The One Letter Difference

Every week, I'm in charge of making sure the songs for Sunday morning get into our order of worship.  Usually this is an easy job because someone else tells me what songs they are.

A few weeks ago, I was doing just that, entering in the songs for our first service, when I made a typo.  The song was supposed to be Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,  but I accidentally typed Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lame.  Changes the whole meaning, my friends.

So I started thinking this would be a fun thing to play with, changing a few letters here and there in worship song titles.  Here are a few others I thought of:

• Blessed Insurance
• (originally Blessed Assurance)
• Glorify Thy Blame
• (originally Glorify Thy Name)
• This Isn't The Day
• (originally This Is The Day)
• Mighty to Rave
• (originally Mighty to Save)
• How Majestic is Your Mane 
• (originally How Majestic is Your Name)
• In His Mime 
• (originally In His Time)

I could probably go on all day.  But I'll spare you.  

2012 - 2013 Goals

Every year, our church hosts a Leadership Summit for leaders in our church where we develop leadership in our existing leaders as well as those who are interested in being in leadership at our church.

One of the main exercises during Leadership Summit is to set goals for the coming church year, and they're broken up into three different categories: personal spiritual/discipleship goals, personal goals, and ministry/ministry team goals.

This year, we have to turn one copy into the office, one to another person for accountability, and keep an additional copy for ourselves.  I thought, for a little bit of additional accountability, I would post mine here with a bit of an explanation for each one.

So here goes...

Personal Spiritual/Discipleship Goals

1. Pray for my lost friend, Susie (I changed her name in the event that she ever actually reads this blog post), every day and invite her to every Big Day.  -- Susie has been my friend for a little over a year now, and I can see that she desperately needs to feel the love of Jesus.  I admit that I haven't been consistent in my prayers for her, and I'd like that to change.  (Also, Big Days are "special" services at our church about every quarter where we focus on inviting visitors and sometimes have special events attached to them, like a bbq picnic.)
2. Meditate on a Psalm each day for one year. -- The more worship leadership magazines and articles I read, the more convicted I am about focusing more on the Psalms.  So I'd like to make it a goal to incorporate them into my life on a more consistent basis.
3. Read through our church's daily reading guide every day. -- I'm not always the best at reading these, and I should be.  There's something special to me about reading the same parts of Scripture that other people in my church are reading at the same time.  Something special in the one-ness of it.

Personal Goals

1. Eat no more than 40 carbs daily through January 1st. -- As many of you know, my doctor has put me on a low carb diet, which I did pretty successfully in the beginning.  And then I visited family in Texas...and then got married...and then life happened some more.  So I've really slacked lately, and it's important to me and my health to do this.  I limited it to January 1st because I'd like to lower my carb intake even more by then.  I realize this is not going to be an easy goal for me to achieve because I love me some carbs, but I believe it is attainable.
2. Join a gym and work out either (a) an hour 3 days a week or (b) a half hour 5 days a week (depending on my schedule). -- I don't like exercising much and would rather go through life without doing it, but I recognize that I'm called to be healthy because my body is a temple.  And I need to take care of that temple.  This is a goal that Chewie and I will probably be working on together, which really excites me.  No one gets me motivated like my hubby.  

Ministry/Ministry Team Goals

1. Add 2 more volunteers to the sound/media team. -- We are kind of bare bones with our sound team right now, and I really need one or two more people to help with staffing the sound/media on Sunday mornings.  This would allow for more of a rotation, instead of a weekly position.
2. Visit a youth for lunch at school once a month (at least). -- Since we don't have a youth pastor, Hubs and I are sort of filling that role.  And I remember how awesome it was when my youth pastor would visit us during our lunch hour (and sometimes even brought a pizza).  I feel that it's one - relatively simple - way for me to show the youth I love them and care for them.  Plus, I'm hoping it will help bring home a little more that our faith should be real even during school hours.

So these are my goals for now.  There's a chance they'll be revised a bit, but I think the main ideas are here to stay.  And you may not care - and that's okay.  I just needed to post this for myself more than anything.  The idea of failing these goals now that they're on the interwebs is enough to keep me motivated.  

Thanks for reading!  And I hope maybe you're inspired to create some goals of your own!

When will they realize...?

I'm starting to wonder when the world will realize that I'm brilliant.  As I've been working at the church, several occasions have arisen where I've had a stroke of genius or fixed a copier issue, and when Pastor J watches in wonder I've explained to him that I'm brilliant.  And he laughs.  But it's true.

