Resonance

On a playground, the way you swing higher and higher is to pump your legs in the same rhythm that the swing would swing if you pulled it back and let it go - the resonant frequency. The way you push down a small but formidable tree (I as did last week) is to push at the natural frequency that the tree naturally oscillates at (in that case about once per second back and forth, back and forth). Tiny.. small.. bigger.. bigger.. bigger.. BIGGER.. BIGGER.. down!

People jumping to music in bleachers or wind gusts hitting bridges are two other places where jumping or gusting just in the right regular tempo makes the movement grow bigger and bigger until it breaks.

A leader I worked with always talked about starting things at the right time of year - the time of year that makes sense to people. The more I think about it, that was a commitment to hitting the organization at it resonate frequency.

To move anything... a company, an organization, a family, an employee... push at the resonate frequency. As it naturally oscillates, push things at just the right time to make the oscillation bigger. Unveil exciting things at the annual conference. If your kids are especially receptive at bedtime, speak things that mold their character at bedtime -- not when they're cranky right after school. Your church operates on the school calendar... start new things at the semester breaks.

Move things at the regular frequency with which they want to be moved - the timing they "resonate" with. Any other timing than that has the feeling of being jerky and dampens the effect you are trying to achieve.

Smile

If you are feeling down, just start smiling. I'm not talking about tricking yourself psychologically. I'm talking about how the physical action of your smiling face sends signals to your brain changing your mood. Try it!

Why can 'no' not sometimes be 'yes'?

I'm not a big James Dobson fan, but one thing he said years ago has really stuck with me.

As parents, sometimes we just get in the habit of saying 'no' to our kids.

Can I play with your iPhone? No
Can I have some ice cream (30 minutes before dinner)? No
Can we stop by the gas station and get a Coke? No

Many times 'no' is the right answer, but does it always have to be?

Sometime soon, when you would normally say 'no' to your kids, try saying 'yes'. It'll be fun to see their reaction.

Is there really a good reason why 'no' cannot sometimes be 'yes'?

Book of Remembrance

Warning: This is a little touch-y/feel-y but sometimes leadership requires that.

Pastor Harry Li inspired me a while back to have what he calls a "Book of Remembrance". It's just a journal where you can write down funny, cute, or special things that happen in your family.

A few keys:
-- If you're the one starting the book, only you can write in it. If the kids or your spouse ask to write in it, say "Get your own book!"
-- Keep the book in a certain place with a pen attached so it's very easy to write things down. If it's always getting misplaced or there's no pen around, it'll be too hard and you won't write in it.
-- Pull it out every once in a while and read some posts to the family... great laughs and special moments.

If something feels funky...

One of my favorite leaders, Bill Hybels, says "If something feels funky, engage!" He speaks of that mostly in regard to work team dynamics going south, but I find it's useful in any area of life.

If the fridge is making a weird noise or the car has a weird smell, waiting won't make it go away. And, every day you wait, you worry.

Whether it's a relationship problem, a technical problem, a mechanical problem, a work team problem... just engage sooner instead of later and you'll keep it from getting worse.

Sometimes you'll find, when you do bite the bullet and engage the problem, that it's not quite as bad as you thought.

If something feels funky, ENGAGE!

Thrash Early

In Linchpin, Seth Godin talks about thrashing early. Often we do things on our own in an organization and then the closer we get to the finish line of a project, the more and higher up people get involved in approving the end product. That is thrashing late... only getting the collective wisdom of the team near the end when it's too late to make it better. Thrashing early is hashing things out on the front end, and then as the project goes along there's less and less input needed from others.

That's thrashing early as a team, but what about thrashing early internally with your own relationship to the project? It's easy to put off the hard trashing til later. You glance and see a couple of things that need to change in that print piece being designed, but you think you'll let it go. And then you find yourself (on the day the piece was going to print thousands) having to hold things up because that one sentence doesn't make sense. You knew it wasn't right a week ago, but you didn't thrash early and say something.

Or, what about when you half-way review some creative work and think it's good enough, but then right before time to ship you see something that could have made it 10 times better.

