Flowers make all the difference

Originally published as Church Flowers in The Belton Journal

A pastor in St. Paul, Minn. blogged this week about a flower garden planted in front of his church.

First of all, I love pastors that blog regularly. It gives a lot of insight into the ministry and what they go through and see throughout the week.

Some even give insight into how their weekly sermon progresses.

Fellowship Church in Dallas has a blog set up for their entire church staff to post notes and journals on. (UPDATE: While Pastor Ed Young still blogs, I can’t find the blogs for the entire staff anymore.)

It gives you a connection with the staff that you might not otherwise have.

But I digress…

Pastor Pat Kahnke of St. Paul Fellowship Church writes that he noticed a bunch of kids bustling around in the church parking lot earlier this week.

As he walked closer he realized that a number of his church members had taken the initiative to plow up a weedy section of their church lot and plant a flower bed in its place.

While planting the flower bed, one of the church members knocked on a neighboring house door to ask to borrow a water hose.

The church neighbor said they could borrow the hose that day and year-round to keep the flower bed looking healthy.

And as a result, another member volunteered to plow the man’s backyard for him.

What a great sign of ministry on so many levels.

They took the care of the church upon themselves

No one sat around and waited for a church beautification committee to tell them what needed to be done. No building committee hired out work that church members could easily do.

People took responsibility for their church and went the extra mile to be sure their place of worship was taken care of.

What if each of us looked for areas in our own churches or work places where we could go the extra mile without being asked?

What if we quit shrugging responsibility for things in our offices or church and stepped up and said, “This needs to be done — and I’m going to do it. Even if it’s not in my job description and even if I may not be an expert on the subject.–

They involved outsiders

One of the things I love about this story is that it involved people in the neighborhood.

Now granted, with a little planning they could have brought their own water hose, but think of the ministry opportunity they would have missed. In the process, they made sure that a neighbor of the church knew what was going on at the church and then found a way to meet him at his need.

Wasn’t that Jesus’ entire ministry was about? He met people at their need.

If we are passionate about what we do, or wherever we do it, it can be contagious – people will want to be a part of it.

A business cannot grow without new customers and a church cannot grow without new members. We must rid ourselves of being exclusive or selective in who we reach out to. We must bring outsiders in.

A few months ago I wrote about George Masters who was so passionate about Apple’s iPod, that he spent several hours designing a complete television commercial based on his favorite toy.

“Why would a school teacher spend a good chunk of his free time, for five months, crafting a really slick ad for no money? For no real recognition other than a, ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ from a few friends? Because he really, really likes his iPod,– wrote blogger Andy Havens. “Masters frankly admits that he partly worked on the project as a way of teaching himself some computer animation basics, and to be part of a portfolio. That being said, why pick the iPod mini as his subject? Because he’s a huge fan. And let’s remember that ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic.’–

If we can get people passionate about our product or message, people will become a part of the message and share it with them where ever they go.

Little efforts can go a long way

Third, as Pastor Kahnke wrote in his blog that he was blessed and ministered to by seeing their effort and the beautiful flowers left by their effort.

A pastor who was worn down was encouraged and blessed by a small effort by members of his congregation.

I can’t imagine that this group of church goers would have realized the impact their thoughtfulness had on their pastor, or the impact it would have on a newspaper editor some 1,113 miles away.

You never know what impact your willingness to serve will have on others.

CWF Results from 5-22-05

Sorry for the delay, but here are Sundays CWF results from Mountain Home, Arkansas.

Chris Idol def. Michael Malick
Eagle def. Son of Thunder James Zebedee
Tim Storm def. Rob Jesus Freak Vaughn
Jesus Freak and Michael Malick def. Chris Idol and Tim Storm

And more importantly, 10 people made decisions to follow Christ.
Praise God.

Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny, little rocks.

I’m really tired from this weekend. But for some reason I’m just not ready to go to bed. I’m afraid I’ll lay there staring at the ceiling or the back of my eyelids forever. Maybe I’ll go home and watch a movie or two. I’m thinking about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s a really clever movie that sometimes I wish and wonder if it could be true.
Could you possibly erase someone or an event from your mind?
And if you could, would you really want to?
I can think of several events or people I might like to erase, but what purpose would that serve?
What if I erased my sister’s death? Where would that leave me? Would I just hurt even worse because in my mind she would have just simply disappeared? I would never want to erase her from my memory or any part of her. She means too much, even as bad as her death hurts sometimes.
I can think of ex-girlfriends that I would probably love to erase, but there’s always so much I can look back on foundly and wish to return to those happier moments.
What would you erase if you could? And why?
Either way, I think I may head home, open a cheap bottle of wine and enjoy the rest of the evening before I finally run out of things to think and worry about.

“Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny, little rocks. “

Weekend Update

Well, the weekends over and I need a vacation to recover.

It seems like the last few weekends have been whirlwind experiences that keep coming.

I spent last weekend I had plans to visit friends and family in Dallas as well as announcing for the first CWF Comeback show in Rockwall.

I ended up doing all that, as well as attending the visitation and funeral of a friend on Saturday.
This weekend, I began a fun Friday evening with a good friend, as we planned to eat and visit the Planetarium in Killeen.

And naturally, we ran into someone I knew at dinner.

A couple from our church saw us on their way out of the restaurant and I’m sure immediately began to hear wedding bells as they saw my friend and I sitting on the bench, waiting for our table.

I guess that’s what everyone assumes when you’re single and you’re hanging out with someone of the opposite sex.

What really stinks is when you or that other person starts hearing wedding bells, while the other is hearing, “Run Forrest, run!”

But none the less, we enjoyed our evening and I was waiting anxiously to see Laser U2 at the Planetarium.

We arrived a few minutes early and were pleased to see a very small crowd would be joining us. But as the show started, we soon realized, without any sound or music, the lasers lost their attraction.

So, the show was cancelled and we were given rain checks for another show.

I emailed the Planetarium Monday morning to ask if there would be another run of the show — and maybe its my wonderful persuasive writing skills, or their over abundance of generosity, but the center agreed to run a special show for me and friends.

So, I’ll get to wait anxiously for another show at another time.

Saturday I saw Star Wars – Revenge of the Sith with my good friends Aaron and Keri Lehmann.

I don’t know if Revenge of the Sith will replace The Empire Strikes Back as my favorite installment or not, but it is my favorite of the three pre-quils.

We finished the day off with dinner at Kobe’s Steakhouse in Addison with friends and family, celebrating Kathryn’s Crappy Birthday and her brother-in-law’s Happy Birthday.

The weekend wrapped up with a whirlwind trip to Mountain Home, Arkansas for a CWF show.

We were a bit bumed before the show began. The crowd was thin, with only 20 people in attendance up until the last 10 or 15 minutes before showtime. Luckily the crowd grew to 72 by showtime — but preparing for a show with an extra small crowd is never a good feeling – especially if you’ve just driven eight hours to do so.
As the show began, we had technical difficulties with the mics and music intros (which to me is ALWAYS frustrating) but surprise, surprise, God still chose to use a bunch of guys who love ministry and wrestling, to bring 10 people into His kingdom.

It still amazes me how God can use a wrestling show to bring people into His loving, outstretched arms, but He does.

And an eight hour ride, in a van, full of goofy guys, suddenly becomes worth it all.

Even if we don’t make it back to Dallas till 6:30 a.m. on Monday, and I have to be at work (2 hours away) at 10 a.m. — it’s all worth it if just one comes to know Him.

The thrill of doing Kingdom work is amazing.

I don’t quite feel at home anywhere else. The CWF proves that God works outside of our boxes all the time.

And the angels rejoice in the salvation of 10 people, who put their trust in the Lord. And we rejoice with them.

Evite

I found this cool website tonight: Evite.

You can plan and invite people to parties through forms and such on the internet. Then the site will send an e-invitation to all your invitees. And they can respond with a yes or no as to whether they’ll be there or not.

Granted, I’ve never had much luck with regular invitations, phone email or otherwise, but maybe this might change my luck.

Who knows.

We’ll see.

Steve Jobs buys a washing machine

Day 64: 03-04-08
Doing the laundry | Photo by Jonathan Blundell

Wired News has an interesting article on Steve Jobs buying a washing machine. The college drop out and Apple Computers Founder and CEO got his entire family envolved in discussing the design of their new washer and dryer.

In a 1996 interview, Steve said, “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. To design something really well, you have to ‘get it.’ You have to really grok what it’s all about.” (A geek’s word, to grok is a coinage of science-fiction writer R.A. Heinlein, meaning to understand something thoroughly by having empathy with it.)

I think we miss that many times in designing things and communicating messages.

I’ve designed websites in the past that really jump out at people because they look great, but in all reality they suck as a website, because they don’t work well. You can’t find the pages and information you want quickly.

A well designed newspaper is the same way. Not only does it look good, but the information is organized in a way that people can pick it up every day or every week and know exactly where they need to go to get the information they need.