November 5th, 2009 by admin

“He’s going somewhere that no one has gone before.” -Me

“This can’t possibly turn out good…” -Myself

“He’s an idiot!” -I

I’m going to ask the kids in my children’s church what we need to be doing different.  I’m going to ask them to get real with me… I’m going to ask them if they really do pray… if they really even try to read their Bibles everyday.  If your best friend in the whole world is a 10… and the new kid who just moved into town is a 1… where would you rank God on your friend level?  What should we do at church to raise that friend level?  Will the changes that need to be made to change that make our church boring?

“This should be fun.” -Unknown

January 25th, 2008 by Pastor Matt

I am so absolutely refreshed today.  It is fabulous.  We just hired a new worship pastor and the guy is incredible.  They have not moved into town yet and he’s here without his family this weekend to get a house.  I get the absolute privilege of having him at my house for the next few evenings.  Last night he was just sitting at the keyboard playing worship songs for hours.  It was fantastic.  I always love it when my wife gets onto her keyboard and plays, I’ve got to encourage her to do that more!

So anyways, last night I’m sitting there listening to Mike play this incredible song that he wrote and I thought to myself, “I am so jealous of his gift.”  I was about 2 seconds away from deciding to get guitar and voice lessons when I learned something (That’s right… I learned something on my own… nobody taught it to me).  I’ve got gifts that others are jealous of.

That just hit me like a ton of bricks, and for the first time I truly understood “duplication.”  When I was sitting there in my living room listening to Mike, I wanted to be him.  I wanted his gifts, I wanted his voice, his knowledge of music, his creativity… I was watching him do something he loved, and I just knew if I could do that I would love it to.  That’s when I realized that this is the heart of duplication.  This is the “thud” moment.  Where my brain just plops onto the ground because it’s work is done.

The heart of duplication is showing people something that you love, and then showing them how to do it so that they love it to.

January 21st, 2008 by Pastor Matt

I love checking on my vision.  Just taking a look at the plan I’ve set out for my life, and the path that I’m taking to get there.  When I wrote out my vision I had incredible plans for a website that would help Children’s Pastors all over the world.  I planned to upload an online curriculum that members would be able to access weekly to use in their ministry.  Areas for other CP’s (Children’s Pastors) to upload lessons and objects of their own.  Membership levels to make more tools available to professional members. All of this was written down at the beginning of last year.  Now, at the beginning of 2008, I am a part of Kidology.  You’d never guess what Kidology does.  They are an incredible website that helps CP’s from all over the world.  They upload an online curriculum that members are able to access and use on a weekly basis.  There are areas for other CP’s to upload lessons, puppet skits, articles, stories, crafts.. ect. of their own.  They have membership levels that make more tools available to professional members. My mission statement for this website was “Duplicating myself into those who duplicate into children.”  Their mission statement is “Equipping and Encouraging those who minister to children.”  The similarities  go on and on.  It’s incredible that God was working in me at the beginning of last year, to serve in a ministry that I had never heard of.  It has encouraged me to always keep my vision in front of me, so that I can give God the glory when He has completed it.

January 5th, 2008 by Pastor Matt

It’s always a blast coming into a new year.  This year will be especially exciting for me.  Within the month I’ll be licensed!  That’s pretty exciting.  Not near as exciting as me being a father in May of this year (it’s a boy)!  So much happens in a year, and we must make all we can out of those years.  I’m looking forward to moving forward in the next 359 days.

I always love to think about the upcoming year and the oppurtunities that lie ahead.  I think about so many people who have had the same oppurtunities every year, but they never take advantage of them.  Better oppurtunities aren’t going to come along until you’ve grabbed the ones already in front of you!

December 19th, 2007 by Pastor Matt

We just finished one of those services.  Those long… hard services where everything doesn’t quite go how you imagined it.  When I was just now sitting here thinking about our service, I thought… what went wrong?

We had a special service, a Christmas party… and we had lots planned.  We had so much planned that as soon as the clock struck 7… we were off to the races.  It just wasn’t working though.  None of the kids were paying attention, most were talking, and the ones that weren’t were just staring at me like, “why aren’t you getting everyone to calm down?”  We struggled through the service, and we made it through quite well.  We had an excellent craft (thanks to my wonderful Wife) that got everyone’s attention back, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.

So… where did we go wrong?  We started off so fast that we didn’t even pray!  I can’t even believe that we just finished a children’s church service without even praying once!  I feel like a children’s church teacher or something should come by and slap my hands with a ruler.

Well… lesson learned.  That’s how we all get better right?

December 3rd, 2007 by Pastor Matt

Last week was absolutely incredible.  On Sunday our Senior Pastor came up to me and told me that we were going to be very busy.  Our youth group had outgrown their area and had to be moved.  So we were getting a new room for the youth, moving the nursery (who had also outgrown their area) into the old youth room and my office.  Within a week we: moved 1 office full of every Children’s Ministry supply, the youth ministry and all supplies, the nursery and all their supplies, the entire church’s supply closets.  Whooooooo!  What an incredible week… and man was I stretched thin…
One of two things happens to someone when they get stretched.  They grow, or they tear.  Last week I had plenty to do on my schedule, and it would have been very easy for me to tear.  If I weren’t a born again Christian… I would have!  However, this past week I have grown.  I have become a better man, a better person, a better Christian… all because of last week.  I had to kill myself though.

