Jeff' Blog; Weekend Update

Awesome weekend at Alive! Kathy and I attended Alive Church Online while we were away for the weekend celebrating our 28th anniversary. If you didn't get a chance to here our Executive Pastor, Jason Marsden, speak, you will want to catch it online in our service archives - great job Jason - Kathy and I totally enjoyed you from Sedona.

I love the illustration Jason used pouring the water from one container to another as he talked about the Timeless Truth of God's Word and how we are committed to continually using Relevant Environments as we communicate it.

What a great blessing it was for myself and Kathy to be able to spend time alone as a couple celebrating our 28th. We had the incredible privileged of spending a night at the Ritz in Dove Mountain - thanks to Chris from Life Group. Wow - that place is out of this world - thanks for the blessing Chris!!! Then we drove to Sedona, one of our favorite AZ destinations and spent the night there. Did some touring and hiking Sat. and Sunday and back home now ready to start the week.

I'm looking forward to wrapping up the weekend talk series, Unlock, this coming weekend. This series has definitely challenged me in Unlocking My Personal Potential! It has helped me to step up in a few places and dream and pray bigger in others.

Superbowl Sunday is next weekend - it is a great time to try Saturday night service at 5pm so you can go to your Superbowl party early.

Thanks again Jason - home run! Not only am I thrilled to be a part of a church committed to Relevant Environments - but I want to be personally as well in all areas of my life!

Jeff’s Blog: 28 Years Of Marriage

This Saturday, Jan. 28^th, Kathy and I will celebrate our 28^th wedding anniversary. Just some thoughts about marriage after 28 years:

1. I’ve recently completed my Meyers Briggs personality profile with our staff and I am an INTP – it’s amazing anyone would want to live with me let alone for 28 years!
2. I married way above my head. Kathy is first class in more ways than I can share in this brief blog. – Not sure she knew what she was getting into?
3. One reason we made it to 28 years is our decision at the beginning was that this was a deal with no exit ramps. That decision early on made us face our problems knowing that either we deal with things and help them get better or we would be miserable.
4. Not much miserable about it all. Picking a mate with a lot of character and someone who is passionate about God as a follower of Jesus makes for more good times than bad.
5. Early on we decided that if something was of interest to the other than the other would explore it to see what the interest was. That allowed us to develop a lot of mutual interest. (now a days, Kathy says that I’m her hobby! Really my art is her hobby – but I’ll take the idea that I’m her hobby – after all I’m an INTP)
6. When we said “I do” we both were very clear that neither of us would ever be first place in the others life. We knew then and it has proved true, the more we each keep Christ in first place in our lives the better we can love and serve one another.
7. Her family – Kathy has such great roots! I hear so many young couples say that they are not marrying their fiancés family – ha!!! Ask anyone who’s been married for more than a few years – you are marrying the family! That has been a bonus and a blessing for me.
8. A good healthy understanding and definition of love – it’s a choice, not a feeling. It’s pretty cool when the two line up, but it that’s the barometer every storm will bring disaster – and there will be storms. I hear couples talk about how they “fell in love”. That sounds painful. Like you’re walking down the sidewalk and didn’t see a big hole and fell into it – like you had no choice! The choice of love is lasting – the feelings of love will always follow the choice but are fleeting when our choice follows our feelings.
9. Like anything in life that is worth our time, discipline is the key to having and staying in love. We talk about most of the disciplines we are committing to in our marriage vows - stay the course. If you do marriage can be like a fine wine – it gets better with age. (I don’t even like wine! But I’ve heard it said that it’s better with age.)
10. Freedom and celebration of who we are individually. She loves coffee, I hate it. I like NASCAR, she takes a nap. She likes working in the yard; I am only called upon if she needs me to carry something heavy for her. Having a King size bed helps, you can always get close for intimacy but when it comes time to sleep – give me my space. I’m an artist – she has a thing for artist!!! She’s a hot singer – I have a thing for hot singers!!!

