Being in a city up north that actually gets snow, I’ve learned a few things. Mind you, this was the 6th worse snowstorm in Washington D.C. ever, so it was pretty bad.

1. Snow is way fun with kids. Snowmen, sledding, snowballs =Fun times.

2.On the other hand, snowballs actually hurt, they are not fluffy balls of snow, they will give you welts and bruises and temporarily blind you when your 4 year old chucks one at your face.

3. Shoveling snow is for the birds. I’m used to not doing yard work between November and March.

4. Having shoveled snow off my car and around it and still not being able to drive it because the road is frozen and their is ice under my tires is lame and annoying.

5. Snow is really gross after a day and life has to happen again and cars drive around.

6. It makes daily mundane tasks way more difficult. It takes us forever to bundle up the offspring and walk down our treacherous driveway.

7. Snow is beautiful. It really does look like a Winter Wonderland.

8. Driving in these kind of conditions is not cool and the roads are terrible.

9. I stand completely amazed at the creativity of our creator. He knows every snowflake and designed all of them. Outstanding. Even the concept to have all the different types of weather and climates around the world is amazing. From snow to rain forests to deserts to beaches. I’m continually amazed.

Just a future word of wisdom to all prospective northern home dwellers. Don’t live in a house that has a 200 foot hill to get to it. The ice that forms is a beast. You will fall.

What are your snow adventures?

Sometimes I feel that the church has lost the value of hard work. Now I know obviously not everyone does this, there are many pastors that need to slow down cause they are working to hard.

But on the other hand, sometimes I feel, the church isn’t willing to just buckle down and work. I think we have forgotten the truth that greatness always comes from sacrifice. Greatness doesn’t come from laziness or being slothful.

Here’s all I really want to say. Do hard things intentionally. Make yourself uncomfortable. Put yourself in places intentionally that require lots of sacrifice and effort. I believe there will be great reward for that in eternity.

Its that time of year. Goal setting time. Being here at National Community Church, one of the privileges we have is to spend some time with Mark Batterson, the Lead Pastor.

He is like a junior version of Rick Warren with all of his mantras and sayings, they are very sticky and I’m sure I’ll walk away from here with many of them stuck in my head.

We spent some time the other day taking about Life Goals. I am going to spend some time setting some life goals over Christmas. I’ll try and remember to post some. Pastor Mark has written a super helpful guide that is online, which is called 10 Steps to Setting Life Goals. Its a free download and I would highly recommend you read it. You can find it here.

He says, “You know why most of us never get what we want? Because we don’t know what we want! I’m convinced that one of the greatest shortcomings in most of our lives is that we don’t know what we want. We’re out of touch with our God-ordained dreams and stories.”

I would be interested to know if any of you have a list similar to this and to know what yours are.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my life mantras. I have a few little sayings that I try my best to live by. I’m actually going to try and make a list of my mantras over Christmas this year.

One is this, “You can either confess your actions, or you can confess your thoughts.”

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather confess my thoughts. Trouble is, its hard and embarrassing. I don’t do as good a job of this as I should, but I would challenge you to do the same.

Don’t wait until the thought turns into an action, confess it to God or a trusted friend before it becomes an action.

I’d love to hear yours, I may add it to my list:)

I have a theory. The success of our life will be based more on the little things that we do everyday rather than the big things that we accomplish. I think the little things, the disciplines, prepare us for the big things.

Don’t forget to do the little things everyday. Read your Bible, pray, worship God, meditate on His promises, etc.

In the path of greatness were lots of little things that we did to clear the way.

This book is by A.W. Tozer. A fantastic read, its not a quick, simple read even though its pretty short. Its basically his meditations on the nature and character of God.

He just does an amazing job taking you outside of the construct that you have created to hold God in.

Here are two sentences that encapsulate the idea and message of what he is trying to say. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing to us.” I love that, so true.

This second quote may be my favorite in the entire book. “Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.”

