Cause to Pause

Woodland Community Church in Bradenton, Fl is sending a team to minister to a Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. Derek Berg will be a part of that team as will his wife. As many details as they currently have can be located on Derek’s blog here.
Their trip leaves in less than a month.
If you have ever been blessed, encouraged or made to laugh by Derek, join me in supporting them in any way you can. Financially would be great, but in prayer (really, do it this time) would be more than appreciated as well. Whip out that fancy phone, put task reminders in there for

• every Wednesday beginning June 24, ending July 8
• once per day, beginning July 9, ending July 18.

Think about it-the guy is willfully leaving the gulf coast of Florida and going to Arizona and New Mexico in the middle of the summer! If that doesn’t demonstrate “following God’s leading” I don’t know what does. As Kerry Mackey said at the 2009 FLCITRT, we are ministers.

Finally, at long last, here is the review I have been promising. Or has it really been that long of wait? I suppose if your life depends on this article, it has been a long time, but if this article is just one of the many facets of your life, you’ve probably been a little more patient. I guess it all depends on your perspective.

Perspective. That is what the book The Noticer by Andy Andrews is about. It is interesting that when we look at a given situation, it appears completely different if it has happened to us than if we are looking at the same situation from the outside. Jones knows this. And he communicates that to a whole community. Starting with the protagonist in the story, Andy, who he found under a bridge crying about his lot in life, continuing all the way through grieving widows, couples about to divorce, you name it. In very simple (continue reading…)

Been a few weeks, but here are a few things that derserve a shout out:

1. Andy Andrews and his book The Noticer. That review I have been promising is  coming. Honest. However, the short version of the review is that so much of life is about “perspective”. I once saw a cartoon that said “I’d have a more positive outlook if a lot of good things started happening to me.”
This book shows that not only are good things probably already happening and you are just overlooking them, but by intentionally noticing them, you can can have a positive effect on others.
2. Wes Harris from Extend Support. We have an image on our site that has an irregularly shaped border. When the image displays, it would have the faintest of gray outline box. After double checking photoshop to see if it was part of the image, I called our CMS and got Wes. We found out it only happens only on certain high resolution monitors-none of which were his or his co-workers. Inspite of not being able to duplicate the problem we did find a solution.
The reason Wes makes the list is even though he couldn’t see the problem, he was NOT going to let it go. I really appreciate it when customer service people are tenacious. It’s the difference between “the soup is on aisle four” and “let’s walk to aisle four together and I will help you find the type of soup you are looking for”.
Lord, help me to be like this.
3. Summer break. Seems like I can get so much more done!
4. Tweetpsyche.com. Plug in someone’s twitter name and it gets the last 1000 posts and gives you a psych eval on them. Interesting to see how many of us in the church world talk about “upward motion” and “positive emotions”.