Jeff's Blog: My Overwhelming Mercy For The Italian Cruise Ship Captain

A recent international story regarding a sinking Italian Cruise Ship got me to thinking a little about leadership. Here are seven things all leaders should know that this story solidifies:

1. Stay the course: When you get off course of the final destination (vision) you are in danger of hitting the rocks and sinking the ship!

2. Know what you are getting yourself into upfront: As a leader you need to know you have made a commitment to go “down with the ship” so to speak, especially should you be the one to cause it to sink.

3. Enjoy the blessings: The charge of going down with the ship holds in it the promise of enjoying the blessings while the ship is on course and there is smooth sailing.

4. Know when to enjoy the blessings: You don’t deserve dinner in your cabin with your lady friend after you have collided with the rocks and the passengers are scrambling for their lives.

5. Listen to wise counsel: We all make stupid mistakes from time to time and that is why we all need wise counsel. When your wise counselors are saying; “Hey you idiot get back on the ship”, listen to them. You could still be a celebrated, forgiven captain even after sinking a ship - provided you weren't being totally stupid to begin with. I mean hey - look at American politicians!

6. Workout: Seriously, if you are in such bad shape that you can’t get out of a lifeboat after falling in you need to consider using your own gym that you have on your ship!

7. Find A New Career: Once you break trust by abandoning your post, it’s hard to regain it. Let’s be honest, even if the cruise line is offering deep discounts, do you really want to sail on a ship in the near future knowing this guy is the captain?

Jeff's Blog: Green Or Not?

Because of my position I am often asked about things that you will probably never hear me talk about in my weekend talks. Not because I don’t care or have an opinion (If you know me you know I have an opinion on most things!) but because that the mission and vision of what I do in my position is very clear and I stick with it in every talk. So, I thought my blog might be a place to give voice to some issues that I am often asked about. Besides I would love to hear your opinion.

One that I often am asked is about being Green? Am I Green and should the Church be more Green? Here’s my simple answer: As a follower of Jesus, God the Father is my loving heavenly Father and we are called to be faithful stewards of God’s creation, responsible for its care and use. That being said let me give a few of my thoughts and observations:

1. Christian Environmentalism is more about the fact that we worship and acknowledge our creator. Be it that we are being faithful stewards with the money He gives us or the world we live in, we do so as an act of worship to our creator who gives us all things. Unfortunately, many Christians are motivated by the trendiness of being “green” or quilted into it by the world, rather than living the value of worship and the results of that being stewardship of all God has given us. Stewardship is not just a trendy thing.

2. The other concern is that stewardship is replaced with a subservient mentality. In other words, we cannot allow concern for the environment to lead to worship of the environment. We worship the creator, not creation. It could be easy to buy into the mentality that we were created for the earth rather than the truth of the Bible; God created the earth for us. Much like we see in scripture that the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath. God has blessed us with much that is for our benefit, not so that we would worship any of His gifts. We are to worship Him alone.

How quickly the trends of society change, already this issue is quickly taking a back seat. Just listen to the political debates and you will see where the trends of society are going. For the Christian, ours is not to be trending and make the Bible fit into the latest and greatest concerns rather to live by the values God has given us through the Bible – His Word. As we do so we will be able to avoid the trendy and hip things of culture and faithfully steward the blessings of the Father.

Jeff's Blog: Weekend Wrap-Up

I have to start out this weekend wrap-up blog with sadness: my Broncos got spanked! Horribly - embarrassingly - pathetically spanked!!! Disappointing, yet they ended the season a lot better than I thought they were going to at the beginning of the season.

On the upside: at Alive Church we baptized 4 people over the weekend! Celebrating a new spiritual journey through baptism never gets old. I will have to try to get the video from 3rd service; a young couple got baptized. The dad went first and while the mom was getting in the water their little boy, I think about 7 years old, went running down the aisle and onto the stage to hug his dad. It was so cool! So awesome!!! I love seeing everyone sign the certificates. (the cake after each service is pretty good too!)

