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The first in what are going to be some new posts to post some of my and my families favorite recipes.  This first one of marinated tomatoes comes to us from our wonderful friend Jennifer.  They are simply a wonderful addition to a meal in the summertime when the tomatoes are at their peak.

Marinated Tomatoes

• 3 large tomatoes medium to thick sliced
• 1/3 C olive oil
• 1/4 C red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 1 Tbsp basil
• 1 Tbsp parsley

Shake well & chill. Pour over tomatoes. Enjoy

So what is up on this end… I use to be a power blogger and now it seems as though I have dropped of the face of the blogsphere?  I am here but my public writing has fallen off a bit so here is a slight catch up on some happenings.

I had the wonderful pleasure of joining with Third Place Consulting in helping to open up a cafe.  It was an amazing time of ministry, leadership and training.  As a side note… remember “ceramic works far better than paper when drinking coffee in the shower”.

From a local ministry perspective, this past Easter was the first since I have been full time at Messiah, that is a learning experience of really understanding what work / life balance is.  For those that have never been in employed full time ministry with at church, there as you would guess are two times that the work load goes up: Christmas and Easter.  This does not discount any and all of the other worship services that happen throughout the year, but those are two key opportunities to reach out and there is extra effort placed in those times.  If for some in America that are CEO Christitan (Christmas and Easter Only) than that is a key and curcial time to pour the love and salvation message into everyone that enters in either physically or virtually.

Virtually, what the heck do I mean by that?  One of the first items that we took on at Messiah was to launch a live streaming worship experience.  Messiah currently offers a live streaming worship service every Sunday at 9:30 eastern time.  We have blown the doors of the church and said that no matter where you are in the world, if you would like to worship with this faith family, then join us in worship online and give glory and honor to Jesus just like if you were sitting in the physical worship center.  Some time has passed now and we have most of the bgs worked out, a few more to go.  I am so honored to be a part of getting it off the ground and seeing it start to take a footing.  I was amazing the first time that we were able to witness someone through this streaming service give their life to Christ, that makes all the hours worth it.  All honor to Jesus for a transformed life and I am humbled to be a part in it.  If you would care to join it you can find it at Messiah On Demand.

journeys is still rockin’ away and I continue to see it as a valuable ministry tool to connect people, develop leaders and fund causes.  They just posted a brief on the latest cause the help to fund… nothing but life transformation and life saving.

Right now I am jacked to see spring is here and to enjoy being outside with my family.  Our oldest is starting soccer this year and she could not be happier.  Our youngest is still pushing in teeth, so that is a bit rough, but is all over the place and is bundle of joy and love.  My lovely wife is doing well, she is an amazing woman of God, awesome wife and unbelievable mother.  She is getting close to finishing up a large project at work and balances it all so well.  I can’t wait for the backpacking trips this season… I totally missed out last year with the bad knee.

God Bless,
dl

Have you ever been curled up in the fetal position wondering if you made the right decision to enter full time ministry?

Anne Jackson brings this very issue to light in her book Mad Church Disease: Overcoming The Burnout Epidemic.  Instead of internalizing the fears, anger, sadness, and other emotions that can sometimes lead to and result in burnout, she encourages us as leaders to look to accountability people who can help us see the path that God has for us and stay closely on it.

Since I had allowed spending time with God to be replaced by spending time doing things for God, my spiritual tank had been sucked dry. When that happened, I began to lose perspective on almost every area of my life.  My defenses were down, and I allowed myself to start believing little lies the enemy would throw into my path.

Mad Church Disease is a well written path through the troubled road that one might walk in ministry.  Anne writes from the heart with very authentic and real life examples from her own walk as well as friends that have walked the road as well.  We applaud her courage for bringing the epidemic into the light and encouraging the rest of us to respond well to the challenges that ministry presents.