Thrash early! Engage your brain and heart fully early on so there's time to act on what you think and feel before you get too close to the shipping date.

Gospel Goodness

First a note for the MoKids team at Mosaic Church... then a post for today.

SPECIAL INVITATION FOR THE MOKIDS TEAM
In special appreciation for all of your hard work through the year leading children closer to Jesus, on May 16 at Community Meal following the 2nd worship service, we'll honor all MoKids volunteers! We'll have a special seating area for all MoKids volunteers and their families. Of course, there will be some surprises as well. Please mark your calendar and plan to stay for the lunch that day as the church thanks you for your excellent service to our children.

GOSPEL GOODNESS
Do you ever fall into the trap of thinking the Gospel of Jesus Christ is just that we'll have our sins forgiven and go to heaven someday? I mean... those are great things but I think Jesus (who came to give us abundant life) has much more in mind. The next few days I'll be talking here about the awesome things we get when we embrace the Gospel.

For today... just one

The Gospel is not a judge knocking the gavel and proclaiming "sins forgiven... you are free to go".
The Gospel is a father saying "I forgive you... come to me".
Do you hear the amazing difference in those?

More Gospel Goodness tomorrow.... stay tuned...

A different kind of Sunday

At our church, we have three practices that we focus on. Worship, walk, and work. For quite a while, I've been focused on "work" -- doing things to help our church run in a more healthy way. I've even done that to a degree that it's often been keeping me out of attending worship as I strive to get that one more idea implemented or that one more person engaged.

Yesterday, I think I got back in balance and added a whole new component as well.

I arrived early to do some "work", preparing a few things to help the children's and enfolding ministries run smoothly.

Then, I attended "worship" and participated in great worship and heard an incredible message.

During second service, I did something different. I (along with two friends) decided to "walk" our neighborhood. Our goal was to meet people, to learn more about our neighborhood, and to minister to people we came across. Too often, I think of "walk" as "fellowship with Christian friends". But "walk" is much more than pita chips, spinach dip and cupcakes. That's a party. Parties are good and parties should continue to happen. But, for me, I'm seeing "walk" as much more than walking in fellowship together. I'm seeing our value of "walk" as "walking out the kingdom of God in our neighborhood". When we do that, Christian fellowship will definitely be a byproduct.

Worship... work... walk...

Gotta run... will flesh out more soon...

Update on the Arnn's

Wow! What a year. It is completely FLYING by quicker than any other year I can remember.

I want to give an update (especially for our awesome supporters) of all that's been going on at Mosaic the last few months!

As you know, since January I've been leading our children's ministry called MoKids.

Here are some MoKids highlights:
1) This Spring I encouraged my leaders to be "apprenticing" someone on their teams -- teaching them to do the job that they do. One leader in particular did that very well, and we're seeing the fruit! That leader has now moved up to help in a different role in MoKids, and the spot she left vacant has been filled with one of her "apprentices"! That's how it's supposed to work!

2) This summer, MoKids partnered with Child Evangelism Fellowship to hold kids' clubs out in the community bringing children the gospel and the love of Christ. We had 102 children attend clubs at two near-by apartment complexes. A number of children sought counsel about salvation and 4 children prayer to receive Christ as their Savior!

We had, for some time, had our eye on these two apartment complexes for ministry, but it took actually stepping out there for the vision to crystallize. It was a watershed week for MoKids as we officially expanded our strategy beyond "Partnering with Parents" and "Sunday Morning Ministries" to now include a third prong, "MoKids Community Ministries" -- children's ministry beyond the walls of the building. We plan to continue a weekly club in one of the apartment complexes and a quarterly party in the other. It is a beautiful thing to be out in the community.

3) The last few weeks have been extremely busy ones as we prepared for the new school year in MoKids. Some of systems and plans we've begun or improved in the last few weeks are: 1) A better plan for promoting kids to the next class/grade 2) Better use of our facilities 3) New curriculum in the elementary area that spans both worship hours - different but complementary content around one theme all morning!