I continued in the weekend talk series: Unlock. We looked at how to unlock Fulfillment in life through serving one another in love. Take a few moments and read through Gal 5:1-14 or catch the video archive at alivechurch.com. From the talk, remember we are Called to Freedom. God wants and intends for us to live in complete freedom. Next weekend the talk will be about one of my favorite topics: Unlock Truth. The more we live in Truth in every area of our lives the more we will live a rich and satisfying life. (John 10:10)

A special thanks to all the folks who talked via Skype this weekend - especially our Church Online Host, Don Young from Ohio who Skyped in all three services.

This was the last weekend for our Christmas offering, so we will be announcing the total next weekend and begin giving it out to the community and missions ministries that we are committed to supporting.

I hope and pray that you all have a great week this week. If you are like me I have a lot on the plate this week, starting with a staff training tomorrow morning. We are working through the Meyers Briggs stuff so that we can better communicate with one another. I am loving this stuff and have brought it home to work through with Kathy as well. It has really helped in our staff and personal communications. I have a couple of paintings to complete this week and putting in some time to prepare a little more for out next talk series that begins Feb. 11th/12th: Pure Sex.

Have a great week!

Top Ten Time Management Tips To Begin 2012

2012 is well underway and most of us have some specific goals we want to attain this year. The number one reason I hear people say they can’t or didn’t reach their goals is they just didn’t have the time. Yet, we all have the same amount of hours in the day. In fact we have all been given enough time to do ALL that God wants and created us to do. So, here is my list of Top Ten Time Management Tips for 2012:

#10 – Set a specific time (and a limit) to check emails and social networks. If not you will spend time needed to be productive doing email and browsing your social networks.

#9 – When you do check your emails, do something with them. I am amazed at how many people keep emails in their in-box and then end up reading through them multiply times. Read them and respond, file or throw away. If you say you don’t have time at that moment to deal with them then you probably need to go back and read #10 again!

#8 - Realize you are not as good at multi – tasking as you think. Everyone thinks they can multi-task! Guess what, it shows up in your productivity and the quality of your work. You will get a lot more done and reach more of your goals when you set aside focused time to do your work.

#7 – If you are a person who does “To Do” list, make sure it is a priority list. Many times people take what was not accomplished today and put it at the very top of tomorrow’s list. A good “To Do” list should be made by priorities not by what didn’t get done today.

#6 – Delegate, delegate, delegate. If a task can be done by someone else and they can do it 80% as well as you can – delegate it!

#5 – Decide when not to be a perfectionist. Some things don’t require all the effort we put into them. Give your best time and greatest effort toward your top priorities.

#4 – Write things down. A big mistake when it comes to time management is to think that you can remember things without either writing them down or putting them in your Smartphone with an alert.

#3 – Invest time in planning. You’ve heard it before but it is so true: failing to plan is planning to fail. If you do not spend time planning toward your goals and priorities, something will come along and steal all your time!

#2 – Learn to say “NO”. This one simple two letter word will add more value toward time management than any thing else. Say it out loud right now. Practice: No, No, No!!!

#1 – Live by your priorities. This is the number one thing bar none when it come to time management. In fact your life will radically change as you begin to live by priorities. You will have more time, be more productive and fulfilled than ever. If you have never prayerfully considered your top priorities for your life – for 2012 – for the coming week – this is where you begin.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff that life is made of.” Don’t squander 2012. Don’t make excuses, you have been given this incredible gift of time by God to do and be all that He created you to do and be. Be a good and faithful steward. When you hear yourself saying you don’t have time to do the things you really want or you wish you had more hours in the day – you are probably doing some things that God does not want you to do because He has given you all the time you need to do all that He created you to do.

Happy New Year!!!