This week we get the awesome privilege of talking with Brent Hodge of brentinworship.com. If you haven’t met him, you should. You can also check him out on twitter. @inworship. (You can also follow me @lindnerphoto.) Brent is a mover and a shaker in the Worship Ministry World. We get to know Brent a little more in this episode and talk about some of the things he does at Table Rock Fellowship and some of the things he just enjoys doing.

If you’re a faithful listener to the worship ministry catalyst podcast, we would love to hear from you and we’d also love it if you’d take the time to share us with your friends and other worship leaders you know.

Whether you’re new or have been listening for quite some time, we would love to hear form you!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders. Click here to add your info to our directory of worship leaders.

You can join in the conversation by filling out the contact form, or sending an email todavid@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I’m starting a Church Leadership Reading group on www.goodreads.com. It’s a reading group that will read through leadership books and then discuss how they apply to our churches and our leadership roles within the churches.

If you’re interested, follow this link to our group. If you don’t already have an account at good reads, you will probably have to register for one, but they’re free, so there’s no downfall to that. Plus, it’s a cool way to keep tabs on what books you read, if a book you want to read is getting good reviews and a “to read” book list.

I hope you’ll think about joining and that I’ll be talking to you over there soon.

Posted in Church leadership   Tagged: church, Church leadership, church leadership reading group, leadership, Leadership reading group, Leading a church, Reading group   

I came across this quote in a book I’m reading, The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes, Posner.

In some ways, leaders live their lives backward. They see pictures in their minds eye of what the results will look like even before they’ve started their project, much as an architect draws a blueprint or an engineer builds a model. Their clear image of the future pulls them forward. Yet visions seen only by leaders are insufficient to create an organized movement or a significant change in a company. A person with no constituents is not a leader, and people will not follow until they accept a vision as their own. Leaders cannot command committment, only inspire it.

This quote really strikes a chord with me right now, as one of the biggest thoughts on my mind is ownership/committment. I realize I am not fully responsible for the actions of others, but it is my responsibility to inspire and lead people into a place of committment.

Posted in leadership   Tagged: Church leadership, committment, leadership, Ownership, The Leadership Challenge   

I just wanted to let you all know that I’ll be back to blogging – probably tomorrow. I’ve been on vacation the last couple of weeks, and decided it would be good to take a little break. But, fall is here and it’s time to get back into the swing of things. So you’ll be hearing more from me again soon.

This week was great, we had a great worship time with a trio of musicians up there for the weekend. Keys, Bass & Drums. No vocalists except for me. And it turned out pretty good. The upside – I got to experiment with my coldplay keys technique and try to come up with some catchy hooks for some of the songs that are normally acoustic or electric driven, so that was kind of fun. At the same time, doing that takes away from my ability to focus solely on leading people in worship. If we had another vocalist who could lead some of the songs that would have helped quite a bit.

Here was our Set:

• All The Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• God is Great
• Welcome
• Trading My Sorrows
• Blessed be Your Name
• Message
• Heart of Worship

We did some old songs and some newer songs. The first two songs are still somewhat new to the congregation (even though they’re not new). It was a good weekend. Last night seemed to lack energy, but this morning did not. It felt as though people were really engaging and choosing to worship.

I do have to say though that I’m looking forward to next weekend when we’ll have a full band. It should be really good!

For more Worship Service Reviews Click Here!

This weekend was another good weekend. We had a new drummer this weekend – which was great. It’s great to have someone else who’s willing and excited to play. He’s got a big learning curve to pick up a bunch of new songs as he first gets going, but I’m sure he will do great.

We did:

• Rest in Your Peace (my song)
• Portland City Fest Promo
• How Great is Our God
• Holy is the Lord
• VBS Highlights
• Sermon
• Everlasting God

Bill was talking about rest and did a tremendous job talking about how we need to rest like a three year old rests with their mother. It was a great image to get people thinking about rest. Myself having a 2 year old knew exactly what he was talking about.