Thanks Anne for aiding in keeping us aware of staying fully grounded in God’s Word and time alone with our Savior.  Reading this has also helped us be aware others whom may be facing these challenges as they lead in their ministries.  It reinforces the need to surround ones self with authentic accountability and ensuring that one takes time away to relax and recharge.

We are recommending this book to our other ministry leaders that we serve along side.  It would be well for every ministry team to read and understand what could happen and guard against it.

God Bless,
Dan Lacher & Lauri Potter

I am not one that believes in resolutions so I will state goal for this upcoming year (2009).

• Read from the Bible every day.  Unless I am unconscious there is no reason that I should not be able to attain this goal but yet it is a struggle for me at this point.  I will need prayerful support on this as well as all of the goals.  Here is the plan that I am following.
• Deepen my family and personal relationships.  In this overly connected, always on… world it is time to make relationships mean something again instead of surface level “connections”.
• Re-attain goal weight and maintain it.  Last year was such a great feeling to loose 30 lbs. and I have let a little of it come back on, so this year I desire to re-reach the goal weight and maintain it for the year.
• Get my self on the trail for at least two backpacking trips this season.  Last year I was off trail while I had the knee fixed up but I am back in the game this year.
• Finish up the basement project… come on man there is only some trim work left to do.
• Build up the technical and journeys servant teams @ Messiah.  The teams are running slim and I don’t desire to see them get burnt out, the Lord has a place for His people to serve.

There we have them, now to prayerfully work at attaining them.

Tonight over dinner my three year old heard a sound coming from the laptop that sounded a bit like a buzz. Shortly following that she said “dan’s phone, would you like to call home or mobile”. I just started to laugh because I knew she was repeating exactly what she hears the bluetooth speak back if the voice dialing is being used. It was a great moment in parenting.

This week is Thanksgiving here in the United States. Our family will be preparing something along the lines of the standard dinner… but I look more forward to the leftovers. I look forward to making what I call the The Happy Pilgrim. What? That is right, I make a sandwich that we call the Happy Pilgrim, so what is it? For me it starts with two slices of good hearty wheat bread, lettuce, sliced roasted left over turkey, stuffing, gravy and cranberry relish. Oh, place that all together in a sandwich and it is like a meal in one. I was introduced to something similar from a sub sandwich shop while I was helping a friend move in Boston. Skip the meal and make me a Happy Pilgrim and I am one happy pilgrim. Try one this year and let me know what you think.

For what it’s worth.

This weekend was a faboululs weekend that started in the planning several weeks back.  My beautiful wife celebrated a birthday.  We took the weekend to relax and have awesome family time.  On Saturday we chilled at home, slept in and then headed out to journeys for a morning coffee, while there I took the girls for a walk and play time in the back while my bride had a chance to sit and just have some quiet reading time. Later in the day as the girls were napping I asked if she wanted to watch the most recent episode of WineLibrary.tv … to which at the end of the show Gary V gives a big birthday shout out to my bride, AWESOME.  That took a little planning but the timing was amazing and she was stoked.  The evening was topped of by having lined up the babysitter for the girls and heading out for dinner at a dualing piano bar.  It was a great day and she was stoked.  Happy Birthday my love.

For what it’s worth.

As many have heard or will be hearing soon, I will be leaving Sun Microsystems at the end of November of this year after eight and a half years.  I have accepted the position of Director of Technology at Messiah and will be leading up, forming, growing, developing…. all aspects of the use of technology to help spread the Gospel message locally as well as globally.  I will continue to oversee and lead the journeys team, they are my local church bartenders and we rock it out.

I have had a blast and learned so much in my time at Sun and will miss the work and most definitely the people, they have truly made the job worth coming to each day.

Jesus has an awesome adventure ahead for myself, my family and for His kingdom and I am excited to be called to be a part of it all.

For what it’s worth

Before you think Dan has fallen off the deep end let me give you some background. The journeys staff has been going through the Deadly Viper Character Assassins book so this post come with that as a background. The character assassin of Zi Qi Qi Ren basically translates to “self deception while deceiving others”. So where did this attack come from you ask? Well I am glad you did ask because that is what I am here to tell you.

