Lifting the Bull

I don't know about you, but I want the big things to happen quickly. I am interested in quantum leaps not small steps.

But God tells us the power of "little by little".

Deuteronomy 7:22 -  The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you.

Proverbs 13:11 Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.

There is an old story about two Greek islanders vying to become the strongest man on the island. 

One trainee bought a newborn calf. The other laughed at him. How could a calf help his rival train? 
But every day the wise trainee lifted it. Every day the calf got a little bigger and heavier but he could still lift it because it was only a little bit heavier than the previous day. After a year the wise trainee saw the calf was now a bull but he could still lift it. 

In the meantime the unwise trainee had tried every day to lift a bull. 

He had failed every time.

"FLOW- Unleashing a River of Multiplication in Your Church, City and World"

Today my new eBook released through Exponential and I am honored that it is being electronically distributed to pastors around the world.

Here's a brief excerpt:

"...At this juncture in 1998 my wife Deb and I decided to get away for our 20^th anniversary to seek God. The new millennium, century and decade were knocking on the door of our church. We needed to know what to say when we opened the door. During those days away the Lord birthed a new vision into our minds. It was a concept we had never heard of, though it was not original to us.

The vision was to stop becoming a “LAKE church” and instead become a “RIVER church”. To us a LAKE church meant a church where people flow in and stay. It seeks to get more and more people around one pastor in one place. A RIVER church was dynamically different. It was one where the people flow in but keep moving downstream. God takes them to other places to minister. The measurement becomes about “flow rate” instead “volume contained”, about “gallons per minute” instead of “gallons retained”.

Specifically to us we felt this meant, “stay where you are and stop worrying about growing your numbers”. Instead, from those already there, begin to “send people out to start new churches thus making room for more people to fill their place”. We sensed the Lord saying, “Focus on FLOWING instead of GROWING and see what I will do.”

Such a message didn’t come out of nowhere. We had been praying about our next ministry move personally and for the church. I had been troubled listening to a mega-church pastor report on the several million dollars they were spending to deal with an environmental “bird problem” in their relocation effort. I had done the math in our own context. I knew to relocate in our general area to a facility that could support the next 30 years of growth would cost between 10 and 15 million dollars. In an urban poor congregation like ours that amount was astronomical.

I began to ponder, “What could be accomplished if, instead of investing those huge dollars in buildings to “add”, we invested them in people so we could “multiply”? What would the kingdom impact be if we focused on raising up and releasing pastors, leaders and workers to start new churches?

Download a FREE copy here to keep reading: https://my.exponential.org/ebooks/

Is this Disneyland?

Today I just want to say, "how thankful I am for the girl who has made my dreams come true"!

Cheesy, huh? Sorry. Gonna say it anyway because 1) it's true 2) it's my blog and 3) everyone who knows me knows it's true, anyway.

Life hasn't been Disneyland. Disneyland isn't heaven, anyway. Ever been there with 3 young kids, on a crowded, hot day when your favorite rides have broken down but you had paid 3 months rent just to get in the gate so there's no dang way you are going home until the thing shuts down.

No there's plenty of reality in the land of the Magic Castle.

Nevertheless, Disneyland has a way of lifting you above the mundaneness of the world around you and creating an alternate reality in the midst of the doctor bills and car repairs. It's this ability that I refer to when I speak of my wife, Deb.

She specializes in what she calls "The Delight Factor"...I call it Disneyland. Her ability to take the ordinary and infuse it with some magic is extraordinary. She has a strength on the Clifton's Strength Inventory called Maximizer. I have it too, but for me it just manifests itself by making me drive too fast.

But for Deb, her "Maximizer" causes her to create "magic" in the midst of the minutiae. Example: I will throw some lettuce on a plate, splash it with Thousand Island (shouldn't it be Thousand Islands, plural?) and call it a salad.

Not Deb. In only a little longer time than it takes me to make my salad, she will whip up a 17 ingredient salad masterpiece, fit for a magazine cover...then offers some to me. Magic.

Deb worked at Disneyland when she was in college. She scooped ice cream making the dreams of boys and girls come true. She still scooping out ice cream but has added wisdom, truth, love, courage, and comfort to what she serves.

I've been in love with other women (a long time ago in a far away land) but God gave me Disneyland Deb and she's been creating Magic in our little kingdom for the past 36 years!

(She's away leading a women's retreat for a whole bunch of ladies...they are getting a little Disney I'm sure). 

Happy New Year To Me!

Today is November 6 and I turn 56 and I am loving it!

Life either expands or shrinks as you age.

