I hate goodbyes.
I heard Tony Morgan say during a podcast a while back that “…leaving a church is like breaking up with a girlfriend.” Except that since you’re dealing with several relationships in the church, you have to break up a dozen or more times instead of just once.
After last week, I couldn’t agree more.
When we first announced that we were changing churches, it was incredibly difficult. Now that the buzz of leaving has moved throughout most of our social circles, it’s getting easier. It’s less of “…we’re leaving,” and more of “…these are the reasons behind it.”
Here are five things I’ve learned from this process… Continue reading ‘How to Leave Well.’
I’ve been through several changes in the past few months…
- I left the finance industry.
- I started working at a non-profit health care organization.
- Rachel gave birth to our son Ethan.
- I revamped the design and layout of my blog.
- I started riding my bike to work.
- I crashed my bike on the way home from work.
- I stopped riding my bike and resumed driving to work.
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
~Andy Warhol
Sometimes changes are good. Sometimes they’re a little harder to swallow… This change has been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever experienced. Continue reading ‘a Different Flavor.’
Twelve Oaks was awesome yesterday!
We had a small crowd because a lot of people were out of town. When people are gone at an already small church like ours it can make a huge impact on your outlook for worship because it looks like there are a lot of people gone… but the band nailed it! And to top it off, our more charismatic members at our church have started sitting up front, which is really encouraging. Seeing a bunch of people dancing and worshiping is so powerful.
Pastor Rod spoke, and his message had some powerful points in it that really hit home. In one illustration, he told about the work that lumber mills will do to maintain the forests they harvest for wood. From time to time, they do what’s called a ‘clearing;’ they’ll cut down hundreds, even thousands, of acres of trees because they’ve grown up twisted or hollow and can’t be used. “Some of those trees have been there for 15 to 20 years. By looking at the stumps and logs someone would probably say, ‘That’s a huge load of wood!’ but when you ask the workers that are clearing the wood out, they’ll tell you that there’s nothing there.” It was a great reminder of how easy it is to become complacent and satisfied with our worship and our relationship with God.
How was your Sunday?
I would really like some honest feedback from any designers, non-designers and anyone in-between. We’re mailing out a postcard for Easter this year and I’ve been assigned the job of putting the whole bit together. I’m not really sure what to do with the back… so any advice offered will be welcomed and encouraged.
Here’s the front:
And the back:
Comments? Suggestions? Critiques?
UPDATE:
Here’s a new copy of the back, based on some input from Lance. Thanks for the suggestions!
Last Saturday was our semiannual Emerging Worship event.
It’s a meeting/brainstorming/learning session for the volunteers and leaders of Twelve Oaks’ worship ministry. We went off-site and just spent the morning growing and worshiping together. We brainstormed about what we want to accomplish as a worship band, how we can continue to improve, what we’ve learned and how we can get from where we are today to where God wants us to be tomorrow. The response has been really positive, and I think the event itself went really well.
A couple years ago we did something similar where we took our worship team to Memphis and visited the LifeChurch of Memphis (not affiliated with LifeChurch.tv), and spent the whole weekend together. This event was MUCH simpler to get together. It was simple enough that now we’re working on making this happen every six months. We’re making plans to bring in some guest worship leaders to speak and lead the discussions, and someday begin working with other area churches, too!
