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What To Do First to Make a Profit

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 inve

Why my day ended up being perfect


Our miniature dachshund, Geena, woke me up at the absolute crack of dawn, barking and whining. She was all in a tizzy, needing to go outside because she…had the runs. No, not the urge to run around the yard, the other kind of runs. Yeack!!! I spent the first 15 minutes of my day in the dark hours of the morning, staring out at the pond, waiting for my dog to get through being sick in the yard so I could let her back in. This was like a prophetic foreshadowing of what kind of day I was going to have at the church office. Yes, you could say it was a poopy day. That’s about the best way I can put it. Nothing earth shatteringly tragic, just stuff that…well, piled up…pardon the pun.

So I came into the office and noticed the light of my bathroom in my office was on. I would have never left it on, detailed person that I am. So, I went over to investigate and shut it off and discovered a room full of dirt, mud, wet towels, and more. It was disgusting. Did I make this mess? Of course not. First of all, I’m diametrically opposed to dirt. Absolutely against it. Mud? Even a worse aversion to it. Due to my love for shoes…I avoid it whenever possible.

Who caused this? Well, both my boys worked at the church all day yesterday cleaning and working out in the parking lot. They cleaned up before church and they always choose to use Momma’s bathroom because…well, for obvious reasons. Mine is a lot nicer than their Daddy’s. I keep it cleaner, there are always towels there and lots of bath and body products in there. So despite the pink theme…they will choose that any day over my husband’s bathroom. So when they showered and cleaned themselves up, they left a huge mess in there.

So I went from poop at home…to dirt at the office. I just shut the door and said, “I’ll deal with it later…” because there was so much work piled up on my desk in preparation for Easter Sunday. (Get the theme? I was dealing with piles today. Piles of poop, piles of dirt, piles of work.) The pile of work was my priority so I shut the bathroom door and tried to ignore the fact that in about an hour’s time I would have to figure out what bathroom I was going to use. I certainly wasn’t going into my muddy and dirty one.

About an hour later while I’m totally engrossed in a big project that must be done before day’s end, Larry brought someone into my office for an unexpected meeting. Now, that right there is usually enough to make me anxious about how I’m going to get everything done, though I say nothing…sometimes it makes me a little clumsier than usual because I’m just edgy. Usually my mind is somewhere else in such a case too – I don’t think about the meeting at hand, I am still thinking about my project. I called to our assistant to bring me a few things I needed for this spontaneous meeting and promptly knocked my full cup of tea all over my desk. It was a mess to say the least. Three of us worked to quickly sop it all up but the stack of papers I was using to work on my project in front of me were ruined.

Moving right along, I find out in the afternoon that while I’m still trying to get this project done in time for Easter Sunday (was hoping to wrap it up today), I get sudden notice that I have to fill out a bunch of papers for my kids that I didn’t know about and oh yeah…a $169.00 check that they never mentioned to me either. Suddenly I felt the urge to use the bathroom so I had to go in and…clean up the bathroom and go.

By this time I was seriously trying my best to shut out all those voices in my head that were telling me to…put my kids in military school, find Geena a new home, put a permanent sign on my office door that says, ‘DO NOT DISTURB – IN INTERCESSORY PRAYER’ and just keep it there even though it would not be true, at least all the time.

Okay, so then I come home tonight and I just really want to relax. Somehow I got all my initiatives at work done today, but I am beat. We had so much to do today in getting ready for Easter and it’s not all done yet. But tomorrow’s my day off and I’m (God willing) taking it, so thus began getting a little down time tonight. I get on the computer and start reading a few blogs which I so enjoy doing. Going to one, I see an article on Tony Campolo and some things he has said lately. He’s always pushing the envelope, and people either really like him or think he’s a lunatic. Back when he spoke at our bible college 20 years ago, some things he said really made sense, but quite frankly I think the guy is going loopy. Get this…he recently said:

"I am saying that there is no salvation apart from Jesus; that’s my evangelical mindset. However, I am not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians”

“Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is being saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving”

“...what can I say to an Islamic brother who has fed the hungry, and clothed the naked? You say, “But he hasn’t a personal relationship with Christ.” I would argue with that. And I would say from a Christian perspective, in as much as you did it to the least of these you did it unto Christ. You did have a personal relationship with Christ, you just didn’t know it.”

These are some of the craziest things I’ve ever heard the man say. (If you want to see more of this lunacy, just click here.) You can’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and not know it. I do not believe you can wake up one day and just have a sudden awareness that you are in a relationship with Jesus and just didn’t realize it. Coming to Jesus is a decision. People go back and forth as to whether you find Him or He finds you, but in any case - you KNOW what has happened. It's not like, "oops! I did it again...I was in relationship with Jesus and didn't even know it..." I haven't heard anything so boneheaded as this in a really long time.

I thought I had problems with a poopy dog, muddy bathroom, tight deadlines, soppy desk, tea-stained papers, and unexpected bills. But next to a theologian who believes you can have a relationship with Jesus and not know it…I’m brilliant. Come to think of it, in comparison to this, the Northside staff, and all the people in ministry who we hang out with are the most intelligent people in the world!

They say when you look around you someone always has it worse than you. Reading Tony Campolo’s thoughts today, I see it’s true. He's much worse off than me or any of my cronies. He's got worse problems than a pooping dog or a dirty bathroom. He's evidently lost his mind, and I’m a sheer genius.

Putting it in perspective, my life today was just perfect, evidently.

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