It depends on your attitude and activity level.

If you love life and love learning and love people then each year is a wider adventure.

If you take new action to push the boundaries of last year, then the coming year is bigger than the previous year.

At 56 I am in AWE of my Great God who has blessed me beyond measure and blessed me inspite of my stupidity and frequent failures. Some people have frequent flier miles...I have frequent failure miles...but by learning from those failures they are taking me new places!

One of my favorite passages is:
Lamentations 3:22-23 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

If his great love and mercy and kindness is new EVERY MORNING then how much more are they NEW EVERY YEAR?

I can't wait to explore the NEWNESS of life and the newness of HIS love during 56!

I bless you LORD with ALL that is within me!

(No time to write more because speaking at the Multi-Ethnic Ministry National Conference today)

My Mission Statement In Life

My mission statement in life is quite simple but very personal and powerful for me.

For the glory of God and by His power I WILL: LIVE fully, LOVE sacrificially, LEARN continually, LEAD wisely, LAUGH frequently!

LIVE Fully: Carpe Diem! Seize the Day! Make every day count and maximize the opportunities of every day. Here's one of my quotes I made up to live by: "Of the senses God gave me five, use them all to be fully alive!"

LOVE Sacrificially: You can live for self or others. God calls us to follow the example of Jesus and lay down our lives for others. I seek to live by my quote that is on every email I send: "The greatest privilege of living is authentically loving others."

LEARN Continually: Life gets richer the more that you learn. You can pursue entertainment or education in life. You can learn from people, places, experiences, books, etc. My quest is to stay young by learning for all of life.

LEAD Wisely: I am a servant leader who seeks wisdom in influencing those who look to be for leadership. I am a footwasher. I am a door opener. I seek to bless my family, my friends, my church, my conference, the body of Christ, through my life.

LAUGH Frequently: I love to play. Our family motto is "Pray hard, work hard, play hard". "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"my momma used to say. Laughing with family & friends is gift from God to be enjoyed as an act of worship.

The Night the Waters Roared

In light of the Colorado floods today, it reminds me of one of the most awesome God-stories in my life. It happened in the same location as the current flooding.

One of those beautiful 1997 summer days in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains had faded into a light rain as 3000 teens made their way into Moby Arena on the campus of Colorado State University. Moby Arena is a huge windowless concrete structure seating 8000.

As the worship finished, I stood to deliver the evening message that I believed God had originated in my spirit for this group. I preached passionately and although I was not scheduled to do so, I gave an altar call. Students began to respond.

At that point I felt impressed strongly by the Spirit to give a clearer, more urgent call for teens to come to the front and surrender their lives to Christ. I hesitated as we were far past the scheduled dismissal time. I sensed the nudging of God again. At that point I told them to keep coming until God was finished with what he wanted to do.

We had no clue what was transpiring just outside the strong concrete walls. As the altar call took place an eight foot wall of water roared through campus of Colorado State leaving $200 million of damage and five dead people behind.

The fact is had we dismissed these teens at the scheduled time, they would have been directly in the path of the flood. Tens, if not hundreds of people would have died. Instead we were in the safety of the stadium. We spent the night in that secure environment while the flood raged outside.

The next morning we emerged and many of the teens spent the next day helping the devastated community of Fort Collins clean up from the flash flood.

That story always gives me goose bumps about so many things: The leading of the Spirit, the safety we have in Christ (our ark of refuge), the fragility of life and the sovereignty of God.

Range

RANGE is the distance between two different realities, the distance between your low point and your high point, the distance between two different experiences, the distance between your secure point and your fear point or your comfort point and your misery point,

My wife has a temperature range of 5 degrees..she's comfortable between 68 and 73 degrees. I accuse her of being the princess in "The Princess and the Pea". Remember how the princess slept on top of twenty mattresses but still felt the small pea under the bottom mattress thus proving her royalty? I am honored to live with royalty!

Now actually my wife has a huge range...she can go from doing the dirtiest work in the garden to hosting the fanciest of teas, can go from relating with the homeless to laughing with the professors and governors, go from changing a spare tire to writing a dissertation. So I honor my wife's real range.

RANGE is what I see in Jesus as I study his life in the gospels. From engaging lepers to engaging Pilate, from wilderness solitude to speaking to 8,000 or more, from the carpenter shop to the temple courts, from fasting to feasting, from partying with the tax collectors to the mount of transfiguration, from cuddling children to staring down the high priest, Jesus had RANGE.

I am working on my RANGE...
Range comes from being secure about who you are and knowing how "with you" God really is.

