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Change is Worth the Cost

it090003 Change is Worth the CostLike a lot of you, I’ve been thinking about change lately. It seems to the be the hot topic this time of the (new) year.

Change, metamorphosis, reconstruction, transformation, modification, refinement, revolution—whatever you want to call it—is usually a painful proposition. At the very least it is uncomfortable.

But, if change is done with purpose and is planned out ahead of time with and end goal in mind, it can be one of the most beneficial of life-experiences.

Take, for instance, my own recent changes in the way I “do” internet communication. I put off jumping on the Gmail bandwagon for a while—holding onto my work and home email addresses because they were all set up with my workflow. I finally saw the light, and merged all my emails into one Gmail account, and I’ve never looked back or regretted the choice. It took a few days to get it all set up just the way I wanted, and I still do minor tweaks here and there, but it’s been nothing but a beneficial change. My email system has never been more clean and productive before.

To read blogs via RSS, I was a longtime user of Bloglines. Again, it was set up just the way I like it, and I really didn’t want to go through the pain of transferring hundreds of feeds over to a new service. When push came to shove I made the switch, spending a few hours during a slow evening to make the transfer to Google Reader. Yet again, it took some short-term work on my part, but the reading experience has been far superior.

I think so often we choose to NOT change because we’re unwilling to pay the cost. When it comes to doing the work of the Lord—work that will profit the Church and His Kingdom—we know what we need to change and we’re familiar with the plan of action, but the personal discomfort involved for transformation is more than we’re willing to pay.

A couple of Sundays ago I had the opportunity to preach to our people, and I gave them a challenge for 2009. I asked them to set aside whatever resolutions they were thinking about for the year and take on a much higher calling. I asked each and every person in our congregation that day to identify at least one person they would like to see come to Christ and/or get involved in church. This one person will be their focus for 2009 in terms of reaching out in the love of Christ.

Imagine a church where every person within was reaching one other individual a year. It doesn’t sound like much, but it has the potential to make a church double in size each and every year. Even a small church could be a mega church inside ten years with that kind of growth.

It’s exactly what I told the congregation that day. There is absolutely no excuse for any church anywhere—regardless of situation—to not be growing. If any church is not growing, it is the fault of the church members.

Church growth starts with the people. Period.

I’m looking forward to 2009 in anticipation of change—necessary change—taking place in our church. Honestly, I’m a little scared of what might (or might not) happen, but I’m praying that our church will experience a radical transformation so that we can stand before the Lord and hear Him say, “Well done.”

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A Child is Born

Merry Christmas to all! Enjoy the video.

I’ll be breaking from blogging until after the New Year. See you then!

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Star Trek meets Lord of the Rings

Leonard Nimoy: The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins

You’re welcome.

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What we all should be doing

Brian Durr, a youth pastor down in Austin, twittered about this earlier today. I think this might be the missing element to drive home a sermon I’m preparing to give in a week and a half.

It’s so amazing what such a simple act of kindness can do. Think about the impact churches could have if all of us did our part in similar measure.

What are your thoughts/reactions to this video?

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Worship Confessional: December 7, 2008

worshipconfessional Worship Confessional: December 7, 2008

Tough day yesterday. I was not feeling well at all, and neither were several of our members. That takes a lot out of you. I’m still not feeling all that great today. These fronts moving through the area one after another really take a toll on my head (migraines).

This week will be all about prepping for our children’s choir and adult choir musicals over the next two Sundays. Here’s our very traditonal Christmas-y set-list.

  • Angels from the Realms of Glory // Montgomery & Smart
  • Go, Tell it on the Mountain // Work (Traditional)
  • Jesus, Light of the World // Third Day
  • Emmanuel // Bob McGee
  • O Come, O Come Emmanuel // Latin Hymn, Psalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum

This post is a part of Sunday Setlists at Fred McKinnon [dot] com.

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1 Peter Wordle

We’ve been studying 1 Peter in our Bible study recently, and will wrap it up this week. I like running things through Wordle to get a visual overview of the text. Here’s [youversion]1 Peter[/youversion] in ESV.

wordle-1-peter 1 Peter Wordle

Create your own Wordle.

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What font?

fontsHey everyone. This is another one of those “all in” questions.

What font do you use or recommend for your projected lyrics on Sunday? I’ve been using the basics (Arial, Helvetica, Verdana) off and on for a while, but I want something fresh but still clearly readable.

What are your suggestions?

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A Clean Bill of Health

I’m not sure why this happened, maybe somebody was curious and scanned my site. Either way, I just got an alert from my vanity Google alerts that there was a new link to my blog. Here’s what came up:

mcaffee

Nice to know you won’t catch anything nasty if you read my blog. :)

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Worship Confessional: November 30, 2008

worshipconfessional Worship Confessional: November 30, 2008

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is always the flipside of the Sunday before. Like most of you out there, our attendance was WAY down since many people use the Sunday after Thanksgiving break for travel (or for sleeping in to recover from travel).

I don’t know how many of your churches start singing Christmas songs the Sunday after Thanksgiving, but I like to fire them up so soon because of all the musicals we do. There are just too many Christmas songs and not enough time to sing them all.

We’re in the home stretch of preparations for our yearly Christmas musicals, so it’s about to be even more busy than usual for a few weeks, and then we can take a deep breath before the new year.

After the set-list, check out the videos of my daughters singing at our periodic “Fifth Sunday Sing” last night. They both did a fantastic job.

  • Joy to the World // Isaac Watts
  • Jesus, Light of the World // Third Day
  • O Come, All Ye Faithful // John Francis Wade
  • Angels We Have Heard on High // traditional French carol
  • Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus // Wesley & Prichard

Jerah rocked the house with some Superchic[k] last time around, so this time was a little more traditional (literally) with “My House is Your House.”


Jerah Sings in Church from Joy Miller on Vimeo.

Joely gets sample CDs from me all the time, and she found a song she liked and wanted to sing. She’s been working on this song for weeks. We put the words up on the screen to make sure people could understand everything, and she got off a bit when the computer couldn’t keep up with her. She knows the songs very well, but made the mistake of paying too much attention to the screen. This is “Set the World on Fire” by Britt Nicole.


Joely Sings in Church from Joy Miller on Vimeo.

This post is part of Sunday Setlists at Fred McKinnon [dot] com.

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Home from Thanksgiving Travel

66666 Home from Thanksgiving Travel

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