Forget leadership training. We are not leaders; we are followers.
Jesus is our leader; we are His followers. Our fundamental identity is to be a follower of Jesus. He called us to be followers. The first follower said to “follow me as I follow Christ.” Just as the disciples followed Jesus, so should we, and invite others along on the journey to follow Christ as well.
Today David and I celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary.
We met in January 1993 when we started graduate school at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. We had a few classes together that first semester and hung around the same group of friends, but it wasn’t until the next semester (fall 1993) that we really became close friends when we moved to a seminary off-campus apartment complex. David lived in an apartment above mine and would help me with my computer issues and I would type the notes from class. We weren’t dating at that time but many people thought we were because we hung out together and were close friends.
Then we decided that we would try the dating thing. Well, it worked. We grew closer and closer and have been best friends for 14 years now.
We’ve been through struggle after struggle in our married life and in ministry and careers. God has taken care of us though and I know He will continue to care and provide for us — wherever He sends us and whatever He prepares for us.
David, I love you! Thank you for 14 years. I’m looking forward to 14 million more years with you.
David and I were invited to go to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with one of his former doctoral classmates to see and hear our good friend Len Sweet. We jump at the chance to hear refreshing information and soak up all the knowledge we can from him. He is so very encouraging and a great friend.
He always talks about the Gutenberg world and the Google world. The current young generation lives in the Google world where cell phones fit in the palm of their hands and ‘text’ is a verb. The Gutenberg world generation lived BC: before cell phones and ‘text’ was a noun.
He explained a metaphor between an apple and an orange. In the Gutenberg world, the symbol for learning was an apple. If the student liked the teacher and wanted to give her something, she gave her an apple.
How do we eat an apple? Generally, we hold the entire apple in our hands and bite off chunks of it; we eat it whole.
The symbol for learning that we should use is an orange. How do we eat an orange? We hold the entire orange in our hand, then we peel it; we take it apart piece by piece, not whole. We experience it as a whole then we take it apart.
When we read a passage of Scripture, we need to experience it as a whole then we need to ‘peel’ it piece by piece, not ‘bite’ off chunks all at once.
I was recently reminded of a great way for churches to be missional in meeting the needs of the community. This idea came from Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint’s book Come On, People.
In this book, the authors give tips on how churches can help young people achieve their best goals. One of the first and best ways of achieving your goals in life is to maintain a healthy lifestyle through healthy eating habits and meeting your physical needs first. When those physical needs are met then you can more easily meet the other deeper needs and goals.
However, sometimes it is difficult for some people to obtain healthy foods, including healthy vegetables and fruits to make up a well-balanced meal 2-3 times a day.
I like the authors suggestion for churches to plant a community garden on their church property to offer home-grown vegetables and fruits to families and individuals who may not have the funds to buy these healthy foods. Churches can share their entire harvest with members of the community or they can ‘tithe’ at least 10 percent of the vegetables out to meet community needs and then share the remainder with members of the church.
This is a great idea to use that green space on church properties instead of paving it for another parking lot to be used only by people attending church once or twice a week.
What a great creative way for Christ-followers to use their gifts to plant, maintain, and harvest the garden crops for God’s Kingdom!
Stories are great methods for communicating a message. People love stories. Stories allow people to be involved and to use their imaginations. Stories make things understandable. Here is a great post on telling stories. People will listen to stories. Are you telling the story they need to hear? They will get a story from somewhere. We must speak up and be the storyteller.
Why do we do the things we do? Why do we act in certain ways? We want to change behaviors, but we don’t know how to make those behavior changes stick. We have to rewire the brain to change our behaviors.
Find out how to change behaviors and rewire your brain in this new book, Holy Rewired, by Dr. David Phillips. Coming soon! A link to the book is coming soon.
