Lessons from Saying Goodbye

This past weekend we all said a goodbye to our dear friend and colleague Bill Ballance who is moving to Montana. God has definitely called him there and so we send him with our love and our blessing. He will definitely be missed around here. People associate Bill sometimes with the facilities he has designed and built. But those of us who know him well will always associate him with the lives that he has endeavored to help remodel. Bill's pastoral heart is so evident and so needed in these days and times. He is definitely an asset to the Kingdom of God and will be used greatly in Montana I am sure.

Having said all of that, I want to just point out a few lessons that we all learn while we are saying goodbye, yet seem so prone to forget once the waving is all done. The first lesson is that relationships trump achievement in the long run. I know that achievement is important. Trust me, I am driven by achievement sometimes to a fault. But when you say goodbye, it is the people that come to the forefront of your mind. You realize that you wished you had spent a little more time with people than with stuff. Bill is a great example of a man that in my opinion knew how to get things done and at the same time love people. He is a great model for us all. So the first lesson is to value relationships. After all, they will be the one writing your legacy when you are gone!!

The second lesson in saying goodbye is that it is possible to stain everything you have achieved by saying goodbye the wrong way. Whenever I left my position in Gastonia, I determined that I would not be one of those staff people that ruin their achievements during their tenure by trashing the place on the way out. I don't mean physically trashing, but verbally trashing the place. My predecessors at Gastonia had a reputation on causing division as they left rather than trying to bring healing and unity. I determined that when I left no one would hear me saying anything negative about my pastor or my church. So I guess what I am trying to say is, keep your mouth shut on the way out. You can ruin all the good you did while you were there by not closing your mouth on the way out. I hear of people leaving the church and holding meetings with people to let them know of all the reasons they are offended and leaving. All that this does is ruin that members reputation on the way out and make it almost impossible for them to come back. Don't burn your bridges with your tongue on the way out!!

The last lesson I want to discuss is a simple one. When you leave, trust God to fill the hole that is there from your absence. Don't try to fill it yourself by your own ideas or schemes. I once had a wise woman tell me that when I left the church I was at, it would be like taking your hand out of a bucket of water. All of the people that I had displaced by my being there would flow into their position. God has a plan. If He has called you out, He will fill the gap. Trust Him and release it.

I know these are not all of the lessons we need to learn. But they are the ones on my mind today so I hope that they help you one day to say goodbye the right way.

Goodbye!!

Easter Trilogy 2008

I hope that you had a great Easter season. This year's season was a little long again since we did three weeks of Easter productions. Don't get me wrong, I love Easter. It is the greatest holiday that we have to celebrate. I am just not used to this long of a production season I guess.

I want to use this blog as a forum to say how blessed I am to be able to work with the people that I work with. Everyone from the staff at CFA to the choir, and most important to me, the orchestra. We have an incredible team of people that always put in their best and it shows. It is so awesome to actually look forward to getting together with the people you work with and the people you worship with. I love my guys (and gals) and love to see them each and every week. I know that we asked a lot of you this season. Thank you for your patience and dedication to His work here at CFA,

You are all the best (with Nacho accent).

A Canoe vs. A Cruise Ship

Have you ever felt like your life was out of balance? I guess I should also ask if you have ever felt like your life was in balance. I don't know about you but there have been few times in my life when I felt like things were in perfect balance, and even then it only lasted a few moments until something unexpected came along and threw me off again. If you start to think about this balance thing, you can get kind of depressed because you start to feel like you are not achieving something that you ought to be achieving and that you need to work a little harder, which tends to throw you off whatever sense of balance you had achieved up to now. 

I think that it is all about perspective. Have you ever ridden in a canoe? If so, you know that the slightest movement can make you feel like you are going to lose your balance and tip over. Have you ever ridden on a cruise ship? Did you ever feel like any sudden movements would have any impact at all on the ships ability to stay balanced? Probably not, because you could jump up and down, and nothing you did would ever budge that ship.

I have found that the times in my life when I feel the most unstable are the times when I have found myself viewing life from a canoe rather than a cruise ship. What I mean is that sometimes when our "base" is narrow and small we feel like the smallest changes can rock the boat. When we find ourselves disconnected from our family, friends, and most importantly our walk with the Lord, life can feel a lot like a canoe. But when our "base" is wide and large, things can happen all around us and we hardly feel the impact at all. When we feel that sense of connection with our family, friends, and our God, life feels more like the cruise ship.

So how can you get out of that canoe and onto the cruise ship? You can start by widening your base. Reconnect with your family. Don't wait for them to reconnect with you. Be proactive in your relationships. Reconnect with your friends. Most importantly, connect with your God. Your base can't get any wider than that. When you know you are in the palm of God's hand, the winds and waves of life don't seem to rock the boat as hard. Yes, there will still be winds and waves, the question is how will you choose to ride through the storms, in a canoe or a ship.

