Tag Archives: margin

My Late Top 10 Look Ahead for 2013

2 Replies
At the Crossroads

At the Crossroads

I purposely tried to take a break with my blog over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, but now I’m also having a hard time getting back in the groove of writing again. Habits are like that, you get into a routine, then drop it for a time and boom, it’s gone. I sat at my favorite crossroad recently (above) thinking back at 2012 and ahead to 2013, hoping for sun and warms from the winter sky.

New Year’s resolutions to me always seemed like the impulse buy at the checkout line, so I don’t set resolutions for myself, I try to look at goals for the year. Some small and easy, some near impossible. I started off 2013 by reading and finishing Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World by Bob Geoff. This ended up being an incredible way to start off the new year, and is really now my word or phrase I want to live in for 2013, Does.

For years (maybe decades now) I have had a constant internal battle between faith and works, legalism and action, intellectualism and doing. Eventually, a while back actually, I came to the ultimate conclusion that it isn’t a battle for one or the other, but for one AND the other. It’s pretty hard to read the book of James and come to any other conclusion, but being a “doer” sometimes takes some work and effort. Sometimes, doing is “not doing.” For 2013 my goals have as many DO NOT do as it does TO DO.

My Top Ten List for 2013

1. Spend Less Time on Social Networking Sites
My goal really is to try to ditch Facebook in 2013. I’m about as sick of Facebook and all it has to offer but there are still a few people that only operate on Facebook, and they are the reason I haven’t left yet. I have some great relationships developed through social sites, but they are largely time suckers.

2. To Not Take Any Seminary Classes in 2013
Late in 2012 I conferred my first seminary master degree, a Master of Arts in Theology. This was to be the first in a line of “continuing education” in the formal faith setting. But it also comes with a price, and that price has overtaken my extremely strong desire to want to actively be in seminary classes. Mostly it has to do with time. Time it takes to read books I’m actively reading for church compared to books for classes. Time away from Deborah and things we want to do together this year, and my ability to be 100% fully engaged in my ministry work each day. As much as I love seminary work, it’s very hard to be fully engaged in people’s lives while having to spend every spare second studying when it’s a personal choice not a career choice.

Scott Fillmer's Master of Arts in Theology

Scott Fillmer’s Master of Arts in Theology

3. Write Shorter Blogs Posts More Frequently (this one doesn’t count)
This has been a goal of mine since I started my blog. The key to this for most bloggers is to give up on the perfectionist in you and just post. I use to think if it couldn’t be perfect I really don’t want to do it, now I’m more in the mindset of how much doesn’t ever get done that could be done because it can’t be perfect. Doing, not thinking about doing.

4. To Not Wear Socks
This one sounds easy, but is really going to be the hardest one, near impossible, for me after 40+ years of tradition. There are a lot of metaphorical and spiritual reasons for this one but I’ll let those hang for now.

5. Be a Doer of the Word Not Just a Theology Debater
This is my word of the year, so I kind of already theorized on this one (see what I did there), but this is also going to be one of my biggest challenges of 2013. The challenge being how to find those places to engage where I can be the most effective. One of those areas being my staff position at the church. For me, can I make my position as a “business administrator” one that engages others in love and discipleship.

Cornerstone and East Alabama Food Bank Food Drop 2013

Cornerstone and East Alabama Food Bank Food Drop 2013

6. Not To Read the Entire Bible Cover to Cover
I love this one, and it is going to be very freeing. I am going to finish my current canonical reading I started in June, then I’ll focus on a few specific books. I have probably read cover to cover now about 10 times over the last 15-20 years, but I won’t in 2013. Being a very systematic thinker I am still going to read the greatest set of books ever written, but instead of cover to cover, I’m going deep with a few specific books.

