November 22

Church highlights from my favorite place:

I worked in the Great Adventure class at 9:00 with the K-5th graders. It was so much fun! Parents – volunteer in your kids class once in a while – it will change your life! Pastor Kim has created an environment where our kids feel really free to be themselves. My “shy” daughter lead worship, acted out a charade (including a cartwheel), and talked about her talents that God has given her in small group. There is another boy who has a background of difficulties in classes at school that practically runs the place. He does media sometimes, helps lead younger boys, and carries an authority in class. I’m not sure how, but Kim has allowed kids to be their best and they are living up to it. Skip service and go watch your kids be incredible. You won’t regret it!

We had a board meeting yesterday afternoon. It’s really a hilarious ride for 2 hours. At our last board meeting in October we talked about three significant things. At this board meeting we reversed all of those decisions because the circumstances changed. Welcome to leading a young church! Things flip quickly around here…

Mark and I have been very burdened for the 18-25 year old crowd lately. They are leaving the churches of America in droves. I look at our youth ministry and grieve the possibility that they may walk away from our church and church in general when they graduate. Mark these words: North Creek will do something about this trend. We’ve got to create a church structure that bridges the gap from youth ministry to graduates to young married to young parents.

We announced yesterday that Jeff and Angela are moving back to Seattle for a job opportunity. Most people already knew because we believe that you should hear it firsthand, if possible, rather than corporately. Many churches make sweeping announcements and we really try to avoid that. It’s awful to be sitting in church and be waiting for the “announcement bomb” to drop. We are really going to miss Jeff and Angela. They are irreplaceable, but nonetheless, it is our job to make people’s dreams come true. Sometimes that means letting go. Their last Sunday will be December 6.

Speaking of December 6, we are baptizing people that day! I love baptisms! If you need to get “dunked”, let me know and we’ll add you to the list.

Have a great week!

Discouragement

This week I’ve been a little discouraged about life in general. I am normally a very upbeat type and don’t often let the issues of the world overwhelm me, but this has been a long week. It just seemed like there was a lot of suffering and issues surrounding the people in my life and it was just a lot to carry. So, how do I deal with it when I am discouraged?

Well, I remind myself that I don’t see everything as clearly as God. He’s got a different perspective and a full view of the ups and downs in the world. Did you know that our vision is limited to approximately 10,000 colors? And we are able to see a very small light spectrum. Even as we walk on this earth we are missing reality…For what it’s worth, there are infrared rainbows all around us all the time. We just can’t see them.

So, when I look at a situation and it seems so impossible or so frustrating, I remind myself that there are rainbows surrounding those circumstances…sometimes I just can’t see them. God has a full view and he’s got the right perspective. He sees the beauty where I only see despair. He makes all things right in the end.

If you’re struggling this week, just remember you are surrounded by brilliance.

Get a Fire In Your Belly

Just before our first anniversary, Mark and I bought our first house. We were on a very tight budget for the housing market, so we bought a small fixer-upper that we fell in love with. Our little 800 square foot house didn’t even have a dishwasher or adequate heat. It did have an old fireplace and a winter’s supply of wood. That first winter I got very good at keeping the fire going so my cottage would stay toasty warm.

For those of you with fireplaces, you know the mess that spreads quickly from ashes and soot. I was new at homemaking and anxious to keep everything clean and neat. One day I drug my vaccuum out to conquer my pile of soot that had accumulated around and in the fireplace.

When I was about half way done with my small task, the vaccuum inhaled a coal that was still smoldering. I saw it go in, but didn’t realize it was still hot enough to cause a problem. All of a sudden, my vaccuum started pouring smoke as the bag inside lit on fire and the dirt ignited with it. I rushed around squealing and eventually threw the vaccuum outside and hoped that the rain keep my stupidity at bay. Try explaining that you lit your vaccuum on fire to your new husband…

I’m telling you that story because I think that we all need a smoldering ember in our bellies. We need to inhale the dreams of God for our lives and let them ignite us with passion and enthusiasm. We need to step out in faith until we don’t know what else to do except to rush around squealing.

I’m dreaming. I’m praying. I’m asking God to blow His sweet breath on the hot coals once again. And I encourage you to do the same. Even if that means you’ll have a whole lot of explaining to do when other people find out. Life is a fun adventure. Be such an amazing fire that others stop to watch you burn!

Conflict Resolution!

Our Superintendent of our Ministry Network, Les Welk, recently twittered, “If there is evidence of persistent conflict and problems that arise and surround a particular person, consider the common denominator.”