We only did three songs as a band, and once again, I had another vocalist lead one of the songs. This weekend it was great to be able to do that. It allowed me to focus a little more on working with our new drummer and making sure he & I were on the same page. It also helped for me to be able to fill out our sound a little bit as we only had drums, acoustic & keys.

This weekend had the potential to go really bad, and it went really well!

For more reviews see Sunday Setlists.

I wanted to write some more about routine. I talked about it last week, and got some interesting feedback on that post. I wanted to talk about it on a very practical level. It’s another way that routine could be a bad thing. Remember last week I said there are some situations in life where routine is good. It’s good to have a rhythm to your life. It’s good to have things you can rely on. On the flip side of that, if everything in our life is predictable – it’s all routine – we will stagnate.

Life will become like the water in tire swing. At first you might not even notice it. Then, while you’re swinging one day, you spill a little bit of water on you, and notice it’s kind of gross. You try to get the water out, but it’s a tire – so it’s extremely difficult. It’s very hard to turn a tire upside down fast enough to get All the water out. There will still be some stinky water left in there. And before you know it, it will rain again, and fill the tire back up with water which will seem to bring life to the old water, but soon the old water takes over and makes the new water smell.

But what about our God who never changes? True. God never changes. But (hopefully) God is always changing us to be more like him. It’s when we stop changing, or stop allowing God to change us that we stagnate. Yes, God takes the old and makes it new. That’s what he does. But that’s not our tendency. Our tendency is to stick to what we know. We cling to what has worked in the past, even thought the magic is gone. It worked at one time, so if we keep doing it, and keep trying hard enough, it has to, it absolutely has to work again. Right?

It doesn’t. It rarely does.

So, as we approach our relationship with God this week, and how we respond to him worship, maybe we need to get out of the routine of what’s worked in the past. Maybe we need to keep the tire from filling up with water in the first place. Maybe we need to keep it moving in new directions as much as possible so that the rain can’t fill it

“Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.” Psalm 33:3

This weekend, we are without a drummer. At first I thought it was going to be rough and awkward, but it actually turned out quite well. This was our set:

• I Will Boast
• How Can I Keep From Singing
• Welcome
• Your Name
• Rescue
• Message
• I’ll go Where He wants me to go (My Arr. of the Hymn)

We had Trevor lead How can I keep from singing and Danielle led Your Name. It’s great as the worship leader to be able to step back a little. I could actually focus on leading the band without having the mic to do that. It presents an interesting challenge, but it is possible to lead the band without having a mic in my face.

We (obviously) went with an unplugged feel for the set which worked really well, especially on How Can I keep from singing. I really botched the intro to Your Name. I didn’t turn the volume back up on my keyboard before I started, which threw me off. But, we did recover. It’s always powerful (for me) to close with Rescue. Definitely one of my favorite songs right now.

I felt like the congregation really entered into worship this weekend, especially as they were being led by people other than me. I think there’s great power in being led by more than one person. When I do it – the worship leader – people have the possibility of thinking “oh, he’s just the worship leader, he’s supposed to do that.” But when it’s one of their peers, there’s more personal connection and influence there which drives people to worship more.

For other worship reviews – click here

Yeah, I know this is very late, but at least I’m doing it. We’ve actually already done our review of the weekend on Tuesday morning in our worship planning meeting, I’ve just not had time to be able to write it down here yet.

I put in a couple of retro songs this weekend. One of them, that everyone seemed to know, and the other one, everyone seemed to know the chorus only. This was our set:

• Your Love Oh Lord
• Here Am I – Mike Honholtz
• Welcome
• Youth Camp Presentation
• Enough
• Hungry
• Message
• Hosanna

The songs that worked well were “Here am I,” “Enough” & “Hosanna.” Your love… worked pretty well, it worked better on Sunday morning than it did on Saturday evening. It was a song the church had done in the past – before I got here – so I figured they would still remember it, but apparently I was wrong. Hungry was the same way, they might have done it back in past a few years ago, and maybe some people new it from the radio, but for the most part people didn’t really sing on the verses.