Consider this scenario: Chewie gave me a Kindle for Christmas - woohoo!  But all the cases for Kindles at Best Buy (where he bought it) are expensive, and I want time to find the perfect one.  The whole reason he gave me my gift early is so that I can have it for my plane rides to and from TX for Thanksgiving, but I would hate for it to get messed up during travel, like if it was in my purse or something.  So, being the brilliant person I am, I did a little "research" on Pinterest (the best website ever) and found a crochet pattern for a simple cover and whipped one right up (and even added buttons)!  Problem solved in an hour with supplies on hand.  You can't tell me I'm not brilliant.

Ok, ok.  So maybe I'm not brilliant, but can we agree that I'm at least creative? :)

In other news, I saw Breaking Dawn: Part 1 yesterday with Chewie's mom, and it was SO good.  It was a little graphic, which was why we were so surprised that there were several young children there.  I have to say that I'm incredibly envious of Bella & Edward's wedding - it was like a dream!  And Christina Perry has a song on the soundtrack that is incredible - give it a listen (and get a sneak peak of the wedding):

Tomorrow is our annual Agapefeast at church, which is basically a Thanksgiving potluck, and I am super duper excited.  Yummy food and fun table decorations and good friends and church family.  Can't.  Wait.

Also, I'm flying home Monday morning for Thanksgiving!  I can't wait to see all of my family and our dog.  I miss them all, and I haven't been home for Thanksgiving since college.  So this should be really fun!

On the flip side, I won't be home for Christmas this year - the first time ever.  I have mixed emotions about it.  I need to be here because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, and we are having a Christmas morning service at the church.  It'll be nice spending Christmas with my church family, but nothing is quite like Christmas with my family.  So I'll be spending the holiday with Chewie's family and my close friends, which is the next best thing to spending the holiday with my family in Texas.

Anyhow, hope that you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving and enjoy giving thanks to the One who gave us all we have to be thankful for!

It's short because I'm busy...

This morning, our senior pastor informed me that church life is super-duper busy between October 1 and January 1.

Autumn Fest.

Thanksgiving.

Christmas.

New Year's.

I think I believe him.  I am so busy with ministry stuff right now that I can hardly keep my thoughts straight.

But I love it.  I love love love what I'm doing.  I was made for this.

I hope you're finding joy in the busyness in your life right now.

Finale Friday: Quiet Week

Hey-howdy-hey there!  Week one of daily blogging ends today, and I can't believe I made it through!  I find myself constantly seeking out blog ideas everywhere I look now - I think we call this border-line obsessed.  Lol.

As far as life goes, things are swell.  This week has gone by exceptionally slow.  I find myself thinking, "Is it really  only  Friday?!"  It hasn't been a particularly bad week or anything - just SLOW.

Some pretty exciting things are going on as far as my leadership roles at church.  I'm the Children's Ministry Coordinator (or something to that effect), and I just met with our associate pastor and the nursery ministry leader to discuss our mission and goals, etc., for our ministries and how they can work together.  I'm super excited about what's going to be happening there.  AND we're hosting a pancake breakfast for our teams to thank them for all their hard work and get some feedback from them.  So much to be excited about!

Another rather new thing going on is that I am now the teacher for our new Singles' Small Group - that Matthew has fondly dubbed "The Quarter-Lifers".  Our church has suddenly had a huge influx of single people come through,, which is super awesome since Matthew and I have been two of the few there for a while.  Matthew has taken on the role of "Shepherd" for our group, which basically means he plans/coordinates our fellowships and service projects - the more social role of the two.  On top of all this, we've had a wonderful new(er) family in our church offer up their home to host our mid-week group!  So our group starts this coming Tuesday, and I can't wait (and any prayers offered up for this budding ministry are much appreciated)!

Other than that, I've been working.  On the up side, I'm in love with my job.  The Lord definitely has me in the right place, or, at least, the right state of mind for what I'm doing.  I've also been reading a lot.  My  parents got me "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers" - the book that was the inspiration for "The Sound of Music" - for Christmas, and I absolutely love it!  I can't put it down.

One last thing, Matthew is trying to get a job at the shipyard up here.  It would be a really great career move for him - really great, actually.  We worked on his resume on Monday, and he'll be going to the career fair at the shipyard at the end of the month.  If you wouldn't mind offering up a prayer for him regarding this pursuit, he - and I - would really appreciate it.

And that's about it for this week.  Nothing too-super-exciting has happened, which I can't say is necessarily a bad thing.  Sometimes quiet weeks are good.  :)

Hope you all have a great end to your week, and look forward to this weekend's "Word-free Weekend" post!