I posted a tweet about a new website that went live yesterday called “Off The Blogs.” In it, I mentioned that “stuff like this” bothered me. After mulling over it all day and night, I feel that tweet deserves an explanation.

I have been blogging in some form or another for almost 5 years now. I have struggled a lot with maintaining consistency with my writing, as well as striving for some level of “success” with it all. Through it all, I have found that I am the best at this when I am being honest and transparent.

For the past few years, I have struggled to try and find my own identity. It is frustrating, because having grown up in an incredibly secure and loving family, I feel like I should have this all figured out by now. Yet two weeks away from my twenty-fourth birthday, I feel no closer to an understanding of who I am than when I first asked the question.

My tendency when struggling with this question is to look to others to find my identity. One person I look up to, though it is from a distance, is a man named Carlos Whitaker. Carlos is a creative pastor in Atlanta, GA who is also a very influential blogger. His transparency on his blog has inspired me tremendously, as has his creativity.

My biggest struggle when looking at people like Carlos is the desire to be just like that person. I want their success, their popularity, their joy. Through it all, I slowly chip away at the peace and joy that I have on my own, and it leaves me feeling bitter and jealous.

All of this brings me to yesterday’s tweet. Carlos, along with Anne Jackson and Jon Acuff — two more influential bloggers — announced that they are holding an event in Atlanta focused on bringing their collective blog communities together for a night of worship. As I was reading about the event, I got jealous. Rather than just ignore the feeling, I posted a tweet that was both mean spirited and inappropriate.

I’m sure most people just passed over the comment, but it has been eating at me all day. I wanted to make a public apology to Carlos, Anne, and Jon. I have emailed Carlos a personal message.

I’m still learning how to manage jealousy. I still feel that feeling of being disqualified that I posted about a number of months ago, and felt it stronger on Sunday as I attended my old church. I have a lot of growing up to do, and I thank you for your patience.

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This week I made and followed through on one of the toughest decisions I’ve made in a while. I’m actually very proud of the decision I made, even though it wasn’t fun to make it.

Those who know me know I have a passion for being creative. I am constantly thinking, dreaming, envisioning ideas. Last year, I worked at a church where my job was to make a creative team’s ideas become reality. It was an awesome experience, and one that I hope to have again.

That chance came up this month.

Over the past few months, I have been attending two churches. Connections Community Church is a theatre church in the North end of London, and is very similar to the church I worked at last year (even the name!). Presence is a small, “emergent” community that meets at the London Arts Centre in downtown London. I’ve been going back and forth about which church I would finally plant myself in and become involved with.

Over the course of some discussions, the possibility of taking some leadership at Connections came up. I was very, very interested in the idea, as it fit perfectly with what I would love to do for a living (it was a volunteer position). With my experience in service program design, I would help Connections move forward with its service flow and creative elements. The opportunity is everything I am looking for. On Monday, I emailed George, the pastor, and turned the opportunity down. I made the decision to attend Presence instead of Connections.

It was an incredibly hard decision to make. Connections is an awesome, young, vibrant church with a huge potential to make a great impact on this city. George is an amazing leader who I would benefit from serving under, and the opportunity, as I said, was perfect for me. However, right now the timing just isn’t right.

I feel like I’m just starting to get back on my feet with my relationship with God. I know that if I jump into a leadership role such as this one, it will hurt more than help that relationship. It’s fragile right now. It just can’t take the pressure.

For the foreseeable future, I will be attending Presence on Sunday mornings. James is a fantastic teacher whose thoughts have stretched my mind and have met me where I’m at spiritually right now. I’ve offered to help out with music, but don’t want to take over the whole thing. I just want to absorb for right now. Sometimes you need to be still to let your roots grow.

So, that’s where I am at. I still hope for the absolute best for George and the people at Connections. I plan to visit occasionally, and maybe one day in the future I will end up there. I just don’t want to risk their success or my spiritual walk on my fragility right now.

Some things are just worth waiting for.

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Over Christmas I put on a few extra pounds. Nothing too major, however it did get in the way of the progress I had been making with my weight goals. Since then I have tried really hard to stay on track, writing everything I eat in my journal, getting to the gym 2-3 times a week and getting enough sleep. So far things have been going good, but not great. I have almost overcome one of my greatest addictions (frozen yogurt), but still find myself eating late at night.

Last night Sara encouraged me to focus on the positives rather than the negatives, so here is a list of the positive changes I’ve made so far with my health:

1. Big Breakfast. Through reading some articles in Men’s Health magazine I learned that men should be eating around 620 calories for breakfast. Up until then, I had only been eating 200-300. I was finding that by night time I was still super hungry, would eat something, and then wouldn’t be hungry in the morning. I’ve worked hard to reverse this, by eating 2 eggs (protein), a Weight Watcher’s bagel with peanut butter (carbs and protein) and a glass of milk (calcium). This gets me to 588 cal, which is better than where I was.
2. Snacks. Just about every dietician I’ve read about has said to have 5-6 small meals a day. For a big guy like me, that’s about 400 cal a day (not really a snack!). Obviously there’s a need to spread calories out throughout the day, so I have started bringing small snacks to work every day. Apples, bananas, almonds, granola bars, All Bran bars and pudding cups are some of my staples. I usually eat a piece of fruit (fibre/potassium) and a bar of some sort (protein/carbs/fibre). Quite frankly I cannot get enough fibre in me. (I believe there’s a stat that says most Canadians get something like 20% of their daily intake of fibre every day. Hence the booming detox industry!)
3. Apples. I just have to say that over the past few months, I have really grown to love apples. I have gone from not having one in probably a few years to eating one or two every day. So good.
4. Journaling. Every day, I have kept a diary of my health. This diary includes not only my daily food intake, but also my workout, my sleep, and my water intake. This helps me see how well I’m doing. Yesterday I had a really bad night, but I know that I shouldn’t give up on myself because the rest of the week has been fairly good. It’s really encouraging to have physical evidence that I can do this.

So those are just a few of the things I’ve done over the past few weeks to really get things going again with my health. I need to get to the gym more often (went twice this week though!) and really crack down on eating late, but overall I’m actually quite pleased with how things are going.

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I am very much an all or nothing kind of guy. If I make the decision to be part of something you’ll know because I dive right in and get my hands dirty. Nothing less than everything I have is enough. On the other hand, if I decide that I can’t give my all to something then I generally make the decision to step away entirely. I’m constantly throwing the baby out with the bath water. 

As I went through the holiday season this year, I realized that lately I’ve been doing this with my religion.

When I was 15, I made the decision to become a Christian. At the time, I didn’t entirely understand what I was signing up for. As I started attending church and getting into it all, I quickly realized that I was being handed this 2000 year old package and it was up to me to sort through and understand it all. I spent hours researching the bible, looking up apologetic arguments for the existence of God, arming myself for the “battle” that I had just enlisted myself for. I very naively accepted the package that was handed to me, and everything I read I believed was true. I think I also feared that if I didn’t believe it all, that I wouldn’t be accepted. 

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the presuppositions I have regarding the bible, the church, God, Jesus, and everything this Christian religion is about. Why do I have to believe that the bible is literal, or that its 100% true? Why do I have to believe that God created the world 6000 years ago in a span of 6 days? Why do I have to believe that there is a place called hell?

I feel like if I don’t believe all of these things, then I can’t believe in the things I still want to believe in: that God came to earth as Jesus to save us from ourselves. That the message isn’t one of personal salvation but rather of redeeming the world. That our purpose on earth is to be Jesus to those who are in the greatest of need.

I really don’t want to throw on the baby with the bath water on this one.

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One more day. One more day until I wake up to the smells of eggnog and coffee, the sound of my siblings running through the family room gleaming over the treasures they have found in their stockings, the feeling of anticipation in seeing both what I had received as well as the reactions to what I have to give. 

Actually, this will be the first Christmas where I don’t wake up in my Dorchester home. However the anticipation I feel for this Christmas seems to be stronger than many I have had over the past few years. In fact, it seems to me as though this is the best Christmas I have had in quite a while. 

Seven days before Christmas in 2005, I was in a car accident. More accurately, I was in a collision. Having returned home from college after my final exam, I went into town to spend time with friends. We ended up staying out fairly late, past two in the morning. I had a half hour drive ahead of me and while I felt a bit tired I still believed I could make it home safely. About half way home as I was driving through an intersection I fell asleep at the wheel. Few cars were around at this time of night, so I didn’t hit anyone. I went straight into the ditch and hit a slope, flew about 20 feet through the air, and landed on the front of my mom’s car. It was totalled. I woke up on impact. As soon as the car was stopped and I had somewhat regained composure, I reached for my cell phone to call my parents. I couldn’t find it. I noticed lights behind me and got out of my car. A driver behind me had seen the whole thing and pulled over when he realized I went into the ditch. He gave me his phone to use and I asked my dad to come get me. My mom’s car ended up being totally destroyed; I walked away with a sore back. 

2006 was a hard year for me. I went through a lot of loss, and made some bad decisions about my finances and living arrangements. I had agreed to move into an apartment with a good friend of mine from church even though I wasn’t quite able to afford everything. From September to December, I had to borrow several thousand dollars from my parents. I was broke. I had grown up in a family that had a nice home and nice things. This Christmas I was poor. 

In 2007 on Christmas Eve, the church I worked for held its Christmas Eve service outdoors. I, along with my music team, played for approximately 40 minutes in freezing cold snow and wind. My hands were numb as I played the drums. After the service and tearing things down, I drove 3 hours to get back home to Dorchester for Christmas. The roads were rough. I felt pretty sick the rest of that week. A lot of the work that I was supposed to do that week didn’t get done. I got back to Barrie and was really behind. I basically felt as though there was no way to catch up, and I felt like a failure. 

