my helper

I got a little help today.
I needed to be home this afternoon to watch two of my boys.

I did my work...he did his.

hey toothbrush...no vacancy!

So I have a toothbrush holder with four available spots, and now have a family of five.
Is this considered poor planning?

I have three bedrooms, but need four.
I have a one-lane driveway but need two.
I have a one-car garage, but need two.
I have four matching dining room chairs, but need five.
I have one toilet in the house, but need two.

Is this poor planning or poor perspectives?
On one hand I feel crowded and under-resourced, on the other hand I feel extremely blessed beyond belief.

I must learn to be content.
Do you struggle with this?

what to do....

Some days being Amish doesn't sound so bad...

How do you deal with technical difficulty stress?

Growth is Good!

Meet my Life Group...well my old Life Group.
As of today, we have multiplied into two groups.

This is exciting.

This is sad.

This is exciting.

Those are our emotions. Yes, we absolutely love our friendships built in Life Group. Yes, we deeply care for these friends. And yes... we want more people to experience these feelings of belonging, support, friendship and love.

If you have eight chairs at your table, and have eight people eating...it's a good feel. But if you look out and see more people needing to come in and eat, you must be willing to multiply into two groups and feed more people.

Our Life Group sees the need to grow. It's healthy. It's positive. It's Jesus' plan for the Church.

So, our original group is now TWO. And someday we will be FOUR.

I love our church.

(Life Group #1: See you second Sundays for lunch. We just can't get away!)

closed...to get a buzz

Joy and I pulled in the parking lot of Starbucks last night to get our drinks (J=Grande Java Chip Frap & T=Venti skinny vanilla latte). It was closed. And then I remembered... oh yeah... they closed down for training.

The company shut all stores across the nation at 5:30 p.m. to train 135,000 baristas to "perfect the art of espresso." The corporate memo on the closure noted that 12,600 seconds passed without a Starbucks serving coffee anywhere in the United States of America.

I think the church needs to close down for training from time to time. I just want to scream at the top of my lungs..."STOP" ...then gather as a group and talk about perfecting what we call "following Jesus" and how to express that to the entire world around us.

Perfecting espresso is good...taking time to perfect the art of expressing Jesus the way He intended us to live is even better.

Imagine...every Starbucks closed. No one was drinking Starbucks coffee for a few hours. But happened after that? There was a buzz in the media that Starbucks in NOW BETTER. The perfect espresso can be found at Starbucks...was the message sent out.

I long for my community to join us at First Assembly because there is a buzz around town that we are a church who knows how to offer an authentic Jesus experience and lifestyle.

May we learn the art of expression. We need to communicate a genuine, authentic life of following Jesus, belonging to an incredible community of friends, and serving the world with our hands and feet.

sip on that...

MYboys episode 1.1

Watch this video.
No prompting...I just hit the record button to see what would happen.

A Little Lovin'

We hosted another parent gathering Monday night.
My wife rocked the house. She taught on the Five Love Languages of children and teenagers.
Evan blogged about the night. (with pic of my wife.)

Investing in parents will bring a huge return on your investments.
Fighting for families is a great fight.

Sunday reflections

Our church service at First Assembly this weekend was a great step forward in revealing our process of healthy spiritual growth. We're in the middle of revealing a simple, yet powerful, process of strong spiritual health. Our three-focus process is Connecting People to God, People to People, and People to Serve.

Some highlights from Sunday:

• We used the story and video clips from the Wizard of Oz to illustrate how traveling together in a journey is the best way to go. No one should have to go alone.
  
• We launched a Connection Team to take new families out to lunch, contact and encourage families who have missed a few weeks, and give special attention to families going through difficult situations. Several people signed up to be on this team!
• We opened the doors wide open to Life Groups encouraging everyone to join in with the rest of us. We MULTIPLIED two groups! We now have more opportunity for people to get involved. SEVERAL new people signed up to join a Life Group! Very Exciting.
• A group of international students got connected with a guy (an African prince!) from our church who will intentionally help build friendships and belonging into this group of students!
• Children, youth, and adults all heard the importance of connecting to people who share the same values, beliefs and passions.
• I watched adults realize the importance of being more involved in someone's life other than sitting behind them in the church auditorium. The light went on.
• We showed this video of a family in the church simply talking about Life Group.

