My eldest son, Aaron, turns 24 today.  Hard to believe.  He’s celebrating this birthday at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama where he has been for the past month at Officer Field Training School.  Here’s a pic of the boy with his Mom on the day he departed.  Happy Birthday, son!  Looking forward to having you home.

We’re waist deep in planning for the next ministry year.  The past few weeks the staff has been working with a few vestry-members on a new template aimed at clarifying and measuring our objectives or, if we were in a different world, our “key bets” for the next year.  Being in this mode of thought, Greg Shore passed along to me a nice article, “How to Lead without a Title,” addressing elements necessary for success in leadership.  Here’s a snip:

I asked Robin which of the many strategies and tactics are most helpful to entrepreneurs and small business owners. Here’s how he responded:  Focus on five. “Over the past number of years I have studied the traits of people most consider geniuses. One of the things geniuses do is to develop an obsessive focus around a few things. Most businesspeople try to be all things to all people and as a result end up as members of the cult of mediocrity. The essence of mastery is being obsessively great around about five things.

“So, articulate the five things that need to happen between now and the last day of your career to feel you led a world-class career. Then every day, focus first on those five things. Small daily improvements over time lead to stunning results.”

Read the rest.

A picture of the Kingdom:

I stared at Jake for a long time imagining what he would look like or be like without his afflictions and handicaps. For a brief moment I was given a picture of my son without his disability. It was a wonderful gift from a gracious God.

He stayed in the bathtub till the water got cold and then he stood up on his own to be dried off. As I wrapped the towel around him and lifted his 130 pound body from the water, I embraced him tightly.

He shivered slightly from the cold transition of the water to the warmth of the towel as he allowed me to hold him longer than he usually does. I smelled the strawberry shampoo in his hair and the clean scent of Dove soap on his cheek.

Read the rest.

From the Anglican Curmudgeon:

Under that same Presiding Bishop (Jefferts Schori), the Episcopal Church (USA) claimed to “depose” Bishop Robert W. Duncan, then of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and now Archbishop of the Anglican Church of North America. The “deposition” was recognized only by the same handful of provinces which are beholden to ECUSA for financial and other support. Unlike Bishop V. Gene Robinson, he has since been welcomed at Lambeth Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has been invited (with ++Cantuar’s blessing) by the Bishop of Winchester to preach and celebrate in his Diocese, and last week he led the celebration of the Eucharist at the gathering of the Global South provinces in Singapore.

It would seem that to be “deposed” by ECUSA’s House of Bishops is the ideal way to earn your standing among the other bishops of the Anglican Communion. To be consecrated by ECUSA’s bishops, however, seems to be a certain way to cause other Anglican bishops to look further into your qualifications.

Read the rest.

This past Monday was our first Vestry business meeting since our affiliation with ACNA.  We had our normal Vestry prayer meeting on the 2nd Monday of the month – but this was the first business meeting.  And, for the first time in the 9 1/2 years I’ve been rector at SAMP we did NOT discuss TEC at our Vestry meeting.  Nor did we discuss property issues, legal issues, employment contracts, 501(c)(3)’s, trusts, asset protection, by-laws, articles of incorporation or parishoner departures for other biblically faithful denominations/churches.

It was oddly delightful.

Odd because for the first time we realized how just much of our time and energy had been devoted to such things – even though we had held before one another – and the parish – the message and practice of “keeping the main thing the main thing.”

Instead, we talked about our understanding that the church does not have a mission, rather, the mission has a church.  And in light of this we looked ahead into the next ministry year at the questions of where and when to plant a new church(es), the deveolopment of our worship arts ministry/offerings and the engagement with a process of establishing St. Andrew’s as a site for formal Christian education – preferrably in partnership with an accredited organization such at St. Paul’s Theological Centre in which we’d function more formally as the local hub for regional training.  Then we put feet to intention and formed a Vestry team to work with the staff as we develop a strategic plan so that we might effectively pursue these hopes and dreams birthed within our hearts.

At the end of our  2+ hours of discussion my Jr. Warden, smiling, said it was the best conversation we’d had in a few years.  By the time I got home another one of my Vestrymen had texted me:  ”It felt good tonight, I don’t mind 2 hour meetings when we’re actually making progress.  Thank God we’re back to focusing on our true mission.”

Thank God, indeed.

And it did feel good.

A bit of clarification: The Spirit working though people grows churches.  Ultimately, evangelistic churches see more persons become Christians through the passionate efforts of highly evangelistic Christians. More than any programs. More than any church events. More than anything else, we are the instruments God has chosen to use.

Sometimes we ask the question “What is my church doing to become more evangelistic?” But the better question is “What am I doing to become more evangelistic?”

Read the rest.

Chuck Lawless, Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Seminary, writes:

I served as a church pastor for 14 years, have now served for 12 years as a church consultant and have watched hundreds of students begin their local church ministries during my 14 years as a seminary professor. Based on my observations from these various vantage points, here’s what I would do if I wanted to “blow up” a church.

Read the rest.

Sally Wallace spoke at our Sunday evening service about her encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Sally from St. Andrew’s Church on Vimeo.

When I signed onto Amazon yesterday Stephen Prothero’s new book, God Is Not One, was recommended.  So, using my Kindle – which, by the way, I love, I downloaded it.  So far so great.

Here’s an article I found giving you the background to the book.  See what you think:

How does a religion teacher get an invitation to appear, in June, on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report? By writing a book saying that Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and others have preached about the shared, benign beliefs unifying all great religions — and then dismissing that message as garbage.

Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One, which hits bookstores today, argues that the globe’s eight major religions hold different and irreconcilable assumptions. They may all push the Golden Rule, as progressives like to point out, but no religion really considers ethics its sole goal. Doctrine, ritual, and myth are crucial, too, and on these, writes the College of Arts & Sciences professor, there is no meeting of the religious minds. For example, Christians who think they’re doing non-Christians a favor by saying they too can be “saved” ignore the fact that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucians either don’t believe in sin or don’t focus on salvation from it. (Hinduism, Daoism, and the African religion Yoruba round out the eight.)

Read the rest.

Here’s a typical Easter picture: pretty woman, cute kid, everyone smiling on a sunny day:

Here’s Easter as it really is: