Time to Let it Go

The last couple of days I have been in a poetic mood, meaning that I have not been writing poetry but just seeing the poetic beauty around me. I get into these types of mood time to time, especially when I am making a transition in life.

I will not be going into the details of why the poetic mood has overtaken my mind, but I will mention a poem that I had not read for a while.

Mary Oliver's poem, "In Blackwater Woods," moved me when I first read it and it still continues to move me especially in the last part of the poem:

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.      (In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver)

 The last line is a lesson I have come to appreciate and one that I understand is difficult. Knowing the time to let something go is hard. It's as simple as that.

In my understanding of the world and of people, you either find it difficult to let things go or you are so consumed with the idea of not attaching to anything that there is no chance to even consider letting things go because you have not let anything in. The two scenarios both sound bleak, but I go with the first scenario any day, because it seem like you are living life if you do not allow anything to come in.

Letting things go is not just saying that you are over a situation, but more that you have done all you can do in this place and it is time to move on to the next point in your life.

I'm understanding that if you do not let go, you may not actually be able to reach what you are fully capable of doing.

It is a long hard process to understand this and I do not believe I am anywhere close to understanding this. What I can say though is that I am embracing this idea and it's making me a bit more courageous.

Business of Church: Finance

Two of the most dreaded words to put together for a congregation are Church Finance. No one wants to talk about it other than complaining that the Finance Committee isn't doing their job or if they aren't getting the right kind of funding for a project. I'm not saying this happens at every church, but from my personal experience and the experience of my friends as pastors, this is a common theme.

If you remember in the first week of the series I made a chart or relating business positions to the church. This graph depicts that the counterpart of a CFO in the church is a Finance Committee. So in basic terms to say, the entire Finance Department is supposed to come together and create a budget. The pastor of a church and a select others look for people to be on this committee who seem to fit the positions, whether they may actually have finance experience or not (if you are at a large enough church than you are more so likely to have professionals who work in finance in some capacity. If not, you just need to find capable volunteers.).

Even before getting into budgeting, the church encounters a potential issue of having people who may not have necessary experience. This may not be too bad if you have a smaller church that is not doing a wide assortment of ministries; it can be detrimental if you have a larger budget.

This leads to the actual budget. What exactly does a church need to budget for?
There is actually a lot!
For example (This list is subject to change for different churches. Size, denomination, area, etc determines whether a budget would include this, but overall these are items that would be considered during committee meetings):

1. Youth Ministry
1. Trips
2. Curriculum
3. Purchasing Bibles
4. Supplies (Markers, papers, pens, etc.)
5. Camp Scholarships
2. Children's Ministry
1. Trips
2. Curriculum
3. Vacation Bible School
4.  Supplies (Markers, papers, pens, etc.)
5. Camp Scholarships
3. Hospitality Ministry
1. Meals at church
1.  Food Supplies
2. Cleaning Supplies
4. Utilities
5. Salary of Staff
1.  Lead Pastor
2. Youth Pastor
3. Office Administrator/Secretary
4. Minister of Hospitality
5. Children's Coordinator
6. Music Minister
6.  Basic Up-Keep
7. Mission Activities 
1. Soup Kitchens
2. Missionaries
3. Mission Trips
4. Reach Out Centers
8. Music Ministry
9. Preschool
10. Denominational Dues
1. Paying some amount to the general denomination to sponsor larger denomination programs

This list is honestly the items that pop up at the top of my head of what I have seen on different churches financial statements. Like I said before, there are a lot of items that need to be budgeted for in churches. Now this list as I mentioned above is all relative, because there are a lot of factors that play into whether all of this is needed budgeted. BUT, a major player is if what you are budgeting for goes along with your mission and vision (it all fits together or at least is should fit together).

I understand that this all seems basic and easy to understand. Where the real difficulty comes in is the clear fact that a churches main moneymaker is donation based. If your congregation goes down, your donations go down, but that doesn't mean that your budget does down. And if the pastor or the finance committee tries to cut some ministries of budgets of ministries, people start complaining since the congregation has a voice.