Whenever you feel like you are getting stretched thin, and the gas in the tank is running out, just go ahead and get it over with.  Kill your flesh!  I absolutely loved it the first time my pastor said this, “God isn’t trying to hurt you, he’s trying to kill you!”

If you will die to yourself, you’ll grow through those times of stretching.

November 21st, 2007 by Pastor Matt

As Thanksgiving approaches I’ve read tons of blogs, tons of articles, listened to podcasts, and sermons, and tips of the day and on and on all about being thankful.  I was thinking to myself though, “everyone is thankful around thanksgiving.”  It’s on your mind, it’s in your head.  The key is to somehow be thankful when it’s NOT on your mind.  Well, how do we do that?

I’m not going to answer that… you’re going to have to figure that out on your own.  I’m just going to let you know what could happen if you don’t figure out how to keep “thanks” on your mind.

If there’s no ‘thank you’ then people are going to be confused.  I’ll never forget when I was driving up north last year and realized that not everyone says thank you.  Here in Texas, it seems like everybody says thank you!  Maybe it’s the little hand wave after somebody let’s you over in traffic, or the smile and nod when someone holds the door open.  I was very confused one day when traveling up north as I held the door open for two ladies and they did absolutely nothing.  They weren’t talking together, they weren’t distracted, they just intentionally looked away and walked through the door.  Wha?  I actually paused for a second and thought about what just happened.  I wondered if I was somehow being rude, or if maybe they thought I was doing something strange.  When they didn’t acknowledge that they were thankful for what I was doing, I wondered if maybe I was doing something wrong.  Those around you will think the same thing!  If they’re helping you, your ministry, your department, your… whatever, and you’re not thanking them, they will wonder if they’re doing something wrong.  If you are in any leadership position you need to be regularly thanking those who are helping.

No ‘thank you’ will result in confusion and low self-confidence.

November 20th, 2007 by Pastor Matt

Last night my wife and I were sitting around enjoying our Christmas Tree and Christmas music when all of a sudden… darkness. The power went out, but not just in our house; it went out all around us too. It was as dark as I had ever seen our neighborhood. So quiet too. We grabbed some candles and lit up the house pretty well. It was really relaxing and calm just sitting in the candlelight without anything else going on. Then I heard some noise coming from our neighbor’s house. I looked out of our window and they were all outside with their car lights on playing in the backyard.

That may not seem like something that would be worth writing about in your blog but get this… I never even knew my neighbor had kids. I had never heard any kids, never saw any kids, never picked up a toy from my yard, didn’t see any toys in their yard… nothing. It took a power outage for me to notice my neighbor had kids!  What is all the noise and light covering up?  What would we find out if we moved all of the technology out of the way for awhile?  Well… there’s only one way to find out!

I encourage you to go without the techno for awhile. Turn the tv off. The radio off. The podcast off. The…whatever… just turn it off! I’m thinking about going no techno in CM for a service. Going unplugged with a stringed guitar and no words on the screens or motions. No light shows and DVD segments. Just… no techno.  No telling what I’ll find.

November 19th, 2007 by Pastor Matt

I just absolutely LOVE Christmas!  It’s before Thanksgiving and my wife and I already have our Christmas tree up!  I absolutely love it!  We have these wonderful double windows right out in front of our house and we put our tree front and center.  I was thinking last night about how people will drive by the house and see the Christmas tree in the window and know that we are celebrating Christ.  Then it came to me… no they’re not.  They’ll have no idea that we’re celebrating Christ… they’ll just think we’re celebrating Christmas, just like (basically) everyone else does.  Then I thought about that for a little bit longer.

What else am I misunderstanding?  Could it be possible that this system or program that we have set in place appears completely different when looked at from the outside?  Maybe a program that was designed to serve the community is, for some reason, appearing to be a gimmick.  People are bombarded with “You’ve Won $1,000,000!” mass mailers, why would they see our “Free Hotdog and Burgers!” sign and think there wasn’t a gimmick behind it.

Today, try to get outside of your processes, outside of your programs, and try to see what they could look like from another perspective.  Be on the outside, and look in.

November 15th, 2007 by Pastor Matt

Yeah… I’m on a vision kick. I go through these little spurts where I concentrate on one thing, and that’s about all I think about (my SP would call this a “season”). I sat here staring at my laptop thinking… I don’t want to write about vision again… what should I write about?! Well it’s not working, I’m going to have to stay on the vision kick for at least one more post.

After I first wrote out my vision, I felt like that wonderful feeling of accomplishment. I was so excited about it that I just had to run and tell someone about it. My wonderful wife was the victim. I got in front of her and just talked her ear off about absolutely everything. This is what we’re going to do here and then we’re going to do this and then that and meanwhile this is going on and that will be there and thenthewholethingwilljustbesocrazythatnobodyknowswhatisgoingon!!! After going through this whole deal I took a breath and said something like, “isn’t that awesome?”

Well, her reaction wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. A dull look of confusion and a sensitive yet uninterested, “uh huh. that’s great.”

*Thud* that was the sound that I heard. I’m not quite sure where it came from. Likely my brain falling back down out of la la land. I was planning on having a big CM meeting and throwing all of this same stuff out on the table… and I wanted the reaction to be just a little bit different than that. I had to go back to the desk. I then did what Jim Wideman would call “cutting up the elephant.” I got out my vision for the ministry, looked at the sheet of paper, and picked out a sentence. I took that sentence and took it in to my wife. Then I said, “we’re going to start… and this is how we’re going to do it.”

Stay away from the thud. Walk out your vision step by step.