Filed under: Ordinary Life | Tags: Calvary, church, communications, creativity, friends, work, worship
Once a month, a bunch of us from Calvary get together off campus to brainstorm what we’re going to do each Sunday for our alternative worship service called Elevation. We’ve been doing this for almost 3 years now.
We just had our most recent meeting on Thursday, where we covered the rest of our current series on Nehemiah, and our Christmas series on Luke 2:21-38 called “Heaven Came Down.” I’m really excited about how our Nehemiah series is coming together and I’m equally looking forward to the unique take on Christmas, focusing on the characters of Simeon and Anna.
These meetings are always a good mixture of spiritual insight, creative juices and just plain fun. I felt extra sarcastic for some reason on Thursday, but I really do love these times and especially all these people pictured below.
After lunch, we began looking way ahead to 2009 and a series we’re going to do on the parables of Jesus. As a creative and fun experience, my communication team and I led everyone on a sheep hunt where we reenacted the parable of the lost sheep. It was over way too quick and it was mostly just a silly excuse to get everyone outside for a group photo.
The only downside of the meeting is I think someone was there who made me sick. I started feeling bad that afternoon and it’s only gotten worse. Here’s hoping I can make it through the weekend. I can’t afford to be out of commission.
Filed under: Ordinary Life | Tags: Calvary, cars, church, communications, concerts, faith, life, marketing, money, travel, vacation, work
I’ve been dealing with money issues lately. Hasn’t everybody?
For me, it’s been this insatiable desire for stuff. We stayed at this old hotel in Reedley, CA that had all this cool, antique furniture. What got me though was the high-def TV in our room. On the drive back from the Sequoias, we stopped in at Circuit City in Bakersfield and I was seriously tempted to just buy a huge TV on the spur of the moment. Even after experiencing all of the beauty of God’s creation and spending a week getting to know some amazing people on a deeper level – all I really wanted in that moment was a great, big TV.
Then on Saturday, we met up with Leslie’s family at a classic car show in San Pedro with these amazing old cars and bikes. I left wanting to get a 1932 Model A hot rod truck, dropped and chopped with a big, exposed engine and white-wall tires. We then met up with my brother and his family at the OC Auto Show, where we also got to see a free Sugar Ray show. I left wanting about a dozen cars, but if forced to choose – I would settle for a 2009 Challenger.
On Sunday, I spent time in the afternoon looking online at new digital cameras after all the glitches we’ve been having with our old one. I could feel my lust for stuff spiraling out of control.
My money issues escalated today as I spent most of the afternoon working through budget numbers at work. The budget I’m in charge of for communications and creative arts is $100,000.00. That’s a small percentage of the church’s total budget, but it still represents the donations of thousands of people. It’s an awesome responsibility that I don’t take lightly.
The irony of it all hit me when I came home tonight to get a letter in the mail regarding our property tax that states that our home is now worth nearly $100,000.00 less than what we agreed to pay for it a mere 2 1/2 years ago.
In the midst of the current financial crisis the nation is experiencing, I can’t help but think that the root of it all is a priority crisis. I fee like I need to go on a spending fast and make sure my priorities are in the right place. I need to figure out if I really do believe that it all belongs to God. Not just the budget at work, but my own budget at home. My prayer is that I would be a good steward of whatever God decides to entrust to me and not get caught up in the constant striving for stuff.
Filed under: Ordinary Life | Tags: communications, leadership, production, work
“A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” — author unknown
This snarky, yet timeless, quote has been rattling around in my head for the past couple weeks. There are just so many things going on at Calvary and every single little thing is somebody’s really, really big thing. I’m doing my best to keep perspective and roll with the unexpected waves of neediness. I really am.
So, even while that quote is the perfect excuse to just let their “really, really big thing” that has to get done “right now” just slide until me ( and my amazingly talented team) can get to it - I don’t always think that’s the right thing to do.
My prayer is that I can have the wisdom, empathy and patience to deal with all of the last minute emergencies in a way that is God-honoring. And, to also have love and grace in dealing with everyone, in spite of their planning abilities.
Filed under: Finding God in the Ordinary | Tags: business, Calvary, communications, marketing
I did a video shoot last Friday with Chad Ashton for a new program starting at Calvary called Fusion Leaders. They are going to have monthly breakfasts for business leaders in our community. The first meeting is coming up in October, where their guest speaker will be former assistant police chief for the LAPD – Bob Vernon. Along with each month’s invited guest speaker, they also want to feature a video testimony of a prominent business leader who has effectively “fused” their Christian faith with their business life.