The ESV Bible, a Moleskine Journal, and a Diet Coke

The ESV Bible, a Moleskine Journal, and a Diet Coke

7. Read, Read, Read
I lost track of how many books I read in 2012, it was something like 30 or so. The last book I read in 2012 was Sacrilege: Finding Life in the Unorthodox Ways of Jesus, and the first book I read in 2013 was Love Does (above). Both excellent books. In 2013 I’m going to continue to refine my reading process by reading those specific books that take my faith deeper. Books like Creature of the Word, When Helping Hurts, Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books, Jesus A Theography, and a classic here and there like Leaves of Grass or The Hobbit.

8. To Not Forsake Spending High Quality Time With Deborah
This has always been a high priority for both of us, but that’s only because we make it a priority. The hardest thing about this is my ability to say no to good things, good people, and yes to Deb.

Deborah at IHOP for Breakfast

Deborah at IHOP for Breakfast

9. Take an Entire Week of Vacation All At Once
I (we) have never done this ever. For most of our married life Deb and I have owned our own business and when you own your own business you don’t get to take “vacation.” This year is our 20th wedding anniversary and celebrating 20 years of marriage deserves at least a week at the beach.

Sun Setting Over the Gulf of Mexico

Sun Setting Over the Gulf of Mexico

10. Love People for Who They Are and Right Where They Are
This is not a new one for me but also not an easy one. This is an ongoing, continuous, and gradually adjusted ability given to me by grace, only provided by Christ. And it is also how he loves me. To do this you have to drop every judgmental fiber in your being, and just love.

Project 365 [Day 291] Words for Love

Project 365 [Day 291] Words for Love

I have plenty more in my mind but those are the randomly chosen ten for this post.

Ministering to the Church At the Expense of the Family

Leave a reply

This is an old topic, but one that never goes away, for good reason. Below is basically an excerpt from an assignment in one of my evangelism classes on Servant-Leadership and innovations in the Church, and also serves as a very short review of the book InnovateChurch by Jonathan Falwell. In a three part discussion on leadership, this was topic number one, learning how to minister to the church, but not at the expense of your family.

There are four non-negotiable commitments presented by Jonathan Falwell in InnovateChurch that pastors (and I would add church staff) need to make to themselves, and to God, for effective leadership in the church. As an administrative staff member I will admit, the one I found most difficult to keep is number two: I will not minister to my church at the expense of my family. On the surface, this probably sounds like an easy one to keep, and when I entered into ministry work in 2008 I was committed to this very statement right from the start.

In fact, if your ministry is to be more successful, however that is quantified, it must start with managing your household well. (1 Tim 3.5) There are a few basic things that have kept me focused on the proper balance, or margin if you will. It doesn’t always work in ministry as something, or someone, can always quickly pull you right back in with an “important” issue, or something that needs to be completed right away if you are not diligent.

  1. It is important to make our priorities line up properly, as stated in InnovateChurch

    2. God should be first, our family second, and our ministry third.[1] Saying or writing this isn’t good enough. This actually has to be lived out, and as such, will be proof of its importance in our lives.  How are we making God our first priority? How are we managing our household well, and where do we need to change or improve what we are doing day by day.

  2. We have to learn how to manage our time well

    3. This means learning how to say no without feeling guilty about saying no, even if it is something important. Often times in church ministry, everything is of the utmost importance, mainly because it is most important to the person asking. We cannot get into the habit of allowing our schedule or calendar to control our life in idol-like fashion.

  3. We have to learn how to focus on a few things we do well, and let the others go

This means learning how to delegate without looking back. Learning how to give tasks away is hard, especially if they will not be done as well as if we did them ourselves. This includes learning how to enlist volunteers, and building teams of people who can accomplish what we can’t simply because we can’t work 24 hours a day. Rarely is one person only gifted with the ability to do only one task, but God has gifted us with the ability to do a few things very well. This strikes in the face of our multi-tasking 21st century culture, but delegating allows us to focus on those things we can do very well, or are at least our highest priority.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means of course. I do know that when I have built in margin, giving time to my family, I am more productive, and better focused as a staff member. Sometimes that means the most important place I can be, especially in the evening, is in that chair next to Deborah (and Ebby) in our living room.

