You cannot meet and get things done at the same time. In a meeting you can develop plans to get things done, you can decide what things you are going to get done, you can form consensus and get buy in from team members about what things you are going to get done, but you cannot get things done in a meeting. Meetings that work are meetings that prepare you and the team to get the work of the organization done.
Thanks to Pampered Chef and all of you, Holly McRae (Kate’s Mom) is going to receive a wonderful blessing! Trudy Maples, the Pampered Chef Representative for the party, donated all of her commission to the family, and all of the hostess benefits were donated to the family as well! As a result Holly is going to be able to stock her kitchen in preparation for Kate coming home and cooking meals for her family again. If you missed it and you’re wondering what in the world I’m talking about you can check out the story here.
I’m a typical guy I guess and I must confess that I don’t do much cooking other than a little mac and cheese out of the box for the kids. That’s best for everybody’s health in my family, trust me. So I suppose for some of us this may seem a bit trivial. But I can’t tell you how proud I am of all of you who participated and blessed the McRae family in this moment! I’m floored by your outpouring of love! Again, for all of you who are unfamiliar with Kate’s story and would like to follow along you can keep up on their blog here. Keep praying with us!
A couple of years ago a friend told me that they didn’t like what was happening in America. They weren’t making a political statement so much as it was simply a statement about sameness. They were frustrated that no matter where they went in America there seemed to be the same big box retail stores, the same fast food joints, the same home improvement stores, the same clothing stores, everywhere they turned there just seemed to be more of the same. There has been a lot of contributing factors along the way, not the least of which are technology, sociology, some good marketing, and a void of critical thinking and leadership. But the real problem is that this sameness has crept into the church. In response to this issue of sameness, Howard Hendricks said it this way, “If you’re just like somebody else, we don’t need you.” The Scriptures would teach us that the beauty of the Body of Christ, His Bride, the Church is that we are not the same and it is in our uniqueness that we need each other to be and do something together that we could never be or do alone. So how do we avoid homogony? In an age when anywhere America looks the same as anywhere else America, how do we avoid sameness in the local church? Here are a couple questions that may get you going in the right direction.
Here are a few humbling things that Jesus had to say to the synagogue leaders of the day. Not to women at wells, people possessed by demons, men born blind or whose bodies were with crippled with leprosy or even women caught in the very act of adultery, but to the religious leaders. As church leaders today in an ever increasing busy ministry world you and I would do well to slow down for a moment and drink in these comments deeply, ponder them and allow the Spirit of God to teach and correct us.
In his book Revolutionary Parenting, George Barna writes the following:
“Millions of parents have accepted the idea that they have to make a choice. They must either give up careers and self-fulfillment and spend a lot of time with their children, or spend limited but deeply enriching time with them while maintaining the same level of vocational involvement. Over the past 15 years, various studies have shown that this switch has diminished the impact of parents. And the lie about the choice involved has hurt both parents and children, leaving a large proportion of young adults feeling as if they were not adequately parented and a shockingly high number feeling that they lacked a father figure in their lives. In fact, when we asked young adults what they felt were the most significant mistakes that America’s parents have made, the second highest ranked mistake was not spending enough time with their children.”
“The typical American family registers less than 15 minutes of direct parent-child conversation each day.”
In today’s fast paced world most parents are stuck doing their best imitation of a taxi cab driver. They’re escorting their children from one event to the next, pounding down some fast food, chatting it up on their cell phone, and dropping french fries under the seats that will be petrified by the time the minivan gets cleaned 2 months later. There is the revolving door at home where things seem more like Grand Central Station than a home at times. And oh yea, all while mom and dad are trying to advance in their career and let’s not forget trying to carve out a little time for some romance. Things just don’t seem so romantic now after rattling off a list like that. At that breakneck pace, how relationally deep can anyone go with their kids? While we don’t always do this right by any stretch of the imagination, the following are some examples of what has worked well in the Alexander house.
I help churches make vision real. I am a pastor, speaker, strategist, and ministry consultant at The Unstuck Group.
Read more about me.
