Friday Funny…Chick-Fil-A

Tim Hawkins is hilarious!  If you haven’t seen it before, check out his ode to Chick-fil-A.

What if Pastors had to do a call-in radio show?

On Monday evenings, I have to take my 16 year old dancer daughter to her company rehearsals. It is about 45 minutes away from my house, so I don’t usually come home. I go to Starbucks and drink a Dr. Pepper that I sneak in with me (Idon’t do coffee), while I get a little extra study time in.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve gone to pick her up and had to wait a little while as her rehearsal went over. While waiting, I’m listening to the radio and switched over to 750 AM and I caught the Mark Richt show. For those of you not in Georgia, Mark Richt is the head football coach of the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Every Monday evening, he has to sit and listen to people call in and talk about the Dawgs and their recent game.

I don’t know how these coaches put up with these shows. I know that most major colleges have in their coach’s contracts to do a radio show. I know that they get a little extra pay for doing them. But you know they hate doing it.

Most of the calls seem to come from people who have no clue what they are talking about. I mean, do these guys who call in really think they know more about the game and the personnel and the game plan than a man who has been coaching in major college football for over 26 years? Even though I am a Tennessee fan, I really like Coach Richt. He is a solid Christian leader and a great football coach. I mean just consider this info from his bio on the official UGA website:

After eight seasons between the hedges, he’s… [won] two SEC Championships (2002, ‘05), three SEC Eastern Division titles and tied for another, and his 82-22 record is fourth best in the country in winning percentage among active coaches (.788). And his emphasis on graduation has come to fruition as 102 Bulldog players have earned their degrees since December, 2004.

His 2008 team finished 10-3–the sixth time in the last seven years the Bulldogs have won 10 or more games and also finished among the nation’s top 10 teams in the final national polls.

Richt was named SEC Coach of the Year in both 2002 and 2005.

He is one of only nine head coaches in Division I-A history to record 60 or more wins in his first six seasons and 70 or more wins in his first seven seasons and one of only seven to reach 80 wins in his first eight seasons. Richt is also one of only six coaches in history to win two SEC championships (2002, 2005) in his first five years, and one of only five head coaches in SEC history to record four straight 10-win seasons (2002-05

So, with that in mind, I’m listening to people call in on the Monday after the Bulldogs loss to Tennessee…which I enjoyed by the way…sorry Coach Richt It amazes me how people call in and want to tell this man how to run his team, how to call plays, what decisions he should make, who on his staff he should fire, what kind of offense he should be running, which players he needs to bench and which players he needs to play. It is actually pretty comical to me!

I can’t imagine what goes through his head each Monday night as he has to sit and listen to these people. I imagine most of them are overweight, either haven’t played a down of football themselves or haven’t done so since high school, and surely haven’t coached football…at least not beyond their son’s pee wee team. I gather from listening to most of them that their entire hope in life lies in whether or not the Dawgs win each weekend.

I may be stereotyping a bit…and maybe I’m too judgmental, but for the most part I bet these people have no clue about what it takes to run an organization like a major college football program. They have no idea of the hours of training, planning, studying, strategizing that goes in to prepping for a game. They have no idea all the behind the scenes stuff he and his staff deal with. They have no clue about the personal struggles and stresses it all puts on his family. They don’t see the endless hours spent counseling and helping these young men with life issues.

I mean, last week, I was laughing out loud as I heard one guy call in…from what sounded like deep in the woods somewhere…and proceed to tell Coach Richt how he should be training his defense to tackle. He was actually telling him what he needed to do to teach them tackling techniques! Seriously?! Are you kidding me? I don’t know how Coach Richt doesn’t laugh out loud and just tell some of these guys to “shut up and get off the phone!” But he doesn’t. He handles it with humility and grace and patience. That’s why I like him (I wish Tennessee had a coach more like that right now, but that’s another story).

