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. 

I get embarrassed over how many times I have to ask a new contact for their name…a second time.

It’s like they just told me their name and by the end of the conversation, I am asking, “So…tell me your name again?” And even then there might be a chance that I struggle to keep that name with me.

Why does that happen?

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.

It can feel like in today’s world, Business Cards are obsolete. But I’ve found that they still serve a purpose.

So how many of you identify with this scenario?

I hear about a situation second or third-hand and in listening to the information, my judgement begins to be swayed and I have already made my verdict and issued a decree of “Guilty!” And this is the mindset in which I approach the other person.

It was a privilege to be interviewed by Rich Birch at UnSeminary Podcast recently. Check out the video on YouTube or listen to the audio on Itunes. Find all the details at the UnSeminary website.  If you don’t already subscribe to this podcast, I’d suggest checking it out. Its got some great practical topics to help you out in everyday ministry.

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.

A few years ago, a pastor I worked with in my previous church introduced me to the RACI matrix for use in Project Management. I’ve gone back to it again and again as I’ve found it to make all the difference in keeping teams moving forward. 

I’m excited to be heading back to Guatemala next week to teach at the Acts 29 conference. Great things are happening for the Gospel in Latin America. Francisco Bendfelt’s church, Casa de Libertad is a great example of this. I’ll be traveling with our Lead Pastor, Renaut Van Der Riet, as well as couple guys from our Mosaic Latino team. Renaut and I will both be teaching twice during the conference and our good friend and global partner, Jay Bauman from Rio de Janiero will also be joining us to teach. When audio is available, I’ll be sure to post links. Pray for us!

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.

I’m excited to announce that the Spanish translation of my book Defining The Executive Pastor Role is now available on Amazon in E-book and Paperback! If Spanish is your primary language, maybe this will be a help to you. If not, please share the link with others who may benefit from this tool. Many thanks to Sandrie Alvarado at Casa de Libertad in Guatemala City, Guatemala for doing the translation.

My church just came through a pretty significant Generosity Initiative. The big question that many of our staff asked was “Will people actually give what they committed this time?” Because last time we did this, we had a low percentage of people actually follow through. But was it entirely their fault?

I’m exited to be teaching at the XPastor Seminar in about a month from now. If you’ve never been before, it’s not too late to sign up and I’d highly recommend it regardless of where you are in your development as an XP.