The youth camp presentation was cool. This was a great approach for fund raising. What Mathias did was instead of asking for money before camp, asking people to give in the hopes their gifts will ambiguously change lives, he waited until after camp and brought some kids up whose lives had been changed and asked people to give money towards paying for it or to come to a car wash.

We’re still in the summer slump. We’ve got a drummer who’s going to start helping us out in August – which I’m looking forward to very much. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the area of building bands and ownership. I’ve really been thinking about how to do this, so if you’ve got ideas feel free to let me know.

That was the weekend.

Routine is an enemy. It’s a ghost. It will sneak in unnoticed and steal away what was once creative and turn it into a tradition. Routine is something to be avoided at all costs. Routine is not creative. Routine is a pattern, at best done because it worked, at worst because it’s habit.

I’m talking about routine, when it comes to worship services. (However, it should be said that routine in your personal worship will also – most likely – lead you down a road to tradition and habit, not relationship. It should also be said that there are areas of life where routine is good – I’m not talking about those.) I know for us, right now, there are definite routines. We do certain elements in certain places. We do a minimum number of songs and have elements that have to be in a certain place for one reason or another. When I started at the church, I started doing a welcome – just a brief hello to people who were there. It wasn’t routine then. It is now.

Routine is easy. We do it because we don’t want to put any effort or thought into doing something different. We do it because we’re afraid something new won’t work. The irony is that while we’re doing the routine that keeps us from doing the new, different thing that might not work, the thing that used to work stops working. Now, we’re stuck doing something that’s not working, afraid to try something new.

Routine is comfortable. Routine is Selfish. We do routine because it feels like what we know. We do routine because it worked for us. We do routine because we’re so focused on what we want that we lose sight of what’s best for everyone else – the people we’re supposed to be leading.

I have to say, I’m embarrassed about the routine in the worship services I’m responsible for. I do it because it’s easy. I do it because it’s hard work to come up with something new. I do it because I’m lazy. The sad thing is, my laziness is taking away from the possible worship experience of those who attend each and every weekend.

So, what’s the solution. Creativity. More on that later.

I’m finding that I’m still really struggling with the summer slump. Thankfully, I’ve got a drummer who’s committed to the mission of the church and is willing to play sacrificially and has played for the last 4 weekends. We have some bass players who are willing to play frequently right now, as well as vocalists, but we’re really thin in drummers, acoustic guitarists and electric guitarists.

We did the song “Happy Day” written by Cantelon/Hughes. We didn’t have an electric guitarist, so I had to revise the lead part on the keyboard, using a distorted wurli patch, that actually sounded pretty decent. We only had drums, bass & acoustic though, so there were times when it was hard to be driving the song very powerfully.

After that we did announcements & prayer for our Nicaragua missions team, then went into a three song set that started with Wherever He leads – a hymn with music that I wrote, Nothing by the Blood (not the hymn) and Jesus Paid it All – the passion arr.

We were talking about baptism, so I was focusing on songs that dealt with Jesus blood and the washing aspect of redemption. We had one of our female vocalists lead a song in this set, there was one point on Sunday where she got a little off and the band had a hard time finding how to get back on track with her. Part of that was my fault because I was trying to follow her – which is what you do when you’re accompanying someone with the piano – but I don’t think is the right thing to do when you have a band. Instead of having a vocalist sound off, we had a vocalist sound off and the band got off as well.

Our senior pastor closed the service again – which was great. On Saturday, we had a sound/feedback problem, but we took care of that for Sunday. However, the response was great both on Saturday & Sunday regardless of technical errors.

This week, Kevin and David talk about doing an evaluation of your worship services. The big question driving this discussion is “how are our worship services going to get any better if we don’t evaluate them?” Evaluating a worship service can be a difficult thing to do, and it’s something that is more complex than we can cover in this podcast. However, we hope that this podcast will serve as a catalyst for discussion on how you can evaluate your services.

