renown

2 lungs on the way...

2012-01-27T15:05:00.000-05:00

just heard from my Mom that there are 2 Lungs on the way to Duke Hospital specifically for her! they have to get them there & then her Doctors should know by 7pm if this is the perfect pair of lungs for my Mom. if it's a go then she will get her Double Lung Transplant. about a 10 hour procedure. i'm heading up to Duke to be there.

i wrote about this a little before HERE.

we've been praying for this for a long time. for God to heal my Mom. i'm hoping this is it.

i hope this is the miracle.

that this is the moment.

i hope that tomorrow is a new day.

i'm praying that my Mom wakes up tomorrow and it's the dawn of a new day - a new life.

God gets all the credit for that.

i love you, Mom. i'm praying this goes perfectly and pretty soon you'll be breathing like never before... and holding your new granddaughter.

amazing people (repost)

2012-01-25T22:01:00.000-05:00

(It's cool that even though i wrote and posted this over 2 years ago - January 19, 2010 - it is still exactly the same today. even more true i think. thankful for these amazing peeps...)

AMAZING PEOPLE

they're all around me. I'm nothing special, but I have really special people all around me.

that's the secret. There's no way we could do what we're doing without them. I'm so thankful.

God has done amazing things through Ridge Church and i am pumped about what i know He'll be doing through us in 2010... but it's not me and my talent and ability... it's the awesome peeps around me. They are so talented, passionate, and AMAZING!

I am humbled and honored to serve with them!

(off to a creative meeting with a handful of these peeps right now...)

Do you have any amazing peeps around you?

call me an idealist

2012-01-24T21:31:00.001-05:00

people call me an idealist.

it's a negative statement (kind of like too passionate) and sometimes gets lumped with other words to describe me like naive.

but go ahead and call me an idealist. i take it as a compliment.
i think idealism is only a negative if it is just talk. no action with it. because talk is cheap.

i agree with Bono:
“Idealism detached from action is just a dream. Butidealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making theworld bend a bit, is very strong, very real, and very present.”

yep. i'm an idealistic pragmatic. i've been called both in a negative tone, but that's OK with me. i want to spend my life rolling up my sleeves and making the world bend a bit.

i want to spend my life seeing things in the world that bother me (should bother all of us) and be the voice that says "we do not have to stand for this."

and if that's idealistic then so be it.

we'll see what has happened 3 generations from now. then we can judge whether or not i was just a naive idealist.

i believe we can change the world. i believe we do not have to stand for this.

pas-sion

2012-01-23T13:05:00.001-05:00

Pas-sion. noun. [pash-uhn] - "any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling"

i've been accused of being too passionate. i've been accused of having too much of this thing we call passion.

i take that as a compliment.

but sometimes this compliment meant as a negative can play tricks on me in the back of my mind and it could possibly cause me to hold back or play down my passion. i can think in my head "maybe i'm being too passionate?"

no more of that for me though. i'm gonna let it flow. i refuse to suppress the passion in me. i'm going to let it run wild.

because i believe that people HAVE to see your passion. they have to see it loud and clear. it can't be held back. so i don't wanna hold it back.

because...

People respond to passion. it demands a response from them. it may freak them out a little, but hopefully it inspires some similar passion in them.

People follow passion. i won't and i imagine no one will follow a "passionless" leader. not for long anyway. why would you?

People are pumped by passion. i can't think of many things that pump me up more than watching/listening to someone else who is passionate.

People NEED to see your passion. hopefully this should be obvious from the 3 above. but peeps need YOU to show your passion. don't hide it.

other people feed on your passion. let it out.

"thanks"

2012-01-22T19:29:00.000-05:00

it's been an insanely busy week.

between class all day every day + trying to do the work that's due for class next week it was busy enough. but it just so happens that we re-launched our student ministry at Ridge today! we moved into a brand new environment a little less than a mile from where Ridge regularly meets.

there was a ridiculous amount of work that went into making the Student Impact launch possible. insane amount of work. and it's work that i don't even pretend to know how to do.
so, i hope i'm good at saying "thanks". because i've been trying to say it a lot lately. so many people have poured their time and talents into making this thing happen. i'm thankful for these people and their talents + their awesome, willing hearts.
so, "thanks".

this week is going to be equally (if not more) insane. (i think i need a nap.)
fun day today though. we had an awesome launch party with some amazing students. looking forward to next week.

learning from the mastermind behind starbucks

2012-01-20T23:48:00.003-05:00

we would all do well to take a page from Howard Schulz's book. Schulz was the mastermind behind Starbucks.

this was his mantra & i love it. the world would be different if many of us adopted it as our mantra as well:

caremore than others think wise

riskmore than others think safe

dreammore than others think practical

expectmore than others think possible

no wikipedia

2012-01-19T09:09:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia - the source of all things true, historical, and reliable - was unavailable yesterday.
They were offline for 24 hours - January 18th.

according to "Wikipedia" itself it shut down for this reason: "Opposing SOPA and PIPA, two controversial Intellectual Property Laws in the Unized States, the BlackDown attempts to demonstrate what government instrumentalized control of the Internet can cause - a controlled shutdown of websites delivering content a current government may not be pleased with."

Thankfully at midnight last night it came back.
how else would i write these scholarly, technical research papers without wikipedia? just kidding, Dr. Bowers :)

never stop playing

2012-01-18T22:21:00.000-05:00

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow oldbecause we stop playing.”

– Wound & Wound Toy Store, Hollywood, California

There's something beautiful about a child playing.

the way they run

and jump

and just roll down a hill.

they don't care about grass stains on their clothes.

the way they laugh and don't care what they sound like.

the way they sing at the top of their lungs whether it sounds good or bad.

their big fat smiles when they're playing.

they play with abandon.

they enjoy life to the fullest.

and somewhere along the way we lose that. we "grow out of it". or is it the other way around? do we only "grow out of it" because we choose to stop playing. we're self conscious about what people see and think about us.

we lose out on a lot of fun.

we stop smiling as much and laughing so loudly and playing with abandon.

i say never stop playing.

go shave half your head

2012-01-17T17:49:00.004-05:00

Demosthenes was one of the greatest orators in Greek history. he was a legit communicator and still recognized today as one of the greats.

Cicero called him "the perfect orator who lacked nothing", and Quintilian called him "THE standard of oratory" and said that "he stands alone among all the orators". that is some pretty high praise!

but this speaking ability did NOT come naturally. His first speeches were embarrassing,miserable failures. awful. he sucked.
in fact, he probably had a speech impediment.

so, this is what he did to go from being awful to being one of the greatest communicators in history = he shaved half his head!

yep, that was the solution. he shaved half his head and went and hid in a cave.
During his day, a half-shaved headwas a public no-no. So he intentionally quarantined himself in order to reflect on what hemost desperately had to say.

He searched his soul tofind his passion, his sense of identity, and his reason to communicate. did you catch that? he had to find his PASSION. what what was his whole reason to communicate? [because without these things... you can never be an effective communicator]
He thoughtabout what his Greek audience truly valued and the language that would speak most meaningfully to them. he desperately wanted to connect with them. in a relevant way. in a way that mattered & in a way that THEY thought mattered.

ThenDemosthenes practiced speaking from his heart. practiced in the back of a cave, apparently, with half his head starting to look like a chia pet or something.

When he came back out into society he won theadmiration of the toughest critics the world has ever known. His name has been marriedto speaking eloquence for more than 2,000 years. all from a guy with a speech impediment.

why?

all because he shaved half his head.

maybe you need to shave half your head?

then lock yourself away for a while until your hair grows back...
and until you find your voice. until you locate the burning passion deep inside you. what do you HAVE to say or else you feel like you'll explode? what is your reason to communicate? and how can you say it in such a way that people actually care? how can your PASSION and your REASON to communicate be RELEVANT to your audience? what do you most deeply have to say?

so do whatever it takes. shave half your head. do whatever you have to do.

i am.

because i'm not a great communicator, but i know that what i most deeply have to say is too important to not be heard and grasped and lived.

mlk day

2012-01-16T23:29:00.000-05:00

This is the exact article I posted last year on MLK day (& the year before). you can go and read that post HERE (there are about 7 comments on that post) or just read it below. I wouldn't say anything different than I said a year ago. I just want to echo it today!

(his b-day was actually on the 15th, but today is the holiday.

.. hence the day for the post.)

I HATE racism...with a passion. There are few other things I hate as passionately as I hate racism - things like injustice (like the fact that some don't have access toclean water... or the GOSPEL), abortion, ignorance/complacency toward the poor & dying, people who would treat my wife or family bad...

Ididn't really know what racism or prejudice was until I was probably12. I grew up in a big neighborhood where I was 1 of 2 white kids. MyBEST FRIEND in the whole world from the time I was born until around 13or 14 was Colin Lomax. He was my next door neighbor for those 13 years.We did EVERYTHING together. Every day! Colin is an African American...but I didn't really know it. That's the great thing about kids...they're colorblind.

Colinand I have since drifted as we grew up, but still keep in touch. He wasat my wedding and that was pretty awesome. My oldest friend in thewhole world (since I was "zero") celebrating my wedding day with me.

So,in my mind, to think differently of people with a different color skinis the most ridiculous, ignorant, and craziest thing I've ever heard.Crazier than martians and flying pigs.

I celebrate anything that destroys racism and prejudice. God celebrates that too.

Inever really knew that much about Martin Luther King, Jr. growing up.(My school didn't even take the day off.) But about 3 years ago Istarted paying attention and reading some stuff about him here andthere. Last year on MLK day I posted about it too = HERE.

I would loveto let MLK speak for himself... This is something he saidwhen they were about to take action to bring about civil rights forAfrican Americans & politicians were telling him to "wait... justwait and let us take care of it in due time..."

“We have waited three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. Perhaps it’s easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say ‘Wait,’ but when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters… whenyou have to concoct an answer for your five-year-old son’s question,‘Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?’;when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleepnight after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobilebecause no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’;when your first name becomes ‘nigger’ and your middle name becomes‘boy’… when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of‘nobodiness,’ THEN you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.” - MLK

WHOA. I hope that gives everyone a taste of the emotional background of a people with a different skin color than you. I don't think white folk can truly even imagine it.

*Iwas actually visiting my grandmother a few months ago in my dad's oldhometown. We were driving down the main road through downtown (nothingluxurious, it's a TINY town) when I saw an old brick building (my dadlater said it used to be the pool hall he used to hang out in &where he learned to be a pool shark). I was riding with my dad &yelled "STOP"... he pulled over wondering what was going on. I got out& took a picture of the building...

Yeah, no joke. Faded obviously because it hadn't been used in years, but nonetheless evidence of a HORRIBLE and INEXCUSABLE EVILwhere people who simply have a darker pigment in their skin weredegraded and forced to use a different entrance to buildings! Are youkidding me???

Think this kind of racism andEVIL is only a thing of the past? Think again. I just had aconversation with my mom the other day about a white girl I grew upwith marrying a man who happened to be black. The girl's parents can't talk about it withoutcrying - they're so disappointed. They were going to refuse to go tothe wedding... OF THEIR OWN DAUGHTER (but apparently changed theirmind). I'm sorry, but that's freaking ridiculous!

This is as insane as hating people with blonde hair! so ridiculous... such an arbitrary thing. It's just color!

Imean even the "christian" (and yes, I use the term very loosely) BobJones University - peeps who claimed to love Jesus were full onracists. They didn't even admit black students until 1976! what in theworld!? But they would expel anyone who even thought interracialdating/marriage was ok. In 1983 they LOST in the Supreme Court case Bob Jones University vs. The United States!!!for real!!!? They lost their tax exempt status (& still don't haveit back) but stood firm that their "racial discrimination was what God intendedand founded in Scripture." That is SICK. I'm sure God is saying "LEAVEMY NAME OUT OF YOUR EVIL!" (To their meager credit the college liftedthe interracial dating policy in 2000 because of intense media pressureand actually issued a public apology about 2 months ago. God can changeanyone.)

From what I've read, I think MLK wasa great man. I admire him greatly. I can't believe what he went throughjust so everyone could enjoy life without sanctioned hatred.

He had a vision and believed in it. Years later, I am behind his vision still:

"Irefuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to thestarless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peaceand brotherhood can never become reality. I believe that unarmed truthand unconditional love will have the final word." - MLK

Me too, Martin. Love Wins.

renown bag (thanks Natalie)

2012-01-15T23:53:00.002-05:00

when you have written on a website for over 4 years now that you named renown you tend to notice when the word "renown" comes up other places. (which just for the record isn't a whole lot.)

but maybe other people start to notice for you too?
i have this awesome friend Natalie and today she gave me this awesome gift!

it's a little carrier bag. she said she got it for me because it says "renown".

well, she volunteered at Passion 2012 and grabbed this bag for me there.

but (probably) little does she know that Louie and the Passion gang are the ones who even taught me what "renown" is and that it's the only thing that matters.
(probably) Little does she know that it was the ethos of the Passion movement that was a catalytic and life changing movement in my life's extremely formative college-ish years & is why i now call this blog "renown".

thanks for thinking of me, Natalie. the gift came to me through a delivery girl (my wife) so since i didn't get to tell you thanks in person, so... Thanks, Natalie!

the bag actually has the full "passion version" (2 versions mixed) of Isaiah 26:8 printed around the bag - "Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your truth, we wait eagerly for you; for YOUR NAME AND YOUR RENOWN ARE THE DESIRE OF OUR SOULS."

that was the founding deal for Passion. that little idea changed my life. still is...

guaranteed to make you laugh (or cry)

2012-01-14T18:43:00.002-05:00

you seriously have to watch this to the end...
a friend just posted it & it has brought me so much joy and laughter.

There are so many things i feel like i could say right now.
but why don't YOU give it a try...

CAPTIONS PLEASE!

back to school (GCTS, Harvard, & a little flavor of Cambridge)

2012-01-13T13:32:00.000-05:00

after a "short break" that has now lasted OVER 4 YEARS... i'm headed back to school to finish my Master's Degree.

My 1st class starts Monday. I'm currently a little over halfway through the degree. It's a Master of Arts in Leadership or a Master of Arts in Religion with the focus in Leadership... haven't quite figured out which i am technically doing because it's the exact same classes for both.

it's at the same seminary i started at = Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. i love that place and my time there so far has been awesome. It's actually located up in Boston, but there is a really nice campus here in Charlotte and the professors are amazing.

i've only got 9 classes left + a Thesis to write.
i'm going to try to be on the fast track and knock this thing out in just a little over a year by going full time this Spring, Summer, & Fall.

i'll actually take 1 or 2 of my remaining classes at Harvard up in Boston. Gordon-Conwell is in some type of partnership with Harvard that allows students from either school to take a certain number of classes at the other for their degree.
i'm definitely looking forward to sitting in a Harvard classroom.

i'm pretty pumped about some of the awesome classes and profs i'll have here at GCTS too.
For example, starting Monday i am in a class all week with a prof i'm really excited about. He is actually a long time Cambridge Professor in the PhD department! And he just comes to Gordon-Conwell to teach this class in his specialty... then heads back to Cambridge for the semester. should be awesome. never had a Cambridge prof before.

some more of my remaining classes include:
The Leader as Communicator (focus on casting vision & creating organizational culture)
Foundations for Leadership
Team and Team Building
Biblical Theology of Leadership
Managing the Non-profit Organization
Christian Ethics Today
Managing Conflict
just to name a few.

i'd like to go ahead and make this clear. i don't really give a rip about a degree. a certificate with my name on it & some letters after it is worthless, imho.
trust me, the pursuit of a degree is SOOOO not why i'm subjecting myself to all these THOUSANDS of pages of reading, staying up late & getting up early working on school stuff, pulling all-nighters to write research papers, and spending a ridiculous amount of money on tuition.

so why go back?

the #1 reason that far outweighs all others = to grow, learn, improve, better myself, to be a better leader, and to hopefully gain tools that will help me on this world-changing mission i'm on...

#2 - to finish what i started.

#3 - to not waste what i've already done = half a degree. all that time, hard work, and MONEY.