It stems from not being scared for discomfort and misery but also not fearing to embrace the best of life.

It comes from having nothing to prove and seeking to give more than receive.

It flows from wanting to push the limitations of both ends of the spectrum.

It comes from living in a learning posture.

It comes from experimentation and a love for stretching my current reality.

It flows from facing fears and pushing through.

I believe God wants to increase our range rather than reconfirm our comfort zones.

So being in the jungle with cannibals or speaking at Exponential at Saddleback Church OR
skiing a double black diamond run in British Columbia or serving the homeless on Skidrow OR
teaching 5 year olds in a Sunday School class or lecturing Denominational leaders OR
preaching in a mud hut in Ethiopia to preaching to white folks in Kansas...I want RANGE.

Uncle Roy & John Deere & Grace

A handful of people impact your life far beyond what any others do. Uncle Roy is one of those handful for me. He is a gift from God to my life over the decades.

In the picture above Uncle Roy presents me with the gift my daddy gave me 53 years earliers.
It was Christmas 1959 and my daddy was sick. For Christmas he gave me a John Deere tractor I could ride on and pedal. I was 2 years old. 3 weeks later daddy died. Uncle Roy took a special interest in me.

For the past 53 years I have been the grateful recipient of his godly example, his wisdom, his generosity, his prayers and his love.

Recently he moved from his small town of Hugoton Kansas where he had lived for 80 years, to La Habra, CA...the LA suburb. What a daring move for someone headed to their finish line. He moved next door to my cousin.

At a family gathering to welcome them to our "neck of the woods" he surprised me with my "restored" tractor. He had brought it from Kansas to share with me.

My life has been enriched by my Uncle Roy. I did nothing to merit or deserve his love. I did not choose the family I was born into. I can simply receive his love and rejoice....and ain't that just like God's GRACE?!

Dancing at Midnight

Am I one of the few weird people in the world who has risen from bed at midnight, put in my earbuds, turned on a favorite worship song and danced in the moonlight....then slipped quietly back into bed to sleep in peace the rest of the night?

Is it just me that gets up on a 13 hour international flight, goes back near the squished up bathrooms wearing my anti-jet noise headphones, my neckpillow and my eyeshield blinders and while everyone is conked out... begin to slowly, unobtrusively dance to the tune of a intimate worship song?

The Word of God calls us to praise Him in dancing...but what's being pictured in those verses is a boisterous dance of joy...a whirling dervish of delight...mourning into dancing kind of dance. I have those kind of dancing moments too...but not at midnight.

No... at midnight, on rare occasions, perhaps 3 or 4 times a year, I will "slow dance" in worship to my King. My masculinity or sanity could be called into question by such a move...(especially if you could see what I call dancing) but if you deeply know Jesus you may resonate with what I am talking about here.

I love how David responds to Michal's criticism about his dancing. David says in 2 Samuel 6:22 "It was before the Lord..." as if to say, "tough cookies sweetheart, this is between my Lord and me...so frankly Scarlet I don't give a darn!"

The Patriarch Now

When Bill, my father-in-law died a month ago, a radical shift happened for Deb and me....we are now parentless. For all of my life I have been a son or son-in-law but those days are over. That season has passed.

Yes, I know I am still a son of God...Yes, I know I will be reunited with my biological dad, my step-dad, my mom, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law some day....but for here and now and the rest of my earth journey no one will call me "son" any longer.

Bill was the last of our parents to go and until the end I felt a covering over my life. He was a follower of Christ and by virtue of his position, he provided a spiritual shield over our lives.

I am now the new Patriarch of my family.

Patriarchs have great responsibility...they set the pace and the tone of the family they oversee. No more excuses, no more buck-passing. They need to live the example, and cover the family in prayer, and give wise counsel, and pass the faith torch to the next generation.

I feel a bit vulnerable without the prayer covering and the authority covering that I have had all my long. But I know that God has entrusted the torch to me. At 54 it's time to grow up...and be the Patriarch.

3 Birthday Gifts from God

Yesterday I went for a long birthday run on the beach. 54 and 4 miles in the sand feels good. It was a perfect day...sun on my shoulders, breeze at my back, and smile on my face. The cool water bathed my bare feet. It was as if the love of God was being set in front of me like 3 birthday presents.

The first were 3 perfect shells...my trinity of shells...full of color and mystery and wonder and beauty. I could carry them in my pocket but their story was far beyond and blended with the power of the mighty Pacific Ocean from whence they came.