Worship Service Evaluation Form

If you would like to join this discussion, please comment on this post or send an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com. We would love to hear ways and questions you use to evaluate your Worship Service.

Worship Ministry Catalyst Podcast – Episode 9 – Doing a Worship Service Review [32:56m]

Our Senior Pastor has the itch to play guitar. This week, he told a story in his sermon about how he learned to play guitar. He learned the wrong way, so, he had to relearn how to play the guitar. It felt uncomfortable at first, but eventually it became natural. He related this to how when God asks us to do something in following Him, at first it might feel unnatural, but eventually it will feel natural and our old way of living will feel unnatural. So, he closed the service leading the closing song from the guitar. The combination of him playing guitar and relating it to his story had a tremendous impact on many people. It also helped solidify the point in people’s minds.

Our worship order for this last weekend was the following:

• Awesome is the Lord
• Welcome and Announcements
• Take My Life (Passion Hymns Arr.)
• Breathe
• Communion
• Lord, I give you My Heart
• Message
• Everyday

We had a four piece band, Keys, Acoustic, Bass & Drums, and it worked really well. I’m starting to venture out a little on the keyboard. I’ve done this at times in the past, but it’s really starting to work well. I have a keyboard (very fortunately) that helps facilitate this as well. I’ve never considered myself a B-3 player, but I like to use it to add some texture, especially when we’re missing and electric guitar. So, that’s what I’ve been doing. I am fortunate enough to have the Yamaha Motif XS-8, which allows me to fade in/out sounds which smooths out the transition. Yes I know there are other ways to do this, which I will be looking into in the future, but for now this is working great.

It was a great weekend, it was great to do Breathe, that’s a song that’s been in my penalty box for a long time, (years) and it was powerful to lead it this weekend, and the congregation really responded to the song, as well as really responded to the correlation between the song and communion that our associate pastor made.

It wasn’t a weekend that many people will remember for years to come (Maybe for some it was), but we definitely got on base.

If worship is about God and not about us, why do we hold back when we get together as a body? Doesn’t it make sense that we’d want to give everything we have over to God and do whatever it is that He asks us to do? Doesn’t it make sense that we’d respond to Him how He asks us to respond to Him?

Instead, it seems that we’re more concerned with what others will think about us. What if they see me raising my hands? What will they think? What If I kneel and no one else does, what will all the people around me do?

By being more concerned with what the people around us are thinking of us than we are about our response to God, are we actually worshiping? Really? We might be worshiping something, but it’s not God – it’s ourselves. We don’t want to risk our image among those we know, so we don’t respond to God as he asks us to.

This week, what will your response be?

This weekend was a great weekend. Once again, our Lead Pastor played acoustic guitar. And we had the rest of the band there as well. We were fully loaded this weekend, and it made a huge difference in terms of how people responded in worship (At least it seemed to). I think there’s power in having a full band, and an energy that you can’t get any other way. Even if you can have the sounds of a full band, I think there’s still something missing if nothing else than energy that comes from people worshiping on stage.

Saturday night was a little rough, we didn’t have time in the rehearsal to really nail down transitions, we just have time to work up the songs. I realized that we hadn’t had time for transitions when we got about half way through the first song. So, that aspect of the worship time was a little rough.

At another point, we had barely rehearsed the beginning of “All Who are Thirsty” having the drums start the song, but not enough to get it solidified in the drummers head – my fault. So, when I looked at him to start the song, he shook his head, and I had to start the song. Well, my fear of long, awkward pauses in worship services took over, and I just started the song without even pausing for a second to find the tempo in my head. The song was BLAZING fast. That one was all me. The intro for Mighty to Save was supposed to start while I sustained the chord for All Who are Thirsty. We didn’t practice it this way, however, so I had to turn around and nod at the Electric Guitarist – again – all me.

