The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director. Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year. God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started i...
Jesus would give and give of Himself, and then steal away to the mountains or somewhere and find a quiet place. I try to follow His example in this but honestly it eludes me most times.
Friday is our day off. As much as I absolutely love pastoral ministry I find myself hanging on for Friday each week in order to rejuvenate. Many times what I have hung on for by a thread ends up going by the wayside. I'm not blaming Larry...it's just life.
Although our phone rang off the hook today, we I tried to get as much peace as possible and time to ourselves. We try extremely hard to take this one day a week and forsake anything that is not an absolute emergency, and honestly this is very difficult. Although there really are not that many bona fide emergencies, things just find their way to us. I even try to leave a lot of my cleaning and stuff for other time during the week so we can have this day together, but it just doesn't happen many times because people track us down on our phones and call every number possible for us, and just keep it ringing until we answer. Sometimes I have even had people drive to my home and knock on the door if I just don't answer the phone or, they will call one of our kids' cell phones to say, "hey, tell your Mom this or that..." (Downside of having teens with cell phones.) I personally would just like to shut the phone completely OFF however then we get concerned about what could be a true emergency.
I would have just given up long ago and said, "the heck with the day off" but I realize, in order to rejuvenate and run hard the rest of the week, we really need it and if nothing else our marriage needs it. I've seen a lot of my friends burn out, quit, not make it in ministry because they simply didn't persevere in taking this little bit of time each week. As it is we have less than most people out there in the world who have a couple days off a week. Ministry is different. Most Saturdays it takes a major amount of the day to tie up all the loose ends for Sunday that just didn't get done by Thursday, or we have church activities going on. No complaint there, it just is what it is. But despite the difficulty of managing the actual day off, I'll keep trying and persevering to do this because my personal upkeep is important and my family is important.
We were essentially kid-less today as Dustin and Stephen got up this morning and took off to swim and go to the church. Then they came back and picked up Jordan and took him back to Stephen's. Savanna has been living with the Harts for the week. For spring break our home has basically been really quiet, which has been kinda nice. Well...really nice. :-) Things will probably get cranked up again tomorrow night as I think Bobby is coming to spend the night, and there's no such thing as quiet when Bobby's here. But we love him...
So this morning, I tried to sleep in as much as possible this morning, as there are so few days we can. I'd rather sleep than almost anything. We managed a little bit of sleep before the phone started mercilessly ringing. Then we got dressed for the day and went out to get all the stuff for Easter. We'll have 15 people here, so we had a lot of stuff to get. Lots of food and stuff for all the kids baskets, including Bobby.
Since all the kids were out of the house today/tonight we decided to take advantage of it and go on the date we've been wanting to go on. We had a gift card for Benedetto's, and decided to make reservations for this evening. Wow, what a place. So nice. We went and had a great time just quietly talking and listening to the many Sinatra songs that were being sung live, by a sweet old man who played the keyboard and sang.
We're still by ourselves for the evening...so...it's time for me to stop blogging and enjoy every last moment before tomorrow comes and I am back to work and getting things shored up for Easter Sunday. I'm so glad to have Larry to myself tonight. It's been a while.
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