Well, all of that to say this. What if we as pastors and church planters had to do a call-in show every Monday? I think I’d lose my mind! However, you see, it really happens all the week long. In coffee shops, restaurants, living rooms, workplaces, through e-mail, on blogs, twitter and on facebook. We get Monday morning quarterbacked all the time…and Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening… Sometimes it’s positive…but a lot of the time we are attacked. Many people have no clue the pressures and the stress that goes in to leading people. Even when I was a staff member at a church and had some clue, I never knew the weight that a lead pastor carries. Most pastors of established have no clue the stresses and pressures and weight that a church planter carries.

Many people have an idea or an agenda or some advice that they are sure will work better, but they really have no clue. They are quick to judge and quick to criticize and quick to assume, but they really don’t have any idea what they are talking about. These Monday morning quarterbacks are usually about themselves and haven’t gotten their hands dirty or “taken a hit” or “made a tackle” or “carried the ball” in a long time…if ever! I know because I have been one of those. It is easy to do…in football, at work, in parenting, and in the church. I know that all of these people are not bad or “evil”. I know that sometimes people have legitimate things to say and God uses people to speak into my life all the time.

Leaders, know that you are going to get attacked. Sometimes brutally. Sometimes viciously. Sometimes unfairly.  Sometimes you are gonna laugh. Sometimes you are going to cry. Sometimes your family is going to take shots. You will be lied about, misquoted, misinterpreted, misjudged, maligned.  Learn to do as Jesus did and steal away and find your rest and refuge in Him. (Mark 1:35 is one example) Let God handle your battles. (2 Chronicles 32:7-8). Protect your family. Keep your heart and mind protected and pure. Stress will make you more susceptible to temptation. Focus on what matters. Take truth to heart and throw the rest out. How we respond and react to these says more about us and our relationship with Christ than anything.

Church members/attenders and Monday morning quarterbacks. No matter what church you are attending, pray for your leaders. Hold their arms up as Aaron and Hur did for Moses, so that God may use them to bring victory for the Kingdom. Remember what God’s Word says in  Hebrews 13:7

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

If I had to do a radio call in show on Monday, I would need a lot of grace…and patience…and a good sense of humor. Coach Richt is a good example of that. God has taught me some things about how I should respond. I respect Coach Richt, because I don’t think I could do it like he does.

Get A Grip This Sunday!

A new series @ The Ridge starts this Sunday, November 1st. What is the truth about God’s plan for your marriage? Do you feel like you need to get a handle on your marriage? Is it everything you expected? Maybe you need to get a GRIP on some “Love Handles!” Don’t miss this new series this Sunday. Check it out…

Sunday Recap 10-25-09 Wow! what a day!

today we ended our One Month To Live series. As we wrapped up this series on living a no regrets life, we talked about a no regrets life is an obedient life.

• no regrets obedience is an enthusiastic obedience. Enthusiasm comes from the Greek words en and theos, which mean “God within”. True enthusiasm, passion, comes from God within. If the Holy Spirit lives within us, we should be following and obeying Christ with enthusiasm.
• If I am to live a no regrets life, I cannot be ashamed.

Romans 1:16, says “For I am not ashamed of the gospel…”

Matthew 5:14-16 ¹⁴“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

I taught on obedience and biblical baptism. We challenged people to take the first step of faith and then the first step of obedience in following Christ in baptism. at the end of the day, 8 people stood and prayed out loud to follow Jesus as their Lord and Savior! It was awesome! THEN 29 people responded to the call to obedience to follow Jesus in biblical, New Testament baptism! It was an amazing day @ The Ridge! God was glorified, lives were changed, a generation has been impacted! Praise God for doing something unexplainable and undeniable!

Changed lives! That is what it’s all about. THIS never gets old!!

Major probs to Beverly Johnson and her husband Ken who put a great team of volunteers to do all of the organizing and preparations. They had everything that anyone needed, including clothes, toiletries, towels, everything. Their team did a fantastic job! It made everything so smooth and took all the excuses that anyone might have had away.

The band also did their usual stellar job!