Beyond MoKids, I'm also what we call a "ministry developer". I've focused on two main projects in that realm at Mosaic:

1) This summer we had a "Find Your FITT" fair -- FITT stands for faithfully investing time and talent. For the first time, we have consistent job descriptions for all volunteer roles and a system for getting people connected to serving.

2) I'm working with one of our pastors, Steven Weathers, to develop a midweek discipleship program for both children and adults. We are recognizing the need to take our people deeper in discipleship than they can go on Sunday mornings or in LifeGroups. We launched this ministry on Sept 2. Going well! The elementary kids are learning Phil 2:1-11 one verse per week. It's so powerful for chilren (and adults!) to memorize scripture and take God's word with us through the week.


Here are a few updates about the Arnn family:

-- We bought a house in July! We are fairly settled, but there are still lots of unpacked boxes! We're getting there though.

-- Alex is in a public charter school this year. It's going very well. Emmaleigh and Susannah are on the waiting list and are attending a Christian school until they get into the charter school as Debbie begins a new job.

-- I had the privilege of baptizing Emmaleigh and Alex on Easter at Mosaic this year.


Prayer requests:
-- Debbie's mom has not been feeling well. Please pray that it is nothing serious.

-- Please pray for community to further develop among the staff at Mosaic. We are all so busy doing our own thing that we don't take time to team together and find synergy.

-- Please pray for our new Wednesday night initiative - Mosaic Midweek Discipleship. We could still use more leaders in the elementary area to disciple the kids in prayer, scripture memory and worship.

-- Pray that our girls get into that charter school right away!

I think that's it for now! Thank you to all of our financial and prayer supporters! We could not be creating a church for all people across racial and economic lines without you!

These are tough times in our world. I encourage you to press on! Don't grow weary doing what God has called you to do. Depend on Him daily.

Blessings,
Allen

So thankful for teamwork!

On Sunday at Mosaic, we kicked off a season of volunteer recruitment called "Find Your FITT". I'm so thankful for all the people who contributed time and energy to the project. I'll post some pictures soon.

First 100 days

I'm on day 35 as pastor of the MoKids ministry at Mosaic. It's been a busy month! I'm the kind of guy who finds the area of biggest need and dives in to do whatever it takes to fix it. Right now I'm in the glitzy and prestigious world of 2-year-olds. That has been our toughest room to staff. So... again tomorrow... I'll be working in that room teaching our 2's about how Jesus says that God will go after us like a lost sheep and joyfully carry us home on his shoulders. I just hope no adults come by and see me singing and doing motions... "His love swallows me up... with one big gulp" :) (Kris, I hope I don't hurt my back!)

While I don't need to be in 2's much longer, it is always good to take short seasons and experience things way down in the ministry. Last week in 2's I learned some things and have already implemented improvements for this Sunday. That would never have happened if I were directing things from above in a vacuum.

I was doing some calculations to better understand our need for more volunteers. I find that we ministered to 30.4% more children in our ministry January 09 than we did January 08. We have 70.8% more kids in the 2-year-old class! That explains the need... we just need God to send us some great volunteers!

Fun stuff. I love working at my church.

Responsibilities vs. your dream

"If your dreams and responsibilities are running crosswise, you are probably living the wrong life. You've got to take responsibilities and dreams and fuse them together where your responsibility IS your dream. You are responsible to live the life God created you to live." Erwin McManus

Hour for hour

I had an obvious but challenging thought this week. As church staff members, every time we spend an hour doing something for our jobs, someone in our congregation had to do an hour of work to pay for it. Every time we spend $15 of church money a real person in our congregation had to labor for an hour or two to pay for it.

I find myself feeling very accountable when I think about an actual person doing actual work so I can spend church time and church money.