The second were 2 beautiful dolphins about 200 feet off the beach. They were swimming gracefully, rhythmically rising and falling. They were keeping pace with me as I jogged. They were my companions for a few minutes. I marveled at the effortless movement by which they traveled. I was sweating, panting, and grunting my way over the sand and they were floating through the water. I long to move that way through life, in perfect alignment with the way I was designed.

The third was Joe Hoe. I haven't had a conversation with him yet. But we have smiled and waved and said, "Have a great day" to each other a few times as I have been running on the beach. He wears a floppy hat, a big grin, and balances a hoe over his shoulder. I know that hoe. I have never seen it in action but I have seen its aftereffects. It leaves its mark.

You see our beach has mile long park above it called Bluff Park. You can walk on the sidewalk along the Bluff and look down over the sandy beach. The beach sand is a perfect canvas for Joe Hoe's artistic masterpieces. They are nothing special as to the design but the messages that Joe carves in the sand are truly blessed. Joe will write "God Loves You" in 40 foot long letters. Anyone looking down from above can't miss Joe's message.

He's got others. "You are loved", "Jesus saves", "God Cares", "Turn to God", etc. Always hopeful, always caring, always big...really big. Joe simply does his work and goes on his way grinning. Sure people come along and mess up his artwork. Sometimes they turn it into something confusing or sad. But Joe Hoe just goes on day after day writing his sandy love notes from God to the world.

Seeing Joe Hoe on my birthday run was a gift from God to remind me, I need to keep writing God's love in large letters for the world to see. Keep writing with my life, my words, my actions, my leadership...even if my mark  on time is going to be short lived or even if others misunderstand and attack...I am going to write as large as I can: "God loves you!" because I have experienced God's love for me! 

A Birthday Poem on November 6

I am nothing and you call me beloved,
You are everything and I call you my life.

I am weak and have need of everything,
You are strong and have need of nothing.

I am foolish and make stupid mistakes,
You are wise and perfect in all you do.

I am a coward and quiver in front of small challenges,
You are courage and fear nothing now or forever.

I am earth bound and locked into a calendar,
You stand over the universe in a timeless realm called eternity.

I am selfish and egotistical,
You are LOVE and give to all who will receive.

I am easily duped and led astray,
You are discernment and divide light and darkness.

I lie and exaggerate,
You are truth and there is nothing but honesty in you

I lust  and crave for that which pleases for a moment,
You desire only what is truly beauty and enduring.

I am often lost and confused,
You are the way and the path.

I am sometimes lonely and abandoned,
You are the unity of the trinity for eternity.

I am the clay and the canvas,
You are the potter and the painter.

I am the page and the stone,
You are the author and the sculptor.

I am the piano and the stage,
You are the composer and the playwright.

I am nothing but have great potential,
You are everything and have great compassion.

Write my life, paint my life, sculpt my life,
Until it is a masterpiece of your making,
A triumph in your honor!

Vision 360

Stolen from my buddy Mike Goldsworthy's blog...but just as true on mine! This is exciting stuff that God is up to in our city and Mike and I are part of the team leading the charge:

We have just a few spots left for this lunch event with Rick Warren and Miles McPherson. The details and the link to register are below. If you want to come and hear more about what we’re doing, I’d love to see you there.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 25^th, from 11:00 AM – 1:30 PM

COST: $25 - Includes lunch

WHERE: The Reef, 880 Harbor Scenic Drive, Long Beach

REGISTER: www.vision360lb.eventbrite.com

QUESTIONS: eric.marsh@vision360.org

GUEST SPEAKERS: Rick Warren, Pastor, Author

Miles McPherson, Pastor, Author

MORE ON VISON360

We are local pastors and business leaders who love Long Beach and the surrounding area. Like others who live and work in Long Beach, we want our city to flourish. We believe that a key part of a flourishing city is healthy churches. Our collaboration will help strengthen local congregations and start new churches that will bless the neighborhoods and people of Long Beach.

Click here to learn more about Vision360.

• Mike Goldsworthy, Parkcrest Christian Church 
• Larry Walkemeyer, Light and Life Christian Fellowship
• Wayne Chaney, Antioch Church
• John Teter, Fountain of Life Covenant Church
• Darren Rouanzoin, The Garden
• Josh Chavez, Parkcrest Christian Church, 7th Street
• Eric Marsh, Grace Long Beach Church, Vision360 Long Beach City Catalyst
• Blake Christian, Vision360 Business Catalyst, Holthouse Carlin & Van Trigt LLP
• Chris Lagerlof, Regional Catalyst, Vision360

Vision 360 of Long Beach from Ryan Prouty on Vimeo.