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 have been working with Ustream as a very low cost solution for live streaming events, specifically worship, from Messiah. We then embedded the Ustream video and chat into our own site at full resolution instead of being compressed down to a small image. We have been fighting the battle though of users that enter our site being assigned a Ustream guest name similar to “ustream-12345″. This works fine for the guest that desire to come in an remain annonymous, but we also have the flip side of folks that desire to worship online and have thier name or nick name displayed in the chat.
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.
That is an interesting title I think. I have been working on writing this one post for over a week now. I have been trying to ensure that I don’t write in anger, haste or to harm.
Last week while working with a colleague who I am still trying to understand our working relationship, I was totally caught off guard by a comment that was made. The comment was in reference to a rumor that was in the mix about something I had possible stated. I was very quick to quelsh the rumor and ensure this person that I no way made the statements referred to in said rumor and assured the person of where I stood on their role in an specific area of service. Later that day in a working meeting I mentioned to a couple other staff members the said rumor to assure them that if they heard it to stop it in it’s tracks. Rumors are a vile communication and can tear teams apart if not dealt with head on. Well the fun keeps right on rolling at this point. I was then informed in the that there are more that this first colleague whom I supposedly was spreading rumors about feels that I am arrogant. At this point I was floored.
I have never thought of myself as arrogant and to hear that someone perseves me that way was almost crushing. I went through lots of emotions from being sad, crushed, hurt, pissed, pity… I have spent some time away from the situation in prayer and with very close advisers and have resolved this in my heart and I am now to the place where I can write it.
I am a confident person who attempts to walk humbly. I am not afraid to make mistakes while at the same time fear failure. For place of responsibility, I have to make well informed but sometime on the spot decisions and I don’t fear this. If the decision turns out to be the wrong one we correct the issue and learn from the mistake. I am not one that will sit for hours with a committee to make a decision that I feel confident in making under my areas of responsibility. In all of this I attempt to do it with humility. I know there are times in which I have failed and will fail in the future. So that is who I am.
If you are perceiving someone to be arrogant, close the loop with them personally and directly… you might be dealing with a confident person and if so ensure they are serving humbly and for the right reasons. I am still working to cycle back and close the loop with my colleague, they are an amazing person whom I know I still have some things to learn from.
God Bless,
dl
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.
I am stoked to link you to a new blog by Ed Doerner. Ed is an amazing man of God that has spoken into my life and will hopefully speak into your life as well. I challeneged him to start blogging a few weeks back as a tool to get his authentic voice to the world, not scripted or edited down, but from God to Ed to the world.
Today while I was out running some erands I swung into a bridal shop to pick up a brides maids dress for my wife. She has the honor of being in the wedding party for her brothers wedding. On walking into the bridal store a very nice clerk greeted me and asked if she could help. Being a bit of a joker I stated that I was there to be be fitted for my dress… okay I was joking. With a very straight face she said, okay right this way. I was shoked to say the least. I informed her that I was joking with her to which she replied that is it common for men to come in an be fitted for dresses.
I don’t claim to live a sheltered life, I just would not have thought it was a common place as this lady informed me that it is.
Time over time I continue to talk and share the joys of using OpenOffice as an alternative to Office. Just today I was informed by a teacher in the Pinconning Area Schools that they have started to use OpenOffice as their tool for teaching. This teacher was just so thankful and raving about the joys of having OpenOffice in the classroom and able to have the students using it at home. The tool is open, free and great to use. I have been an OOo user for a long time now, I admit there have been bugs and it continues to get better with each release.
An amazing story and I love telling the use of open source software and more.
God Bless,
dl
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.