Love language

Love language
Originally uploaded by travis spencer

This says i miss you in four year old language and font.

Saturday fun

I'm out of town today at a leadership conference. On many Saturdays I wake up and just hang out with my boys in the morning. Lately, they love to play with photobooth and make silly pictures on my computer.

So, since I can't be there this morning, I thought I would post a pic from a few weeks ago and tell the boys I miss them.

Love you boys!

is this you?

Do you live in Blue Mound, IL?
You were my 10,000th hit.
I'll buy you a pizza.
Who are you?

Perceptions...

www.unchristian.com

The average young adult in the United States perceives Christians much different than Jesus ever planned for his people. We must discuss this. We must realize the perceptions that are out there.

Let's talk. Let's change. Let's reshape how people view followers of Jesus.

Discussion points from Gabe Lyons:

Perception: Christians are Anti-homosexual
Solution - Show compassion. Show comapssion and love regardless of lifestyle. We need to communicate that homosexual sin is not the only sexual sin taking place in our culture. We need to love them and let God work trough us.

Perception: Christians are judgmental
Solution: Show grace and find the good in people.

Perception: Christians are hypocritical
Solution: be authentic. Christian need to be transparent about their flaws.

Perception: Christians are about Proselytizing (Just get people saved!)
Solution: Cultivate relationships and environments where others can be transformed by God.
People who are not Christians should not be "targets." Just build relationships. No gospel dump.

Perception: Christians are sheltered
Solution: Be informed. Be engaged in culture. Offer sophisticated responses to the issues people face.

about to bust 10,000

Almost 10,000 visitor hits since I've started blogging.

Thanks for following. Let's keep going!

Free conference stuff

Free conference stuff
Originally uploaded by travis spencer

Got a free book.

What a lunch!

Evan and I had lunch today with Scott Hodge and Mike Jones from The Orchard.

These guys were great to connect with. They shared ministry and leadership stories, provided insights into strengthening our church, and overall just inspired and encouraged us to continue shaping our church into a group of people who want to reach out and make a difference in other people's lives.

I have a lot to ponder and digest (not just the exploding quesadilla salad from Chili's) after hanging with them for a few hours. Great wisdom and experience.

Scott and Mike: thanks for giving us a few hours of your time.

Everyone else: take advantage of taking quality people out to lunch and gaining invaluable insight from them. For $10 a plate, you can't get better return on your investment.

@ Leadership Conference

I'll be at Target Leadership Conference in Rockford from Thursday to Saturday.
I'm pretty pumped that Reggie Joiner from reThink Group will be a speaker. He's the developer of 252 Basics, the Kids Factory curriculum we use. Just love the stuff.

Also excited to hear Gabe Lyons. He's a co-author of unchristian. Other guys there will be Dan Hunter and rocker Dave Mudd. Great guys!



Bonus: I'm having lunch with Scott Hodge on our way up to the conference. Totally pumped to connect with him.

I'll be blogging (maybe several times) during the conference.

No autographs today, please!

Look who got in the newspaper...
Mattoon Journal Gazette Feb. 20 Section D1

Remember the train show?

Stop the presses

I wrote a week's worth of devotionals for the Spring 2008 issue of Take Five Plus, a youth devotional guide. A copy of the book came in the mail today.

My stuff is found on April 7 to April 13.
You can get info on it through Gospel Publishing House.

Evan with baby

Any tips for evan?
who is evan?

men in church

From Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge...

Walk into most churches in America, have a look around, and ask yourself this question: What is a Christian man? Don't listen to what is said, look at what you find there. There is no doubt about it. You'd have to admit a Christian man is ... bored. (page7)

How accurate is this?
What can we do to assimilate men into active and effective roles in the church?

boys love trains

boys love trains
Originally uploaded by travis spencer

At a train show

missed opportunity...

I just found something that would have been a GREAT valentine's day gift.




The MESSAGE BEAN: The bean will germinate in about 7 days and when the bean opens up, the receiver will see the laser-edged message on the bean.

They have other messages, too!
Love
Happy Birthday
Good Luck
Best Wishes
Welcome
Thank You
Dream
Get Well
Peace
Happy Holidays

Cost: $15

rest

rest
Originally uploaded by travis spencer

We couldn't ask for better conditions. Snow on the ground, a cain by a frozen creek, a natural rock wall behind us. no Wifi. rest.

