image: Nathan @ Flickr
Last week, I shared the first three of six things anyone can do to help make guest experiences great (you can read that post here). These were originally shared with our staff team to help equip and prepare their own teams for demonstrating love and value to the people connecting at SLW.
Though written to staff leaders, here are three more things anyone can do to help make great guest ministry happen: Continue Reading…
image: Nathan @ Flickr
Easter Weekend is a tremendous opportunity to interact with more guests than usual in a church—each with a story and a need we have opportunity to connect with. Knowing this, we passed along six reminders to our staff team–things anyone can do to help communicate our love and value for our guests, so our various teams could be better equipped to make connecting with SLW a great experience for anyone.
Though written to staff leaders, here are the first three things anyone can do to help make great guest ministry happen: Continue Reading…
Image courtesy: Leo Reynolds @Flickr
In the last post, I shared how a drive past an Air Force ‘boneyard’ reminded me of how we can ‘sit-and-bake’ away our purpose when we were meant for so much more. You can read that post here.
Simply being aware of the danger of allowing ourselves to fall into disrepair is helpful, but one of the most frustrating things we can face is trying to get a handle on just what our purpose is and how to fulfill it. How do we know what it looks like to live out what God has for us? The reality is Scripture is full of explicit direction on what a follower of Jesus should do… flowing, of course, out of who we are in Him.
I like the explicit instruction–it’s relatively easy to boil those things down to legalistic, oversimplified check-list items (when they were intended to be so much more) and feel like I’m somehow earning my keep in this relationship.
But then there are aspects of this life of a follower which are so basic, so foundational to who we are meant to be, that they’re just kind of a ‘given.’ They’re reminders of the truth that what we do is rooted in who we are. In Hebrews 5, among discussion about Jesus, His obedience, and the need for us to grow in obedience, we see this:
image: Wikimedia Commons
Have you ever driven past an old building and felt the kind of sadness which comes when you see within the broken down shell of what-used-to-be a glimmer of the beauty which once was?
Not far from where I grew up is ‘The Boneyard.’ Driving past it, I always got the same kind of sadness: engineering masterpieces, the marvel of aviation, splayed out in the open for all to see–some as evidence of compliance with a Cold War agreement promising materiel drawdown. Shells of planes were left out in the oven of the Arizona desert to bake away the last vestiges of their purpose.
The Gómez family is on staycation this week, so I’m reposting some of my favorite past posts. This one, from 2009, highlights some of what to expect when waiting for God’s provision:
image: lawrence_op @flickr