#4 - my wife made me. she said now's the time to go back when Keira is so young and i'm not missing her soccer games or ballerina performances or whatever it is little girls do. this is pretty much my last & best chance.

so it's back to school time for me. gonna be a lot busier for a while, but i'll manage.
& hopefully i'll emerge at the end of this journey as a radically better leader. that's the goal.

pic for Erick

2012-01-12T22:33:00.001-05:00

Pretty awesome pic from all the kids in Upstreet to their awesome friend Erick in Kenya. The child they sponsor through Compassion.

all those colors are the thumbprints from every kid who loves and supports Erick in Upstreet.

gonna be awesome that my kid will be a part of this.

how can YOU be the change? (Keira)

2012-01-11T18:02:00.002-05:00

How can YOU be the change?

i think that's a phrase my kid(s) are going to get SICK of hearing me say. i'm thinking a lot more about parenting these days... since i am one of those now. Crystal and i are both thinking a lot more about it. we're talking about it all the time -- what kind of parents we want to be, what kinds of things we want to do for our kids, WHO we want them to be, etc...

and it's real now because Keira is here. so it's not just a nebulous idea.

but i think Keira will get sick of hearing me say to her "How can YOU be the change?"

let's say that she comes home from school & there is a kid that EVERYONE is making fun of/being mean to. the teacher didn't really seem to even care. Keira is bothered by it. i'm going to ask her - "How can YOU be the change that needs to happen?"

or maybe our neighbor has surgery and their yard is a wreck. Keira complains that it looks so ugly. "well, how can YOU be the change?"

and there are a million other examples.

EITHER:
she will get so sick of hearing me say this phrase that she will stop complaining about anything or talking about anything that isn't right in the world for fear that i will prod her to think about changing it...

OR:
she will change the world.

i hope it's the 2nd one.

and the below isn't all that related to the above but it's just a thought that i resonate with and agree with wholeheartedly. it's how i want us to parent Keira and any other kids God blesses us with...

“I want my children to grow up understanding that life withJesus is more than just being nice, or trying not to cuss and get drunk because 'that is what good Christians do.' I want my children to be so compelled by thereal Jesus that they are willing to stand with him, giving their lives to hisrevolution, not in order to be religious but because there is simply no moreexhilarating way to live. I want my kids to see my wife and me asrevolutionaries who subvert the dominant belief systems of the world, not outof religious obligation but in wholehearted response to the person of Jesus.”

–Mike Erre (from Jesus of Suburbia)

YES! That's what i want!

push them from the very bottom of your soul

2012-01-10T18:09:00.008-05:00

when you think of James Earl Jones you think of that AMAZING voice. right? that's a God-given GIFT of speaking right there. too bad i wasn't BORN with that.

but James Earl Jones wasn't born with it either. His family moved from a farm in Mississippi to Detroit when he was only 6. (thanks to Boyd Clark for this story, btw.)
this move was pretty traumatic for him & it prompted a stuttering crisis for him. a BIG stuttering crisis.

he hardly spoke a word for 8 years!

did you catch that? from 6 to about 14 this kid hardly spoke! that's pretty hard core. probably not the kid who's at the top of your list of kids who will grow up to become great orators.

In his high school English class they all had an assignment to write an original poem and then present it in front of the class. BUT James Earl's stuttering was SO BAD that his teacher was going to let him SLIDE on the reciting it to the class part! i never had an English teacher like that :)

but the teacher also called him out a little saying that the poem was SO GOOD, he wondered if James really wrote it, or just copied it from somewhere?

here's what Jones wrote about that:

"My honor was at stake. Plagiarism was bad business. I had written every word of this poem myself... I was shaking as I stood up, cursing myself. I strained to get the words out, pushing from the bottom of my soul. I opened my mouth--and to my astonishment, the words flowed out smoothly, every one of them.

My classmates were amazed, not so much by the poem as by the performance."

it's hard to think of a more important lesson for a communicator or a leader that communicates to learn...

Make sure the words are yours.

Pushthem from the very bottom of your soul.

Theperformance will take care of itself.

summing up renown

2012-01-09T14:53:00.000-05:00

i think if you had to sum up our whole existence
if you had to sum up this whole STORY in 1 word

it would be renown.

God wants glory - literally renown - for Himself. & on the flip side, we're only ever happy when we want it for Him too.

renown is not a Question of "if" but of "when" & "how".

i think the reason for the sky & trees & clouds & fish & bushes & mountains & oceans & galaxies & polar bears & stars & all that we see and experience is 1 renown.
that 1 renown is the whole reason for it all. it's the point.

for us to say "wow." & "Whoever made that must be flippin amazing."

so our stories (lives) exist for 1 renown too. that's the only reason we even have a story.

but, we also hijack our stories for our own "renown" and different "renowns".
[& i use "renown" in quotations because it's not real. renown is literally unending fame & there's only 1 of those.]

"Renown" for our name.

for our company's name.

our team's name.

for our country - (wherever we may live).

but all of this "Steals" renown from the 1 ultimate renown that is the whole point of everything.

as if...

as if - because we can't ultimately "steal" renown (or else it wouldn't truly be renown), but we just trick ourselves into thinking we can steal some. but all we're really doing is robbing others (and ourselves) of joy, satisfaction, and the amazing, fulfilling lives we were meant to live.
that's all we're doing any time we direct anyone's attention away from the 1 renown that matters onto any other fake, wannabe "renown".

we're screwing people over.

because actually there is only 1 true renown. all other attempts don't live up. the fame ends at death... or 100 years after they're gone. OR (if you can call making it into the history books "renown") maybe it sticks for even 1,000 years or 2,000 years? but then the clapping ends and the fame stops.
but the 1 real renown doesn't even slow down... it just gains momentum.

what is renown if we had to sum it up? it's God's glory & His Name. that's the epitome of renown.

we only even know what renown is because we understand it through God's fame. He's pretty much as famous as it gets.
should be a pic of God next to renown in the encyclopedia... just to clarify for everybody.

or at least on wikipedia. maybe one of you can help us out with that?

DJ Stout hyping my mom's lung transplant tomorrow

2012-01-08T22:27:00.000-05:00

i've never heard of DJ Stout, but apparently he's pretty famous on Country Music radio stations (explains why i've never heard of him). He's pretty big on CBS radio stations like 103.7, WSOC radio, WFNA, WFNZ, etc...

if you listen to him or if he's on in your area make sure to check him out tomorrow - he'll be talking about my Mom's Double Lung Transplant all day long.

Pretty cool of him to give this kind of attention on all his stations. hopefully it drives a lot of donations toward my Mom's transplant. She still has to have $100K for the transplant!

12 years! - happy 7th

2012-01-07T21:53:00.000-05:00

12 years ago today Crystal Mitchell (then Crystal Pagels) and i went on our 1st ever date to Applebee's. 12 years later we ate there again to the same Applebee's for date night. back where it all began.

January 7th, 2000. i can remember it pretty vividly. Crystal riding with me to Applebee's in my awesome Honda Civic. she was 16 & i had just turned 17. that was a really long time ago. crazy.

and i was just happy a hot girl like Crystal would go on a date with me. who knew she would be the most amazing woman i ever met. the wife that i would get to grow old with... and an amazing mom.

12 years and it just gets better & better!
happy 7th, Babygirl. i love you more than you'll ever know.

i need to write

2012-01-06T17:19:00.000-05:00

i really really need to write for my own sake.

i come alive when i write. but when i'm not writing, it's as if i shrivel up inside.

when i'm learning and thinking about so much i HAVE to have an outlet and writing is one of those outlets for me. it helps me process and more practically understand and put in to practice the things i'm thinking, learning, and dreaming about.

but i haven't been very good at it lately. in fact, i've been really BAD at it lately. in December, i wrote LESS blogs i've ever written in any other month in the history of renown (4 years).

and in many ways, writing for me is definitely about QUANTITY over quality. that's a tension, but i really need to crank the stuff out of my head & not worry about how pretty, perfected, or excellent it is.

i haven't been doing this lately & the new year hasn't started off very well at all either.

but i'm laying down a goal and i'm making it public. 300 posts to renown in 2012. that's more than i've ever written. that's almost 1 article every single day. about 25 a month.

there, now i said it "out loud" for everyone to see. hopefully that helps keep me disciplined to reach my goal.

but the goal is only for the sake of me becoming a better me... developing what's inside of me & diving into this outlet that i desperately need.

wishes

2012-01-02T17:22:00.001-05:00

Ridge Church is granting some wishes the next couple weeks!

yep, so start thinking and making your 2012 wishes & they may just come true!
we'll be granting some on the next couple Sunday mornings as part of our Wishes series.

we're talkin any kind of wishes you may have. big wishes, small wishes, personal wishes, wishes for the Church, etc...

then post them to the Ridge Church Facebook page HERE.

who knows, you may have your wish granted?

i've got plenty of 2012 wishes... how about you?

the 1st ever renown blog

2012-01-01T14:57:00.000-05:00

Below was my 1st ever post on renown = 4 years ago, January 1, 2008.
it's a new year again & lots of good stuff coming on this blog.

the 1st ever RENOWN blog
“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” – Paul (philippians 1:20)

Life’s not about me. It’s all about God and his renown. God is the greatest, most awesome, coolest, most glorious thing in the universe. He is the only One and only thing that can satisfy! We ALL want satisfaction, but like the great theologian Mick Jagger sang – “I can’t get no (pause…) satisfaction!” (it’s OK that you were singing along and rocking your air guitar. You’re supposed to have fun when you read this blog.) (I bet you were also thinking to yourself, "what possible good can come from a blog that begins with a picture of Jagger?" now you know.) I would say we can’t find satisfaction/happiness/joy because we’re looking in the wrong places. So, where should we look?

Paul understood that life is all about God, not us. He was determined to exalt Christ in any way he could. And THERE Paul found satisfaction. I feel ya, Paul! I want to magnify Christ’s renown in my life every second or if He can be exalted higher in my death, then that’s cool too. Whatever it takes. It’s all about Jesus. And in this lifestyle I am satisfied and the happiest man alive.
Like Paul, this is my life goal… to spread the renown of Jesus Christ! I’ll spend the rest of my life doing this for His name’s sake and be the happiest man on earth.

And here’s my blog that’s just another part of my life that’s attempting to spread God’s fame. I’m not an expert writer or anything close, but I’m learning and experiencing so much that I need an outlet for it. Some days I’ll be writing about my amazing wife, pimp stuff in God’s word that I’m studying, something I learned at a conference or in a book, or just something funny or crazy that’s happening. You're reading the 1st ever RENOWN blog... this is a momentous occasion. You may need to take a deep breath just to let it all sink in. It won’t always be something deeply theological like what you read above (jk). But it will always be thoughts flowing out of an attempt to be completely satisfied in a God who is worthy of all the renown and fame in the world.

this is going to be the best thing we've ever seen

2011-12-28T10:48:00.000-05:00

exactly the way i feel & what i want to say to you, Crystal...

"We should get jerseys cause we make a good team
But yours would look better than mine, cause you're outta my league
And I know that it's so cliche to tell you that everyday
I spend with you is the new best day of my life
Everyone watching us just turns away with disgust
It's Jealously, they can see that we've got it going on

And I'm racking my brain for a new improved way
To let you know your more to me than what I know how to say
You're OK with the way this is going to be
This is going to be the best thing we've ever see

Maybe I'm just lucky cause it's hard to believe
Believe that somebody like you'd end up with someone like me
And I know that it's so cliche to talk about you this way
But I'll push all my inhibitions aside
It's so very obvious to everyone watching us
That we have got something real good going on

And I'm racking my brain for a new improved way
To let you know your more to me than what I know how to say
You're OK with the way this is going to be
This is going to be the best thing we've ever seen"

- thx old school relient K for putting words to what's in my heart

& thanks to my amazing wife for letting me experience something so amazing.

4 drawers in the dresser

2011-12-23T23:06:00.000-05:00

yesterday i explained the Unexpected Christmas Store that Ridge did this month. it's been amazing. you can read that post HERE.

i've got my own thoughts from this experience of being able to bless others in our city, but below you can read it in the words of my great friend Spanky... who heads up our whole partnership with Piney Grove Elementary and this Unexpected Christmas Store. you can read it from his blog HERE or in full below...

_______________________________________

"I walked into Piney Grove Elementary this morning to drop off some presents that a family had left Saturday at the Unexpected Christmas Store and was reminded what a difference Ridge Church is making in this community. I was bombarded with hugs and 'thank you's from the principal and the administration as I walked into the office, because of the ripple effect the Unexpected Christmas Store and Ridge Church's partnership has already had on these families.

When I left there this morning I was reminded of one the most heart breaking stories that

has come from the 14 families that were able to come shop at the Unexpected Christmas Store. This family came to the store Saturday morning with a life story that would break the

average person and leave them with no hope. As this single mom came in I could again see the heaviness on her face but could have never imagined what she was going through. We began her shopping experience by piling bags upon bags on a table and all around the floor for her and her 4 children. When I brought her into the room to look over everything and she was in absolute shock.

"This is ALL for us?!?!"
"Yes ma'am. We wanted to make sure we could take care of your wish list and give you a bunch of household items that you could use."

Hugs and tears flowed but more than that smiles and joy began to appear. When she was done looking through all of it I told her that we still wanted her to go shop and pick out some cool toys and things her children would love to open from her on Christmas morning. But before she finished her shopping I told her that we had one more big item for her. I showed her a very nice dresser that The Black Lion had donated to the store for this family. She did not notice what a nice piece it was at first, she noticed that it had 4 drawers. "God must have known that I needed this since it has 4 drawers. Now we have one drawer for each child!" [insert realty-check-wow here]
This is when she began sharing her family's story with me. Her oldest son who is ten years old was diagnosed with Lymphoma cancer last year. This crushed her and this journey was crushing the whole family. The only option for saving her son was to try and have another child. She did get pregnant and had a wonderful little baby boy, who was there with her at the store. The doctors saved the stem cells from the baby's umbilical cord to use for the older son's cancer treatments. So with the cost of having another child, having to pay for cancer treatments and becoming a single mother of 4 the family began to lose everything. They gave up their house, car, and sold all they had--even furniture, and now live in an extended stay hotel. The mother told me that this entire Christmas break they are spending their time at a cancer hospital in NYC. That was the extent of their Christmas until the Unexpected Christmas Store. This mom was so happy when she left that she went and got her children and came back. This time when she walked in her face was full of hope.

Most of us could never imagine having to go through what this family is faced with and most of us would never imagine being as generous as the small group was that took this family's wish list and went above and beyond.

I truly believe that when we realize how blessed we are and the responsibility that comes with those blessings we can change the world and make a lasting impact...maybe one family at a time.

Thank you Father for allowing us to be apart of this family's transition from being crushed by life to a season of HOPE. We don't always see the effect of our generosity but thank you for allowing us to see just a glimpse of the reward this day and allowing us the opportunity to give!"

the coolest christmas store ever

2011-12-22T07:51:00.000-05:00

the last 2 weekends have been pretty awesome.

Ridge Church opened a STORE at our new facility. it was a Christmas store & only 14 families were the shoppers over the 2 weekends. Tons of Ridge volunteers were there to roll out a red carpet experience for these 14 families.

these weren't just 14 random families either, but through our partnership with Piney Grove Elementary we were able to invite the 14 families who are most in need at this school where 81% live below the poverty level!

each of these 14 families have incredible stories of need & through the generosity of the peeps of Ridge Church were able to be a huge blessing to these families. we're only blessed to be a blessing. and that's what we've been doing.

it has been AMAZING to watch Moms walk through this Unexpected Christmas Store and receive car loads of all the clothes and home products they need for their family + needs that they didn't have hope of receiving - a refrigerator, dresser, bunk beds, etc...

this has been amazing to be a part of. i'll share a couple specific stories in the next posts.
i'm pumped to be a part of a community of people (Ridge) that is literally blessing and changing our community.

need to feel like a better parent? just read this

2011-12-19T13:45:00.000-05:00

My wife's grandmother from New York has had the privilege to stay at our house and hang out with Keira twice since she's been born. and in that time i've probably heard this story about a half dozen times.

just letting you know up front that this is a true story! i didn't make it up and i didn't just steal it from something i saw on Tosh.0 or Ridiculousness.

here you go:
back in the day when my father-in-law was a baby, his mom (my wife's grandmother) was driving through town and made a U-turn...

the back door of the car came open and the baby FELL OUT!!!

he straight up fell out onto the street on his head!
out of a moving car!

she got out of the car, threw him back in the back seat, and kept driving.

wow.
hard to top that one.

and he turned out just fine (you know, for the most part). she seems like she was a wonderful mother & of course this kind of thing wasn't the norm.

but hey, stuff happens. we're all going to make mistakes. i'm sure i'll make TONS. thousands. i'm trying not to, but i'm sure i will.

but when i make those mistakes i'm going to remind myself of this story and say to myself "at least i didn't eject my baby onto the street from a moving car."

hopefully i never top that one.

