like those futurist representations of “the future” that we saw when we were kids…… only to find that reality looks nothing like what was projected.
When trying to reach people with a message of a coming Kingdom of justice, peace, hope, love, and goodwill, it must become an imperative that we change the way in which our message is communicated to match the context into which it is being projected. Often a mismatch will occur when we are preaching a message that seems like yesterday’s news to many – not because the message is old, but because there is an incongruance with the context or “worldview” within which it is articulated.
How about you? What are the areas that we need to be innovating in order that our message of “the Kingdom of God is at hand” matches this brave new world of growth at break-neck speeds? Discuss.
I am really digging a series of lectures that I have loaded onto my iPod. The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series from Stanford rocks! Most days see me listening to this stuff being piped into my ear canals whilst I work. I know, I’m a nerd. Even if you are not in the business world, this is an awesome resource for anyone in any position of leadership. If you are a pastor, or ministry leader, or in any ay deal with trying to influence people, you can glean powerful insights into strategy and tactics, successes and failures, from people who have started organizations from scratch, and have then grown and scaled them into something remarkable.
For those of you who are a little lost by all this, iTunes U is a project by the venerable Apple Inc. to take education mobile by offering university content through iTunes/iPods. The possibilities for this are mind-boggling. Education will soon be democratized in such a way that people can get a university education whilst flipping burgers in a diner.
I seriously recommend this entrepreneurial resource to everyone. Head to Stanford on iTunes U and load these seminars onto your iPod.
A couple of the things really stuck (pun intended) with me from the talk. One of them was that he described how 