[1] Jonathan Falwell, ed., Innovate Church, ed. Jonathan Falwell (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2008), 14.

The Blur of Time from Columbus to Veterans Day This Year

1 Reply

I just can’t believe it is almost the middle of November, Veterans Day, or Auburn Arena‘s opening night for the 2011-2012 NCAA Men’s basketball season. It’s really all been a blur since about October 1st, like having frosted lenses in your glasses, but seen through the venue of the calendar, if that makes any sense. Where did October go? Leading up to the beginning of October was so focused on our trip to Uganda, then a few days after I returned from Uganda Deborah got sick, and then ended up having to be in the hospital for a while, where we spent Halloween before she got to go home the next day.

It actually feels pretty good to be here writing on my blog again, which is something of a normalcy issue for me anyway, something I have tried to make a normal part of my week for the past 10 years. It feels strange to me when I go a few weeks without posting, but the gaps mean about as much to me as consistent posts. I have come to learn and appreciate over the last 12 months or so that when someone you know and care about gets sick, friends, family, your spouse, priorities tend to shift around to triage mode. You do the things that need to be done and forget about all the other stuff you normally do that uses up time each day.

Everyone I know is so busy it sometimes seems like if anything out of the expected happens the whole system of time will shut down and collapse, and in some ways, it does. It’s like getting on a transatlantic flight. Time still moves forward even though you are stuck in a small metal tube for 12 hours. Inside that room (or cabin), time stands still while everything around you motors on at light speed, your “normal” is temporarily on hold until you get out of that time warped room. When we took off from Atlanta for our overnight flight into Amsterdam only our world stopped. As soon as we hit the ground in Europe I turned on my phone to find out that Steve Jobs had died while we were in flight. It was only our world in the plane that became timeless for 12 hours.

I have no doubt in my mind that being “busy” is not a biblical mandate. In fact, the opposite is true. Psalm 46.10 instructs us, to be still, and know that I AM God. But how do you balance this with the noise and chaos that is our world today? I still fight hard for margin (being still) every single week but sometimes it just doesn’t work.

Slowly, things return to “normal”, or if not, you create a “new normal” where you can establish some kind routine again. I’m not sure why routine is the goal but routine often times removes uncertainty and change, which seems to be what we all fear the most, but routine also gives us a continuity of motion for each day. I can’t imagine that Paul’s routine in Acts removed a whole lot of uncertainty for him, and fear in itself always feels like a testing of faith to me. Over the past month or so these thoughts have combined in my mind while looking at three different areas of scripture. The words of Matthew in Matthew 6.25-34 on being axioms about tomorrow, (something I think I have been genetically inclined to do from birth), 2 Corinthians 12.9 where Jesus instructs Paul that “my power is made perfect in weakness”, and 2 Timothy 1.7, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

Tonight starts a new normal routine for our house, a “normal” routine for the second week in November that is, the start of Auburn’s basketball season. This is always something that Deborah and I look forward to each year. Not necessarily because it’s an Auburn sporting event, but because it is a few designated hours we get to spend together outside our normal routine, without much noise or distraction… one of those timeless two hour flights with the added bonus of not having to actually be at 40,000 feet. War Eagle!

Labor Day Monday Photo With a Bike Uganda Style

2 Replies

This Labor Day was a glorious day. It rained almost all day today due to Tropical Storm Lee pounding up from the Gulf Coast. For those of us fortunate enough to be able to take at least part of the day off today it was wonderful. For a few shorts minutes this morning I was able to sit on my patio and watch the rain and do nothing. It was great, but a time of solitude took me back to thinking about those in Uganda, many who labor very hard every single day. Matthew says “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (11:28), and we came across many who needed a little rest over there, as we all do everywhere. Margin is such an important thing in life. So important in fact that God put it 4th on his important list of things for us to do.