Santa blackmail

2011-12-16T22:56:00.000-05:00

always one of my fav Santa cartoons

it takes a smart & audacious kid to blackmail Santa Claus. i wish i would've thought of it.

my mom's in today's newspaper

2011-12-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

the Charlotte Observer published an article today on my Mom and her wait for 2 new lungs. you can check it out HERE.

a random international, cross-cultural thought... globalism

2011-12-12T23:18:00.001-05:00

(This was originally posted to renown on December 15, 2009.)

I have so many random thoughts. I have them constantly. Seriously - the thoughts never stop. I don't write about a lot of them, but I think I am going to start more often.
That's really why I started this blog - not so much to always have these polished articles to dispense knowledge & ideas to the world [sarcasm], but as an outlet for me to think out loud! I'm going to start doing that more & this post is an example. They might make me look ignorant, but that's ok... it's my blog & I'm just thinking out loud. A lot of completely unprocessed, still-forming-in-my-brain-thoughts...

Here's my thought: If someone just wakes up 1 day and wants to go live in another country, THEY CAN'T.

isn't that weird?

Maybe it's not weird to you because that's just the world we've always known. Those geo-political boundaries are set in stone. But to me, it's really weird that if I just wanted to go live in another country... just for the heck of it... I couldn't. It wouldn't be that easy!

I would have to fill out all kinds of paperwork, make sure I have a passport and a visa if I'm staying forever... + probably a lot of other stuff I don't even know about. I couldn't just hop a plane & go. Why not?

*I haven't looked up all the rules or anything. I don't really know what the laws are going to & coming from all the other countries, so I admit, I am a little ignorant. But I figure that renown readers can probably tell me more about this than wikipedia, so go ahead and leave me a comment & explain all this if you want...

I guess it's all about keeping tabs on everyone? All our geo-political borders are so solid that countries don't want peeps from other nations slipping in unannounced. (And I am well aware that 9/11 changed the world, but these laws were the same even before that, right?)

To me it's just a weird world that we live in when we have to stay so divided. If I wanted to move to New Zealand tomorrow, or Egypt, or Germany, or Kazakstan, or Malawi, or Chile, or Indonesia, or Canada, or Mexico, or Kenya, or Ireland, or Poland, or anywhere else... I couldn't just "up & do it." That is SOOOO weird to me. What if I just wanted to move to Liberia, get an apartment, get a job, try the local restaurants, make some friends, and just live there for 5 years and then come back? not that simple.

Same with the U.S. When did it even start that if someone wanted to come live in America they couldn't just come move here? When did it become "illegal"? Maybe it has something to do with paying taxes? Or making sure we all get counted in a census? I don't know...

I just think it's weird in our world of 6 billion + that any person doesn't really have the freedom to live wherever they want.

Do YOU think it's weird too or am I just weird for thinking it?

winners quit all the time

2011-12-07T17:24:00.005-05:00

i read a book a couple years ago that full on lines up with my philosophy on everything.

i was born with (maybe inherited) an ALL or NOTHING personality. my natural bent with anything in life is to go all in or not go at all. so i like what Seth Godin had to say about Vince Lombardi's famous statement:

“Quitters never win and winners never quit.”

– VinceLombardi.

but Seth says:

* “Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the rightstuff at the right time.”

To sum up this whole book and my philosophy as simply as i can = Don't Quit or else Don't Start.

so, be sure you're going all the way when you start or else you're just wasting precious time, energy, resources, etc... but if you do realize you need to quit then do it ASAP!

here are a couple awesome lines from Seth's great little book called The Dip:

“Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority ofpeople who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most. Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority withthe guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new. In both cases it’s about being the best in the world. Aboutgetting through the hard stuff and coming out the other side.”

Quit the wrong stuff.

Stick with the right stuff.

Have the guts to do one or the other.

“Strategic quitting is the secret of successfulorganizations.”

“The stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot,waste a lot of time and money, and quit right in the middle of the Dip.”

“If you’re going to quit,quit before you start.”
* “Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be thebest in the world.”

and i LOVED this part:

‘Never Quit’ = “What a spectacularly bad piece of advice.That ranks right up there with ‘Oh, that’s a funny dirty joke, let’s tell theteacher.’

Here is the advice that Lombardi and all these other peeps MEANT to give us = “never quit something with great longterm potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.” Now that’s great advice!

“In order to get through the Dip [of the thing you're called to] you’ll need to quiteverything else.”

ouch.

it's all about focus.
it's the 3 sport star who quits 2 sports he loves for the sake of the one he loves most and can be the best at.
it's the organization who quits 8 things they're doing well for the sake of the 1 thing they can do BEST.
and example after endless example...

what do YOU need to START?

& what do YOU need to QUIT?

i may be old...

2011-12-06T17:03:00.000-05:00

i hadn't heard this song in YEARS. several years. and then all of the sudden, when i woke up on Saturday (December 3rd) morning this song started blaring inside of my head. i have NOT been able to get it out since. for days it's been taunting me.

it's from one of my fav bands when i was a kid... those amazing artists from the glorious ska/punk revolution of the 90s... Five Iron Frenzy.

i guess these lyrics are just too fitting for me since Saturday. somewhat depressing to think about. at least they were writing about being old a long time ago and i just now got there. enjoy and imagine the punk/ska beating along in your head... sing along if you know it (yeah, right... like anyone would have ever heard this song... or admit to it if you have).

"I'm twenty-nine years old, still wearing the wallet chain, like I was twenty-eight.

I'm wearing my Vans right now, so high school kids will think that I can skate.

I've got a degree in science, yet shaking my fists in defiance.

Anyway, I'm not cliche, I hardly own any ties.

I may be old, but at least I'm not like all those other old guys.

I'm watching MTV, for fashion tips, so I can say, that I saw it first.

Backwards hat, tattoos, and goatee say I'm cool, just like Fred Durst.

I pay almost all my bills, I sleep on a futon still.

Anyway, I'm not cliche, I might not even die. I may be old, but at least I'm not like all those other old guys."

let me go ahead & get this out of the way... again

2011-12-02T22:05:00.001-05:00

'tis the season again. So, this is just your friendly reminder to please not write me a letter about writing "xmas" because you think i worship the devil and am in some kind of conspiracy to overthrow the world... just read this 1st.
merry xmas!
(This was originally posted on November 24th, 2009 HERE.)

OK, I thought it might be easier to just say this once and get it out of the way.

It is a lot easier and faster for me to write "xmas" than "Christmas". There, I said it and it's out of the way now.
So, when I am typing something quickly = a blog post, an email, a text, etc... I'm probably going to write "xmas" instead of "Christmas". (So don't be offended when you get an email or text from me with "xmas" in it.)

Lest you think I am some heartless atheist (or a devil worshipper) - it has NOTHING to do with "taking Christ out of Christmas" as lots of people say. It's not some "liberal" agenda to hijack this "Christian nation". It is simply 5 less letters to type. It's easier. That's all. I don't hate Jesus. In fact I love Jesus and am radically following Him as best as I know how.

In case you're curious "X" is actually the abbreviation for "Christ". Therefore xmas instead of Christmas. It's not "taking Christ out of Christmas", it's simply abbreviating.
* "X" is the 1st Greek letter in "Christ" (Xristou). That's why "X" is the abbreviation for Christ.
And that's why I hope you can understand that I'm not a devil worshiper just because I write "xmas".

And actually I think it's interesting in light of this topic that the ancient Hebrew scribes used to write YHWH to abbreviate God's Name because they wanted to revere His holy name and didn't think themselves worthy to even write all the letters - Yahweh... (we think).
[i wonder what they would think of us... actually writing the WHOLE name out. Would they think us irreverant or blasphemous? or even part of a conspiracy to overthrow the world?]

So, again, just to clarify = I'm going to write "xmas" instead of "Christmas", but not because I hate God, just because it's faster.

What about YOU? Do you write "xmas" or "Christmas"?

Unexpected Christmas Store!

2011-11-30T15:03:00.001-05:00

check out what we (Ridge) are up to this Christmas!

Do For One from Ridge Church on Vimeo.

pretty awesome & i can't wait for the next couple weekends of blessing these families! let me know if you want to help in some way.

all i want for Christmas (& my birthday)

2011-11-28T14:50:00.000-05:00

Since 2008 i've joined up with Advent Conspiracy and leveraged my birthday & Christmas to provide clean water to villages who don't have it. the only presents i asked for was water for them & now we've been a part of building 3 wells in 3 different villages!
you can read my explanation of it HERE or just search "Advent Conspiracy" on my blog.

i'll probably do Advent Conspiracy or something like it for my birthday and Christmas the rest of my life. i have everything i'll ever need so no need to ask for presents.

BUT this year i'm doing something different.
"In lieu of" presents for me, i would simply love donations for my Mom's DOUBLE LUNG TRANSPLANT. you can read more about that HERE, but simply put - my Mom is about to have a Double Lung Transplant that will cost over $1 Million! her part to pay will be around $100,000 so we need all the help we can get!

if you were thinking of buying me a gift for my birthday at the end of the week (December 3rd) or for Christmas PLEASE just take that money you would have spent and donate it to my Mom's transplant!

you can donate by by contacting me OR click HERE. from my Mom's page on the National Foundation for Transplants you can click "Donate Today" and then fill out the info, but BE SURE to click the bubble that says "My gift is in honor of the following NFT patient's fundraising campaign" and then write EDITH MITCHELL in the blank.

that's my b-day & Christmas wish. thanks!

personal spiritual momentum

2011-11-26T19:03:00.001-05:00

(This was originally posted to renown on November 17, 2009.)

Yesterday was Catalyst One Day in Baltimore. Actually it was like the 5th Catalyst One Day this year with Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel all around the country. I actually mentioned it before the 1st one here. It's basically 2 awesome talks from Andy, 2 awesome talks from Craig and then a Q&A time with both of them.
I didn't get to go in Baltimore yesterday, but I did listen to the entire conference audio from the one at North Point in ATL. It was awesome!

I just want to share a few things I walked away with from one of Craig Groeschel's talks at Catlayst One Day '09 = Creating and Sustaining Personal Spiritual Momentum

I felt like the talk was directly for me. I'm one of the peeps Craig talked about who = "So often (and with pure motives because we love Jesus) we try to do MORE than we were designed to do!"
*And stemming from that reality check this next "nifty" statement was the biggest thing I needed to hear. It's my main takeaway...

"Do today what I can do today to enable me to do tomorrow what I can't do today."

Man, I so need to hear that on a regular basis. I am a futurist and can see the end goal & just wanna get there all in 1 day. It's like my wife - when she gets in "cleaning/house work mode" she wants to do a whole year's worth of stuff in 1 Saturday... and I'm like, "baby, we can only do 1 thing at a time..." I need to take my own advice sometimes.

So what can I do today (if I can't do it all)? Craig gave us all 4 suggestions:

1. Do something to defeat my dark side

2. Create Artificial Ministry Deadlines - this is a biggie for me, bkuz my dark side is working too much... I have to work hard to not let myself work all the time! Craig sharing his practices were so freeing for me... to hear that he makes himself stop working on a talk after a certain day. It's just done... no matter what.

3. Delegate what someone else can do - ***And "delegate authority not responsibility!"

"Delegating responsibility creates followers, but delegating authority creates leaders."

"You will not create or retain great leaders by telling them what to do/delegating responsibility."

4. Do something only you can do - like take time off, be a husband to my wife, and remain broken before God.

**This was awesome stuff for me! I hope it was beneficial for some of you leaders out there too!

What are some of your thoughts on these points from Craig's talk?

How do YOU create & sustain personal spiritual momentum?

i'm thankful for... (off the top of my head)

2011-11-24T14:59:00.002-05:00

today (and every day) i'm thankful for...

a God Who is the greatest Thing in the universe & loves me and has invited me into the greatest mission and story imaginable.

an amazing wife who i don't deserve but who sticks by me no matter what & who is more beautiful than i ever imagined a girl being. the perfect mate. ("you complete me... kitchen matey")

a brand new baby daughter who has completely captured everything inside of me and has introduced me to new joys and spaces in my heart that i never even knew existed!

a Mom & Dad who are the greatest parents in the world. God knew what i needed when He hooked me up to be raised by them.

1 grandmother who is still alive and gets to meet her 1st great granddaughter tomorrow.

some really awesome friends who are almost like family in many ways - who care so much about me and love on me, cheer for me, stick with me

blessings and blessings like crazy. Somebody backed up the blessing truck and has been dumping them on me for 28 years.

the responsibility to BE a blessing with the blessings i've been given. the joy of blessing others.

this amazing creation all around me that overwhelms me with awe every time i look up... created for no other reason than for us to say "wow, that's beautiful. Whoever made that is pretty awesome."

some pretty darn cool in-laws who are now grandparents that love us like crazy.

limbs and sight and hearing and a voice (that can't sing well at all)

the ability to run, jump, play after a doctor said 8 years ago that i wouldn't do that stuff again

a job that i LOVE. it's a privilege to be a part of a movement that's so much bigger than me or anyone else and the fact that i get to do something i love every single day and actually get paid to do it. doesn't seem fair.

sabbath - when i get to take a break from that work i love. that act of just being/resting

all the really cool accents in the world

the Gospels

generous people

the team of people i get to work with. they are awesome. so much better than working with a team of people that aren't awesome.

2 cars that run. are you kidding me? how freaking rich are we?

a house and neighborhood and neighbors that are all really nice.

a God who is bringing this revolution that we and all of creation longs for.

the unstoppable vision birthed in my soul to launch a movement that will change the world & the vision that keeps coming and coming for how to create the beginnings

bloomin' onion sauce

the Psalms

language

Ridge Church - my church, this community of people on mission together in Charlotte.

water

a space like renown where i can flesh out my thoughts and try to make sense of what's inside my head

the BEAUTIFUL game

wisdom

wise people

good stories

teams of amazing volunteers that i get to serve on mission with

beauty

art

passionate people

music (except country)

laughter

dreams

great t-shirts

the oceans

sunrises

sunsets

different cultures

smiles

books

the ability to express worship

things that are funny

diversity

the ability to learn

revolutionaries - past & present

hugs from my wife

sex

comfy chairs

the technology for double lung transplants

the ability to pass through a day without it passing me by

love

...and the fact that it always wins

renown, the only thing that really matters. the only renown that can satisfy. the only true unending fame.

2 new lungs for my mom

2011-11-23T11:05:00.002-05:00

There are people in life who never have many health problems. They live their whole lives without cancer or life-altering (or ending) diseases. they occasionally get sick, but nothing to speak of.

There are others who aren't so fortunate. Their lives are so affected by sickness and disease that those of us in the 1st category can't really imagine.

My Mom falls into the 2nd category. Since i have been alive she has been affected by pretty serious (and uncommon) lung diseases. i guess i didn't know much different as a kid because that's just the way it was.
Plus i don't think i have ever once heard my Mom complain. she just goes on living life and enjoying life to the fullest. which is awesome and i have crazy respect for her.

My Mom has been an awesome Mom too. She was full of love for me and helped raise me to be what i am today (which some may debate whether that's good or bad, but she only gets credit for the good). Her focus was always on being an awesome and loving Mom, not on being sick... so i guess i just always saw her as an awesome Mom.

i was probably at the end of high school or starting college before i realized that her lung diseases took an extra severe toll on her life. she was in the hospital a lot. i learned later that the specialist doctors were saying she shouldn't have been alive this long. (and that was 10 years ago.)
i'm thankful that God has been so good because i can't imagine life without my Mom.

but i can remember praying constantly from the time i was 3-4 years old that God would heal my Mom. that He would heal her disease so she could live a "normal" life. i prayed every single day before i think i even understood what it was to pray to God. (or maybe i understood even better back then than i do today?)

as i got older i can remember starting to pray for a miracle. a miraculous, supernatural healing because that's what the expert doctors said it would require. They said there was nothing they could ever do to make her better. her lungs were at something like a 20% capacity. they basically started saying she was on "borrowed time."

so i would pray that God would heal her. miraculously. That He would override nature & make her well. let her enjoy life without these diseases that make it almost impossible for her to breathe.
i think it's what all of us would want for someone we love. Especially for your Mom who has poured so much love and influence into you.

the idea of lung transplants had come up before but double lung transplants weren't even opitions back then. they weren't possible. the technology hadn't been developed yet.
but a few years ago they did start doing double lung transplants.
my Mom became a candidate.
she's gone through years and years of prep and tests, etc...