Easter Trilogy Week 2

We finished week two of our Easter Trilogy yesterday. You can go to concordfa.com to view the production. Yesterday's theme was a Life of Dreams. We portrayed the life of Joseph and how God worked out the dreams in his life. Pastor Rick gave some awesome exhortation on how we need to remain faithful during the time between the inspiration of our dreams and the fulfillment of them. Too many times God's plan is thwarted because of our impatience. 

Abraham's impatience between the time of his dream for an heir and its fulfillment brought about Ishmael. Many times in our lives we try to work out God's plan in our own way and in our own time. The dream is still good and still God's plan for us, but we end up tainting it with our ideas of how it should be worked out. Let's decide to trust God and be patient. His time and His way is perfect. Though we may not always enjoy the path, His ways are higher than ours and are perfect. 

Living is Growing

This weekend I got to see the many changes in my nieces and nephews that simply come from growing up. Today I got to spend the day celebrating my niece's 3rd birthday. What a joy it is to see her grow and learn and develop into the person that God has created her to be. One of my nephews had his first T-ball practice. Another nephew drove us to the movies with his new driving permit. Another niece showed me how she is learning to read. All of these changes and growth tell me one thing...they are alive. Change and growth is a part of life. The moment we begin to fear and reject change is the moment that we stop living and start dying.

Embrace the new things that God wants to teach you and grow with them. Look back at your spiritual year and see whether or not you are still embracing the changes and the "living" that God wants you to experience, or whether you have become stagnant and stopped "living." If you have started 'dying,' look around you and embrace something new. Learn something new. Do something you have never done before and start enjoying the wonders of "living" once again. Its far better than the alternative.

Easter Trilogy Week One

Easter Trilogy part one is now behind us and we move on to part two. This past weekend was all about the life of Moses and the steps of obedience that led him to become known as a friend of God. 

Moses at one point in his life was not only completely unaware of God's plan, but completely unaware of the one true God, Jehovah. He had been raised in a polytheistic culture where basically anything could be symbolic of one of their gods. Yet even with that background, God got his attention, spoke to him, and changed his life. I don't know about you, but that gives me a lot of hope not only for my life, but for loved ones who I think are unreachable. The fact is that God wants to reach them even more than I want him to reach them. So we can pray with confidence for our loved ones, because God can put a burning bush in their path and speak to them a whole lot better than we can.

Say a prayer even now that God would put burning bushes in our loved ones lives and speak to them out of those experiences.

 

Easter is Right Around the Corner

I don't know about you and your church, but around here things are hopping getting ready for our Easter Trilogy. Yes, you read it correctly...Trilogy. CFA has now begun the tradition of having an Easter Trilogy which is a three part sermon/drama/musical series leading up to Easter. This year we are doing the life of Moses on March 9th, the life of Joseph on March 16th, and the life of Jesus on March 23rd. This is a great way to build enthusiasm around Easter and provide something that people can invite their friends and family to.

You may not be doing the Trilogy or even an Easter drama, but do something. Easter Sunday should be more than just another Sunday service. It should be an excellent celebration of the most important events in human history. So step it up. Do something outside of the box and make this Easter something memorable for you and your community. 

Give Them the "Lazy Eye"

When I was born, I had the "lazy eye." My left eye was droopy and needed to be operated on in order to look like the right one. This picture was taken after that surgery. The surgery was a success, except for the fact that they took a little too much and now my eye doesn't quite shut all the way. Whenever I sleep, one eyes stays a little bit open. It freaked my wife out when we first got married. But she has learned over time that as long as she can still hear me snoring, I'm OK.

I ran across this picture today in the process of backing up some old photo files and it got me to to thinking about how many times over the years I have been self conscious about that eye. Whenever I would pray in public, I would always wonder if people were looking and wondering why I was praying with one eye open. Whenever I was a Youth Pastor, I always seemed to think that it was necessary to explain to the youth why my eye was messed up. 

After a while I came to realize that the only people who really noticed it were the people that I told about it. I had been having this huge complex over something that other people really never even thought about. I had been handicapping myself with the wrong idea of how people saw me. That "lazy eye" had really never handicapped my ability to see others because I can see almost perfect even without glasses. But that lazy eye had handicapped how I saw myself. 

Today ask the heavenly Father to help you understand who you are in Him and find confidence over any false perceptions that may hinder your ability to minister to others. Stop letting your "lazy eye" handicap how you see yourself or others.

GPS for the Soul

Recently Brandy and I purchased a GPS to assist us in our traveling for IWM. We had used one on our trip to New York last year and really loved it. It is kind of like having a cell phone, once you have had it, you can't imagine not having it. So we bought one.

The other day Brandy and I were using it on our trip to Chapel Hill and I made the comment that no matter what wrong turn we may make, we can still drive with confidence because the GPS adjusts and gets us where we are going. You know it is kind of that way in our walk with the Lord. We no longer have to feel lost in life. We have the Holy Spirit that will lead us and guide us no matter where we find ourselves. If we will only learn to trust and rely on the Lord's leading as easily as we do that GPS, we will find ourselves not only driving with peace and confidence, but living with it as well.