So the major two difficulties is church finance are that you may not have an experienced committee and that donations are all determined on what people show up and how many show up. These aren't the only two issues, because you could include that people may be selfish and seeking too much money or everything starts focusing on money and not the true purpose of the church, but those are not necessarily connected with the finance committee and has to do with the image of the church.


Church finance as a whole is vital and the area that can most relate to a for-profit business. The difference is the donation-based income and also the fact that the finance committee is a volunteer based committee. But if these volunteers do not understand the complexities of what makes up a church, then this can lead to larger problems just like it would in business.

What to Expect:

    Week 4: Church Marketing

    Week 5: Church Strategic Planning

    Week 6: Church Force- Volunteers

    Week 7: Personal Experience/ Wrap Up

It’s Not Salad, but Sweet Like Chocolate

“I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing.”

― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

So for 7 months I was a Minister of Youth, fancy title for Youth Pastor but whatever. I worked with two other guys and it was a good time. I learned a lot both on a personal level with my own faith, but also with teaching youth. It was a great experience and I am so happy I had the opportunity to work with these kids and experience the hardship, because there were many times when I just wanted to give up.

But as I am now done with the actual position and helping with the transition period happening it got me thinking about the last couple of months on our lessons about the Gospel and why reading scripture is important. With this reflection, it caused me to remember a quote from one of my favorite books.

“I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing.”

― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

Before I go too deep into this post I guess it would be useful to describe the quote. How it is used in the book is describing one of Don’s friends who gave her life to Christ who thought salad was more of something that you should eat, but didn't necessarily enjoy eating it. Now that is out of the way, let’s get into the nitty-gritty.

So often we made out scripture as something that is boring, bland and tasteless. People, and I’m including people in the church, make it this way and take out any flavoring in it. BUT that’s not the case at all!

There is so much flavoring in scripture that you sometimes have to put it down because it is so overpowering. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just read Song of Songs…ummm there is a lot of passion in that book. I can’t help but get emotional when I read Hosea or feel like I am punched in the face when I read James. There are so many flavors in the Bible and we just over look it. We just like to make it palatable and don’t want to embrace the many tastes that it presents.

So the Bible to me is more of a chocolate thing. It’s sweet and gives me so much warmth and hope. It’s something delectable that causes me to savor each bite I take from it. It fills me up in a way that I cannot necessarily put into words, but I do know it is sweet. Each taste I take makes me want to share the taste to other people by offering them a piece of it.

But that’s just me.

For the love of Books

A book is a very treasured thing.

A book is a thing that you can fall in love with.

A book is freedom.

As a child I always remember having an active imagination. I always remember the day of school we went to the library, but it wasn't quite a love yet. It was when I was in either the third or fourth grade when I picked up a book that taught me how to love books. This book was called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Since then I have fallen head over heals in love with books. Like so many, I find so much joy reading. I love the fact that I am transported to different worlds, or into battle or take great adventures. Some of the best connections I have ever made with people have been made over books.

I swear, books can unite anyone, especially when you are reading books at the same time. For example, I have never been a part of a book club, but I started reading two books at the same time as my boss and whenever we see each other we wanted to know what the other was thinking about the book. Books create conversations and can widen your range of thoughts. I guess that's why so many people decide to join book clubs because of that.

Books inspire so much more, which is why people who love power fear books. Books challenge authority with what they are about, with encouraging thinking for yourself, and with creating your own ideas.

Personally, I just love books and love the power that comes with them.

Books open the mind for a world of opportunities if you will let them.

The Business of Church: Mission and Vision

When you have a business, it is key to have a mission and vision statement. These statements are the basis of how you make your decisions and where you are planning to be heading in the years to come.  To give a better example and the difference between these two statements, the American Marketing Association has two definitions that make these concepts understandable.