Back in the summer she and my Dad packed up and moved to Durham, NC to live next to Duke hospital to do months of pre-therapy to prepare for the double lung transplant.
3 weeks ago she was put on the double lung TRANSPLANT LIST.

wow. what a journey. for her a crazy journey that i'm sure she could tell you tons of stories about.

but the journey from my perspective:
from a little kid praying that God would do a miracle to heal my Mom... i never dreamed that science and medicine developing to this point would be the avenue God could use to heal my mom.
she can actually get NEW LUNGS. that's crazy to me!

on Monday we got the call that 2 lungs were on the way to Duke for my Mom! Crystal and i hustled to Duke hospital as fast as we could to see my Mom. it turned out the lungs weren't good for my Mom, so she's back to waiting now.
but literally any day she could get the call again and go in for this amazing transplant. just waiting now...

it's still in God's hands like it was the 1st day i ever prayed for a miracle 25 years ago.

*if you would like to donate to my Mom's transplant you can leave a comment and i will contact you or you can click HERE to donate to her campaign through the National Foundation for Transplants. (the double lung transplant costs over $1 million and her expenses will be $100,000.) You can also ask to join the "2 lungs for Edith" fan page on Facebook.

i'm crazy thankful for my Mom. i'm thankful i've experienced her love and joy and positive outlook on life.

she's amazing

2011-11-21T14:17:00.000-05:00

Keira is so amazing.
yesterday i just sat and held her for about 3 hours. i didn't do anything else. just looked at her. talked to her. watched her. it probably sounds boring and unproductive to you. unproductive? maybe. boring? nope. just the opposite. I LOVE THIS!
(i want to start video blogging all this a little more again...)

she is so WIDE EYED with wonder. all the time. i love that.

her eyes are so full of life and expectation. & i have this strong feeling inside of me of not wanting her to be disappointed. i want life to live up to those expectations.

she's always looking around everywhere at everything so interested. she's seeing and experiencing everything for the 1st time! it's crazy. and i'm getting to watch her see and experience everything for the 1st time. i look forward to doing that for years and years.

she's turning her head on a swivel. if she could turn it around backwards to look back there she definitely would.
i want her to explore that curiosity so bad - so i turn her around to help her see what's behind her.

it seems like she will have a lot to say when she is able to talk. i can just see it in her eyes.

she looks up into my eyes these days. and when she does, my heart does something it's never done before. it feels like it's never felt.

and then she just falls asleep on my chest. and i just look at her. sometimes her arms and hands are draped around me.
and i just watch.
kiss.
pray.

she's amazing. even her little fingers are amazing. yesterday i teared up just looking at her fingers. i know, i know, i'm a sap. but i couldn't help it.

she's just so amazing.

what do YOU call people when they sell you out?

2011-11-17T19:24:00.002-05:00

(This was originally posted to renown on November 16, 2009 under the title "Friend, do what you came to do.")

wow. I read those words this morning and the floored me. I haven't gotten them out of my mind all day. (I've probably read them many times before, but for some reason today they grabbed me...)

I've been reading through the gospels over and over and over for a while. I was about to finish Matthew again this morning when I got knocked over by that phrase Jesus said.
It was when Judas came with his posse to betray Jesus. He says "W'sup Rabbi" & then kisses Him to greet Him and also point Him out. Then Jesus said it...
"FRIEND... do what you came to do."

Are you kidding me? FRIEND? Obviously Jesus knew what He was doing there. 1) because... well, He's Jesus & 2) because He straight up says "do what you came to do." so He know Judas is selling Him out.

And He still calls him friend. I couldn't help but think HOW DIFFERENT Jesus' response is compared to His followers' response when people wrong them. how different Jesus' response is from my response when peeps betray me, wrong me, sell me out, etc... I'm usually not calling them friend.
I think it's obvious that we don't follow Jesus in this kind of love because I grabbed a commentary on Matthew that happened to be nearby. It's a famous NT commentary from a famous commentator that most peeps would know if I said his name... He wrote for pages on this passage but NEVER ONCE said anything about how awesomely loving and kind and gracious it was for Jesus to call Judas "friend". He only talked about how those were the last words Judas heard Jesus say and how those words will ring in his ears while he's burning for an eternity in hell. hmmm... shows where we are as Christians I guess if that's our reaction.

but I just say -*What radical grace and love! I've been overwhelmed by it all day. What if I lived this way? What if ALL of us followers of Jesus lived this way? the way Jesus lived... what a novel idea.

Not to mention just across the page Jesus washed Judas' feet the night before he betrayed Him. Wrote a research paper on that one time and was also overwhelmed by Jesus' unconditional love for someone we would want to hate.

So, how can we be more like Jesus? how can we show radical grace & love to people who don't deserve it?

worst parent i've ever seen

2011-11-16T18:10:00.002-05:00

This is the most disturbing video i have ever seen.

This is the worst parenting i have ever heard of in my life. what a POOR POOR kid. my heart BREAKS for him. i want to call social services!

we're figuring out our parenting philosophy with Keira and we don't have it all figured out but we will be the EXACT OPPOSITE of this parent!
(you can see our parenting philosophy on this subject HERE)

just watch this video and i hope it makes you as angry as it makes me.

i will be just the opposite of this horrible dad. Keira will LOVE the Yankees. she will HATE the Red Sox. Because the Red Sox is a horrible organization. they suck. they don't deserve to exist on earth. & because that's what Jesus would do. there is no other option.

we will make sure we parent better than that guy.

not a whole lot

2011-11-15T23:50:00.001-05:00

not a whole lot of processed thoughts in my brain tonight... so how bout a political video.

i basically know jack about politics. i'm not one to talk about this kind of stuff because i basically get my news from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Twitter, and Daniel Tosh on Tosh.0
so i've never even heard of this guy below, but i think this is pretty hilarious. i'm sure if i've seen this then everyone else in America must have seen it by now.

not a political expert, but guessing this guy won't make it.

useful

2011-11-14T22:40:00.000-05:00

Jim Collins told a great story about something his mentor, Peter Drucker, said to him when he was young and trying to make it in life.
i think it's something we all need to hear. (i only wish you could hear Collins' imitation of Drucker's German accent. uncanny.)

"You spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive.

BAH. You probably will.

You spend a lot of time worrying if you will be successful.

BAH. You probably will be successful too.

Why don't you go out and make yourself useful."

so, maybe you didn't even need that. but i definitely needed to hear it. hit me right where i'm at.

too much worrying and not enough of us making ourselves useful.

another reason why i blog

2011-11-13T23:03:00.002-05:00

yesterday i posted again about why i write/blog. you can read that HERE.

but i guess there's a secondary reason why i write too. here's an example:

i was at Catlayst 2011 last month. hung out with lots of old friends and met lots of new ones. at one break i was walking up the stairs from my seat and this guy jumped out into my path and was like:
"hey, is your name Patrick?"
"yeah."
"do you write a blog called renown?"
"yeah."
"man, your blog is so impacting. wow. I read it all the time. SO great to meet you." as he shakes my hand.

Richie and i got to talk for a while. he sounds like a phenomenal leader. campus pastor at a really big church up in Chicago. sounds like he killing it up there, but he's crazy humble and nice. i would be proud if Richie is representative of the normal demographic of renown readers.

and i can't even explain how humbling it is in that moment to hear that something you've written has impacted someone in such a positive way. crazy humbling and eggs me on a bit to keep writing.

so, shout out to Richie, btw! God bless in your new position, bro.

that's just 1 tiny example. since i started renown and have been writing for a few years now i've heard back from tons of readers whose lives have changed and the world is becoming a different place = children have been sponsored, people have reconciled with their families, their pastors, their churches, & people have told me their lives have been impacted in so many different ways.

this isn't the only reason i write, but really encouraging. all for 1 renown.

writing again...

2011-11-12T21:15:00.001-05:00

i felt like i didn't write for a really long time. i guess technically i went about 2 weeks without writing here. but it felt like months and months. i felt like my soul was drying up when i wasn't writing.
now that i've been writing again - i feel alive again. it's amazing how much i NEED to do this for my own good.

i have a few hundred partially written "articles" stacked up just waiting to pour out onto this blog. i've got to get them out of me and onto "paper". below is what i wrote HERE back on August 19 about WHY I WRITE.

tomorrow i'll actually post about another reason why i write.

______________________________________________
so why start a blog and write stuff pretty much every day?
great question & i'm glad you asked.

there are many answers to that question but the main reason is that I HAVE TO.

if i didn't write i think i would explode.

there just aren't enough people in the world to talk the things in my head out with. and i've gotta talk things out... or write things out.

writing is the way i have to process all these thoughts, ideas, wrestlings, learnings, etc... in my brain.

i've got to have an outlet for it all. renown is that outlet. i can write about whatever i want or need to write about on renown.

This helps me grow. it's part of my development. writing makes me a better me. writing helps me make sense of me, of God, of the world, of what's next, etc...

i know i'm not a great writer. i never claimed to be and have never really attempted to be. i just write. i just crank it out. get it out of my brain and down on paper.

really, this blog is just for me. the fact that other people choose to read it is just an extra bonus i guess.

although ultimately, this blog is not for me. as the name implies, it's for a RENOWN bigger than mine. but not necessarily just that people read it and are pointed toward that renown. although it's awesome when that happens, it's secondary. Primarily, just the fact that i have a place to write helps me become who i think God is trying to mold me into for His renown.

so i don't think i'll ever stop writing. unless i stop having ideas and thoughts and wrestling with stuff. and i hope that's not until after i'm dead.

so i blog because... well, because i am. i think; therefore i blog.

i got this phrase from Tony Morgan but it's from my heart 100%. seriously. i blog because i think stuff. (& i'm no expert, but i'm guessing Tony somewhat adapted it from Descartes or someone like that in the age of Reason or Rationalism or the Enlightenment ?)

"I process what I believe and figure out who I am while I write. I think; therefore I blog." - Tony Morgan

What is YOUR outlet or avenue for processing all that stuff in YOUR brain?

a Good to Great TO DO list

2011-11-11T15:47:00.001-05:00

Below is a TO DO List Jim Collins gave each of us at Catalyst '11. it is awesome if we follow it. These won't make a lot of sense without reading my previous 4 posts or hearing Collins' talk.

1 Go HERE and run the Good to Great diagnostic on you, your team, and your organization. This is a vital evaluation process.

2 Answer these Questions = how many seats do you have on your bus and what is your plan to have 100% of those seats filled with the right people in 1 year?

3 WHO will you allow to mentor me? Build a personal board of directors.

4 Get your personal HEDGEHOG right before it's too late. (a Good to Great principle = the coming together of your passion, design, and how you can make a difference.)

5 Once you have your Hedgehog, set your 20 mile march and stick to it! (Collins set weekly time goals.) What is your organization's 20 mile march?

6 Fire at least 6 new bullets by the end of the year. Navigate uncertainty with bullets.

7 Turn off electronic gadgets at least 2 days every 2 weeks. now that is a biggie! (it's impossible to "be present" with your iPhone in hand.) we need to be focused and gadgets rob us of our focs.

8 STOP Doing List. "True disciplined action is not what we choose to do, but what we choose not to do." *maybe you find it kind of ironic to have an item on your to do list that says "have a stop doing list" ? maybe humorous, but vital.

9 Double your reach to people half your age ALWAYS by changing your practices without changing your values.

10 Set a BHAG that makes you really useful. (big hairy audacious goal)

Which of the 10 TO DOs is most needed for you? which scares you the most to do?

creativity, innovation, & pioneering

2011-11-10T16:36:00.000-05:00

i'm prepping to launch something. i'm going to pioneer something. it's a big grand vision. it could go splendidly awesome or it could be a complete bust. i have no idea.

so i perk up and pay special attention when gurus and experts like Jim Collins talk about STARTING something and about pioneering and innovation. (i perk up and listen when YOU talk about it too... promise.)

2 days ago i wrote about Collins' analogy for empirical creativity = fire bullets! and keep firing bullets until you hit the target. THEN shoot the cannon ball.

because if you fire the cannon ball 1st... *how many cannon balls can i fire with limited gun powder? (and that gun powder represents 100 different things)
SO, we need to test what we pioneer very carefully.

and fascinating thoughts around the whole idea of pioneering that i'd heard Jim say before...

*"Pioneering innovation is extremely important for society, but lethal for the innovator."

very encouraging words for someone prepping to do what i'm prepping to do. (psych. as the kids used to say.)

so being the pioneer on something is GOOD, but rarely works. the innovator dies off. but the thing may continue.

the thing is, i'm actually cool with that. i don't need my name on it. i'm gonna die off anyway. i'm more concerned that the mission continues.

which is good because 64% of pioneers "die" outright. i.e. - they don't see their innovation come through - although it does come through. (for example = the things Apple has "pioneered" failed for them. they were a bust. although that thing may be a success. the things Apple is successful with - they did not outright pioneer. interesting, eh?)

and we are ALL innovators. we are all creative. we create. we have ideas. some of us are even pioneers with that creativity.

BEFORE you try to argue with me and say you're not creative = think back to when you were 5 years old... we were all creatives when we were 5 years old! i promise you were. we were constantly creating when we were 5. it was natural.

somewhere along the way that maybe died off for you. it was suppressed by "the system" or by you personally. and now you're just disciplined but not creative.

back when we were 5 we were all creative but none of us were disciplined.

"Marrying creativity to discipline makes creativity come alive!"

- Jim Collins

and that is 1 of the greatest secrets i've ever heard. MARRY them. that's key. it's the only way. (i've got pages and pages of thoughts on this i just can't wait to drop out here.) What if SPACE for CREATING were built right into your 20 mile march? (wow is what.)

basically we need to marry the 5 year old US and the 25 or 35 or 45 year old US. disciplined in our creativity and creatively disciplined.

then there will be more innovation. more PROBLEMS being solved. the world will keep changing. there will be more PIONEERS.

and i promise - if the thing/mission you pioneer is WORTH DOING and IT succeeds, but you don't - it's ok.

if it's worth doing then just do it.

straight butta

2011-11-09T16:32:00.000-05:00

"straight butta" is what we used to call something back in the day that was just amazing. it was so smooth and "pimp" that only the phrase "straight butta" would suffice to describe it's awesomeness.

so this stuff below from Jim Collins' talk at Catalyst '11 a few weeks ago is straight butta. my last couple (and the next) blogs have been thoughts from that talk and these thoughts below are the random ones that don't really fit into a topic.
so the topic for these thougths is "straight butta" - because that's what they are.

ya feel me?

The signature of mediocrity is Chronic Inconsistency!
This is true when you look at areas of your life or organizations across the world. Chronic inconsistency (or i would be witty and say consistent inconsistency) can be found in the mediocre leaders and organizations everywhere you look.

Collins says that VALUES are what can remain consistent. only VALUES endure. therefore, the bottom line from his 1st book (which is really a SEQUEL to Good to Great), Built to Last, is "Preserve the Core AND Stimulate Progress."

*which is what missional churches and contextualizing "missionaries" have been trying to do for hundreds of years.

The KEY is understanding the difference between practices and values. Change 1, never the other.
never changing values but ever changing practices can make something enduring and great!
wow - that feels like a direct address to churches & missional people. it feels as though it applies to us twice as much as business organizations. unfortunately, we're pretty bad at it.