In addidtion, we had 36 families in our community who were victims of the flooding last month that we “adopted” . Today 36 families from The Ridge took packets to give to these families, including a case of water, a $100 gift card from Home Depot and a $25 gift card from Wal-Mart, along with a gift certificate from Chick-fil-A. We are taking these to families and encouraging them and praying with them and simply ministering to them. Thanks to two churches from out of state who made donations to make this relief project possible: my brother Tim’s church in St. Pete, FL, Bridgepoint Church and Fuel Church in Poteau, Oklahoma where Shane Waldrop is pastor. Thanks to the people of these churches who helped make this happen.

We intentionally have waited with this project, so that we could respond to specific families in a personal way after all of the initial “excitement” and emotion of helping out had worn off. Our goal is to “be here” for these families long term. We are still partnering with Samaritan’s Purse and still need volunteers to help with 200 projects they have that have yet to be done. So, don’t stop helping, because time has passed and you might have forgotten about our neighbors.

I was really proud of our folks as I saw them walking out with packets to deliver. I pray that this will be a blessing and a great opportunity to share God’s love in a practical way.

It was an amazing day…a God day.. @ The Ridge! I have been blown away by what He is doing and can’t wait to see what God is going to do. If you missed this Sunday @ The Ridge, you missed God move in a powerful way. You never know what He is going to do, so you shouldn’t miss a single Sunday!

Next week…

This Sunday @ The Ridge

You do not want to miss this Sunday @ The Ridge! I promise you it is going to be a great day as we wrap up our One Month To Live series. If we want to live a no regrets life, we need to live it in a certain way. What does that look like? Be here tomorrow and you’ll find out. I can’t wait for this Sunday! I am really pumped about it! Some of you are on edge about it…you are anxious about it…you are thinking about it…and you don’t know why. Just be there. If you have other plans, change ‘em or adjust ‘em so you can be here. Bring someone with you…call ‘em or email ‘em this afternoon and talk to them about it. Most importantly, be there yourself. If you don’t come, you’ll be saying later, “Dang! I should have been there!” Don’t let that happen to you!

Friday Funny

One of my favorite characters on my favorite show…

Sunday Recap 10-18-09

I was expecting that attendance would take a huge hit yesterday. With the schools taking a furlough day Friday, I knew many people would be out for the weekend; then with the cold weather, I expected that more people would be out. Well, we were down some, but really almost what we’ve been averaging this fall. If all our regulars had been there we would have had a great attendance. So it was good attendance wise. Several new faces too.

Here’s some more highlights:

• Continued our One Month To Live series with part 5: “Leave Boldly”. We looked at Paul’s last words to Timothy as he “left boldly” in 2 Timothy 4

• To Leave Boldly We Need To…start with the end in mind…live life as an act of worship…get serious about it…and grab hold of God’s plan for your life