Mission Statement: It is used to guide the company’s decision-making and strategic planning.

Vision or Vision Statement: A guiding theme that articulates the nature of the business and its intention for the future.

The fact that the mission and vision statement are important is not a difficult fact to grasp. In fact, the concept is exceedingly basic and seems like it would be a no-brainer for a company to create one.

Now, I’m not going to be explaining the definition of these two or why they are important. Those are easy to grasp. What I will be discussing is why it is so vital to have them in the church.

Most churches or their general denominations have mission/vision statements. That is not really surprising. The fact that I find exceedingly interesting is that local churches may have different mission/vision statements that are different from the greater denomination that they are a part of. To me this is intriguing because aren’t these statements supposed to guiding a company (or church) into the future?

Like most companies, the church creates a team that helps develop the mission and vision statements, but there are some differences. In a company, the people on the team are selected and only a few people have input to what the final results will be. At the church though, you can create a team but many can throw input and make noise loud enough to stop progress. There is a fine line of being on a committee and effecting a committee decision, which can be good and can be bad.

It is good that churches can receive input from people outside the committee, but these people may have not been asked to voice their opinions for a reason. Think about it in business terms. If you know that someone is wanting to stay the same, believe that the old ways are the best and does not want to adapt to changing times, do you want them to effect your strategy for the future? Of course not and in business you can find a way to move them out of the way, sometimes providing a golden parachute or buying them out of the company or something along those lines.  You can’t do that in the church, because it is all volunteers.

Having a volunteer committee is honestly a double-edged sword, especially when it comes to strategic planning with a mission and vision statements. A pastor can plan a meeting, but the committee members don’t necessarily have to show up since it is not technically their job. If they are able to come and attend then that is good, but if they are not able to come then there is no consequences. There is not necessarily a solid base, which in turn makes it difficult to make strategic decisions when you are not having the same committee meet each week, because of absences.

 Another item to consider with this is something that I brought up a couple paragraphs ago: different mission/vision statements. There are many churches that belong to denominations that are very well organized. These denominations create mission and vision statements for what they want to achieve. To make sense of it in business terms: imagine a corporate retail stores headquarters as the church denomination and the stores as the local churches. Now imagine the headquarters having a different mission and vision statement than the local stores. It doesn’t make any logical sense.

Now having said this example, not every church differs from their denominations mission and vision. For example, the church I attend has a different mission statement from the denomination (having the idea of being much more specific with the ministries they want to achieve) and have the same vision statement (because they belong to the denomination and want to ultimately follow them in that direction). I agree with this stance, because the mission should be tailored to the specific area in which you are located.

Having written all this, it is easy to say that the Church and business world are not so different when it comes to the importance of the mission and vision statements. It is in the development stage that they differ to the fact that the Church relies more so on a volunteer committee verses ones that are getting paid to create these strategies. This does have an effect on how successful these statements are, because how invested people are. A business must follow their mission/vision to survive and so does the church. For some odd reason people do not put the connect together that for anything to survive it must have a purpose and thus having a mission and vision for the reason of its survival. 

What to Expect:

    Week 3: Church Finance

    Week 4: Church Marketing

    Week 5: Church Strategic Planning

    Week 6: Church Force- Volunteers

    Week 7: Personal Experience/ Wrap Up

The Dream

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Today is the day we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and all that he did for this country. MLK Jr. was always one of my favorite people to talk about in school, because he made a difference and impacted the world.

His entire “I Have A Dream” speech is inspiring and gives me chills every time I listen to it. Most of the times I have to hold back tears, because it just hits me in ways I can’t explain. It’s always been that way for me, even when I was in elementary school and they explained the importance of this speech. I always found it as something to always keep in mind.