Collins once asked the famed Peter Drucker (who happened to be Collins' mentor) which of his 26 books he was most proud of? - Drucker answered, "The next one." [i love that]

Andy Stanley interviewed Collins (again) at the end of his talk. he mainly talked about the difference between RIGOROUS and RUTHLESS cultures. especially as it relates to people in the seats on the bus (in our orgs) / firing people who don't need to be on our bus/ moving people who are in the wrong seat.
A rigorous culture is all about service to the cause. We make big RIGOROUS decisions for the sake of the cause - the sake of the mission. we should ask the question "what REALLY is compassion in this situation?" many times, firing is the most compassionate (yet hardest) thing we could do.
because if someone is failing in a seat, they're not in their Hedgehog (a Good to Great idea) - so helping them is getting them out of that seat. fast.

well, i wrote a lot more random thoughts into this "straight butta" article, BUT they just developed into blogs all by themselves. so, tomorrow i'll share some more "straight butta" Collins had to share on CREATIVITY.

3 traits in great leaders

2011-11-08T15:19:00.004-05:00

those 3 traits of great leaders (according to Jim Collins) are:

1 FANATIC DISCIPLINE

2 EMPIRICAL CREATIVITY

3 PRODUCTIVE PARANOIA

you can catch up on the 1st trait in yesterday's post HERE. + you have to read that 1st post to understand the framework story used to show these 3 traits = the 2 teams and their leaders racing to the South Pole.

2 EMPIRICAL CREATIVITY

When most leaders are unsure or in a time of chaos - they don't know what to do so they just do what others are doing/have done in the past. that's our natural response as average and even good leaders.

great leaders figure out how to marry their creativity with empirical data = combine their creativity with what is PROVEN to work (not just what others are doing/have done). make sense?

they work hard to figure out what WORKS. maybe it's not the most popular method... in fact it's probably not or else we wouldn't be in the time of chaos or season of being unsure.

i would prefer to call this CREATIVE PRAGMATISM. Jim's phrase sounds smarter, but mine makes more sense to me.

it's the realization that i am NOT smart enough to outsmart this, but there are people with empirical, practical evidence.

and then you make your move based on this empirical, creative pragmatism.

and looking in from the outside - the moves these leaders make may appear to be rash, crazy, BOLD decisions... but they are simply creative decisions based on the empirical evidence of what works.

and i LOVE Collins' analogy around this - it is EXTREMELY relevant to me in this moment of my life. he said it's like a ship back in the day at war on the open seas with another ship.

they can straight up fire a couple cannon balls to blow up the other ship -- but if their aim is off just a few degrees... and they miss... well, they're out of gun powder. you only have enough "powder" to fire a few cannon balls.

so, the better way is to fire bullets. test shots. get the right trajectory and then fire the cannon ball with all that gun powder you still have left.

try with a little. and again. and again. then you hit the mark... THEN go big. that's empirical creativity.

3 PRODUCTIVE PARANOIA

in an uncertain world you really do have to be prepared for what you can't predict.

These great leaders are always sitting around wondering "what if" -- while channeling that energy into being PRODUCTIVE!

(most of us do just the opposite = paranoia & "what if" wondering paralyzes us and we do nothing.)

the team who actually made it to the South Pole put out 10 mile wide black markers at every depot stop! and you better believe they didn't miss a single one. THAT is productive paranoia.

(the other team just put a flag on top of the depot itself. they all died.)

some famous guy, CEO of a company - can't even remember who, but he had an awesome quote = "We predicted 11 of the last 3 recessions." = again, THAT is productive paranoia. that company was OK in every single recession. they're still doing fine. (wish i could remember who it was?)

they were being (some might say) OVERLY paranoid. but it was productive paranoia, so they put plans in place and they have been OK in every single recession.

so, the GREAT leaders have Fanatic Discipline, Empirical Creativity, and Productive Paranoia.

i have a lot to still be developed in me. how are YOU doing with these 3 in YOUR leadership?

tomorrow i'll post more leadership takeaways from Collins & on Thursday i'll post the 10 point TO DO list he gave all of us!

20 mile march'n it again...

2011-11-07T14:06:00.002-05:00

One of my last posts before Keira was born was this below - my thoughts from Jim Collins' awesome talk at Catalyst 2011. i was going to post the rest of my thoughts on it the next week, but Keira had other plans. that was about 3 weeks ago now! so i'm reposting the 1st one below and i'll follow up with the rest tomorrow.

diving back into my 20 mile marches myself, so this is good for me to dive back into & keep writing tomorrow...

when it comes to greatness there are 3 inherent traits that set GREAT leaders apart from the others...
& These are according to Jim Collins' STELLAR talk at Catalyst '11 last week. (and probably from his newest book Greatness is a Choice)

i'll just give you those big 3 traits straight up & then explain what he was talking about as we go:

1 FANATIC DISCIPLINE

2 EMPIRICAL CREATIVITY

3 PRODUCTIVE PARANOIA

The story and framework he chose to build this talk around was a study of the 2 teams who were in a race to make it to the South Pole back in the early 1900s. the leader whose team made it exemplified each of these 3 traits. the leader whose team all DIED did not.

each leader and each team faced the SAME environment and the SAME circumstances... one made it and one DIED. these 3 traits made the difference... and they make the difference in a long line of Great vs. Good leaders and Great vs. Good organizations.

Here is a little more context and discussion around these 3:

1 FANATIC DISCIPLINE

Jim told a (made up) story as a GREAT example of this trait. Let's say there are 2 guys who are going to walk from the California coast all the way across the country to the East coast of Maine. that's a long walk. they both set out on the same day.

The 1st guy sets a pace for himself of 20 miles per day. he is committed to his 20 mile march. he is fanatically disciplined about it. the 1st day he walks 20 miles. the 2nd day he walks 20 miles. the 3rd day he completes 20 miles and is tempted to keep going... he feels good, the sun is still up, he can probably walk 40. but nope. he sticks to the 20 mile march. he hits Colorado and there is snow all over the ground and he wakes up early and wants to sleep in inside his tent... but he does his 20 mile march. no matter what. fanatic discipline.

he makes it to Maine.

The other guy just gets after it. he walks 40 miles the 1st day. then blazes ahead for 57 miles on the 2nd day! he's dead tired on the 3rd day so he just sleeps in and lays around all day knowing that he can make up the ground later. he hits the snow in Colorado exhausted and takes a 3 week break to let the weather clear up. he hits the trail again and does 60 miles, but can barely walk the next day. he never makes it to Maine.

the team who made it to the South Pole had a 20 mile march and their leader made them stick to it no matter what.

THAT is fanatic discipline.

and that is what i need.

for those of you familiar with Good to Great, this is a repackaging of the FLYWHEEL principle.

my main takeaway = i desperately need to KNOW what my 20 mile march is. i'm going to spend the time and the hard effort to land on the right 20 mile march for every area of my life and then i'm going to freaking hit it every single time... no matter what!

we'll talk about the other 2 traits in the coming days, but for now - anybody know their 20 mile march?

mixing it in

2011-11-01T23:55:00.000-04:00

my introduction into daddy world has been an awesome 2 week ride. it's been fun updating all of you via writing about our experiences with Keira + the pics and videos.
i wanted to say thanks for all of your congrats and support through the numerous social media outlets.

i fully plan to keep writing about this new world of parenting, our amazing daughter, and plan on frequent video blogs starring Keira...

BUT

i'll also get back to some "normal" posts too. starting this week. probably sprinkled in with the posts about Keira.

looking forward to it all...

Keria's intro to the world (video)

2011-10-29T20:32:00.000-04:00

i thought i would take a minute to introduce my brand new beautiful daughter to the world...

i hope you enjoyed that. she is not even 2 weeks old. the tiniest thing i have ever seen. amazingly beautiful.
and i love her more than i ever thought i could.

what will our baby BECOME? (repost)

2011-10-27T08:05:00.002-04:00

(This was originally written and posted to renown on August 25, 2011. Now that Keira is born we're starting to put the plan into action.)

crazy stoked our 1st child will be here REALLY soon. in just a couple months.

one of the things i'm probably MOST excited about in the next couple months before it gets here is that Crystal and i are gonna write what we want our child to BECOME and always focus our parenting for the next 18 years on those things.
Just 5-8 simple words like "Generous" or "Revolutionary" and focus our parenting and the experiences we provide on helping our child become that type of person.

this was an awesome suggestion from a tool we give new parents at Ridge Church in an attempt to partner with them. really thankful for that.

so, here's our rough draft. it's just an initial brainstorm list. a lot of them probably bleed over into each other. really wanna narrow these to 5-8 or even less. and would like for them to all be summed up in 1 word. would LOVE any of your thoughts!

LOVE - start with knowing he/she is LOVED by me, by Crystal. then be overwhelmed with the amazing love of God. then pour out love to ALL. no matter who it is = friend, family, all ethnicities, all lifestyles, the OUTCAST, an ENEMY. live their life with the belief that LOVE WINS.

REVOLUTIONARY - radical. never satisfied with the status quo or the normal way that everyone else lives. a world changer. never worry about trying to "fit in" to an apathetic culture, but not be afraid to shake it up.

GENEROUS - i would really love our child to be a person who will GIVE, GIVE, GIVE all their lives. and if they give away too much [oxymoron]... oh well.

STORIES - i would love for our child to - from the very beginning - live a life worth telling stories about. to just GO FOR IT. go for the adventure. go have the experience. don't be timid. don't be SAFE. take RISKS. have some stories to tell.

POSITIVE - this will be a really fun challenge with the balance of power in our house with 1 eternal optimist & 1 "realist" [spelled "p-e-s-s-i-m-i-s-t"] :) haha, this will be fun. we'll see if it makes the final list. i would love our child to always believe the best... about every situation, every person, etc...

TRUST GOD - trust God no matter what. unwavering faith in a God who loves them more than they can imagine. live a life based on that radical trust.

JOY - unashamed and unbridled JOY in God. a radical pursuit of JOY in God's glory with a reckless abandon. + just a straight up enjoyment of life. it's just too short to not enjoy it. that would be silly. why do you think we're here? All about FUN all the time!

LIVE IT - authentic. just be. live. live what you believe because what you live IS what you believe. don't just talk about it, because talk is cheap. anybody can do that. live it.

THANKFUL - it's a destructive thing to not be thankful even for 1 minute. this child will have so much to be thankful for from its 1st minute on earth on... it will never catch up. it can spend a lifetime being thankful and never be thankful enough.

DREAMER - Dream BIG. not small. big vision. big goals. have a freedom to dream big and not listen to "naysayers".

RESPECTFUL - to us as parents starting out... to everyone though really.

UNIQUE - you be you. be who you are. whoever that is. i don't care. be the way God made you. Find your IDENTITY only ever and always in who God says you are in HIM.

WELCOMING - of all people all the time.

HUMBLE - this is a biggie and a toughie. i would love to help my child eradicate pride from its life. maybe it can help me. i want them to be Open Minded and never so arrogant that they think they have it figured out. i hope they never one time in life think they are "better than" anyone.

CORAGEOUS - do the right thing even if no one else is. don't back down on what you believe in. Risk! don't be afraid to FAIL. it's ok, just try it again.

SELFLESS - it's a great big world out there. lots of countries. lots of people. lots of needs. you are just one person. life is obviously NOT about you. how could we ever think that for even 1 second?

WISE - if they could somehow learn to make wise choices early on... wow.

PASSIONATE - i can't figure out another reason to wake up in the morning unless i'm passionate about something. i guess i really don't care what they end up being into - what the pursue, what activities they're involved in, what career they choose, etc.... just do whatever it is with PASSION!

RENOWN SPREADER - grow up to be a supporting cast member to the 1 renown that matters. have a desperate desire to be used by God. whatever that might look like for him/her individually.

BLESSING - we are BLESSED to be a blessing! we are so blessed & it is for no other reason than the grace of God that we are not a family living under a bridge with no food. only grace and the fact that we are blessed. so, if the reason we've been blessed so much is clearly to BE a blessing to others... why would we ever go through a day without being a BLESSING?

well, it's just a start, but we obviously have some trimming of the list to do.

the birth story

2011-10-24T18:40:00.003-04:00

1:37 AM = "my water just broke!"

NOT the words you want to hear in the middle of the night on a Monday morning.

you see, Keira was due on 11/8 (but she was born on 10/17). i had big plans for last week - beginning on Monday (a few hours after 1:37) i was going to get so many things out of the way so i would be good to go when she decided to come. haha... nope.

and i had only gone to sleep around midnight... i knew it was a long day ahead on an hour and a half of sleep.

oh yeah - and i was on crutches. i had a jacked up ankle that until that moment i couldn't walk on. got over that really fast and started hopping around because it was GO time. even manned up and drove Crystal to the hospital! (i put the car in park at each stop light, but i definitely didn't wanna be the husband whose wife had to drive her own self to the hospital!)

the water breaking itself was pretty nasty. totally covered our huge bed... dripped all on the carpet and then i heard it when she got to the bathroom floor - sounded like somebody dumped out a 5 gallon bucket of water on the floor! crazy.

it was pretty cool that we had just packed our "GO" bag for the hospital, walked through a list of what else we needed, hooked up the car seat, etc...
+ i had just been to "Daddy Boot Camp" on Saturday. good timing.

we got to the hospital around 3AM and were greeted by some amazing nurses! they were all Crystal's friends that she works with and they were awesome. cheering with big smiles on their faces as we walked in.
[and throughout the whole experience, our nurses were AMAZING! they went overboard and i seriously felt at home instead of in a hospital. EXTREMELY impressed.]

we got hooked up with the VIP room. cool view. decent bed for me.

about 5AM we were finally trying to get some sleep when a Doctor & 2 Nurses came busting into our room... turned on all the lights flipped Crystal over and slapped an oxygen mask on her face while pushing all kinds of buttons and talking amongst themselves.
when i sat up sleepily and tried to ask what was wrong nobody answered me... not a cool moment.

turns out our baby's heartbeat was simply really low for a little bit. they all came sprinting down the hallway. it turned out to be all good of course.

after lunch it all started happening so fast. we went for a walk. Crystal's contractions started getting pretty bad. then all the sudden around 3pm she was pushing.

i donned my "Baby Daddy" shirt, our Doctor came over from the office just to deliver Keira (very cool), and i think i counted about 12 nurses in the room and asked if we were having a party? they were all so excited. 12 women shouting "C'mon Crystal! good job Crystal!" with every push.

Crystal is a hero and pushed for 15 minutes and Keira Brielle Mitchell was born! it was the craziest thing ever watching it all go down. i know now why they call it a miracle.

of course, we never found out the gender ahead of time so i got to make the call as she was born.

"It's a...

GIRL!"

it was awesome to be the 1st to announce Keira's gender to the world.

everybody was cheering. i cut the cord which was very cool. (way more spongy and harder to cut than i was expecting.)

Crystal and i just got to hold her for a while right after. I was just so amazed. She was so beautiful (even with the weird white vernix stuff all over her). she was so real finally.

i fell in love at 1st sight.

it was really cool that Crystal's parents and my parents got to come to the hospital and hang out with Keira that 1st night. both grandparents for the 1st time. (so, Keira probably won't be spoiled, right?)

it was really a perfect day. it was an amazing experience. i'm thankful that we have tons of pictures and video from the experience to save those memories.

i would be up for doing it again... some day.

but of course this one was our 1st. very special. Crystal was amazing. i was so proud of her and thankful for her. PROUD that she is my wife.

our daughter is amazing. we are just soaking in every single second with her.

right before Keira's 1st night out (video blog)

2011-10-23T19:44:00.001-04:00

OK, so i was slacking just a little on the Keira video blogs the last couple days. i've been a little busy just staring at her, holding her, kissing her, etc...

here's a quick vid i shot right before we took her out for the 1st time the day we got home from the hospital.

(and i guess i was a little more tired than i thought because i said Keira was almost "48 years old" instead of 48 hours...)

still got a vid coming soon to intro Keira herself to the world. probably tomorrow. stay tuned.

Keira's birth morning - video blog

2011-10-19T19:12:00.023-04:00

some people have been saying i need to do some video blogs tracking these early days of parenting, etc... so, here's a few cracks at it.

i will introduce Keira Brielle (our new daughter) to the world via video blog one day soon, but for now... here are a few videos from the day of her birth! (Monday, October 17)

This 1st video is the moment we walked into the hospital early on Monday - around 3AM.