The photo above was so typical of the people we saw in Uganda. Super nice, hard working people, many moving goods from one place to another, by foot. I had never seen so many crazy things being moved around on a bike and moped; like a full sofa, a coffin, a refrigerator, and all kinds of agricultural goods. At some point I’ll do a post with just photos of things we saw people carrying on bikes, for now, this guy is my honorable labor day photo. Something like 50-75 pounds of trees being pushed up a hill in the mud, pretty incredible.

Sunday with The World State by G K Chesterton :: Poem

Leave a reply

I think it has literally taken me a few years to adjust to Sunday being a work day, and I have grown to absolutely love late Sunday afternoons after all the services and meetings are over. It’s one of those few times during the week I get (usually) a few quiet uninterrupted hours to spend with Deborah watching a game or to read. A while back on the recommendation from Piper on the Role of Poetry in the Christian Life I picked up the book A Sacrifice of Praise, An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century (yes, I seem to just find books with long titles). I came across this poem by Chesterton, with a short title, called The World State I thought I would share below.

The World State

Oh, how I love Humanity,
With love so pure and pringlish,
And how I hate the horrid French,
Who never will be English!

The International Idea,
The largest and the clearest,
Is welding all the nations now,
Except the one that’s nearest.

The compromise has long been known,
This scheme of partial pardons,
In ethical societies
And small suburban gardens—

The villas and the chapels where
I learned with little labour
The way to love my fellow-man
And hate my next-door neighbour.

I love the subtle in your face presentation of the “second greatest commandment” here found in Matthew 22. There is just something about the Brits and the French that make me laugh and I can hear this poem being read aloud in a British pub somewhere like The Eagle and the Child in that awesome British accent. Chesterton was a poet, writer, and literary critic in the very early 1900′s and was friends with H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and others. He also wrote, among many other things, Saint Francis of Assisi.

Cultural Priorities and the Breakneck Speed of the West

4 Replies

I love this shot of Jason, Eddie (our driver in Uganda), and myself. If you are holding a machete in the middle of the woods-jungle I think it’s a rule, you have to stop to have a photo taken. Jason and I were attempting to clear a few branches away for a lady who lived on the property and to say thanks she gave Eddie these awesome avocados (you can just see her in the photo in the upper right background). Actually, we both thought it would be really cool to get to use a machete to do some actual real work, and I ended up with the machete and Jason the axe pipe thing (sorry Jason).

I know I have said it before but it still amazes me. The speed and priorities of life in Bulboa where this lady lives is so extremely different from the west, even different from just up the road in Kampala. Life down in Buloba isn’t really run by a clock on a wall like we know it, and no one seems to be in a hurry to do anything, it’s just TIA (this is Africa). I didn’t really hear that said too much while I was over there, but I did hear it a few times, which generally refers to “whenever”. I personally loved that and enjoyed the down time, especially since that pretty much doesn’t exist at all on this side of the world. I fight for it every week but it’s certainly not the norm no matter how hard you try to slow things down. The little wood we chopped up was supposed to last her about a month, although I’m not sure how, the same bit of wood wouldn’t have been enough to start a fire to me. We did spend about an hour or two walking around this neighborhood while others in our group worked on some painting. It was very low key, very laid back, very TIA.

Over here this week life moved along at our normal breakneck speed. Nothing inherently wrong with that but every minute of every day is packed full and it didn’t take me any time at all to fall back into life at hyper-speed where you have to fight for margin. Margin is where life happens, where we meet with God and remember why we do what we do.