When I was little, I had this glorified image of protesting and when I mean little, I mean at the age of 4 (one of my brothers’ did something that I didn’t like and I protested at home. I literally made a sign and walked around the house protesting about my brother. I was FOUR!!!). I viewed people who protested, my influence was the Freedom Marches that King and others led, in a super positive light because they wanted to lead for change. As I have gotten older, I don’t agree with every protest I see, some I totally disagree with, but people are standing for what they believe.

King’s speech is still as powerful as it was when he first delivered it, but are we still fighting for that dream?

Let’s think about it, there are still injustice in the world; there are still people being looked down on whether it is race or gender or who you are attracted to; there are still people who do not have a voice. Just because it is 2014 does not mean that we have already achieved this dream, in fact, we still need to be fighting for it.

Has it gotten better? Of course it has! Is there room to improve? Of course there is! If we ever believe we have reached the perfect point, then I am very sorry to inform you that is a fallacy. There is always room for more understanding, acceptance and listening!

I’m not saying here that we must all believe in the same things or all is the same. All I am saying that we need to be accepting of people and be willing to listen to the other side.

We are all created equal! We can do this if we lend our hands out to our brothers and sisters and rise up together. It does not matter if we agree or disagree politically, spiritually or anything like that, we must be willing to be a source of peace. Peace, not being a doormat and not having an opinion, but willing to listen to the other side.

I believe we can continue to move toward the direction of being equal, but it won’t ever be perfect. Just because it won’t ever be perfect does not mean we can’t strive for equality for all!

I would Prefer Not...

So I think I have given myself way too much freedom with my Friday post, because I am always at a loss for what to write. Like I will literally say, “Oh that would be an awesome post! I will totally write about [insert whatever I am thinking at a random time]!”

And what comes of it…me being stuck with what to write about, which funny enough makes me remember a time during my freshman year of college.

I attended Otterbein College for a year and it was so much fun and I learned a lot about myself and also in the way of education. But I had that was called Intro to Literary Imagination or aka Intro class to the English Major where we read a lot of books in 10 weeks and had a number of papers and a project. I appreciated the class, not as much as I appreciate the lessons I learned from reflecting on it, but it was interesting.

The very first piece of literature we read that quarter was a novella by Herman Melville, so I initially dreaded reading it.  My last experience with Melville was horrible. I had to read Moby Dick for honors English my junior year of high school and hated Melville’s writing style.

I get people love Melville’s Moby Dick but I am not one of them. I respect you if you love it, but you could not pay me enough to read that novel again.

So having this as my background I was not looking forward to Bartleby the Scrivener. During the actual time I took the class, I was very impartial to the book. I personally didn’t like Bartleby (he was lazy) nor did I like the narrator (he was a wimp). And Bartleby only said the same thing over and over again (“I would prefer not”.).

Now fast-forward 3 years:

I am in my senior year of college and in my last semester.  I am working really hard and trying to impress my professors and trying to find a career. I was putting all this pressure on myself to try to live up to the expectations of others or what I thought was the expectations of others. It was not a good thing. Seriously, just look at a post I did last year entitled “Total Panic.”

It was during this time that this simple and once annoying phrase came into my head. A professor and I were discussing a project and the thought that luckily did not come out of my mouth reached the top of my mind. I would prefer not.

Bartleby wasn’t lazy, he was just sick of it all! He was tired of these stupid standards that don’t actually make any sense or just how some people wield power over you. I had experienced too many people acting like I was just this little peon and I just preferred not to do what they said. I preferred not to live up to their standards and live up to my own.

Now fast-forward to now:

Living up to my expectations has been great and has pushed me to think in different ways.  I’m not saying that it has been easy, but it has been great to just have to appease myself and not others. I am not saying that I am thinking selfishly, but just not living up to other people’s expectations because if I am not happy with life, then I am doing something wrong.

So let just say it together: I would prefer not.

It’s not saying no, but it is stating that you would rather be doing something other than what they have for you to do. Maybe this phrase will work for you as it did for me and give me the understanding to strive for my own goals and not being programmed to not be able to think for myself.