This 2nd video is us coming off the elevator up to our room. Crystal wanted to make sure she got my crutches in the video. unfortunately i was still walking on crutches when Crystal's water broke! adrenaline carried me through the whole day hopping around. by the end of the day it was killing me :)

it was pretty awesome to be greeted at 3AM by all those excited nurses above. and for 3 days it was a straight up party with about 30 nurses constantly loving on Crystal and Keira. it was amazing. Crystal works at an awesome place with some great friends.

This next video is when Crystal was starting to push (don't worry, it's G-rated). i was showing one of our nurses how to use the video camera so she could video the birth. i just shot this quickie...

...and about 15 minutes after that video Keira was born!

we got home from the hospital just a few hours ago and are taking Keira out for the 1st time! headed to Fox & Hound first... but if it's crazy tonight we'll go over to Bravo! just across the street.

IT'S A GIRL!

2011-10-18T18:21:00.000-04:00

wow! this is so crazy!
a little girl!
i am so crazy in love. i didn't know it could feel like this.

welcome to the world!

2011-10-17T18:22:00.001-04:00

you heard it here on renown 1st...

KEIRA BRIELLE MITCHELL

was born at 3:20pm today! our 1st kid!!! a daughter. this is crazy!

she and mom (Crystal) are perfectly healthy! we're crazy thankful to God and so blessed. God is amazing.

Keira was 6lbs & 8oz + 19.5 inches long.

she is the coolest, most awesome person i've ever seen. wow. never new my heart could feel this way.

welcome to the world, Keira... your dad loves you like you will never be able to even imagine.

contextualization

2011-10-16T19:54:00.003-04:00

this is something we all must do constantly at some level. if we're on mission then contextualization is a non-negotiable.

the godfather of the missional movement (and Newcastle born), Lesslie Newbigin, had this to say as a foundation for contextualization back in the day... [my thoughts in brackets]

“The gospel isaddressed to human beings, to their minds and hearts and consciences, and callsfor their response.”

[This is KEY!] =“Human beings only exist as members of communities which share a commonlanguage, customs, ways of ordering economic and social life, ways ofunderstanding and coping with their world. [literally world view.]
If the gospel is to be understood,if it is to be received as something which communicates truth about the realhuman situation, if it is, as we say, to ‘make sense’, it has to becommunicated in the language of those to whom it is addressed and has to beclothed in symbols which are meaningful to them. And since the gospel does notcome as a disembodied message, but as the message of a community which claimsto live by it and which invites others to adhere to it, the community’s lifemust be so ordered that it ‘makes sense’ to those who are invited. It must, aswe say, ‘come alive.’ Those to whom it is addressed must be able to say, ‘Yes,I see. This is true for me, for my situation.’ [this is huge & thefoundation of contextualization. this is so key - for both a missionary to China or a student ministry in the Bible Belt.]

[& before you call me and Lesslie both heretics...]
But if the gospel is truly to be communicated, the subjectin that sentence is as important as the predicate. What comes home to the heartof the hearer must really be the gospel, and not a product shaped by the mindof the hearer.”

– we need contextualization “whether in one’s ownneighborhood or at the ends of the earth.”

that is at the heart of what it means to be missional... literally on mission in whatever culture we find ourselves in. i say, the more we contextualize the gospel, the more effectively we communicate it.
we must... i repeat, MUST become experts not just in the gospel itself, but in contextualizing it!

you were the man, Lesslie. thankful to have you as one of my dead mentors.

any thoughts on contextualization?

20 mile march

2011-10-14T18:49:00.001-04:00

when it comes to greatness there are 3 inherent traits that set GREAT leaders apart from the others...
& These are according to Jim Collins' STELLAR talk at Catalyst '11 last week. (and probably from his newest book Greatness is a Choice)

i'll just give you those big 3 traits straight up & then explain what he was talking about as we go:

1 FANATIC DISCIPLINE

2 EMPIRICAL CREATIVITY

3 PRODUCTIVE PARANOIA

each leader and each team faced the SAME environment and the SAME circumstances... one made it and one DIED. these 3 traits made the difference... and the make the difference in a long line of Great vs. Good leaders and Great vs. Good organizations.

Here is a little more context and discussion around these 3:

1 FANATIC DISCIPLINE

he makes it to Maine.

the team who made it to the South Pole had a 20 mile march and their leader made them stick to it no matter what.

THAT is fanatic discipline.

and that is what i need.

for those of you familiar with Good to Great, this is a repackaging of the FLYWHEEL principle.

my takeaway = i desperately need to KNOW what my 20 mile march is. i'm going to spend the time and the hard effort to land on the right 20 mile march for every area of my life and then i'm going to freaking hit it every single time... no matter what!

we'll talk about the other 2 traits in the coming days, but for now - anybody know their 20 mile march?

greatness

2011-10-13T17:33:00.003-04:00

One of the 1st lines in Good to Great that wrestles you down and grabs your attention is:

“Greatness is not a matter of circumstance. Greatness is largely a matter ofconscious choice."

That is what i am talking about. that is echoes of my Father & Grandfather from years past.

and that is one of the lines Jim Collins kicked off his stellar Catalyst '11 talk with last week. for me, it was the best talk of the whole conference.

a lot of it was great reminders after reading Good to Great a few years ago, but those in-your-face reminders have kicked my butt back into gear. but some of it was also reframed in different ways - probably from his newest book Greatness is a Choice. (that i can't wait to devour, btw.)

so, back to that statement. "Greatness is not a matter of circumstance. Greatness is largely a matter of conscious choice."

we can see that from the pure data/evidence. because if 2 organizations are in all the same circumstances and 1 stays good while the other goes to great... obviously something they did made the difference.

WHAT makes that difference though? why do some leaders and organizations thrive in chaos? it is NOT what happens to you; it's the choices, actions, and disciplines you choose.

the rest of his talk was about a lot of those choices, actions, and disciplines that makes a great leader.

and it was all pure gold. i'll be breaking it down and processing my takeaways from it here at renown the next few days, but for now i'll just leave you with another sliver...

It all starts with PEOPLE.

Get the right people on the bus. that's the famous chapter/phrase from Good to Great. it's all about the right people on the bus and then having those people in the right seat. So...

Try to change every WHAT question to a WHO question.

and that's just 1 of the 5 principles that cause leaders and organizations to go from good to great, but i think if we rigorously acted on just this one... wow. there would be a world of difference.

and this may seem off topic but it was a simple/profound/brilliant quote in context. because a lot of times we make bad people decisions... but we have good intentions... our hearts are good...

"Bad decisions made with good intentions are still bad decisions."

yep. right on Jimmy. more coming soon. and it's all the really good stuff. i'm saving it.

what do YOU think so far?

welcome home

2011-10-12T15:37:00.001-04:00

below is the powerful story we told in our Student ministry at Ridge this Sunday. i hope it moves you.

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. "I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.

She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she's ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she's ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car--she calls him "Boss"--teaches her a few things that men like. Since she's underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline "Have you seen this child?" But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can't mess around," he growls, and before she knows it she's out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don't pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herl sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. "Sleeping" is the wrong word--a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.

One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she's hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she's piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.

"God, why did I leave," she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. "My dog back home eats better than I do now." She's sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.

Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, "Dad, Mom, it's me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I'm catching a bus up your way, and it'll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada."

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn't she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.

Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. "Dad, I'm sorry. I know I was wrong. It's not your fault; it's all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?" She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn't apologized to anyone in years.

The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams. She's forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. a deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City.

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks. That's all we have here." Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they're there.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They're all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "WELCOME HOME!"

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her Dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I'm sorry. I know..."

He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We've got no time for that. No time for apologies. You'll be late for the party. A banquet's waiting for you at home."

big props to Philip Yancey for writing such an amazing and powerful story and then publishing it in What's So Amazing About Grace?

i hope the story sounds familiar to you in many ways.
the girl is really all of us.

dave ramsey's talk part 2

2011-10-11T14:12:00.001-04:00

this is part 2 of my takeaways from Dave Ramsey's talk at Catalyst 2011 last week. you can read part 1 HERE.

the continuation of Dave's Core philosophies for his organization

5 Things that Caused Us to Win

3 Slow and Steady Matters

do not let your pace go faster than your resources.

i love this simple line of thinking that i need to be reminded of SO often = "Either God is gonna send me the money to do the deal... or i'm not gonna do the deal." simple as that. i needed that.

this principle is echoes the children's story of The Tortoise and the Hare. we live in a culture full of Hares, but every time i read the book the Tortoise wins the race. there's something to that.

i'm definitely a Hare though. trying to sprint in this marathon. i don't know what it takes to remind myself and discipline myself to be slow and steady.

nothing happens fast. START today, but it's a marathon. just go at it slow and steady every day. and then one day...

4 Financial Principles in Your Organization Matter

Dave said, "you didn't think i was going to talk all this time and not mention money at least once did you?"

to be honest, i was still writing about #s 1-3 and pretty much missed everything he said about this. just being honest.

5 A Higher Calling Matters

if we're in it for something beyond the money then that makes a big difference in our org. we get a date on our tombstone that we're born and a date on our tombstone when we die. hopefully mine looks something like 1982 - 2080.

Dave repeated a question about this that could seem cliche, but in context it was not:

"what are you going to do with the dash?"

more great stuff from Catalyst 2011 on the way.

let the takeaways begin

2011-10-10T13:51:00.001-04:00

i was at Catalyst 11 last week. awesome as always.
last year i was in Kenya and it was the 1st Catalyst conference i had missed since 2006.
i love Catalyst a lot and value it big time because of what it always produces in me.

maybe more on the conference as a whole later. for now, i'm just going to dive right into processing my learnings and takeaways. really for my sake, but if it works out great for you to have some "2nd hand learning & growth" then that's awesome too.

i'm processing Dave Ramsey's talk from day 1 right now. (i don't even feel the need to take time giving my props and gratitude to Dave for all he's done for us... you can just read HERE, HERE, and HERE if you must.)
for me, his talk was probably the 3rd best talk of the week. i love his leadership stuff as much as his $ stuff. and he gave ALL 13,000 of us a FREE copy of his book that just released, Entreleadership. (now i can take mine back to the library.)

he spoke about his organization's 5 core philosophies or core values. he simply called them:

5 Things that Caused us to Win

1 People Matter - There is a high correlation between success and relational IQ.

i see this big time everywhere i look. everything i've ever read or experienced myself backs this up.

opportunities come through people. plain and simple.

it was awesome to hear Dave talk about how amazing they treat their people that work for them. that's why they work so hard to hire the right people who will be around for a long time... because they are going to POUR into them & treat them right.

2 An Incredible Team that Demands Excellence Matters

Pretty cool reminder that Dave's 1st step in their hiring process is to PRAY. his prayer = "Lord, keep your crazy children away." lol. start praying ahead of time for God to send us the right one. *Because we don't want anyone on our team who is working a J.O.B.

definitely some pretty funny, quotable 1 liners when Dave was talking about this section:
"I don't put up with drama. I'm not running a beauty parlor... I want to GET THINGS DONE!"
He said people tour their place all the time and say "wow. all your employees are such nice people." Dave replies, "That's right... we fire the other ones."

Dave's always good for some brilliant leadership principles + a laugh or 2 in the middle of it. i'll drop the next 3 values on you tomorrow. until then, What do you think of these first 2 so far?

and this...

2011-10-08T16:48:00.002-04:00

and i think success also looks like this:

"20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things

that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbor.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore.

Dream.

Discover.

(Mark Twain)

because i HATE disappointment! i loathe it. so if i can help it, i don't want to experience it tomorrow or 20 years down the road.

so i think i'm just gonna go for it now. and if i "fail".

oh well.

i'll just try it again.

what does it look like?

2011-10-08T09:11:00.000-04:00

what does it look like to have succeeded in life? i think we have all kinds of different opinions on that.
here's 1 view of it:

To laugh often and love much

To win the respect of intelligent people

and the affection of children

To earn the appreciation of honest critics

endure the betrayal of false friends

To appreciate beauty

To find the best in others

To leave the world a bit better [or a lot better]

whether by a healthy child,

a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition

To know even one life has breathed easier

because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.

(usually attributed to Elisabeth-Anne Anderson Stanley

who probably had too long of a name to ever be successful)

good idea?

2011-10-07T12:15:00.001-04:00

got to meet Blake today. talked about my vision for Africa a little bit. specifically my newest 1st step into launching that vision.

then talked to a marketing director for TOMS and he asked to hear my vision so i dropped it on him. good times & good talk.

so, TOMS has decided to totally fund anything i want to do.

just kidding.

hopefully they won't "steal" my idea before i can launch it. haha... i guess if they do then it must have been a good idea.

i hear that the best "vetting" system for ideas is to talk them out with as many people as possible. so they can tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly. and who better to talk my idea out with than the guys who have gone 1st in a similar sort of way.

they told me they actually thought it was an awesome idea. "definitely go and do it" they said.

gonna start posting a ton of thoughts i'm processing from Catalyst - so be on the lookout.

All in 1 day

2011-10-06T23:35:00.003-04:00

It's crazy how much can happen in your soul in 24 hours.

Seriously.

It's crazy how much can happen in the core of you in one day.When I take some time to prepare my soul and heart on the front end (like I did) & fully open my soul to whatever God feels like doing...

And when I beg Him to create something in my soul...

Deep down in me...

Something clean & beautiful...It's crazy what can happen in 24 hours.

It's crazy what can flood into my soul when it's wide open like this. It's pouring in.
Thanks, God. Thanks for answering my prayer. Keep creating in me.

Do the same tomorrow... Except even bigger and scarier and crazier...Keep creating on this canvas of my soul.Crazy what can happen when you're present for 1 day with the Presence

the F word

2011-10-04T18:20:00.015-04:00

so i got an email from Bono today.

yeah. Bono. and it was an email about the F word.

when you get an email from Bono, you open it... Plus when anyone sends an email about the F word... you open it.

here's some of what he had to say:
Dear Patrick,

I've been known to drop the occasional expletive, but the most offensive F word to me is not the one that goes f***. It's F***** - the famine happening in the Horn of Africa, mainly Somalia.

I hope you'll take a few minutes to watch ONE's new video "The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity" and in doing so sign the petition:

i don't know about you, but i'm not cool living in a world where 30,000 kids can die in 3 months.
because they don't have food.

YOU can sign the petition HERE.

i've been a part of the ONE campaign since 2006. love them. love what they're doing. they email me a few times a week, send me texts, send me petitions to sign, call me up and link me to call my senator or representative's office... and i jump onto the NC region conference calls for the ONE campaign.

ONE was actually the 1st organization to be linked on the right side of this very blog when it began years ago.

Check these guys out. be a part of it. join the movement to make poverty history.

because it's an obscenity.

4th generation die hard Yankees fan almost here

2011-10-03T21:54:00.000-04:00

all seems right with the world when the Yankees are in the playoffs. it's the beauty of October.

and it's possible - just a slight possibility - that my 1st child will be born while the Yankees are in the World Series. and i think that would be awesome.

Because this 1st child of mine is coming into the world, day 1, as a 4th generation, die hard Yankees fan.

his dad (me) came into the world as a 3rd generation die hard Yankees fan. i had no choice but to love the Yankees. it's in my blood.

my dad was a Yankees fan as a kid before me and his dad was a big Yankees fan before him.

Staying at my grandfather's house 1 time i found all my dad's old notebooks in the basement - tons of notebooks filled with all the box scores from whole seasons of Yankees games my dad would listen to on the radio. that's dedication. it was all Mantle, Maris, and those names in the notebooks.
pretty cool for a 9 year old avid Yankees fan like myself to stumble onto.

i grew up watching all the Yankees games with my dad. like a tradition. we went to Yankees stadium together. something we'll never forget.

in my mind and heart loving the Yankees is just something you do as a father & son. that's the way it makes sense in my brain.

so whether i have a son or daughter... i can't wait to start making memories and traditions around the Yankees. HOPEFULLY we may even get to start this year in the World Series when they are 1 day old.

(but also hopefully it won't be being born right during a World Series Yankees game... that would be tough.)

what's your outlet?

