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My HURRYING HOME Strategy

March 8, 2007 in Family, Goals, GOD, Leadership, Mi Vida Loca, Productivity, The Connection Church with 2 Comments

This past Sunday, I preached about work.To listen to the sermon, click HERE and play the Happily Ever After Sermon.

Anytime I preach, I try to look into my own life and grow. I don’t want to just get up and talk about something without ever applying it in my own life. How hypocritical would that be?Given, not EVERYTHING I may preach about applies directly to my life, but I always do my best to make an application and live out whatever it is that I am sharing about. I wouldn’t have it any other way.SO, here it is, the practical applications for my own life…5 seemingly simple things:

#1. ARRIVE ON TIME – This means getting to the office NO LATER than 8:00am. I need to quit being lazy and showing up at 9:00 or 9:30am. I have done excellent in this area this week.

#2. LEAVE ON TIME – Leave the office by 5:00pm. This is related to #1. If I get there on time, I can leave on time.

#3. BE HOME - When I get home, I need to be home. I have this tendency to work even after I get home. I need to leave the computer off and just BE HOME.

#4. ONE NIGHT – I need to only work ONE night per week. Being a pastor often requires that you meet with people and make phone calls in the evenings. After all, most people work during the day. I need to limit all of those meetings, phone calls, etc to ONE night per week. Preferably the same night every week. That way, Amber and Couper know that I work X-night of the week. This one won’t always be consistent, but I am going to keep it as consistent as I can.

#5. GUARD THE DAYS OFF – Last, I need to protect my days off better. This means no work related e-mail or phone calls on my day off. First, I am going to try this with Fridays. We’ll see how good I do and then maybe I can add Saturdays.

This will be a big challenge for me! Realistically, if I get really good at numbers 1 through 4, #5 will be a piece of cake because my work will already be done.Cole always says, “if you lose your family, you lose your ministry.” I want to be as effective for the kingdom of God as I can and I want to love my family the best that I can. This list is stuff that I really want to build into my life BEFORE Couper is born. So I have a good headstart…about 2 months. I realize, of course, that being a pastor means doing whatever it takes and that sometimes, I won’t be able to stick to these guidelines. At the end of my message this past week, I encouraged you to make some choices that would help you to cheat work rather than home. I just shared the choices that I made this week…what are yours?

Pre-Birth Baby Class

March 3, 2007 in Family, Mi Vida Loca with Comments Off

Today we went to our first pre-birth baby class. I am not a jerk…And, I won’t lie…it was grueling. All day on the floor (I am not a floor person) learning how to breathe. I learned how to breathe a long time ago and seem to be doing well with it.HAHA! Maybe I am a little bit of a jerk. In all honesty, the class was well worth it. I learned a lot of useful information and I am excited about being Amber’s coach. The only negative thing about it is that if she has the scheduled C-Section (which it is looking like will happen) I won’t get to use any of this new breathing information that I learned.Pray that Couper turns so that Amber can have a regular birth!I’ll probably share more on this next week…today was part one of two in the class!AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Hi ho, Hi ho, its home to work we go

February 27, 2007 in Family, Leadership, Productivity, The Connection Church with 2 Comments

I have been working on my sermon for this coming Sunday all week. We are doing this series called Happily Ever After and this week is Chapter 4: The Career. The sermon is all about balancing our jobs and our time at home.And I have to say, its been very convicting as I prepare to speak this week. I am a workaholic by nature. I come from a family of self-employer business owners and hard workers. Its in my blood. Work is what I love to do. It drives my life sometimes even.BUT WHEW! God has really been making me feel like I am a big jerk sometimes. I have been doing a really great job lately about balancing things. Amber would even affirm that right now!I have had all of this in the back of my head since the start of 2007 (new years resolution stuff) but now I am going to attempt to really verbalize it and work it out in my life.So here is what I am doing. Before Couper is born, I am setting some rules in my life that will help me balance work and home. But I am in a special predicament because my job is quite different than most.

How do you balance family and ministry? How do you develop healthy boundaries? Few occupations take a toll like ministry. Ministry has unique benefits. But ministry also has unique emotional, relational, and spiritual challenges. -Mark Batterson

BUT, family is more important than ministry. At the same time, the more personal sacrifices leaders make the more of a difference we’ll make in people’s lives. Those of us who are occupationally-driven, like me, face a danger: work becomes home and home becomes work.That is why we have to have some self-imposed limits. Lucky for me, I don’t mind saying no. So I am already one step ahead.I just need to figure out what will help me BE OFF on my days off. So, I am going to try an experiment. No e-mail on fridays and no work-related phone calls on fridays. I simply won’t check the e-mail and I won’t answer the calls.We’ll see how this works out for me…

Amber’s Birthday

February 21, 2007 in Family, Mi Vida Loca with Comments Off

Celebrated Amber’s birthday on Monday night. Toots, I absolutely love you. You’ll probably never read this, but you mean more to me than anything in the world! I love you.I had a bunch of her friends (our connection group) meet us as a surprise at TGI Fridays, one of Amber’s favorite restaurants. It was a night full of fun. For her birthday, I gave her a pregnancy massage. I think she’ll like it since she has been tired and sore.Lesson learned this week: your spouse always comes first. Shower her with gifts, impress her, show her that you love her, whatever it takes.