Making It Personal

This past week I was preparing some statements for the "State of the Church Address" a part of our annual Society Meeting at the church.

When I began to review some of the numbers from the 2013 year I was encouraged by many, and I was discouraged by a few. You see, 2012 was an exceptional year in our church - we saw numerical growth in almost every area and every ministry, and we experienced significant relational and spiritual growth as well.

But as I looked at  the reports from 2013 I felt differently. One particular area was baptisms. We were blessed to baptize 15 individuals in 2012 - 5 adults,6 teens, and 4 children. However in 2013 we only baptized 3 - 1 adult, 1 teen, and 1 child.

15 baptisms versus 3 baptisms, these numbers spoke for themselves. Or did they? See, it only took me a minute to realize that one of these three baptisms was my 7 year-old daughter. And, it occurred to me that numbers are discouraging, but only when we are not giving it our all. And that numbers no longer matter when it is personal.

This is not to say that I don't desire to see many more hearts and lives committed to Christ and that I don't desire to see many more baptisms in 2014. This is simply to say that I will aim to make every commitment, every life, every baptism personal. And I will rejoice - I will celebrate with each as if it is my own son or daughter that is making this life-changing commitment.

Make It Right Now...Not Later

There are two questions that I ask this time every year, maybe you have similar ones;

"What are you going to start doing in the new year?"

"What are you going to stop doing in the new year?"

• I ask these questions of myself. 
• I ask these questions about our family. 
• I ask these questions of our church leadership. 
• I ask these questions of as many people as I can in regard to as many situations as I can. 

In years past these two questions have helped me to get to the heart of what must happen in the year that lies ahead. This morning I sat to reflect on these two areas and to evaluate how I did - personally, as a husband, as a father, and as a church leader. And that's when it hit me, there is a huge problem with these two questions. 

When we sit to evaluate a situation - whether it be a relationship, an attitude, or an action - whether it relates to our life, our family, our home, or our career - if we come to the conclusion that something must start or stop, we must do it immediately! 

The problem with starting something or stopping something in the new year is that we have such a broad time frame to correct it. So this new year's eve, I am changing my questions and will be asking;

"What are you going to start doing today?"

"What are you going to stop doing today?"

Don't aim to make things right in 2013, aim to make them right now!

Status of 2010

I was tooloing around on facebook this evening and came across something called My Year in Status - 2010. It takes all of your facebook statuses for the year (or a lot of them at least) and puts them together as a collage. I especially liked the fact that I could go through and pick and choose which statuses to include in the collage.


It was interesting to see the statuses that were shared throughout the year from the standpoint of what I was doing as well as what I felt was important enough to share as a status. It brought back a lot of memories from this past year.

Great memories of family, friends, jobs, thoughts, fears, and successes!