Have you ever tried to read the Bible in a year? How’d that work out for you? I tried it once. I got behind after a few weeks, got discouraged, and stopped. Then I found a two-year plan. I stuck with that one a little longer, but still found that it left little time to wander into other passages that were not in the plan. Finally, I decided to look for a three-year plan and I’ve been doing it for almost ten years!

Recently, I had the opportunity to preach the sermon in between Christmas and New Years. One of our pastors refers to this as “Youth Pastor Sunday” and there is some truth to the fact that it is rarely the Lead Pastor preaching that week. At Mosaic, we tend to take turns doing it and let’s be honest, nobody really wants to do it. While everyone else is enjoying some extra time with their families at the holidays, the person who draws the short straw has to be prepping a sermon. So, since I knew that I’d be doing this particular Sunday a couple months in advance, I started my prep early and I did something really different. I attempted to practice silence and solitude in a room full of people. And it actually worked rather well!

We recently finished a four week series at Mosaic called “Only Jesus”. In the early planning stages, it was a catch all for a few different things we wanted to unpack with our church. But then it morphed into an incredibly succinct look at what our church is all about. As the communications team joined together with the teaching team to hear from our Lead Pastor on his heart for the series and discuss the felt needs of a congregation whose collective head was spinning from rapid growth, we began to brainstorm on the story that threaded it all together. Pretty soon,

I know I am a geek for new products or processes that help me do my job with more energy or more effectiveness. But this one is really working well for me and so I wanted to throw it out to you as my readers.

I recently got me a standup desk.

I recall 30-35 years ago when I was a teen and my dad worked in the concrete construction business. He was a foreman and would travel from job to job to check in on his guys and the progress of their work. I worked a couple of summers and got to ride around with him.

The crews loved him. Beyond his care for them as people, he was super organized in his work. He knew details, remembered conversations, and made things happen. These were also the days before smartphones and task management apps. 

So what did he use? I distinctly remember. 

Routine is nice, but routine can make me too settled in my thinking at times. I am a linear thinker and I enjoy processes. I appreciate practices that help move me to successful thinking or profitable action.

I like systems that work once and then keep working thereafter.

But I never want my thinking to go stale. Regardless of your vocation, stale thinking does not promote God-glorifying action. I believe that is one reason that God gave us creativity – to push the fences of typical thinking to new possibilities and fresh outcomes.

If you follow this blog, you know that I’m deep into a fairly large building project for our biggest campus. We had the architect, General Contractor and AVL company taken care of, but one area we had not dealt with yet was Kids Ministry Theming. We decided to hire Plain Joe Studios to do the work. Let me tell you why.

I think it’s important to not take ourselves too seriously, and be willing to have a little fun, even poking fun at our own ministries. April Fool’s Day provides a great opportunity to do so, and I took it! One of our churches little quirks is that we start all of our gatherings :02 minutes later than logic would dictate. So, it’s 9:02, not 9:00. It’s 11:17, not 11:15. Our founding pastor will tell you that he did it just to make it stand out and catch your eye a bit more as you drove by a sign. It’s one of those silly things that people remember, and plenty of us make fun of it as well. A couple of years ago, we actually considered changing it due to the cheese factor, but decided that at this point, it’s just a part of who we are. We are the :02 church. But what if suddenly, we decided to become the :03 church? That was the basis of my April Fool’s Day post that went on our website and throughout our social media. People had a lot of fun with it. Here is the article I wrote:

Like most churches, ours has a couple of announcements each week, generally tied in as a closer to the gathering. One of our staff members plays gate-keeper on what gets announced and when. For the weekends, she creates a cheat sheet for us to bring on stage with the list and key information so we aren’t doing that annoying thing where you turn around to look at the screen because you forgot the dates of the women’s retreat or whatever. Recently our cheat sheets got a major upgrade.

Last week I had the opportunity to spend the week with 175 middle and high school students from Mosaic Church. It’s not something I would usually do. Was it worth my time? I don’t have a particular calling to students and I have no unique gifting with teenagers. But when our student ministry pastor asked me to consider going, I prayed about it, and decided that it was in fact, a good use of my time even though I’m in one of the busiest seasons of my working life.

Gospel centered vision + Spirit led implementation leads to health. Health leads to growth. Growth leads to lack of space. Lack of space leads to a call for more space. Call for more space leads to a need for more financial fuel. The need for more financial fuel leads to  . . . well, that’s where the real confusion sets in. Do you hire a generosity company or go it alone? How much will it cost? Is it really worth it? These are hard questions that every growing church faces.