The next time I decide how I'll spend my next hour or spend the next $10 or $20 of church budget I want to be thinking about the people who labored to make it possible doing things like this:
- cutting grass for an hour
- selling cars for an hour
- cleaning houses for an hour
- brewing coffee for an hour
- changing diapers in a day care for an hour
- directing traffic in the hot sun for an hour

This may seem really obvious and simplistic. And, I acknowledge that people are tithing joyfully not begrudgingly. No one is sitting around thinking about this hour for hour deal; they are giving to God. BUT... it does help me prioritize my spending of church time and money when I think of the decisions that workers are making all over Little Rock and beyond to labor in their job that next hour and give the money earned to Mosaic Church.

Yesterday, I had to rush order a case of labels needed for child check-in this Sunday. My neglect of that known need caused me to spend more on shipping than I should have. Imagine if I had to go to a member of the congregation at his workplace and ask him to work the next 2 hours to pay for the excessive shipping cost related to my procrastination.

One other related thought... An old friend of mine was a missionary to Romania. In Romania, people don't make much money and giving to the church is low. In order to do the things the church wants to do, people in this one area painstakingly craft and sell shoes to make money for the church. I find that very challenging.

Maybe an axiom is in order! When deciding how to spend church time or church money, ask yourself: "Would someone make shoes for this?"

The power of accountability

My wife and I have tried dieting separately off and on through the years semi-successfully. We've had a breakthrough now though. We've been dieting TOGETHER. We each set a weight goal (really a mini-goal on the way to our true goal weight). We both LOVE desserts, but we agreed that we wouldn't eat ANY sweets until we both met our mini-goals. It's been about 3 weeks with no sweets (and for me about 6 weeks with not a single Coke!) Debbie met her goal two days ago and I met mine today.

We'll celebrate with a reasonable dessert tonight and then we need to set our next weight goals and decide what we are going to keep each other accountable to regarding food and exercise.

This makes me think. We are succeeding in the weight loss department through accountability, but what else should we be using accountability to help us accomplish? Probably lots of things! We should think on that.

What are you and your spouse or friend working on together?

Woohoo for Firefox tab hot keys

I'm excited to have learned the hot keys to navigate between open tabs in firefox.

On the mac...
ctrl+tab - toggles sequentially through open tabs
ctrl+shift+tab - toggle backwards through open tabs
cmd(apple key)+1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or etc - goes straight to tab 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 etc

cmd+t - opens new tab
cmd+w - closes tab

Wow

I was just part of something amazing. A friend named Carlos was in his basement my himself leading worship in front of his mac book pro. 170 friends from around the country/world joined in the worship via his blog and were able to participate through live sharing of the their worship thoughts through chat. So often, worship is a band leading, everyone signing, and a few people shouting out a thought or two. This was everyone shouting out their instantaneous worship, their prayers, their thoughts.

I had my kids sitting with me and they chatted in a couple of praise thoughts of their own.

Carlos' blog is www.ragamuffinsoul.com

Park and Movie Day

Today, we went to Riverfront Park and to the dollar movies. Here are some pix...

Em by a sculpture...


Mr. Cool...


Susie...


More Susie...


"I didn't want water, I wanted a diet coke."


Dollar Movies are great!


This family really gets into it's movies... you should have seen them after the movie. Alex was spinning, kicking, karate chopping Em. Pretty funny... like when we saw Ratatouille and Em/Alex were crawling through the movie theater afterwards like rats!

Catching up with old friends

Via Facebook, I caught up this week with two friends I haven't seen in years. One of them I haven't seen in 19 years. It turns out he's a pastor in the delta of eastern Arkansas. What's even wilder is that he has recently picked up my pastor's book, "How to Build a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church". He commented how the delta is a place that really needs that.

Just being at our church in Little Rock, it's easy to miss the multi-ethnic church movement that is beginning to spread.

Need a new blog address

I'd like to get back to blogging, but I need a new blog address.

allentexas.blogspot.com made sense when I was an "Allen" living in Texas. And, I actually lived in the city of Allen, Texas. But now I live in Little Rock, AR.

Once I get some creative juices flowing on that, I'll be back on here more.

AT&T Internet at Starbucks

This is a great day. Found out I can log into the internet at Starbucks using my sbcglobal dsl account.

Thank you Starbucks! However, I HATE the new brown cups.



Bring back the green!!!!!!!