2011-09-29T19:36:00.003-04:00

(This was originally posted on May 17, 2010.)

what is your outlet?
you know, what you do to blow off steam and forget all your cares?

that thing you do that you just lose yourself in.

that thing that when you're doing it you can forget everything else - all your frustrations and cares and just get away from it all. almost to another world.

i heard some pastors talking about this over the weekend. their outlet was running marathons and that kind of crap and i was just like "you're crazy." but it was a good reminder to me that we all need our own outlets. something that works for each of us.

usually when i'm so frustrated or bummed or life is so crazy that i just need to "get away"... i can get away with just me and God. maybe just to a quiet room, to my porch swing, to some beautiful spot... and i can just pour my heart out to Him! it's beautiful. it's amazing. i can "cast all my cares on Him."

that's also what a good date night is for sometimes. i have an amazing wife. she lets me dump all my frustrations on her and she listens and comforts me and attempts to cheer me back up.

but neither one of those are really an "outlet". they are people. (which are probably better long term solutions.)
Sometimes nothing is really "wrong", we just need to blow off some steam. just get away from it all - to an outlet.

For me it's definitely soccer. as a kid and even a high schooler (and beyond) soccer was my "god". Not so much after i lost both my knees (cartilage). but i definitely still love the game. can't play it very well anymore but i love to play it so much. i can still lose myself in a soccer game. it's a beautiful thing. i get wrapped up in every facet of the game and lose myself in it.

So, i'm thankful to recognize it as a healthy outlet for me. i'm heading to my soccer game tonight in about 10 minutes. great timing too because i really need to blow off some steam and take out some frustrations. (i'm thankful i can do this instead of beating my dog... jk)

whoever woulda thought soccer can be so spiritual? but so can fishingor hunting or video games or reading or even running... or whateveryour outlet is.

**So, what is YOUR outlet?

an observation

2011-09-28T14:10:00.001-04:00

Crystal and i were in a child birthing class the past 2 weeks. about 30 people in my class and here was my observation that will blow your mind:

There were NO non-pregnant people in the child birth class.

Out of 30 people in this class, every single one of them were pregnant. (of course there were husbands there... but only husbands of pregnant ladies.)

i warned you that this observation would blow your mind, right?

OF COURSE there were no non-pregnant people in the class. that would be kind of weird. why would they take a child birthing class? That's not a class you take just to go ahead and be prepared BEFORE you get pregnant.

2 years ago... or even 1 year ago... or even 7 months ago if someone tried to get me to go to a child birthing class i would have looked at them like they were crazy!

but now... when we're pregnant - SIGN ME UP because i want to know this stuff.

it's all about timing. people don't take a child birthing class before they're pregnant because they don't need to know this stuff until they're about to have a baby.

this is the same observation my pastor has pointed out to me many times. it goes something like this. "People only learn on a need to know basis." they only pay attention and really want to know when the timing necessitates it.

like being pregnant necessitates some new knowledge... but i would have never paid attention to that before.

it's that way in all of life. people don't really feel like they need to know until they NEED to know.

so what could we do about that? how could we capture their attention before they feel like they need to know?

when it comes to making some of the message of Jesus appear relevant (because it already is relevant) at certain times to people = is it kind of like trying to sell a birthing class to non-pregnant people?

and how can we sync the right people at the right time with what they need to know when they feel like they need to know it?

or maybe we just keep giving them the message and they'll come back to us when they feel like they NEED it. we can't predict the timing so we just set up systems to constantly give the message... so they know where to go looking when they feel like they need it.

i knew where to sign up for a birthing class.

something that's always true of you

2011-09-27T10:21:00.002-04:00

you are loved.

no matter who you are. no matter where you live or what language you speak.

no matter what you've done or haven't done.

you are loved by God no matter what.

just because you're His kid.

just because.

when it was all gravy

2011-09-26T12:55:00.001-04:00

"it's all gravy".

you know what i mean by that, right? when it's all "extra". when you got what you expected (potatoes) but then there's something extra on top of that expectation (the gravy).

it happens in life a LOT and i love it. i love the gravy.
for me the phrase is very similar to "Playing with house money."

just have fun & enjoy it because it's all extra anyway. it's above expectations. like when an underdog comes through. you didn't even expect them to be in the game, but they actually did well? wow. that was all gravy. OR the freshman kid who starts on Varsity = everything he does is all gravy.

when there are no expectations with people there are great opportunities for gravy. no expectations for that person to perform, but then they actually do... well, that was all gravy.

*I wish I could go backto 16 or 18 or 21 or even 24 and know what I knownow…

i wish i could go back to stages of my life when it was ALL GRAVY. because those were the days and i don't think i even realized it.

nobody really expected much from me because i was young. so if i did anything halfway decent it was like, "whoa". (spelled "a-l-l g-r-a-v-y")

i've thought about it a few times. if i could just go back with what i know now... with the awareness of what i've figured out... with the little experience i've gained... that would be awesome. i could really pile on the gravy.

i've been reading a book this year (and a lot over the weekend) called The Pocket Guide to Adulthood: 29 Things to Know Before You Hit 30

reading it has prompted me to think about this a little more. because, in your 20s, in a lot of ways, there's still a lot of gravy to be had. but (from my perspective) not so much once you hit 30.

& this realization hit me - "dude, you're 28. 30 is hunting you down. forget the gravy. where's the actual potatoes? it's not all extra anymore. you just gotta bring it from now on. what have you been waiting on?"

i know it was this kind of thinking that contributed to my 4 month "mid life crisis" at the end of last year. so, i'm not dwelling on it. i'm not bummed by it. i'm just motivating myself with it. because i want to look back at 38 and see something drastically different than looking back at 28.

but still. "if only" i could go back in time... know what i know now... do it over... could be some serious gravy

but I can’tknow what I know now without living these years/experiences.

I guessthat’s the whole point.

an old talk that still affects me

2011-09-25T21:22:00.001-04:00

(This is a repost from October 13, 2009.)

One of my favorite leaders and communicators is Rob Bell. I think he's the man. Me and Crystal even went to Mars Hill up in Grand Rapids ("the epicentre of progressive culture" as Rob would say) a few years ago to check out what God was doing there.

You've no doubt seen or at least heard of Rob's Noomas. I think they're brilliant and think more and more people should be exposed to them. He's releasing some revolutionary new "noomaesque" stuff that will be totally free soon. More on that in another post.
I've got all his books and love them. You may have read one - Velvet Elvis, Sex God, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, or the most recent Drops Like Stars... which is also the tour Rob is currently on (came through Charlotte just 4 days ago!). (You can buy his books HERE.)
He had a talk prepared that I had actually listened to a couple weeks ago = "The Importance of Beginning in the Beginning." But he scrapped it at the last second feeling a leading to talk about something else. Something from his soul he had never talked about before in public.

Anyway, nuff said for the intro.
He started off his talk with the Q = Is bigger better? Of course we would mentally say “no,” but there’s something deeper that makes us feel differently. (We talked through some of John 6:22-66.)

"That’s not why we do things – because they’re popular. We do them because God’s doing them." Right on!

And I absolutely LOVED this = God won’t say to me “Why weren’t you more like him.” No, He’ll prolly say = “Why weren’t you more like YOU?” We all need to hear that and believe it!
He told us about a take on the 10 commandments that I guess is actually pretty old. It's what the Rabbis used to say... The 1st 9 of the 10 are externally measurable. But the last is different.*The Rabbis say the 1st 9 are commands, but the 10th is a REWARD. If I obey God (the 1st 9) then I won’t want anybody else’s life! (I won't covet.) It’s a reward. My life is just fine. I was fascinated by this thought. I'm not saying I buy into something like that the 1st time I hear it, but that's a pretty good take on it. I think it makes perfect sense.

This was a great and deeply internal searching for me = "Is there ever a deep, residing anxiety in me that I haven’t accomplished enough?" My answer would have to be Absolutely. God wants to set me free from that. Don’t let what I’m building and doing become a burdern/stress on me.
A subset of that question was "Is there any way I’ve been stressed about size?"

I was struck by this comment Rob made = "There’s a difference inme walking a hard road and carrying a stress-inducing burden. Jesus maygive us a hard road, but not a stressful burden…" I thought that was REALLY interesting considering how many pastors and leaders are probably stressed out right now! I think there's a thin line between the 2, but an important one not to cross. What I'm following God to do right now is hard, no doubt, but it shouldn't be constantly stressful for me.
That was the theme throughout the talk.

*Jesus wants to set me free to enjoy the work I’m in right now. And that is very freeing. He kept nailing it with these awesome questions he kept asking me...
"Is there anywhere or any way that I’ve neglected to take care of myself because I think I’m supposed to be going all the time?" [I’m think I’m getting better and better and figuring this out.]
Does my spouse get my very best? Or does she get what’s left over after I’ve given it all to the church. My spouse will be there the whole journey. Better keep my priorities straight.

*"Jesus wants to make sure that peeps like me who are proclaiming a gospel of peace and life are actually experiencing the peace and life of Jesus." profound.
I think it was awesome for many to hear him say "Let them have their more and you just do what God's put in front of you. Be free from the big… that’s good news."

It was an awesome talk! Definitely in my top 2 or 3 of the conference. (And awesome enough for Matt Chandler to say a couple times how good it was. Wonder what his big bro Driscoll would think of that?)
It was all great stuff for me to hear (and I'm guessing for thousands of others too). Thanks for sharing, Rob, and letting this be the first place you talked about it in public. We needed it!

What do YOU think of Rob's stuff?

for pastors tomorrow

2011-09-24T22:31:00.000-04:00

i was struck by a comment my friend Jared left on one of my posts earlier this week. the post was about humility & part of Jared's comment said...

If many pastors were honest the prayer at the end of the sermon would sound more like this:
"Dear God,
That rocked just now. That must have been one of the best sermons I've taught in a while. I mean, even I was a little surprised by how well that went. Thanks for making me so awesome and for everyone getting to hear that.
In my name I pray,
The Pastor"

whoa. i think that's a great comment to read on a Saturday night. may it be very different tomorrow morning all over the world.

we must be desperately humble. we are nothing without God's power.

i get to speak a couple times tomorrow in a couple different environments. it will suck big time without God.

so, i just hope i can get out the way and let Him do whatever He wants to do.

no coke for half a life

2011-09-22T22:51:00.000-04:00

When i was 14 years old i drank Coke every day. i drank Coke and Pepsi and Sunkist and Sprite and on and on and on...
all day long every day.

at every meal and in between every meal i drank sodas. loved them. never dreamed i would ever stop.

When i was 14 my whole soccer team decided to not drink any soda for 30 days. just during some big tournaments that were coming up.

i did actually feel amazing for 30 days. i felt free... like weights were lifted off.

but i couldn't wait to have a Coke when the 30 days were up. i could almost taste it.

on the 31st day i poured myself a BIG glass of Coke. Watched the fizz bubble up & then go back down. filled it up again to almost overflowing...

and then...

i took a big...

long...

cold...

sweet...

gulp.

and it was...

NASTY.

it tasted horrible. i hated it. i think i forced myself to drink it and i felt awful the rest of the day. i felt like something was burning my insides. i burped all day long. that was not cool.

i tried for a few more days to like Coke again. or any soda. but i just didn't like it.

i had formed a habit - not drinking soda. i didn't like it anymore. and i felt amazing. i felt like i could run like the wind.

so i just went with it.

and now it's 14 years later. i'm 28. and i haven't had a soda for 14 years.

half my life.

for half my life - 14 years - i drank sodas every single day. then i took 30 days to form a new habit. and now i haven't had another soda for these past 14 years.

habits are formed in 30 days or less. that's pretty crazy. and they could be STRONG habits that affect the rest of your life.

so what kind of habit could/should you form over the next 30 days?

you can change the world without cartilage

2011-09-21T08:53:00.006-04:00

this is a BRAND new perspective for me & it's changing everything. i hope it will for you too.

All of us have circumstances that suck. things that happen that aren't fun and we WISH they didn't exist. There is a broad spectrum of these things = from things out of our control to the bad decisions we have made that create crappy circumstances in our lives. ALL of them we wish we were rid of.
We all have people in our lives we wish we didn't have to deal with. we cringe when we see them coming. There is a broad spectrum of these people too = from people who have wronged us in the past to people who are straight up jerks to us to people who just simply annoy us.

think about those specific people and circumstances for YOU right now. what are they and who are they? walk away from this blog to the other side of the room for 1 minute to make sure you have this in mind then come back...

______________________________

(are you a little bit riled up or stressed out now? sorry about that.)

i'm thankful for a lot of stuff and a lot of people. i think of myself as a pretty thankful person. but it seems ludicrous, backwards, and opposite to be thankful for the crappy things and the people who are crappy to me.

but this is the brand new perspective for me. Because humility is THE most IMPORTANT thing... because it's a pretty big deal, & because it's a must for changing the world... then i want it no matter what.

& as i look back on my life - the humility i have learned has mainly come from crappy circumstances and people who were crappy to me. hasn't it been the same for you? isn't that how you learn humility?

so here's my new perspective from the old school writing (all from different chapters) of Andrew Murray:

"But let us not be discouraged [when these crappy things come]. Let us look upon every person who tries or vexes us, as God's means of GRACE, God's instrument for our purification, for our exercise of the humility Jesus our Life breathes within us."

"Accept with GRATITUDE everything that God allows from within or without, from friend or enemy, in nature or in grace, to remind you of your need of humbling, and to help you to it."

"Accept every humiliation, look upon every fellow-man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you. Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-men as a help to abide humble before God."

that's hard to do. it feels very opposite of what i want to do. but, if humility is what i want most then i should be REALLY thankful for the "awesome" ways it is produced in me.
so thank you to all the circumstances and people that teach me humility. I see them as GIFTS... as "means of grace". i am genuinely excited about the man they are helping me become.

i'm confident that the reason there is no cartilage in my knees today is so that i could learn some humility. i can look back and see that losing the meniscus in my right and left knee was a crappy circumstance that would shred some pride out of my life... make me a little more humble.
it's very hard to be prideful about an ability that you no longer have. if you were prideful because you were an amazing singer and you suddenly had no more voice... it would be pretty hard to be prideful about the voice you don't have.
as many times as i've been bummed about having bum knees and all the limitations and pains... i look at that crappy circumstance with Gratitude. i want humility more than "menisci".

we should be thankful because without this humility we can't change the world. You can change the world without cartilage, but not without humility.

“Until a humility whichwill rest in nothing less than the end and death of self; which gives up allthe honor of men as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone;which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing, that God may be all, that theLord alone may be exalted, -- until such a humility be what we seek in Christ, aboveour chief joy, and welcome at any price,there is very little hope of a religion that will conquer the world.”

(Andrew Murray, over 100 years ago)

*Mr. Murray, i wish you were here these days... we need a revolution of your words, ideas, and passion.

what are your thoughts and comments about this whole humility thing?

that's dangerous (but i don't care)

2011-09-20T08:58:00.005-04:00

i think the world can change. i think it should & it's supposed to. i think it's gonna. no doubt about that.
i would rather see it happen sooner than later.

i want my life to be about changing the world. i want to spend every day bringing the world-changing revolution. when i'm dead i want to look back on a life spent trying to change the world.

but i fully realize that is going to involve some dangerous stuff. dangerous on many levels.

a lot of things may be dangerous that we don't normally think of as dangerous OR they're not things i would have thought necessary in order to change the world.

like humility, for example. i've been writing about it a lot lately and i probably will be for a while.

humility isn't something that usually makes the top of the list when you are compiling necessities for changing the world.

but it is necessary.

without it there will be no world-changing revolution. not through us anyway. i'm convinced that humility is every bit as necessary (and even more necessary) than audacity to change the world. both have to be there. (i've already written on the uber importance of humility HERE, HERE and HERE.)

so, if that's the case then i want humility more than anything. because i want to see God's love and renown change the world more than anything.

so, i PRAY that whatever the cost God would help me be full of humility. MAKE ME HUMBLE. Shred pride from my life... every hint of it... until there is only humility left. DO whatever it takes to make that happen! because,

unless it does = i will never be fully satisfied/overjoyed and i'll never be used like i could be to change the world.

but this is a freaking dangerous prayer and desire.

i fully realize that. and yeah, it's kind of the joke in some Christian churches - "don't pray for humility, or God might give it to you..." as in - God may have to BREAK you to humble you. so we think to ourselves - "don't pray for humility because the humbling process is... well, HUMBLING." (spelled P-A-I-N-F-U-L)

so, this is legit. if i want to be fully, 100% humble i know it's going to hurt.

but i don't care. and i don't mean that in a cavalier way at all. i'm a little scared.

but i don't care as in i care MORE about being a humble man that it is worth the hurt and pain and humbling process that it will take to get there.

so, what if we all pray the "danger prayer"? what if we all went through whatever it took to be humble? what if we were just a whole bunch of broken, humble, audacious people?

i guess we might just change the world.

happy birthday Ridge!