• Our confidence in leaving boldly & passing the baton is determined by…what we’re passing…how we’ve invested in whom we are passing to
• Here’s the thing…How and what you leave is determined by how you live
• MANY prayer requests were turned in yesterday for everything from jobs to marriages to kids to health issues and more. Our staff spent nearly an hour today sharing these and praying through each one.
• Lots of new faces today. Love seeing new folks @ The Ridge!
• I’m lovin the “wear a name tag every Sunday” policy. It really helps me get to know and remember folks, but it is also helping people connect better with one another.
• The band was PHENOMENAL yesterday! Kendall just blew us away with one of my favorites: (Holy Is) The Lamb Who Was Slain and the band with Kerry on lead, totally rocked NeedToBreathe’s Valley of Tomorrow. Awesome job…as usual! The Ridge band is the best kept secret in Paulding County, I guarantee it!
• Showed off our Ridge-@-Lantern and gave out patterns and instructions for everyone to carve a pumpkin with The Ridge’s logo and use it as an outreach to their neighbors (see previous post here). You can download the pattern here. We’re encouraging everyone to use the opportunity to reach out and invite your neighbors to our next series: Luv Handles beginning November 1st.
• Giving is still down quite a bit. However, many people have remained faithful and obedient. Our staff and Stewardship Team are doing our best to control and cut spending in our budget. We are trusting in God’s provision as we prayerfully strive to be wise managers of His resources.  Please pray about this with us AND remain faithful even in the tough times. BTW, remember you can always give online too even if you aren’t here one week. The economy is tight and everyone’s budget is tighter…mine too! Yet God’s principles still apply. Malachi 3:10 is still relevant…even more so! Every $ we give goes to changing people’s lives…bottom line. That’s what we will continue to do. You are investing in eternity!  Thanks for your faithfulness!
• Enjoyed a little down time yesterday afternoon with the family. My college girl is home for fall break and I’m really enjoying having her here.  Will hate to see her go back on Tuesday. But Thanksgiving is not far away!
• Watched a great Falcons game last night. Wendell got to go to the game. I was jealous.
• Busy week ahead! Can’t wait until next Sunday @ The Ridge. We close out our One Month To Live Series with and amazing special gathering that YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS!! Whatever it takes, be here and BRING SOMEONE with you who needs hope and who needs to know Jesus. If you aren’t here, you’re going to be kicking yourself for a long time…I promise!

Ridge-@-Lanterns

This year to celebrate the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg Church or All Hallows Eve (the day before All Saints Day, Nov. 1)…also known in our culture as Halloween…we @ The Ridge decided to do something a little different. The next two Sundays @ The Ridge, we’ll be handing out stencils to create an alternative to the traditional Jack-O-Lantern.  For several years, our family has chosen to proclaim our faith in a simple way by carving a cross or some other symbol of our faith in a pumpkin and placing it on our porch. After all this holiday was originally a Christian celebration.

This year my wife had the idea to carve our church logo in a pumpkin. I call it a “Ridge-@-Lantern“. We want to get people all over our community to see, not only our logo, but the cross lit up. SO, we’ve created simple stencils that you Ridgers can use to “represent” to your neighbors. Here’s the one our family carved…

Ridge-@-Lantern

In addition, we will be providing you with invite cards for our November teaching and worship series: Luv Handles: Getting A GRIP on God’s Design for Marriage which starts November 1. Halloween night is the one night all year that, for the most part, all of your neighbors are out in the neighborhood at the same time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to hand out and personally invite many of our neighbors and friends to The Ridge this Halloween. Give some candy to the kids too!

We had originally planned to do a carnival on Saturday the 31st. We have traditionally done one in the fall. However, the economy this year has just made it cost-prohibitive for us to pull off. We felt like this would be a unique, inexpensive way to do a little outreach. It also will give us all a chance to connect on a personal level with more people. It will take a little effort on all our parts to do, but it should be pretty effective. Besides it was a fun family activity!

*By the way, I bought a cheap pumpkin carving kit at Wal-Mart that really helped make the details easier. It was worth $4.

Friday Funny

Tim Conway and Harvey Korman were legends of comedy. Tim for his amazing abilities and Harvey for…well just cracking up at Tim! Enjoy this classic sketch from the Carol Burnett Show:

Water, Water Everywhere…but not everywhere

At the end of September, NASA launched a missile at the moon. The mission of the LCROSS Project was to determine whether there might have at one time been water left over in a crater caused by a comet’s collision. A missile was launched hoping to explode and cause a plume of water vapor from long frozen water particles to rise fromt he surface of the moon. A probe with sensors flew through this plume to see if indeed there was some remnant of water on the moon. Interesting Sci-fi stuff.

However, all this to me, begs the question “Why?”  What is the point? Do we think that at some time in the future we will be living on the moon? How much water could there be to tap into anyway? Is there enough to sustain a colony or science station? What if there is? What would we do there anyway? I know there are answers to all of these things. I’m not totally opposed to space exploration, but we have to be realistic about it. We were created with this perfect planet. God made this our home and positioned it perfectly in the solarsystem by His design. It is the only place that can sustain life. Any closer to the sun and we’s burn up, any farther away and we’d freeze.