Needless to say, on Sunday morning, I came in early, listened to the recording of Saturday night’s service, and made some notes of things we needed to fix in our rehearsal on Sunday morning. And we did. Sunday morning was great. Nearly all transitions were smooth, and the overall feel coming from the band was much more confident than it was on Saturday Night. I recognize that confidence isn’t a luxury we have right now. We have suspended weekday rehearsals for the summer, leaving us only one rehearsal on Saturday afternoon. So, I know I’m going to have to continue to expect situations like this. However, I also recognize that I need to make sure I do everything I can to help the band succeed.

All in all, it was a great weekend. It’s nice to be able to do songs in the style they were written and not have to do a bunch of modifications to them to make them work with what we have.

But, by far the best part of the weekend was when people responded in worship. It was great to see that people were connecting with God, and that God was using us in that way. Sometimes it’s hard to remember in the moment and even after the services what I say to people all the time. We’re not the point. God is the point, and our objective is to connect people to God. If that happened, we succeeded.

Sometimes I wonder if technology is really all it’s cracked up to be. At times (probably most of the time) it can be a wonderful thing. There are so many pieces of technology that make life easier, and make it easier for us to share our lives with others. There are times, when I do something that wouldn’t have ever been possible before with out it.

But at other times, I wonder. Yeah it’s great, but when it’s not working correctly, it can really be a pain. For instance: we use a VoIP phone. And when it’s working correctly it’s great. It’s cheap, and gives us more features. But when it’s not working it’s a pain. The internet is another example, when it’s up and the network is functioning properly, it’s great, when it’s not, it’s a pain.

Today, the network wasn’t working when we got back from the park, so I had to spent the next 3 or 4 hours getting it back up and working. It’s all working now, and I’m obviously online, but it was a royal pain to go through the process to figure out what was wrong.

Technology also has other issues. For instance, since we use a VoIP phone, it makes it more challenging to have phones throughout the house. So we either had to buy a more expensive phone with more extensions, or I had to figure out how to run the phone into the wiring in the house. I did that, but then there was interference from the phone service in the house. So, I had to disconnect the phone service outside the house. Now we have the phone running through the wiring in the house, which is nice. However, I’m forcing this new technology to fit into the mold of a technology that is becoming extinct. Which means at some point it will be extinct and we’ll have to buy something else to replace it.

I’m online, but thinking about not being so.

I have to admit, something kind of cool happened this weekend. My Senior Pastor played on the worship band. Maybe, this is old hat to some of you, but for me, it was something very new and very cool. We’ve been kind of searching for musicians for a little while here at Gateway and since he had wasn’t preaching this last weekend, he offered to play on worship band. Even though he’s an incredibly busy man, and has a lot on his shoulders running the church and many pressures I couldn’t understand, he gave his time to play in the worship band this weekend, and did a great job. It was very cool.

We also had a drummer show up at the last minute, which was also great. We’re really struggling to find drummers right now, so I was thinking we’d be without one this weekend (kind of a bummer on the weekend your Sr. Pastor is playing). But our children’s director (who’s one of our drummers) came through. In spite of being away at camp all week, and having his sister’s wedding on the same day, he came and played drums. It was great!

So something that could have been like last weekend – me, a bass player and a couple of vocalists – turned out to be a pretty well rounded band. So, props to Bob & Lee, a huge thanks for selflessly making the worship at Gateway this last weekend a success.

On another note, we’re in the midst of “One Prayer” at Gateway, and this last weekend we watched Craig Groeschel’s message “Make us One” and I thought it was phenomenal. It was a challenge to find songs that fit well with the message, so I didn’t try too hard to do so. (I actually tried for a long time to find some songs that went well – but couldn’t find any, so I gave up.)

Here was our set:

• All the Earth Will Sing Your Praises
• Joyful, Joyful (David Crowder Version)
• Welcome/Announcements
• Come, Now is the Time to Worship
• Meet Us Here (Mike Honholtz)
• Message
• You Alone

We even had almost the whole band for the closing which is something that we don’t do very often – I like to allow the worship people to leave early if the need to, since they’re there all weekend.