This is why its so important to have a correct view of the incredible majesty of God.

I would recommend this book to anyone, but don’t just give it a cursory reading, read it slowly, digest it and let his thoughts pierce your soul.

Well, I’m gonna have few book reviews coming, I re-read one lately, and am a few book reviews behind. I’ll space them out for your sanity.

This book was by Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger. I know I’m way behind reading this book being a church guy in the church world. But here’s the really Simple overview.

Church is way too complicated, we have too many ministries, too many activities and we end up just consuming church peoples time and running programs rather than making disciples and reaching the lost.

The solution, make church more simple, don’t be mediocre at a lot of things, be excellent at a few. They advocate to run almost every “ministry” or “program” out of small groups.

Great book, a great read for any church leader, it may or may not be paradigm shifting for you. No matter what side of the coin you are on in this debate, it will be a good challenge or a good reinforcement and refinement for what you are already doing.

I’m sick with all the media gossip machine trashing Tiger. Our ears in America are obsessed with hearing gossip. Honestly, I don’t care how many people he cheated with. We all know he made some really bad decisions, we’ll probably find out its worse than we even know about right now. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

America acts all aloof when we haven’t done whatever it is that the celebrity has done like we are better than them. You know what the honest harsh reality is? Every single one of us is capable of the same thing that Tiger did. If you don’t think you are, guess what? You are one step closer to doing it.

As Jesus said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” (when speaking of the woman caught in adultery) I think we especially as the church, need to have mercy and compassion on Tiger and Elin, they obviously need our prayers. I applaud Tiger from stepping down from golf for an unspecified amount of time. He may have gotten his life off track but at least he’s man enough to do something about getting his family back.

One of the coolest perks about being a location pastor @ National Community Church is we get a resource stipend every month for us to spend on ourselves to buy books and things like that to help us grow as leaders. Something that I deeply appreciate and plan on continuing whenever I have a church that is big enough to hire staff, so that I can afford them the same privilege that I have now.

So I thought just for fun, I would show you what I ordered for my November – December purchase. You might think I’m a theologically confused, but I love messing with people on every side, Calvinists, Arminians, Cessationists, Charasmatics, etc.  In fact, I’ll admit it, not only do I like to mess with people on both sides, it actually invigorates me. Hope you don’t have a lower opinion of me now.

Figure me out, psychoanalyze me, I’d be interested for you to try and peg me from this list theologically.

1. A Multi-Site Church Road Trip – Geoff Surratt

2. What The Dog Saw:And Other Adventures – Malcolm Gladwell

3. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters – Tim Keller

4. Release The Power Of Jesus – Bill Johnson

5. A Million Miles In A Thousand Years: What I learned While Editing My Life – Donald Miller

6. How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In – Jim Collins

7. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash the Power of Life in Christ – Pete Scazerro

8. Everything Is Spiritual DVD – Rob Bell

Let the games begin!

I’m not gonna try and turn this into some spiritual lesson. I simply found this hilarious. So earlier last week I was walking home from Alpha at NCC. If you read my blog you know I walk right past the capitol every day. As in, right in front of it.

It was probably about 9:15pm walking right in front of the Capitol and this guys stops me and asks me for directions. So I stop, we chat for a second, and he, an American by the way, proceeds to ask me, “Hey I am looking for this big white building with a dome on the top of it and its called the Capitol.” I’m trying to figure out if he is serious. When I find out that he is dead serious, it took everything within me not to start laughing. I’m just keeping it real.

So very lovingly I point to the “big white building with a dome on the top of it” and say, “Well thats the capitol right there.”

He says, “Oh, thanks man.” I said “see you later.” He walks away and then I proceed to laugh & cry in disbelief that an American standing right in front of the Capitol building that is even on our money, doesn’t even know where it is. (He didn’t have a learning disability by the way, I wouldn’t be writing this or joking about it, if he did. He was a completely sober, seemingly intelligent American)

Craziness.