We all know hell is a messed up place (a tad bit of an understatement). But this graphic helps visualize it in a way old gamers will appreciate.
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I'm passing on to you something I'm going to share with our ministry collaboration team at church. It's from Patrick Lencioni. Five Dysfunctions of a Team Absence of Trust Trust is critical in building a high-performance team and lack of trust is very visible in a dysfunctional team. The most telltale sign of lack of trust is that no one would bring up any issue/problems which will show him/her weak or vulnerable. ‘Having the guard on all the time’ is a characteristic of a team member in a dysfunctional team. I remember my experience with a leadership team; even though the project was in very bad shape, the manager in charge would always talk about great things the team was accomplishing and any uttering by other team members to the contrary was termed by the leader as ‘lack of team work’! Needless to say, there was no trust in the…
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It hit me about midway through our three Easter services that this morning was only the second time in 19 years I haven't preached on Easter. The only other time was in the months leading up to the grand opening of our church plant in San Diego -- when we didn't have any Sunday morning services. Truth be told, it felt a bit weird to not be preaching. I've always enjoyed the Easter crowd because it is so diverse in nature ... a challenge I find energizing and engaging. Plus, Easter lends itself to great themes which are fun to speak about: hope, redemption, transformation, and more. I'm learning to appreciate the different "angles" of worship. This morning, my view was from the side.
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Warning: a techie tip is about to follow. For the non-geeks in the crowd, feel free to play Solitaire for a few minutes. Actually ... even the non-geeks will appreciate this. Have you ever needed to edit a photo or image and not have Photoshop installed on your computer? It happens to me on my work laptop on a regular basis (I have Adobe C3 installed at home). Pixlr is a free online image editor that looks pretty slick. I took it for a test drive this afternoon and it will do two-thirds of what most people need to do (and maybe more). Check it out!
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It's a fact of life that most of us are short-sighted when it comes to the ripples we create. I still remember receiving a birthday card from my mother when I was in college that contained a short sentence of her confidence in me. Unfortunately, the physical card is long gone -- the victim of being given to an eighteen year-old with a teenager's perspective on things that matter. However, the words, the feelings expressed in that card live on to this day in my heart. They are ripples that continue to grow and expand with each passing year. Words of affirmation are like that. Much beyond the initial splash they may create, the lasting effect comes from the way they ripple through our remaining years. They become a point of reference that reminds us that though the world may seem a dark place, all is not lost. Just the…
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