R&R

Rest. Relaxation.

The Assemblies of God in Illinois give their peeps 2 free nights at two of their campground/retreat facilities. We're choosing the more rustic option. It's not the Holiday Inn, but it is a great get-a-way that costs....nothing (for lodging).

So, tomorrow at noon we're dropping off the two older boys at the grandparents' house and heading out with the newborn for two days of rest.

Now, rest doesn't mean more sleep. It means less stress. We are joining up with some good friends (Barths) and plan on playing Settlers late into the night!

We're looking forward to a little down time.

Hoping to:

• Play Settlers a lot. (it's like crack!)
• Drink a lot of coffee.
• Read.
• Take my wife out to dinner at one of her favorite restaurants.
• Not worry about work, people, stuff.
• talk to Joy about anything besides work and why our boys are fighting.
  

Capture the heart...

I spent about four hours with a few Children Ministry leaders today.

The leadership team of ICM and the children's ministry leaders of GT Church hung out at my place for a few hours, then hit a chinese buffet. 

We tried to focus our discussion around capturing the heart of the leader, the child, and the parent.

Some thoughts from the discussion:

Capture the heart of the leader

• Children ministry often takes you out of adult services--especially in churches with only one service. This could make you feel isolated.
• We often are task driven, thus our our spiritual life can take a hit.
• We need to be spiritual self-feeders.
• We need to encourage our volunteers to be spiritually healthy, especially because they are feeding our children.

Capture the heart of the student

• Children "get it" more than we give them credit for. Don't simplify the Gospel just because you don't think they will not understand. (This is a delicate balance of providing what they need to know, but not so much they get loss.)
• Children must know who Jesus is. Don't just talk about a generic "god".
• There was some discussion regarding virtue-driven teaching as a dangerous method. I would say...as someone who uses and loves virtue-driven curriculum that you can teach virtues through powerful Bible stories.

Capture the heart of the parent

• Everyone agreed that parents need help, and need to be involved in the process. 
• There was discussion that including family/parent ministry into the children ministry philosophy must be done top down....meaning the senior pastor has to help this happen. It needs to be a church-wide philosophy, not just a children's ministry philosophy.

I love hanging out and talking about ministry stuff. It's great to hear different ideas, view points, personal soap boxes, and challenges everyone face.

Wanna hang out? I'll buy the coffee.

Here's a suggestion I got on my design.
from my friend
He said that's what Sunday School looked like in his day.

Here's my original idea

Kids Factory Series Art

We will do a six-week series that goes along with the church's series called The Journey.
Kids Factory will call its series The Drive.

great coffee

St. Arbucks aside....
Here is a short list of great coffee worth buying:

• Peets
• Dunkin' Donut
• Topeca Coffee
• Gevalia
• Barnies Coffee

What else is out there that I need to know about?

I voted.

I voted.
Originally uploaded by travis spencer

perspectives

Tonight I go to bed at 1 a.m. in my home.
Two families I was with today still sit bedside in a hospital next to their loved ones.

- A heart needs healed.
- A virus needs erased.

May God heal their bodies.
May I never take for granted my health.
May I never forget His blessings.

Praying for my friends.
Believing in my Healer.

Meet My Dad

This week my dad came over to help me fix our bathroom sink. He is very skilled in this area. I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to faucets, plumbing, and pipes. My dad, on the other hand, is a pro at home fix-it jobs.

If I had to do it by mysef, I would have been left with a pile of...



and I would still be staring at this pipe wondering what went wrong.



THANKS DAD!

Free Audio Bible for your entire church!

I just got off the phone with an incredible organization called Faith Comes By Hearing. They have a program called You’ve Got The Time. The organization works with local churches to provide each congregation member with free Audio Scriptures on MP3 disc: an Audio Drama New Testament for each adult and teenager, as well as a KIDZ Bible for each child.

We have MP3 audio Bibles coming next Thursday for every adult and child.

It doesn't cost anything. However, they ask if you would be willing to take an offering to help them translate the audio version into other languages. Thanks to these efforts, listeners from around the world can now hear the Scriptures in digital recordings in 278 languages.

They also send you a sample MP3 player they use in Third World countries. It's a solar-powered, hand crank device that anyone can use, no matter where they are in the world.

Direct link to the You've Got the Time program.