The first time that I clearly recall hearing God, freaked me out. This to date is the only time that I believe I audibly heard Him. I was showering and praying about what the heck the day would bring when, as clear as can be, I heard a voice tell me that I was going to pray at the firehouse and over the fire fighters. I seriously looked around to see who was in the bathroom. I was a bit freaked at first, and spent most of the day then wrestling with God on if He really wanted me to do this. Really, I spent most of a day bantering back and forth over something so small. I finally said You got it, picked up the phone book, found the number for one of the stations in town and called. I headed over around dinner time and had a chance to sit around and find out a few of their stories. Before leaving I had took the opportunity to pray over the firehouse and the men that were their. It was humbling to hear the voice of God asking me to do something so simple yet so powerful.

Like I said above, that is to date the only time that I have heard the voice of God audibly speak to me. The other two encounters I am going to share came differently.

Messiah believed that we were being called, and still do believe, to take journeys out of our current building and to bring it to Main Street to create a coffeehouse ministry venue. Early in the process of imagining what this could be, I had been seriously praying over where God wanted us to place the coffeehouse. We had found a location right on Main Street in Midland and really felt like it was the place. Several of us had prayed over the location, but there were other offers starting to come in all at once on a building that had been sitting empty for over a year… So one night after a long day of working numbers for the new venue and endless hours working on other portions of the technology issues around Messiah, finally I made it home. Family time is always a wonderful thing to come home to after a long day, and as on every other normal night, Erin and I did the standard family routines and then Erin and I dropped into bed. I was exhausted off my feet… but I could not fall asleep. After tossing and turning, I found myself praying and asking what was on my heart that I had not confessed or didn’t understand. God and I had a great talk that night and then I drifted off to sleep. A few hours later, I had the most vivid dream I can recall having. As simple as the dream was, I clearly heard God tell me that the He was giving us the building and to not worry.

Okay, so first I tell you that I audibly hear the voice of God while I am showering and now I tell you that while I am sleeping one night He comes to me in a dream and tells me that He will give Messiah a building for launching a Main Street coffeehouse ministry venue… if you are still with me, that is right. It was an amazing and powerful dream that woke me up and I knew that it was truly God that had given me the dream and spoken to me.

Now to the present where I have been wrestling in pray for months with God over something and not knowing which way to go, what side is up or down, and really at a loss for the direction on how to proceed. While Erin and I were recently on a small vacation I had lots of time to do nothing. Nothing except spend some amazing time in prayer as I continued to wrestle with God over this. After several days of this and being deep in His Word, I was awoken by another amazing dream that laid out the answer. I know above I said the dream about the coffeehouse building was vivid, but this tops it. The details of this dream are captured and will be shared in time, but I am humbled to have been awoken by this dream and to know it was God clearly speaking to my heart on the matter. Simple and humble amazement washed over me for my Creator.

So there is it. I don’t know how or why God has chosen to speak to me in these ways but I am blessed to have listened and acted as He has called.

I leave this post with a word from our Lord.

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. Philippians 1:6

Be Blessed
dl

View on Vimeo.

After that work was done someone got their hands on all of the footage from the two days and made an out takes video of the whole thing. I said that I would post it for all to see so here goes.

Be Blessed,
dl

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

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

At first I thought the solution to this would be to first go to Ustream, get logged in and then return to the live streaming page.  This did not yield any change in the results.  Futher searching through the help and forums from Ustream did not reveal anything further to the solution.  I was finally albe to connect with someone on the Ustream live help chat and obtain the solution.  So instead of keeping this nugget of knowledge to myself I am sharing it with you all.

There are one solution that will help with any guest as well as guest that are registered users on Ustream.

• For those guest that desire to change thier assigned name from “ustream-12345″ to soemthing more understandable they simply type in the chat box:
  /nick MyName
  This will change the “ustream-12345″ to “MyName-12345″
• For guest that desire to use their full Ustream username then the also have to supply their Ustream password:
  /nick UstreamUsername:UstreamPassword
  This will change their nick to their Ustream one for the chat.

Solution accomplished for those that are using a Ustream embedded chat outside of the original Ustream show page.

• 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.

Upon arriving in Houston I met up with the original Church Bartender (Michael Trent).  Michael has been and continues to be an amazing mentor and friend.  We both have a deep passion to see the church be church and stop playing.  We visited a church body doing just that.  Ecclesia has positioned itself in the world but has set the done as Jesus called us to not be of the world.  They have an amazing building that is used for but not limited to a cafe, recording studio, worship area, local art gallery, neighborhood natural foods market.  If you ever make it to Houston, you need to place them on your list to see, they are being church.  While at Ecclesia we hung out with Daniel Park and where privileged to hear his story and the amazing plans that God has for him in Prague.  The pastor at Ecclesia has help to write a new translation of the New Testament soon to be released.  I am currently reading a segment of it called: The Voice of Acts: The Dust Off Their Feet: Lessons from the First Church.  This is the book of Acts retold and amazing.

As it turns out dinner always turns out to be an amazing time of spiritual growth.  I was blessed to have dinner with some old friends and new.  The seafood at McCormick & Schmicks was wonderful and the conversation was life changing… time to win the world for Christ people, if we do not do it, who will?

I spent considerable time in class and training as well.  The audio mix class with Armando Fullwood (Design 2020), Reed Hall (Lakewood) and Walter Silverberg (The Potter’s House) was out of this world to have that knowledge and experience base pouring in and training me.  The other classes that I attended were on Third Places Now & Next, Simple Steps to Streaming Live, Church in a Digital World, Creating Engaging Environments with Video Staging, and the 60 Minutes Church Website Makeover.  The keynote from by Dave Ferguson on building up leaders, launching them and growing the church was amazing.  What is your faith families Big Idea and are you accomplishing it?  After the talk I was privileged to hang out with Dave in the green room and learn and share what Christ is doing at CCC and Messiah.

By far the most powerful and impact-full discussions I had was on learning about Global Need.  I really still do not know how to put it into words for what the Lord is doing there.  Please go to Global Need and check it out, read up and get involved.

The expo floor is always interesting and filled with everyone from builders / architects, chair supplies, stain glass window manufactures to the highest end electronics vendors in the world and everything in between.  One has to enter the expo floor with filters on or you will be overwhelmed.  The three products that I will take away from my time on the floor are; ProPresenter and Tight Rope Media Server.

Thank you to all of the presenters, teachers and contributors that gave of their time to teach.  I close with this,  what is this vision that Christ has given to your faith family and are you accomplishing that vision?  We know the great commission, so are we truly living it out?

God Bless,
dl

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