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...
It's still cold outside by Florida standards (I'm wearing my leather coat today) but in the house of God it was a beautiful day! It might have been cold outside but it was hot in the Spirit!
I knew things would probably be a bit down today regarding attendance because of the daylight savings time change, but was determined not to let that affect me spiritually, and it didn't. God was in the house in a powerful way. The Lord moved in a great way in worship and through the gifts of the Spirit. Today I brought our second message in our preaching series on "Pride and Prejudice." As most everyone knows, this is a theme that resonates on my heart not just one week out of the year, but at all times. This is one reason I write the blog Equal Time along with my friend and co-founder of the blog, Pastor Tara Sloan. Neither of us write as much over at Equal Time at least right now...but when we do we have something power packed to say! (And we plan to write there a lot more in the coming months, so stay tuned.) At the close of the service I had us sing Brooklyn Tab's "Make Us One Lord" and asked Rosemay to come up and close us out in prayer. She can be so cute/funny sometimes. Before she prayed, she said, "let's all hold hands and sway back and forth and pretend like we're Brooklyn Tab..." then we sang it again and prayed. It was good.
She (Rosemay) met me in the hospitality room afterwards and told me what a great day she thought it was - how powerful the worship, as well as the Word. She then gave me some gifts she had brought back for me from her recent trip to Israel. I love them! She gave me a purplish color shawl with gold running through it (sort of reminds me of something from Africa) and some skin products from the Dead Sea as well as this delightful little box that is for my wedding rings. It's so cool. She said the women in Israel put their wedding rings in this little jeweled box at night and pray a blessing over their marriage. I thought that was the neatest thing. I just fell in love with it!!! And then she gave me the new CD from Brooklyn Tab - not even sure if it's officially released yet but she pre-ordered it for me. How thoughtful of her! She's such a giving person/friend.
We went to lunch with David & Cathy Torres, Pastor Linds, and Jordan & Emilie. We had in mind to take David out for some time now for winning the chili contest at church and this was our Sunday to do it. We went to Liang's. Larry was craving that orange peel chicken again. :-) Seriously he has done nothing but talk about that! We had a good time of laughs at the lunch table. At one point I had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard. I love that!
Tonight was our leadership meeting. We hold our meetings at our home 90% of the time. I like that personal touch and extending hospitality whenever possible. We came home from lunch and I went to sleep for a while before the meeting and Jordan cleaned the rest of the house in prep for the people to come. Larry and I did the majority of it last night however we had a few last minute things that had to be done so Jordan did them and I slept til' time to get everything set out for dinner. We always start our meetings with dinner and tonight we just did a "share a dish." I have to tell on Adam Tobias...
Sometimes I cook all of the food a meeting - I enjoy it and I've cooked for an army before! I just love cooking for a crowd. But other times we have potlucks. I gave an email to our team with instructions to "bring a dish to share with the group" and Adam showed up with an empty casserole dish and said, "you said bring a dish to share with the group - here's mine!" (Of course he was just kidding. He brought potato salad and a cake to share.) LOL
We had dinner and Larry showed a brief comedy video that had me laughing so hard I was crying though I have seen it many times. We had a de-briefing on the last month of stuff @ Northside, and then I taught a leadership teaching on recruiting and we discussed it. Good times. I love our leaders. They are just delightful people.
WHO you do ministry with is way more important than any other factor, in my opinion. It's something I've learned over the years. It's not about tons of resources. It really doesn't matter what is going on - how many resources you have - don't have - whether times are good or bad - as long as you actally like the team you work with you can pretty much weather anything. And I really, really like the people I'm with. Actually - I love them! I am so grateful for each one. Tonight at the dinner table I was at (we're all over the house sitting/eating) Adam shared something with our group that, even after almost six years of knowing him, I never knew about him before...and it really stirred up a lot of emotions in me and I started to cry. We have some truly remarkable people on our leadership team who have been through so much and triumphed.
It was a beautiful day and I'm set for a week of the same...in Jesus name.
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