As you may know my family was just blessed with receiving a new baby into this world and what a blessing from God she is. We are also blessed to live here in Michigan where we receive from time to time snow. The two days after our girl was born it snowed, so the day we came home from the hospital our driveway and sidewalks were covered in snow, heavy wet slushy snow. I being a new daddy did not have any of the energy needed to head out, grab the shovel and clean of the drive and walks. So instead I hunkered down in the house with my wife and two daughters for family time and some sleep when we could get it. One could say I was hiding in the shadows and thinking, oh my kind hearted neighbors with snow blowers will take care of the walks at least and maybe even the drive. Wrong! There are several of my neighbors that have snow blowers and knew that we had our new baby, what’s wrong with them… come on people. Well there is where the amped emotions kicked in, I was grumbling to myself and my wife about how I can’t believe that no one has come over to clear off the walks or drive. Then it snowed again… and yesterday a lot more. So I rise up early before leaving for church and pull the four wheel drive vehicle out into the street and get the minivan started to warm up. You guessed it, we got the van stuck in our own driveway… grumble grumble… we can take care of this our selves…. Right, so after church I had to stick around, so I sent my wife, two daughters and mother-in-law home in the van with instructions to square up to the drive and they should be able to make it. Smack! Nope, when I arrived home a couple hours later I found the van stuck at the end of the drive and the trail leading up to the garage. I headed in to find out what went wrong and get the keys to give it a try myself. As I entered the house the phone rang and it was a neighbor offering to help me get the van unstuck as well as wondering why we did not ask for help, he would have gladly come over to snow blow off the drive and walk. Well of course… why think everyone is going to help, no just hide in the shadows and grumble right? The Lord again used this to teach me humility and a lesson that I knew and even spoke only a couple weeks back with the staff. Also, turns out that a lady at our church has a snow blower that she loaned me for the day so I did get the drive and walks cleared off.

So how deep are you going to get the snow get? How much grumbling are you going to do with your eyes squinting out the window at your neighbors? How long are you going to hide in the house and deceive yourself? Here is the answer, don’t get yourself stuck in your own driveway twice, be humble and ask for help. Let the Lord speak through the hands of those around you.

God Bless,
dl

The staff here at journeys has started in on a new study on leadership, character and integrity. Here is the first post on digging deeper in.

What are you hiding? What are you keeping in the dark place of your life that you don’t want anyone to see? Are you talking about topics you should not with people you should not? Where is your web browser going and what images you viewing that you shouldn’t be? Okay, so that is the dark side, where is the light coming in to make the darkness flee? Sure the quick answer is that we know that we will all stand and give an account for ourselves before God (Romans 14:12). Next we know that is biblical for use to stand accountable to one another (James 5:16). So it is biblical to have a close friend to give full / 100% access to you that will act in love and grace. So Jud and Mike have this at the fullest level, more than I have with my accountability partner. They have it so that they know all of each others passwords and have software that will let each other know all of the websites they have been on. That is amazing access into ones life and a level that we should all strive for. So why do they do it, why should we do it? For some of those reasons that I started out asking in the begining. Thinks about it, are you going to carry on conversations that are un-godly if you know that someone has access to all of that information at any point in time? Are you going to visit a website that may contain material that you know you should not be viewing if you know your accountability partner is going see that and call you out on it in love and grace? I doubt it, if you have truly given that level of access to your life. So why is that we do not get it that Jesus all ready has our passwords and has that full access to our life? We fail with the One that has the greatest access into our life.

I don’t know how you came across this today, but know this fact my brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ loves and adores you and want to shower you with His forgiveness if you will let Him into your life. Do find that person on this side of heaven that you can give 100% full of love and graces access for your life and remember that Jesus all ready has our passwords…

God’s Blessings,
dl