So, Chad and I hit the road last week to shoot two of these video testimonies that could also be used as a promo for their small group time facilitators. The first location was Custom Comfort Mattresses in Anaheim Hills. We got there at 6:30 in the morning to film B-roll of the start of their production run. We got really cool footage of each step in production and were ready to do the interviews at about 7:15 in their main showroom. We filmed the company’s president/owner as well the COO, who had prior experience working in youth ministry. They were both great guys and we got some really great stuff.
We then drove over to Long Beach to the main Farmers and Merchants Bank. The building just recently underwent a total renovation and it showed. We were able to film on the main bank floor and even inside the main vault. All of that was incredible. The testimony interview was with the bank’s president since 1979, Ken Walker. His family has owned the bank since 1907. His story of God’s faithfulness and the bank’s stability through the Great Depression and the current mortgage crisis alike was fascinating. However, I’m not sure how much of it translated well on video. In fact, we must have rolled over an hour of tape for what needs to be about a 3 minute piece, trying to get something that was easily useable.
While the mattress guys were fairly ordinary as far as business stories go – their video was so easy to edit because they gave great, consise sound bites. In contrast, the entire bank story was far and away the bigger and more extraordinary story, but there were no clear or useable points to grab. It will take a lot of extra work to pull something cohesive together, or it may get left on the cutting room floor.
The whole thing was a good reminder for me about how the message is really only as good as the medium being used to communicate it. What an awesome responsibility we have when telling the good news of God’s story to a world that so desperately needs it. We have got to keep it clear and concise and never let it become boring, or even worse, unuseable.
Filed under: Finding God in the Ordinary | Tags: Calvary, church, communications, faith, leadership, prayer, production, work
I’ve always been a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. I’m very comfortable and fairly confident leading from the back of the room – even if it’s a very big room, a big production or a big project. Over the last couple weeks I have found myself leading from up front. I guess you could call it growth, or at least a shift of sorts.
First, I got to pray with a family from our church during a recent child dedication time. That was an incredible priviledge in a lot of ways to be a part of such a special moment in that family’s life.
The next night, we had an event at Calvary that we called The STUDIO. It was a night designed to cultivate creativity and community within our worship and creative arts volunteers. I helped Nicole lead the ice-breaker/team-building game, emceed the entire awards part of the evening, and unfolded the next couple of teaching series to begin gathering creative ideas from our volunteers. It was a nice sized baby step as there was just under 100 people, but it still felt like a big event.
The very next morning in our service planning meeting, I was once again nominated to do the current highlights (our term for “announcements”) from the pulpit in both Sunday morning services. I’ve been asked to do it about 20 times before over the last six months since I took on my current role and I’ve always laughed it off and refused to go there. I’m not sure why, but this time I said yes.
So, I found myself this last Sunday up in front of hundreds of people stringing together words that hopefully formed some cohesive thoughts about what’s going on at Calvary. I had no idea that I would be struck with a sudden bout of parkinsons. My hand wouldn’t stop shaking. My vision narrowed and I couldn’t get my eyes to focus on any one thing for more than a nano-second. My voice suddenly had a mild quiver. I think Matt Doan, a fellow Calvary Pastor, summed it up when he told me afterward that you only have about 10% of your usual brain capacity as soon as you get in front of a large group of people for the first time. That’s exactly what it felt like.
I don’t know how much more I’ll find myself leading from up front, but I want to be willing to be used by God wherever He want me. Do you have a familiar area of comfort that God is growing you out of, or at least shifting you? Are you willing to follow His lead if He calls you to something new?
Good Friday and Easter Sunday were amazing. I thought all of the services this past weekend at Calvary went really well. We had about 4000 people total on campus between all the venues. I know it’s just one weekend, but there is so much we pour into it because we know that there were at least 1000 people there who only come once or twice a year. If we can create opportunities for those people to connect with God, then all that effort is worth it. If we can get some of them to see their life through a different lens and take a next step with their faith, that’s a great thing. In the end, I hope that many lives were really changed and some were challenged to make life-altering decisions.
However, now that Easter is behind us – it also means that my huge excuse over the last few weeks of “we’ll get to that after Easter” is now shot. It is now post Easter and there are all sorts of projects that we have to get moving on. The list is extraordinarily huge and it seems like every time something is knocked off the pile, two more things are added on. I hope that in this next month, we can get on top of it all without losing the creativity, relevance and excellence we are always striving after.