I think this is a valuable lesson for our lives. If you are constantly mad at people and have unresolved conflict often in your life, the problem might actually be…YOU! The Bible says in Romans 12:18 – If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

That’s our goal as Christians. Drama, conflict, and unforgiveness is inevitable, but needs to be dealt with quickly with the agenda of irradicating it out of our lives. It’s the hardest thing to do, but sometimes you just have to “anty up” and have the difficult conversations as quickly as you can. Otherwise you can look around and all of a sudden have a heart full of unresolved JUNK!

If that’s you…it’s time to clean house. Deal with your issues and when you put your head on the pillow at night, you’ll be able to rest in the peace of God. Good luck!

November 15

I’m a broken record, but I just gotta say it…Sunday was great!

Here’s my highlights:

Mike was teaching the Great Adventure today and the computer shut down. One of the students, Adam, got up and taught the class the memory verse. He knew it because he was in the first service and learned it there. What a great kid and leader! Way to go!

My in-laws are back! They were gone for three Sundays and I missed them being at church.

Our church drank 124 cups of drip coffee today. Not to mention lattes and other drinks that people bought. Amazing how many coffee addicts you get when you call your church the Coffee Church.

I talked to a teenager today who wants to be a writer when he grows up, but he flunked english…ironically, that probably means he’ll be a great writer…

We had our first missions meeting tonight. What a monumental moment that was for me! I am very excited for our church as a whole to get behind impacting the world in this way. I know that there are many great adventures ahead for the people of North Creek.

Mark’s sermon was awesome! We’re in a parenting series and I think it’s going to be really good for a lot of people in our church and beyond. It’s a big task and we all need to be in this together.

Don’t tell anybody, but Mark and my heart is stirring for the next step for North Creek. We are praying, dreaming, scheming, and will set into motion a new season for our church. Why sit on your laurels? There are great things for those who step out in faith.

Tools

I was getting ready this morning and heard signing downstairs. A sweet 5 year old voice belted out in a worship song, “Beautiful one, I love…Beautiful one, I adore…” It was one of those moments that stops me in my tracks and makes me so thankful for having Jesus at the center of our home.

There is no such thing as the perfect family or perfect parents, and our family is no exception. That being said, what we are trying to do more than anything for our girls is to model for them worship, reading the Bible, faithfully going to church, serving others, and allowing them, even at this young age, to make our faith their own.

Challenges in their lives will come and we won’t be able to stop most of them. However, if we can give them the foundation and the tools to jump those hurdles, we will have succeeded. Loving the Word of God and having a heart of worship are the two most important resources we can pass along to their young hearts.

The next several weeks at North Creek we’ll be taking some time to talk about Parenting. It’s going to be pivotal for some families. I encourage you to be a part of this series, even if you don’t have kids yet or yours are all grown. Many hands go into molding our kids and we all need to be trained in shaping the heart of the next generation.

Working Hard for a Living

This is an article written by Jon Gordon, a life strategist. I enjoyed it because I think my generation is guilty of thinking that we can get everything handed to us. The reality is that hard work is still the predecessor to greatness. I hope that you enjoy this interview/article!

Jon Gordon interviewed Jamie Eckle for Computer World about the benefits of Hard Work.

The Benefits of Hard Work

Q&A: with Jon Gordon

The author of Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else says the secret to success might be as simple as hard work.

Q: I’ve read a lot of prescriptions for success, but these days you don’t hear much about hard work. It’s certainly a factor, but is it really the preeminent qualification for success?

A:I really believe it is. Innovation doesn’t happen without hard work. Producing a great product or service doesn’t happen without hard work. Real leadership happens in the trenches, not on the golf course. Software doesn’t get produced without thousands of hours of hard work. Of course, you have to be smart, you have to have the right strategy, you have to have a great culture. But hard work is what translates vision and ideas into results. Study the best of the best and you’ll find that they really do work harder than everyone else.

Q: A lot of people think hard work goes unnoticed, and that it just makes you a drudge. How do you make sure your boss sees the extra stuff you do?

A: I have found that when you work hard, people notice. Maybe not right away, but eventually people notice, and rewards happen without you pushing for them. They naturally come your way.

The key is to do your best every day and strive for excellence in all that you do. If you are working hard and looking for the reward, this usually creates a neediness that stops others from rewarding you. Rewards come to those who are humble and hungry — humble in that you are striving to learn, grow and improve every day, and hungry with a passion to be your best and bring out the best in others.

When you make excellence your focus, success and rewards are just a nice byproduct. The reward is in the work, not in the outcome.

Q: What about the advice to work smarter, not harder?

