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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 i...

A day in the life

I have some exciting news this week ~ I can't wait to share it, but first I have to call and e-mail a few bff's and tell them personally and not let them read it on my blog. :-) I owe that to my close friends. But just wait, I have great news. In the meantime, here's the majority of what I did yesterday... Woke up. Went in to make sure Jordan was up for school. Bedroom light on. Bathroom light on. His door open. I hear him milling around, assume all is good. I lay back down for some extra zzzz's before getting Savanna up. Big mistake. Saw Savanna off to school and got ready for work. Came out to leave for work and noticed Jordan had gone back to bed and was laying there sound asleep. Very frustrated. (Me, not him...) Wanting to wring his neck but I don't want to be late for work. Decided for once to deal with it later. Went to work. Read some devotional things on the way to work as usual. (Larry drives) Busted through a ton of work in a few hours. Probably 7 thin...

I made it!

What??? Lucretia Noble's White Chocolate Fudge Cake! (Lucretia is wife to Pastor Perry Noble , Lead Pastor of Newspring Church, Anderson, SC) My friend Pastor Tara and I read Perry's blog daily -- I highly recommend it! And he has highly recommended his wife's cake to everyone near and far. I mean the man RAVES about this cake like it's so good it could make a tadpole slap a whale. Seriously. So he put the recipe on his blog and Tara decided to go for it and make it and she too raved about it. You can read about her experience with making it here . So I said, "I've gotta see for myself what's going on here..." I decided to make the cake tonight in preparation for a special ladies night I'm having at my home tomorrow night. We are having a dinner and I have lots of people coming over and I decided this would be the perfect time to try out this recipe. (If it flopped we'll still have plenty of other things but it doesn't look like it's g...

Friends Day!!!

We had a phenomenal Friend's Day today at Northside. I knew it would be! I had all the faith in the world about what God was going to do, and He did it. We had a terrific attendance, and 10 people got saved! That was the best part, of course. Worship was off the chain. We did a brand new song this morning, "Freedom" by Eddie James. It was so hot, I'm telling you -- so hot I'm surprised it didn't singe everyone's eyelashes! (lol) Larry was so pumped about it he came up to the pulpit and said, "we're doing that song again!" and we went right back into it. Funny thing happened -- little Andrew who I just adore -- he's so funny leans up to his Mom and said, "ummm...we just did this song. Why are we doing it again?!" KIDS! They are so funny. We featured some amazing testimonies of what God has done in people's lives through His power and the ministries of Northside. After church we had lunch on the grounds. First, mega kudos to...

Three words for single girls to remember...not "I love you" but...

Recently I was at the district breakaway conference where Judy Jacobs preached. (It was OFF THE CHARTS! INCREDIBLE!) There are many things I took away from the conference some of which I've already shared. However, it would take days to explain, and for that reason I'll have to keep sharing in bits and pieces as the weeks unfold. Today I will continue by sharing one thing she said that sticks out in my mind ... She said, "Girls, you need to marry a man who will drink your bath water!!!" (What she means by this is don't settle for anything else than a man who adores you, respects you, serves you.) The truth is, many men won't even draw a woman's bath water much less drink it! Obviously, Judy already knows that, thus the reason she feels the need to include it in her preaching. She's a fantastic example as she waited until she was 39 to get married, when she said she "finally found a man who would drink her bathwater!" (SMILE) It really was a...

Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day!

Today was a great day...the best kind of day off...the uninterrupted/catch up on sleep/no emergencies/do what you want sort of day. I think there's nothing more valuable to a pastor than to be able to get uninterrupted rest, and be with our family. Each time we have a day off or a holiday I just cross my fingers that no emergencies will happen and we can get some down time. After getting the kids off to school I went back to sleep until noon. Does anyone love sleep as much as I do? I'm not quite sure. I must still be really young! All the old people I know get up really early, like 5 am. What is up with that? If I'm getting up at 5 am, it's to catch a plane or something like that. I would never do it voluntarily. Six o'clock is plenty early enough for me and that's just when I have to during the week to get Jordan and Savanna up for school. After sleeping til' noon I got up and slowly ate breakfast instead of eating it quick like I do during the week before ...

Ahhhh...it's Thursday night :-)

Had such a good day today ~ busy but when working that's the best kind of day to have! (Mine are all usually busy, but not always totally wonderful.) We have been getting ready for our "Friend's Day" on Sunday. There is so much to do and the event is in two more days. Today Tom was at the church working on the van fixing it (we don't need the van for the event Sunday, he's just doing a repair on it). We all went to Home Depot to get some things to fix various things that we wanted to have done by the weekend. And then Cathy and I headed off to Michaels and Walmart to get some things to decorate. We were so happy with what we got -- we were both THRILLED to get the sales we got and there are going to be some incredibly nice "fall" touches in our facility on Sunday!! We worked until about 6:00 pm and then headed to the grocery store to get some things, also for the weekend. We're having a dinner for all of our "friends" after the mornin...

Hello. My name is Deanna, and I am...

I tell myself each day, "I'm not going to do it anymore." Then I find myself doing it. Even though I have my accountability partner more days that not, I'm singing, "oops, I did it again..." I would say my addiction started somewhere in elementary school, only it didn't become full blown until adulthood. Like any addiction it didn't start out of control -- it was a subtle thing at first, that looked harmless but slowly it grew into such an overpowering force that I finally needed to seek professional help. I've been getting that help now for over three years but each day is still an uphill battle, and just like my friends who are going to AA, I say, "one day at a time." I call upon my higher power each day to help me in this war I am waging. Each day that I succumb to the temptation again I tell myself the next day will be different. And the next day I'm always asking myself how I find myself at this same spot...again. Porn? No, it...