by | Jan 13, 2006 | Uncategorized


De-Lurking Week
Hat-tip to Mindy at The Mommy Blog for reminding me about De-Lurking Week. It’s the one time of year that we bloggers get to ask ever so nicely, for you readers out there to announce yourselves, just once. Go on, get friendly and I promise not to ask again until next year.

Warning: This Blog Is About To Overpost
But I keep having thoughts that I think I need to record somewhere and interact with.. this I wrote in an email conversation that started with Nooma and keeps spinning me off in all sorts of other directions.. I’ll be back in another half hour when I’ve thought of something else.

Excellence hardly ever stands alone – it comes from well-thought out
foundations, well excecuted decisions and actions, and within environments
of well-connected, energised, focused people. You can’t make an excellent
movie with only good technique – the terrible scripting and acting will
show your film to be a facade – and similarly our own lives ..

I’ve been thinking about this in terms of my own personal life and
development – it’s false to do one thing excellently, if nothing else
matches, because then that’s not really genuine excellence – it’s jsut
fluking by on appearances. Which I guess points us back to origins,
foundations, key values etc. It’s no good to have a tidy house for guests
if you live like a slob the rest of the time. No use throwing a great
party if you’re only ever hospitable on your own terms, but you don’t
throw open the doors of your house anytime someone turns up.

Guess it’s the same at work, at church, with friends – Much easy to do all
that ground work with a project and produce excellence than with a person,
huh? Still – a challenge worth pursuing. An excellent life is something
worth living for.

Light
don’t want to think about
the darkness within
don’t need any more than my
present heavy sins
just hold on to me
and let us celebrate

i give a little light to you
you bring a little back to me

by | Jan 12, 2006 | Uncategorized

Still Standing
I’m getting a little pissy as the day wears on – I’m temping at a company in Ellerslie and it’s fairly slow, but that’s not what’s taking the heat. Fiscally, I can’t afford not to work today, and working means doing nothing, versus doing a lot for a lot less at my other job. Funny equation huh – get paid for doing nothing in a workplace that’s meaningless to you, or be broke doing something you love that has eternal purpose to it.

However, with all these questions about leadership, community, direction and implementation running around in my head, I’m swimming a little in the could-be’s and what-if’s. Particularly frustrating today to be thinking about team. I like teams. I like to work in them, I like to build them, I like to lead them. I especially like being part of teams that are well functioning, supportive and encouraging environments.

I’m a little stumped about the State of the Nation when it comes to the immediate team I’m working in. After all, if I’m going to commit to serving and working here for another period – it’s going to be pretty damn important how the team operates. And because I’m not the leader of the team – it’s pretty crucial that I either figure out how to lead up, or how to comprehend the dynamicity around me.

Right now, the royal ‘We’ are planning our annual Leaders Training Day. With no input, no discussion, no planning from me at least, and I doubt any of the other team members. I’m doing a couple of worship songs. Wicked. Let me go put myself in the creative box in the corner, save the trouble of doing it yourself.

But – less with throwing the toys out of the crib – and more with the strategic ways forward. We need to spend more time meeting together – building a team ethos with broader ownership. Less time meeting seperately. And many other things.

by | Jan 12, 2006 | Uncategorized

Building New Ways Of Thinking
I’ve been collecting thoughts and dreams of who we as a community could be this year. Hopes of what we will become and things we want to see transformed about ourselves.. it’s been inspiring, challenging and frustrating receiving them back. Some have been magical and others too easy! But there is one that stands out .. from a 17 year guy in my youth group…

I want to see us become a family – the body of Christ become a home for the world.

by | Jan 11, 2006 | Uncategorized

Light Up My Skies
light up my skies darling
no one but you can
fleeting electric jolts
to my existence

everything is powered
by the dark and light
of connecting to you
momentarily darling i live

Wedding Music
I both love and loathe doing wedding music. For Alex and Lisa it was a great joy to be part of their day.. other weddings I sang at in 2005 seemed out of place and strange. And then there are the weddings that bring out the mischievious in me.. like the one I am singing at on Saturday. We are performing the processional live.. always risky, but this time creatively on the edge. We are playing a piano based version of the Trumpet Voluntary, that bursts into a fusion of Coldplay ‘Fix You’ and the most well-known phrase of the Voluntary. It actually sounds amazing. Then the song for the signing of the register is “You’re All I Need To Get By”. More upbeat than most wedding songs… but I am the wedding singer, and so I gladly serve the heart’s desire of the bride and groom.

The stress of it all is that someone’s wedding is ultimately one of the most important days of their life. And everyone is counting on you to not screw it up.

Please may we not screw this one up.

by | Jan 9, 2006 | Uncategorized

Here’s What I’m Thinking Lord
i’m thinking too much. there’s a lot of things that i’m juggling.. hopes and dreams and desires. there are things that are really hard to let go of, and things that i’m not sure i want to pick up. at the bottom of the swirling tidepool, I look up and know that i don’t know what you are saying, or not saying, trying to give, or trying to take away.

i’m so caught up in the future that my right now is terrifyingly out of control. and even if out of my control and into yours, is where I want it to be.. the insides of me are all out of kilter and uncomfortable because I’m not certain about where I should be heading. I’m not even sure about what i want to do.

i know that this is the kind of person I want to be; wise and available.
generous, creative, leading and enpowering those underneath me. I want to be free and to pioneer new things, I want to innovate, re-create, resource, build on, tear down and build into new life.

God, I am powerless against my humanity that reaches into to the depths of me and grapples with holding on, letting go. I am powerless in the face of my need to be loved, my desire to belong, my longing for encouragement.

By my emptiness today, I commit my ways to your hand. I look to You to relight the footlamps. I look to you to show me where I must lie down, and where I must die. And I look to you for hope.. hope not just for personal fulfilment, but hope for a life that will change the people I live around.
a life that will be honouring, a life that will love abundantly and deeply and will mirror Christ.

In my emptiness I look to Your hand to supply my need. Reveal to me where you are working and moving so that I might follow you there. Peace is in the presence of my Lord, going about his work.

Let me listen now, and for the day.. show me again, pictures and dreams.
Forgive me and heal me. Cleanse me and make me again yours.