Water on the moon? Okay. What does that do for us here? Did you know…

• Roughly 12 percent of the world’s population, or 884 million people, do not have access to safe water.
  
• About 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation — roughly two-fifths of the world’s population.
  
• Approximately 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This is around 5,000 deaths a day.
  
• Diarrhea diseases can be reduced by more than 40 percent through the simple practice of washing hands with soap and water.
  
• Water-related diseases are the second biggest killer of children worldwide. Number one is acute respiratory infections, such as tuberculosis.
• Approximately 97.5 percent of the water on earth is saltwater. If all the world’s water could fit in an average bucket, only 1 teaspoon would be drinkable.
• Nearly 90 percent of water-related diseases are due to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene; and most victims are children in developing countries.
  
• The average person in the developing world uses a little more than 2.5 gallons of water each day for drinking, washing and cooking.
  
• Whereas the average person in the developed world uses 13 gallons per day only for toilet flushing.
• Every 15 seconds a child dies in Africa from lack of access to clean water
  

I’m no bleeding heart and I’m not just talking statistics. I’ve actually been there and seen it.

village girls draw water from hand dug well in Burkina Faso

look at how unclean this "drinking water" is as it comes out of the ground

this well being drilled in Burkina was made possible by the Dry Tears Campaign

An African walks an average of 6.2 miles a day just to get access to water. There is also no guarantee that the water will be clean when they reach it.

Did you know that a hand dug well in Africa only costs about $1500 and can supply water for an entire village. Yet most of the time it isn’t very clean and it doesn’t last as long and can have much disease. However, a drilled well costing around $4000-5000 on average, can supply better, cleaner water because it comes from deeper below the surface. One well is said to be able to supply water for 1000 people, but we saw that the reality is many more than that will use it. Most drilled wells will last many years longer than hand dug wells.

According to The Water Project, $10 will supply one person with water for 10 years…So what did you spend on lunch today?

Now, back to NASA. The LCROSS Project cost $79 million. That’s a low cost mission by NASA standard. Yet to what end was this mission? To simply discover if there might have at one time, many moons ago…sorry! bad pun … been a comet the collided with the moon and produced some water vapor that froze there? Okay, so what?  Why are we spending so much money on this?

Consider this…$79 million would provide 17,555 drilled wells in Africa…a place where we KNOW there IS water and where we KNOW there ARE people who need it and can use it for at least the next 10-15 years! That would be enough water for 17.6 MILLION people. That’s more than the population of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi combined! The population of the 28 counties that make up the metro Atlanta area is 4,917,717.

Many of us in this area were inconvenienced a few weeks ago by having to boil water for a few days after the recent flooding. Some were more seriously in need and out of water for several days. Yet, we could get access to it if necessary. We could buy bottled water or, in some cases, we were given it by relief workers. In these third world nations, however, there isn’t a Kroger down the road. And there isn’t relief coming in a few days. And repairs won’t happen in days or weeks to provide clean water. The infrastructure doesn’t exist and the funds simply are not there to produce it. In my trip to Burkina Faso last year, we got the chance to meet with several government officials from regional governors to the mayor of the capital city. All of them said that the number one issue was clean water.

When was the last time you dumped out a half empty water bottle because you didn’t finish it and it got warm in your car? Just think about it next time.

And NASA and anyone in the government who might be listening…which I’m sure no one is…I’m not some liberal greenie who is opposed to space exploration, but why don’t we stop wasting our money on fruitless efforts that have no real meaning and make no real difference in the grand scheme of things; when we could be helping people HERE and NOW. We like to talk about all the needs in the world and how someone whould do something about it. Well, I just gave you one idea that would literally save millions of lives.

Just a thought.

If you want to support some worthy ministries and missions who are digging wells and making a difference check out these sites:

The Dry Tears Campaign (this was started by some local Paulding Co. teenagers)

The Water Project

Blood Water Mission