It was a great weekend, and people really joined in as well. Which is one of the biggest goals of what we do on a weekend.

I’ve got to confess that I absolutely love Last Comic Standing. I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t like it, and in general comedy might not be something the majority of America want to watch, but I love it. It’s great to see the people who are actually funny. You know, the people who don’t have to be dirty to be funny. That’s the kind of funny that takes creativity. It’s also cool because there’s more than one kind of comedy on the show. If you watch a comic, even the best comic, there could very well be times during their performance when you tune out. But, when you have a variety of comedy, it’s much easier to stay tuned in.

If I had one complaint it would be that we don’t see enough of the individual performances. I think we need to see all of every persons performance so we can vote better when that time comes. We do want to be an informed audience and not just guess who’s the best.

If you haven’t, you should try it out. It’s great!

I’ve been resisting the facebook surge for quite some time now. I did Myspace for a while, and I just wasn’t that thrilled with it, but my wife finally convinced me to get on facebook – (She actually set up an account for me then all I had to do was confirm.) So, after a month or so of waiting to decided if I should or not (I still wasn’t sure that facebook might be the meddling of the anti-christ) I have finally given in.

If you’re interested in adding me – you can do so through facebook.

I just thought I’d take a second a brag about my wonderful wife. We’ve been in the process of moving for about a month now, and she’s been amazing. She packed our entire house while taking care of a two year old and an infant. Since we’ve been at our new house she’s been an unpacking fool, getting the house set up and looking great, as well as painting and a whole slew of other things.

I take her for granted so much, but I’m so blessed to have someone as wonderful as her.

Thank you for all the amazing things you do for our family, and the sacrifices you make!

Here’s my latest post over at www.worshipministrycatalyst.com

“This weekend was kind of a let down for me, being perfectly honest. The band that we had, did a phenomenal job, as did the vocalist and tech team. The reason it was kind of a let down for me was that I was trying to schedule a very full band, and I was pretty sure most of them would be able to make it, and we ended up with only three pieces to the band. But, aside from that it was a good weekend.

We’re in the second week of our Revolution series, and this week was about grace so we did communion at the end of the service. Bob wove it seamlessly into the sermon and tied the whole service together extremely well. It wasn’t one of those weekends where you do communion because you haven’t done it in 6 weeks, it was a weekend where we did communion because it was the right thing to do. The congregation responded very well to communion, and the worship that followed.

There has also been quite a bit of consistency to the experience of the entire weekend. The songs have been consistent with the theme, the decor is also consistent. The mood is set from the moment you walk through the doors with the decorations in the foyer, then pre-service videos and other videos throughout the service.

I love the direction we’re going with our services, we’re really starting to go in the direction of begin far more creative with the entire worship experience and not just trying to get the songs and message to line up. I hope that we really keep going further down this road so that the experience for everyone regular attender and visitor alike is something they remember after they leave the building.”

In this week’s episode, Kevin and David talk about conflict & criticism. We deal primarily (in this episode) with criticism from church members at large. Kevin shares another story about the “touring days” with the MBC Ambassador choir.

Worship Ministry Catalyst Podcast – Episode 3 – Dealing with Conflict & Criticism [31:36m]: Download

Please feel free to give us some feedback about the episode. If you have further insight into the topic of dealing with criticism, please leave a comment on the post over at www.worshipministrycatalyst.com. We really look forward to hearing from you. You can email david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com or you can use the contact page.

So, I’m not really a Mac guy. I have a hard time rationalizing spending ,000 on a computer I could get for 0. And even though PC’s have gotten a bad name lately, I still think they are the best decision for most people. They’re the most commonly accepted platform – worldwide, there are many more companies that offer complete support for them, and most people can afford one. I don’t think Mac’s are more stable than PC’s, my Mac has crashed many times, My PC has crashed too, but when it crashes I can trace it back to a component on the computer that has gone bad, that I bought for cheap. When my Mac crashes I can’t do that. The Mac is supposed to have all great components, made by mac (According to one of their recent commercials) so they’re higher quality. I’m not convinced. My mac will crash at random times, and I lose information, just like I would on a PC.

