Monthly Archives: June 2012
Summer is here!
Summer is here, and with it comes a complete season change in my life and ministry. I see three main things summer brings into my life every year:
1. Evaluation
Late spring and summer have always been a time of evaluation. One on one meetings with all my youth staff, a youth staff retreat/evaluation meeting, and fleshing out changes that are needed are all things that happen during this season. September to Christmas is the height of our effectiveness, and summer is when we “do our homework” to prepare for it.
2. Trips
Mission trip, camps, student leader trip, family vacation, and all-church family camp all are happening this summer. I am gone more than I am home, and this has been the norm for me almost every summer. Every single one of these trips play an important role in my overall ministry and family success, important enough to dominate my life for a few months.
3. Outdoor fun
In between everything above anything left over is filled with outdoor fun. The Idaho culture is we live here to play, and outdoor recreation options abound and are close. This is my favorite thing about living in Idaho, and I embrace this gladly. Days at the lake, camping, golfing, mountains, trees, sunshine, BBQs, pools, and…. all involve both family and ministry and I love it.
In my attempt at keeping my life in the right order of priority(read more about this here), the identity of “blogger” gets pushed down the list during the summer months (as it already has). I value you and am honored that you read what my feeble mind spits out onto this site, but my posts will be inconsistent at best over the next few months. Thanks for your understanding in this, and please do check back as I will try and post as much as time and life allows.
What changes does summer bring for you and your ministry? Whatever it is, I hope you embrace it and enjoy the change!
Cleanliness does not equal Godliness
The other day I cleaned my office. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but it is a major deal for me. Because clutter doesn’t bother me, my organization style involves piles, and once I put something in my file cabinet I never think about it again—I don’t clean my office very often.
I literally have said “I only clean my office when I have nothing else to do” to several people who have made comments about my messy office. However, this time I had to clean my office because I have a ton to get done.
Lately my life has felt incredibly cluttered. As I have been reading through my book doing the final edit I realized how much I needed to learn from my own writing. My own priority list of identities I am fulfilling is long and out of balance. My frustration level was at epidemic levels, and I was running on empty.
I needed to take a break from my life, even if just for an afternoon, and was not getting to it. Every time I walked into my office the clutter and mess actually did bother me, because it reminded me how much I had to get done and how I wasn’t cutting it. Honestly I felt like I was running two hours behind for everything and not fulfilling anything.
It took me a few hours to clean and organize my office, and it provided me a much needed break. Since I never clean my office, it was like a deep breath for me. Going through old files, shelving books, and purging my piles made me realize things were not as bad as they seemed. I realized much of what I was feeling was coming from expectations, worries, and assumptions I had made about or put on myself—just like the mess in my office.
I have heard and said it before that sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap. For me this past week the most spiritually significant thing I needed to do was clean my office.
Not only did I finish that day with a clean office, but also with a cleaner perspective. Will my office stay as clean as it is right now, not likely. But God was trying to get my attention about the unhealthy perspective I was carrying through my day to day life, and did it by something bothering me that normally doesn’t.
Is God trying to get your attention about something in your life? What is bothering you that normally doesn’t?
Are you living life to the full?
” I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
These words by Jesus are words every Christian should be living out, yet many aren’t.
Yesterday was my tenth wedding anniversary, and this weekend our boys are staying with Grandma and Grandpa, and my wife and I are enjoying life together for a few days. As I think back over the past ten years, there have been a lot of fun times and I can say we definitely have lived life to the full because of Jesus.
There have also been times when we (mostly me) have not enjoyed life and lived it to the full. There is always so much to do, whether with ministry stuff, kids stuff, career stuff, house stuff… It is easy to get lost in it all and forget to enjoy life.
One of my best friends told me “slow down and enjoy my bride” this weekend. Those are great words of advice.
Do you need to slow down and celebrate? Maybe a marriage milestone, a ministry victory, or even just having fun for fun sake. If you need permission to live life to the full, consider this permission. You can’t enjoy life when it is going at 100 miles an hour. Slow down and celebrate!