A: You definitely need to work smarter, too. But work smarter and harder. They go together. It’s true that by working smarter and being more productive with your time, you may not have to work as hard to enjoy your current level of success. But if you want to be more successful or rise to the top of your field, then “smarter, not harder” won’t do. Those who adopt the motto of working smarter, not harder, will eventually be left in the dust by the competition. The best are always striving to get better. They are always pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone. They are always innovating and improving.

Beautiful Day!

Today was just a GREAT day at North Creek Church. Here are the highlights:

Kas Anderson did a testimony video about an accident four years ago that killed her husband. The teen driver was texting and caused a head on collision. Kas’ story is one of faith and forgiveness. She is a remarkable person.

Three teenage men talked to me about getting baptized today. So proud of that generation! Come on! You can change the world by becoming men that honor God and your families.

A couple of people told us today that they are interested in Starting Point. That’s an opportunity for them to explore about the basics of faith. What an incredible journey to begin!

We took our second largest offering today at about $9,200 in one shot. That’s about $8000 above our normal weekly giving, so you can imagine the shock! Here’s the best part: We’ve been behind the last couple of months and now we aren’t. Want to know what North Creek does with extra money? We dream about ways to change lives and then we DO it.

Two incredible men showed up in the nasty weather this week to weed the property and then they put new barkdust down. And they didn’t even tell us they were going to do it…I like those kind of surprises! Thanks Greg and Gregory!

We have our first missions trip informational meeting next Sunday night. I had a lot of people ask me about it today.

One of my favorite people told me that she is pregnant today! That’s a great way to grow our church!

Pastor Kim passed on to me that the kids had a lot of really remarkable things happening in their lives. God moves in the young and the old! I love that!

Someone donated 9 lbs. of Starbucks beans today. YES!

Pastor Chris spoke today. I love it when he preaches. He’s really different than Mark, but yet they have the same heart and agenda. They compliment each other well and I’m glad he’s on the team.

We have a very generous church that gives money, meals, time, energy, and emotional resources to people who need it most. I’m proud to be a part of what God is doing in the hearts and lives of His people.

I hope your week is blessed!

Don’t Feed A Raccoon

In our old house we had a cat door that backed up to a field. One night we woke up to find 4 raccoons checking out our master bedroom upstairs while we slept. When we discovered them in the middle of the night, Mark got some food, let them curl up the foot of our bed, and scratched their bellies until they fell fast asleep. OR…he tore out of bed as fast as he could and started beating their butts with a pillow until they scampered away as fast as their paws could carry them. Probably you believe the second ending because you realize that a raccoon in your house is dangerous and disgusting.

There’s a quote that says, “You give a raccoon cat food and pretty soon he’ll be back for the whole cat!”

I think that feeding a raccoon is a lot like harboring bitterness in our hearts. Bitterness is dangerous and disgusting to our souls. If we allow the seed of bitterness to grow in our hearts, soon it will destroy everything about us. What started as something simple like feeding a racoon, will come back to take what is valuable to us…our character, our integrity, and our passions. Bitterness is insatiable. It doesn’t settle, but will continue to feed on whatever it can get. It’s not something that can co-habitate with the things of God. It will eat them away from you. Literally.

I’ve never met anyone that aimed to be a bitter, angry person, and yet, even as you read this, you can think of someone in your life that you would describe this way. How did they get that way? Why did they allow that awfulness to take hold?

It all begins in the little things. The way that we think about someone, and then slowly, what we speak about them. And then we begin to allow a piece of bitterness to get a hold of something in our heart. It’s about one brick of unforgiveness being stacked on the next until there is a wall that is coming between us and EVERYTHING.

Bitterness ruins the whole being. It’s the whole cat being destroyed and devoured. It’s got to be dealt with quickly because just as a racoon is a thief, so is the devil. He wants to destroy and devour your soul, so whatever it takes, don’t feed the raccoon.

Pivotal Circumstances

This weekend Chris Harold will be preaching on pivotal circumstances. As a pastor, I have the privilege of knowing a lot of stories and the history behind the people in our church. I encourage you to ask people this question, “Tell me a pivotal circumstance in your life?” You will be amazed.

On Sunday you’ll see a video story of a woman in our church, Kas Anderson. I had the privilege of being on the other side of the camera as she told me the journey that God has brought her on in the last five years. What a beautiful person with a remarkable story. And she is one of many in our church…some healed of cancer, set free from addictions, saved from abuse…God is at work in our midst!

Sometimes we don’t think we’re living in the epic miracles of the Bible, but it is just because we are altogether too short-sighted. God’s hand continues to use the circumstances of the world to grow our faith and in the midst of that, miracles happen everyday.

So, ask someone this week what their story is. And if you have a story of God’s redeeming love for you, tell it.