Cornerstone Staff Take it To the Bowling Alley :: Photos

Leave a reply

Every month we have a meeting where the entire staff gets together for lunch, but this Tuesday, everyone headed over to the Auburn Bowling Alley for a game instead of our normal “meeting”. It was loads of fun and a great break from the normal routine of things. That first shot is the whole motley crew, including my bald head (thanks Ashley Coxwell for taking the shot), seems everyone on staff is a professional bowler, we just happened to have missed a few pins for some reason. This particular all-staff meeting was said to be a “surprise” so none of us knew what was going on until we were told where to drive to for lunch. I love a staff that cherishes some down time, even if it’s just 90 minutes at the bowling alley. I hadn’t been bowling in probably 10 years but it was a blast. The are tons more photos but I’m saving those for ransom later in the summer.

Processing Life Like Watson on Jeopardy or World Community Grid

Leave a reply

This is sort of a quasi review slash life contemplation post, and really ended up just being a really random article, so stick with it, but I still don’t promise a coherent application at the end this time.  The title could just as easily been “How Can We Harness our Power for God’s Glory”, so maybe this is just part 1 or maybe I’m just rambling today.

A while back when Watson won on Jeopardy! (video) I watched as each “person” explained a little about the charity they would donate their winnings to if they won. IBM was to donate 100% of their winnings to a group called World Community Grid (a “charity” actually run and sponsored by IBM, so in essence they gave their $1 million winnings to themselves, but that’s another post, see also their wiki-page).

Since Watson won I have been running a pseudo test-run on the World Community Grid (WCG) system, which helps non-profits process images to fight cancer, find water to drill a well, and so on, by using the unused processing power of an idle computer user. This is almost identical to the early SETI@home project that was so popular about 10 years ago and now processes things like FightAIDS@home and “Computing for Clean Water”.

It’s a fantastic idea. Use the unused and idle time on a computer’s processor to crunch gigantic data streams that single computers just can’t do and are extremely expensive to run on mainframe computers. After running their system on a few different computers for several weeks my short personal pros/cons for WCG are:

  • The system is unobtrusive
  • Runs in the background
  • Is customizable to your computer’s system requirements
  • Does help fight cancer etc but it’s “in the cloud” and impersonal
  • Uses a TON more system resources than normal use (more heat, wear and tear etc)

Can We Harness Our Time and Mind Like WCG?

I still think this is such a great idea for computers that are just sitting there doing nothing almost all of the time, but so is donating those computers to non-profits that REALLY need them? This reminded me of the Toomer’s Oaks when over $30,000 was raised in a few days and thousands and thousands rallied for a few trees.  It came up during the the conversations that week as well. Can’t we somehow utilize or harness this pent up man-power or money for something REALLY productive like fighting the underage sex trade going on all over the world or helping people in our own state who need food?

That’s what brought me to WCG.  They do this.  So why can’t we as people, as followers of Christ, do what WCG is doing with computers? I quickly came to at least a few reasons why we can’t do this.

  1. There is No Down Time at All – I really think this is something that we, especially as Christians, need to build into our life, margin. We can use all our extra spare unused processing brain power or time to do great things but that leaves no margin in our life whatsoever.
  2. Eventually We Would Overheat – my test computers never overheated but they were averaging cpu temps around 175*F with cooling fans blowing at 2,000+ RPM’s continually, 24-7, heating up the casings, monitors, etc.  Eventually we would overheat, or burn out.  Burnout is something we should fight against all the time, it robs us of times we can be productive.
  3. Just Because it Works on a Computer – I heard a podcast sermon recently that said one of the greatest tragedies in our culture today is our school teaching children they are just pieces of matter thrown together that happened to form a human being. As advanced as science is now, we are unique, individually special people, made in God’s image, we are not random pieces of matter or even computers.

So I guess my ultimate question is one I have asked myself for years now. How can we utilize the power of the Internet, social media, our spare time, to glorify God, and do so in a way that makes an impact on someone else’s life for Christ, so they will in turn do the same?

5 Reasons Why I Love My Job at Cornerstone Church

Leave a reply

Cornerstone Church

I haven’t posted consistently here since November because every time I went to write something, words didn’t suffice. This week, and the past several weeks, have been so unbelievable that I really can’t describe my feelings into coherent words yet (see Deb’s blog post in brief). The ups and downs of life that have occurred is something I have never faced before, and I don’t really know where to start, other than to say we have a great God, worthy of every ounce of praise we can muster.

