CCDA Conference (Post 3)

Yesterday at the conference was really awesome. God really spoke to me in several areas of my life. I wanted to share them in case they can help you. I went to a workshop called “Emotionally Healthy Leaders: Leading from Within”. The guy that led it was Peter Scazzero; he wrote a really good book called “The Emotionally Healthy Church”. During the workshop Peter talked about how once we accept Jesus as Lord we become a ”New Creation in Christ” and we become part of a new family with new brothers and sisters. When he was saying that I was like ye I know I could preach a great sermon on that then he came with the boom. Although we are a new creation there is brokenness in your blood family that exists in your life and ministry even though you are a new creation. As I put my family genealogy on a piece of paper I realized that there are some things that I still do that are not good, and I can see it in my kids.

Here is the bad thing for those of us that lead ministry’s we now allow our dysfunctions to play out in our ministry “In Jesus Name”. I plan to make a couple changes when I get home to get my arms around changing some of these issues. Here is your assignment….. Think about the dysfunctional things in your parents and grandparents, and then look at your kids and see if it has been passed down. You can’t change something you can’t see.

 

CCDA Conference (Post 2)

One of the speakers last night was A.R. Bernard, and I always love to hear him speak. I’ve heard him speak several times. A.R. Bernard is the pastor of (Christian Cultural Center) in Brooklyn, NY. One point he made that I thought was very good was that as a church we need to be insulated not isolated. We need to make sure we keep our churches grounded in the truth, while we are being salt of the earth. When we are isolated we tend to think we are insulated. So we just need to make sure that we are serving God’s purpose for us on earth.

One of my favorite things about the CCDA is how multicultural it is. I really love the way that it is so diverse, and I think that is the way it should be. Our work place is often diverse, but then we go to church on Sunday and it is not so diverse. I think diversity is something we need to work on. I often hear pastors say I want my church to be more diverse; however, they have no diversity in their leadership. Duh. It’s like practicing basketball and wondering why I’m not getting better at baseball.

Hey on another note, earlier this week the Memphis Grizzlies basketball team was staying at the hotel we are staying in. I’m at the front desk and I turn around a see a guy who is like 7 feet tall. I was like wow, that dude is tall. Then I see a bus and everyone getting off the bus is tall. So I’m going up to my room and I get in the elevator with Marc Gasal, Antoine Walker and 3 other guys I don’t know who they are. Hey it’s the Memphis Grizzlies; you have to be a sports super freak to know two players. So I’m on the elevator with 5 professional basketball players and I look at Antoine Walker and said “5″ 9′ has never felt so small”. He smiled and shook his head. I bet he never heard that before.

 

CCDA Conference (Post 1)

Running a non-profit organization that helps the homeless is a hard job. It is a difficult balance between supporters and homeless people and making sure I’m spending enough time with both. I’m also unintentionally making people mad both homeless and supporters. If you add in the long hours and the low pay it can be a very difficult job. So why do I do it? First, God told me to!!!!! If you are a Christian that should be enough; however, I’m also seeing real life change. We have seen 20 homeless people accept Jesus as their savior this year…… I also have people come up to me all the time to tell me how PIN has changed their lives. So when I think about it the positives way outweighs the negatives. However there is someone associated with PIN that has a really tough job…. My wife Anne.

Anne is so awesome! She gets to live out the tough times because I share them with her, but doesn’t get to share all of the complements and praise that is heaped on PIN. I would say that being married to a person who runs an organization that helps the homeless is actually one of the hardest job in the world. So when I found out that this year’s conference was in Miami and we had enough frequent flier miles for a free ticket I decided that Anne should come with me. Anne loves to travel, and when I was a 6 figure engineer at GE we were able to take nice vacations. My salary doesn’t allow us nice vacation money, we get budget vacations. So Anne and I came to Miami two days before the actual conference starts to have a mini vacation, and we had some fun. We went for a ride on an air boat in the everglades, went to Key Largo, and ate lunch on south beach. I’m so glad that it worked out that Anne has been able to come, she deserves to relax more than any person I know.