However, I’m really starting to like Garage band on my mac. I used it today to make some practice CD’s for our choir, and it’s growing increasingly easy. I just drop a recording into Garage Band from my hard drive or iTunes, then with my M-audio Radium 49 – which you can get on ebay for 50 bucks – I play the Soprano, Alto, Tenor & Bass parts. After I play them into garage band, I mute all tracks except for the part I want to highlight, and the master recording, export the song to disk, and I’m done. It’s a pretty fast way to make practice CD’s, I did one song in a little over an hour – which is something that used to take me a few hours.

So, I’m starting to like garage band. However, the more I think about the things that I like about the Mac, most of them are things I can buy for a PC – and still have money left over in comparison. So, I’m not sure which I like better. Let’s just say, if someone gave me a Mac, I probably wouldn’t throw it away.

So, we’re having a garage sale today, (actually my wife is doing the garage sale while I am inside with the kids). And I’ve pretty much decided we’re never doing this again. Here are some reasons why:

1. The paper could get your ad wrong and have people show up an hour earlier than you expected.
2. You can say in your ad “no earlies” but that means nothing to most “earlies.”
3. Those “earlies” will ring your doorbell repeatedly, just to let you know they’re there. (As if you hadn’t noticed the 10 cars in front of your house, and heard their conversations.
4. It takes way more time to separate the stuff you want to sell (half of which is stuff you bought at a garage sale in years past), set up the sale, and man the sale than the money you will take in will give you per hour.
5. Some old biddy will knock a jar of pickled peppers off the table, making a huge mess.
6. The same old biddy will try to help you clean up the mess, and in the process ruin your kitchen broom.
7. Your wife will have to hold your daughter while you clean up the mess.
8. Before you get the mess cleaned up, your daughter will walk through the pickle juice in her socks.
9. Your garage will now smell like pickle juice.
10. By the time you pay for the newspaper ad, a new mop & a new broom, you’ll barely have enough money to buy your wife an ice cream sundae for all her hard work.

All of this in the first hour. I wonder what the next 9 will bring.

My wife and I are moving. I accepted a job at a new church last November and have been commuting 56 miles one way, for the last 7 months. We’re very excited that we have sold our house and have bought a house where our new church is.

The interesting thing about it is that my wife has been packing stuff in boxes for months now, and for the last two weeks has really been hitting it hard. She’s great! The thing is, that it’s kind of like being on vacation. We’re getting more and more to the point of having only the essentials out for our living necessities, and more and more of it is in boxes.

It’s not like a vacation though because we’re moving the boxes and doing things that I wouldn’t normally consider fun. However, in light of the fact that we will be getting a brand new home, and really a brand new life, it makes it all worth it. I’m sore, and I’m tired, but I’m thankful.

Don’t be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small steps.
- David Loyd George

Sometimes in leadership something becomes obvious to us, and yet, we ignore whatever it is. Sometimes, it’s extremely obvious, so obvious that all the people around us see that we ought to be doing this thing, and still we don’t do it.

Often times in leadership, we don’t do what we know we ought to do because we’re afraid to even breech the topic. Maybe your doing something in your job that goes against your ethics, yet you keep doing it because you don’t want the confrontation it would take to stop doing this unethical thing. Or maybe your boss is killing you off, giving you way too much to do, and you’d rather die than talk to him about the situation. Or maybe you disagree with the philosophy of your boss, possibly to the point of driving you insane, but you don’t want to even think about talking about this with him.

Let me offer you a word of encouragement, be courageous. Nothing great was ever achieved by someone who didn’t act in a courageous way. At some point, all the leaders we admire, took a step that was uncomfortable, awkward, risky or even dangerous. And it was that step that began their definition as a leader.

Let me encourage all of us to be a little more courageous. Let’s not waste anymore tine being scared of doing what we know needs to be done. Let’s take a step in the right direction and do it.