As a way to just get myself started unpacking the events of the last few months I thought I would start with my job at Cornerstone and go from there. I’m well into my third year (see I Have Now Joined the Ranks of Church IT), and starting in 2011 I moved into a slightly different role, one that I am really looking forward to in the year ahead. It has been quite an adventure, something I would never trade if I had to do it all over again, and this past week was a big exclamation point on that statement.

Thinking over the reasons why I love my job I started realizing there were 100′s, so in a nut shell, here are five off the top.

1. It Combines My Life Passion and My Career A “life passion” is probably inadequate to describe my faith. Being a Christian isn’t about being passionate about something, like I love Auburn football, or love to eat, it is who I am. Being able to go to work every day and play a small part in something big is huge to me, but it’s more than that, it’s the combination of the 100′s of reasons I love working for the Church.

This is a catch all reason. Everything about my faith is played out each day, for better or worse, and I have the honor of being supported by the members of Cornerstone. The support that I receive in my life, especially over the last few months, transcends a “job” and has become a way of life.

2. The People I Work With are Unbelievable I can’t say enough about the staff at Cornerstone. In the almost 25 years I have spent in the work force so far, I have never worked with a greater collective group of people than those staff and those who lead the church than at Cornerstone.  I could write a post about each of them and how much they mean to me individually, and as a group.

3. Cornerstone’s Vision and Direction This is something the staff and leaders talk about all the time. Where is God leading this church, and how can we best follow His direction. Much of what goes on at Cornerstone Church comes from the statement Leading People To Know and Serve Jesus, and our jobs, whatever that job is, should ultimately work towards that goal, and I love that.

4. Margin, Prayer, and Study, are Expected Finding time to live the life we are called to live out as Christians can be hard. We get so busy with work and everything else that is life, but as a Christian we are called to live out our faith Monday through Saturday too. At Cornerstone, the leaders expect us to live out a life of faith that is taught in scripture, and I love that about my job.

5. The Willingness to Learn and Adjust An amazing quality of Cornerstone Church is the willingness of the leaders to listen, learn, try something new, fail if needed, then adjust and try again. This is no small thing at all, and few businesses, let alone churches, can stop that train once it gets rolling, or try something new to try to make a difference in someone’s life.

That’s my top 5. If you’re in the Auburn area please come by on Sunday morning (or during the week), we would love to meet you.

Cindy Wall Honored as Auburn Flies Eagle vs Tennessee

2 Replies

eagle flying at the auburn football gameIt seems that every day since Cindy Wall [AU press release] died I have found out more and more about what a great person she was and how much she meant to so many people.  Yesterday there was a beautiful memorial service for Cindy at Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Auburn where many people shared what an impact she had with the Auburn Athletics department and the Auburn students in general. Today during the Auburn vs Tennessee football game, Auburn University has said they are going to fly the traditional pre-game flight of either Nova or Spirit (sorry, don’t know which it is today), one of the eagles in the Auburn Raptor Center, in honor and memory of Cindy.

I don’t actually recall Auburn doing anything like this before but I am sure they have. Either way, it is a great show of how much Cindy meant to so many people at the Auburn Athletics department.  Below is an image from her celebration service at CUMC.  I will be at the game today and will post the images of the game later tonight (hopefully).  Let’s hope the Tigers fare better against Tennessee than they did against LSU last week.

Cindy Wall Memorial Celebration Service

Cindy Wall Honored in Auburn Football Game

[Update] The game yesterday was hot and loud but fun… the pregame did have a special memorial to Cindy Wall and the photo is posted below.  The stadium announcer did say the Auburn University eagle (Nova) was flying in her honor that day, and I took a quick photo of the AUHD sign as Nova flew.