2011-09-18T18:22:00.002-04:00

it's hard to believe... another birthday for Ridge!

i can still remember the very 1st Sunday morning we ever met 3 years ago. it was exciting.
there was a buzz.

This morning was our 3rd birthday of meeting on Sunday mornings. 3 years... it's wild to think that it's been that long!

it's our 4th birthday overall as a church. and i can vividly remember that 1st ever Sunday night we met. there was a crazy buzz that night.
we started loading in at like 10am and got home around midnight. i'm nostalgic, but i don't miss those 14 hour days at all.

and it's crazy to think that very soon we'll be moving to our own permanent facility. it will be our very own. no load in or load out. we do what we want with it.
what a thought.
it hasn't really even sunk in yet.

the big deal... the main point of all this -- is that the last 3 & 4 years have been absolutely amazing. God has done some incredible stuff. He has changed so many lives in big ways. we've been able to bless our city and the world.

it's been an awesome 3 & 4 years, but i know the next 3-4 will be incredible and put the past to shame.
no doubt the best is yet to come.

stay low. go hard. we on a mission.

...on writing

2011-09-16T17:22:00.004-04:00

I love to write.

But, let me be clear, I like to write when I like to write.

The trouble is, that if you want to be awriter, you have to write when you don’t feel like writing or else you don’tget to write when you do feel like writing.

(because if you're inconsistent, you don’t have a platform left to stand on forpeeps to read when you want to write. *not that i necessarily want to be a writer by any stretch of the imagination.)

so, here's to this practice & discipline of writing when i love to write & writing even when i don't feel like it.

it's a pretty big deal

2011-09-14T18:10:00.002-04:00

it's a big deal because...

“Without this there can be no true abiding in God’spresence, or experience of His favor and the power of His Spirit; without thisno abiding faith, or love or joy or strength.”

humility is what i'm talking about, by the way. still on this humility journey and will be for quite a while.

so, Andrew Murray says that without humility there is no - experiencing God's presence or favor or power of His Spirit or faith or love or joy or strength.

well, that's a pretty sucky life without all those things. (i'll write more about this later but that's why i'm saying crazy things to God like - "do whatever it takes to make me humble." i can't see any other way to happiness.)

AND humility is a pretty big deal because:

“the lack of humility is the sufficientexplanation of every defect and failure.”

wow. that's a pretty big statement, Mr Murray. and if you're right, then how do we get/have humility? what do we do? what even is it?

“it is simply the sense of entire nothingness,which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all.”

those are the greatest words on humility i've ever heard. it's this yin & yang. us and God. we need to simply see ourselves like we really, truly are = NOTHING. and see God... even a glimpse... of Who He really, truly is - ALL.

boom. done deal. we'll never be the same. no room for pride then. pride is ludicrous. humility is the only thing for sane people at that point.

“humility is simply acknowledging the truth of my position as creature, and yielding to God His place.”

And just to remind us how big of a deal humility actually is (like we talked about in the previous post - "the most important thing")...

“Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along withothers; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitudebefore God, and allows Him as God to do all.”

anybody starting to see how crazy important this is?

i'm desperate to be humble and kick pride out. i wanna do whatever it takes.

but somehow - we, our culture, the Church, etc... talk and think about it so very very little.

maybe we just need to be reminded that it's a pretty big deal.

THOUGHTS?

humility - the most important thing

2011-09-12T12:57:00.005-04:00

(i set up these Humility thoughts HERE but just now getting a chance to actually blog about it.)
just trying to think through (by writing) the ideas about humility that are rocking my world right now.

Andrew Murray sets it all up by saying that "nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be NOTHING, that God may be ALL."
and that's a great summary of this whole idea of humility. nothing and all. that's the essence. me becoming nothing. literally humbling myself, emptying myself, to the point that i am 100% dependent on God... which lets Him be the ALL that He already is.
if there is still something of me in me... God cannot possibly be ALL in me. that's a tough thing to humble myself to the point that i empty me of me. rid myself of every trace of pride. (is it even possible? but i think that's the only way for God to be ALL and truly do His thing.)
the main idea Murray threw at me is that HUMILITY is the MOST IMPORTANT thing. and at 1st i think "no way." no way that's the most important thing in my life.
but i think i'm buying into that idea.

this is all i've been thinking about the last couple weeks. and you don't normally think of something like humility as being revolutionary... but it IS. i promise. it's a radical thing.
to us it feels like a thing of the past... it doesn't seem sexy or like it allows for our swagger so we throw it out.
but i'm with Andrew... it's maybe the most important thing:
"Our chief care, our highest [good], our only happiness, now and through all eternity, is to present ourselves an empty vessel, in which God can dwell and manifest His power and goodness."

& humility is the place of ENTIRE dependence on God. it' s a great place to be. but i think we have to think of it as our 1st order of business... the most important thing we can be in our day, because it's the ROOT of everything else we can do for God's glory.

Murray says humility is "the ROOT of every virtue... and so pride, or the loss of humility, is the root of every sin and evil." + "evil can have no beginning but from pride, and no end but from humility."
WOW. those are BIG time words! he's not messing around.

i was way wrong when i picked up this dusty old book that used to sit on my grandmother's shelf. it looks so old and boring. i just thought it would be nice to read what some old guy said 100 years ago. i thought it wouldn't be all that relevant. maybe it would be a little pious. certainly not revolutionary.

but tell me that this doesn't rock your world:
"The truth is this: Pride must die in you, or nothing of [the Kingdom] can live in you."

"Could you see what every stirring of pride does to your soul, you would BEG of everything you meet to tear the viper from you, though with loss of a hand or an eye."

whoa. maybe you can get a sense of why this Andrew Murray guy is jacking me up. really wrestling hard with this humility thing. because i can see how revolutionary and ALL-ENCOMPASSING/ ALL-IMPORTANT it is.

is it really the most important thing? i guess if without it, God can truly not be ALL and get His glory... if the lack of it leads to every sin... if it is the root of every good God does through us... then yeah, it must be the most important thing.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON HUMILITY?

even more mind-blowing stuff to come. lots more.
(just trying to process)

humility (a start)

2011-09-06T20:54:00.002-04:00

humility.

not something any of us talk about that much.

it's not really a pop culture subject. or even a "pop church" subject. i haven't seen many books written about humility lately (although i did read & write about this one HERE and HERE a couple years ago.)

in fact, God used that above book to mess me up when it comes to pride and humility. God used the words in that book to point out the pride in my life. it produced a passion in me to desperately want to get all pride out of my life. i want nothing to do with it. i just want to be a humble guy.
but that's really easier said than done. we're all more prideful than we think. it's a sneaky thing, pride.

and as i've hopefully made strides over the last few years i constantly find that the more and more humble i hopefully become the more and more pride is uncovered in my life. it's like the more prideful we are the less of our pride we can even see. As we become more and more humble we see our pride more and more.
i hope there can maybe be an end to it.

since about 2006, i've made it a life long goal of mine to chase after humility as passionately as i can.

so, when i came across this book, Humility, that used to sit on my late grandmother's shelf, i picked it up. it made the final cut for my 2011 reading list and i just cracked it open last week at the beginning of our vacation.

and it has been rocking my world since page 1.

it's written by a guy named Andrew Murray (not the tennis player). i knew he was an "old" guy. i knew he was going to be one of my "dead mentors". i think i even quoted him during a sermon i did way back in college.

But that's about all i knew about him. turns out most of his ministry was in the 1800s (& trickled into the early 1900s). he was born in South Africa and lived pretty much his whole life there. and he wrote a ton of books and influenced a ton of people and had a hand in several influential movements. and check his sweet beard.

*One of the coolest parts for me is that is was my grandmother's book. she was an awesome woman who loved Jesus as long as i knew her. that was obvious. she died when i was 12, but i spent several summers at her house, so i knew her pretty well. never as an adult or even a teenager though.

When i opened up her book to read it a really old paper fell out. it was a (typewriter) typed paper she had put together to lead a Bible study at her church on humility. it was dated January 12, 1982.
pretty crazy. pretty awesome. like a window into the past. i wasn't born yet. i wasn't even thought of yet i guess. my grandmother wasn't even a grandmother yet.

and as i read this amazing book that has changed my life... i got to see all the stuff that my grandmother underlined and highlighted. i got to see the stuff that jumped out at her and influenced her life.
it's been like reading this book together with my grandmother.

and the book is pretty radical. it's revolutionary. i didn't know people said this kind of stuff back then.

i want to write more and more about this book in the coming days, but i'll sum it up by saying this: Murray basically says that Humility is the CHIEF thing. The chiefmark of a true disciple. It’s foundational to all the other virtues.

boom.

dead mentors

2011-09-05T18:06:00.006-04:00

about 4-5 years ago i was challenged + challenged myself to read a healthy and steady diet of dead guys.
the thing i reminded myself over and over until it became a part of me was

"i need some dead mentors."

there's just too much great stuff out there written by peeps who have been dead for 50 years or 500 years to only read the stuff that's being published this year. i vowed to keep a steady influx of both the current & the long gone in my reading list.

at one point i had some kind of quota or minimum for reading dead guys, but now i've had a lot of dead mentors. i see the value in good ones and i gladly read them consistently. NEED to read them.

i've had dead mentors over the last few years like - Augustine, Julian of Norwich, John Wesley, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas A' Kempis, Brother Lawrence, Jonathan Edwards, Mother Theresa, John Calvin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John of the Cross, Martin Luther, Evelyn Underhill, A.W. Tozer, C.S. Lewis, Lesslie Newbigin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Thomas Merton, Karl Barth, David J. Bosch, Norman Vincent Peale, Francis Schaeffer, Dale Carnegie, Randy Pausch, Kyle Lake, etc...

this practice i instituted of having dead mentors has been a great one. it's helping to form me as a man and for that i'm forever grateful to them. (on that note, i have hopes and i pray often that in some forms i could be a dead mentor to someone else in 300 years somehow. but that's a thought to expound on for another day.)

on vacation i've been reading an amazing book. it has full on changed my life. (well, technically the proof is in the pudding as far as life change goes, so we'll see... but i feel as though it has definitely changed my life.)

it's a book i picked up off my late grandmother's shelf at some point. thankful to her that i could "borrow" her book. it has rocked my world. excited to write all about it tomorrow.

stooping down

2011-09-04T16:31:00.003-04:00

when i think about stooping down i think about plugging something into an outlet. those things are always way down there at shin level. kind of annoying.

i feel like most of the time i'm bent over and wedged into some place i only halfway fit into and it's dark and i'm trying to plug something in. i can't quite see or reach the outlet so it takes forever and i get frustrated with it easily.

or generally i hate stooping down to plug something in because my knees are really bad and i just can't handle the stooping down part. i wouldn't mind if all outlets were like eye level or chest level.

but they're not. so i have to stoop down. and i have to stoop down for all kinds of little stuff. i have to stoop down for all kinds of stuff that's way down below me.

ever wonder what kind of stuff God stoops down for?

God is SO HIGH and so HOLY & Unique that He actually stoops down just to look on the heavens and earth!!! just to get low enough to see!

"Who is like the LORD our God? [implied answer = "NOBODY!"]
the One who sits enthroned on high,
who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?"

nobody is like that! That's the freaking awesome God we know! He's so big, so other, so unlike anything we can compare Him too... that the heavens & the earth are like a tiny little wall outlet that He has to stoop down to even see.

wow. no wonder this same Psalm says "From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised."

for a God like this, i would say so.

be a part of this! (repost)

2011-09-03T22:22:00.000-04:00

(This was originally posted to renown on November 11, 2009. Still just as powerful today.)

It's no secret I'm a HUGE fan of Compassion International! Crystal and I decided long ago that the last thing we would drop from our budget would be supporting children through Compassion! We can do without pretty much everything before we can drop that!

Maybe that made this moment at Catalyst '09 more powerful for us, but I don't think so. I think you'll agree that it is so powerful to watch! I'll let the footage speak for itself...

even watching it again just now I started choking up and fighting back the tears!

It's so powerful because you can SEE the life that was changed by just a few bucks a month. Why don't you click HERE and sponsor your own child today!? Change a life!

superhero

2011-09-02T19:58:00.002-04:00

sometimes i like to just sit and watch the world... watch life happen... and write about it as i see it. it's just a good thing for me to do sometimes.

i like to simply watch and then process what i'm seeing by writing about it.

i rarely ever put that stuff anywhere else besides my "thoughts" file. but i was cleaning op some "thoughts" recently and one of those random musings caused me to think more about becoming a parent soon. so i thought i would thought i would post it here to renown.

The following is what i wrote the week of this past Christmas (2010). i was in New York with my wife's family and i stole away to a Starbucks inside a Target for a little while. here is what i saw and wrote:

I'm watching a mom walk into Target…

in the snow.

Deep snow.

With 5 kids.

5 kids.

Tugging 4 across the street all holding hands & carrying one in a carrying car seat thing.

Until one of the littlest walking boys dropped his zip lock bag of gold fish & had to run back and get it. Then the chain was broken only for a few moments.

This mom looks really tired.

It's really cold outside and I have been being a baby about how cold NY is in December.

i've had a revelation sitting here drinking my coffee and watching this scene. maybe one day i'll find out if this "hunch" of mine is actually true:

When you go to the store with 5 kids – you don’t have a good day.

Another mom is sitting beside me sipping her Starbucks with her 6ish year old. She just said to him in a very admirable tone – “wow. 5 kids. She must be a superhero!”

haha - her little boy just said “she must have been like this big around (motioning with his hands) when she had all of them!”

mom said “well, they’re not all the same age. [as if that explained it enough] She must be a superhero though.”

And superhero she is indeed.

that time thought by me also in a very admirable tone.

Then a guy with a hard core mullet and a huge bald eagle on the back of his jacket walked by.

wow.

couldn't get my camera open on my phone fast enough though. the sight sufficiently disrupted my thoughts about the world at this moment.

renown

2 lungs on the way...

amazing people (repost)

call me an idealist

pas-sion

"thanks"

learning from the mastermind behind starbucks

top 10 books i read in 2011

no wikipedia

never stop playing

go shave half your head

mlk day

renown bag (thanks Natalie)

guaranteed to make you laugh (or cry)

back to school (GCTS, Harvard, & a little flavor of Cambridge)

pic for Erick

how can YOU be the change? (Keira)

push them from the very bottom of your soul

summing up renown

DJ Stout hyping my mom's lung transplant tomorrow

12 years! - happy 7th

i need to write

wishes

the 1st ever renown blog

this is going to be the best thing we've ever seen

4 drawers in the dresser

the coolest christmas store ever

need to feel like a better parent? just read this

Santa blackmail

my mom's in today's newspaper

a random international, cross-cultural thought... globalism

winners quit all the time

i may be old...

let me go ahead & get this out of the way... again

Unexpected Christmas Store!

all i want for Christmas (& my birthday)

personal spiritual momentum

i'm thankful for... (off the top of my head)

2 new lungs for my mom

she's amazing

what do YOU call people when they sell you out?

worst parent i've ever seen

not a whole lot

useful

another reason why i blog

writing again...

a Good to Great TO DO list

creativity, innovation, & pioneering

straight butta

3 traits in great leaders

20 mile march'n it again...

mixing it in

Keria's intro to the world (video)

what will our baby BECOME? (repost)

the birth story

right before Keira's 1st night out (video blog)

Keira's birth morning - video blog

IT'S A GIRL!

welcome to the world!

contextualization

20 mile march

greatness

welcome home

dave ramsey's talk part 2

let the takeaways begin

and this...

what does it look like?

good idea?

All in 1 day

the F word

4th generation die hard Yankees fan almost here

what's your outlet?

an observation

something that's always true of you

when it was all gravy

an old talk that still affects me

for pastors tomorrow

no coke for half a life

you can change the world without cartilage

that's dangerous (but i don't care)