A year has passed since last Christmas, and I have to say that this year has been on one hand the single hardest year yet, and on the other hand one of the most rewarding years I’ve had. I have a great job, a great family, a great girlfriend, great friends, a new band. It feels in a way that this Christmas is coming too easy; I feel like I don’t deserve it. 

And I don’t deserve it. None of us do. While there’s still a lot of questions in my mind and heart, and while I am unsettled about a lot of things, I still believe that this season marks the coming of a true remedy for the human problem. Even though I screw up. Even though I mess things up for me, my friends, my colleagues, my family and more, I know there is someone who can fix it. It isn’t a simple fix. It isn’t a bandaid. It’s a cure. It needs to work its way slowly, through my head, my heart, my actions, my reactions, my attitudes, my words… 

This is the story of Christmas. That all our failures are forgiven. All our sins are erased. There is no more record of my screw ups. Tomorrow is a new day. This is a new life. 

Merry Christmas to all.

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Last year at this time, I was part of a team that launched Connexus Community Church. As the Associate Director of Music, my role was to lead a team of musicians that provided worship experiences for five different environments. I had been performing the same role when we were at Trinity, however at some point during the transition something changed. My role was becoming less about leading worship and more about leading people who lead worship.

I wasn’t ready for the switch. I was moving from the role of player to coach far too quickly for my comfort. It was a change I hadn’t anticipated (even though I had been warned).

Jordan at Worship Trench posted an email he received from his church’s executive pastor in response to a question about shifting into a more executive role:

Yes. You should start feeling much more like a coach than a player. A coach is watching his players and highlighting when they do things right and how they can develop the areas that still need work. You also begin to think of the “what if” situations and train and prepare for those. Probably the best teaching coach I’ve ever seen was John Wooden. There are a ton of books on his coaching and his development thinking. You may find them fasinating [sic].

It’s not that I don’t want to coach one day. However, I still feel like I’m learning the game, let alone being an all-star player! Now I haven’t played the game in over 8 months. I don’t know if I ever will.

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I was out for coffee last night with my amazing girlfriend, and we were talking about life and things we’re both passionate about. One of the things I told her that I’ve never really told anyone before is that I never stop thinking. Honestly. All day, everyday, I am thinking about something. I am thinking about how to make the company I work for successful, how to make my own company get started, what ways I can get involved in church, what passage I just read that morning and how it applies to my life, ideas for preaching series (yes, I have about 4-5 ideas if any pastors are looking), things my girlfriend and I can do, the goals and dreams I have for my life and our lives, what the best strategies are for church management and execution, whether or not I should go to school, what I would like to write a book about… and the list goes on and on. 

One of the reasons I shy away from writing in my journal and my blog is because quite honestly, my fear is that I won’t know when or how to stop. Sometimes I am so captured by a thought that I need to explore every possible angle, every path, every choice. Other times it’s a matter of critiquing: what could I have done better? How could that church service been communicated better? How could that design better get across the message it’s trying to convey? 

All this thinking causes me to cease up and not do anything about any of it. 

I rarely watch television, but when I do my girlfriend and my parents both say that I tune right out of everything else going on in the room. I turn myself off. It’s a relief to not have to think anymore. Sara also walked through a new diet plan with me yesterday based on the fact that I spend so much time thinking (apparently I eat too many carbs and no where near enough fat; your brain needs healthy fats to function). So now I’m at a coffee pub eating an egg bagel because I need the fat from the eggs. 

Does anyone else have this? I don’t want to call it a problem, because it feels more like a gift or a skill that when harnessed could really do some amazing things. I just wish I had somewhere to focus it all.

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Several times in my life I have struggled with sleeping. It isn’t a case of insomnia; I’m not entirely sure what the cause is.

The problem has surfaced at different stages of my life. The first time was in college, when I would stay up incredibly late, get a couple hours of sleep before class, and then basically be non-functioning the rest of the day. A few times my friends had to come into my room to wake me from my sleep. I was socially reclusive during this time, having little energy to spend time with my friends.

The issue arose again while working at Trinity Community Church. There were some nights when I didn’t go to sleep for fear of not waking up (weird, I know). It affected my performance at work, and with the help of my leadership and friends, was able to bring everything back under control. I began making sure I built margin into my life (taking Tuesday Sabbaths), and just working discipline into my life. 

It became a problem again when I first came home from Barrie. After a month or so I had everything under control, and for the past several months things have been relatively good. However, the last two weeks have been really tough. The last couple of nights I’ve gotten maybe 5 hours of sleep, which is just not enough. 

So, this is my big ask for today. Would you mind praying for me tonight? Just before you go to bed, if you could offer up a quick prayer that I would be able to get to sleep; that through discipline and peace of mind I’d be able to get the amount of sleep I need. I’d very much appreciate it.

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This post is a bit misleading. Its purpose is to celebrate my 100th blog post. However, anyone who has known me for a while knows that this is not the first blog I’ve ever had and definitely not the first 100 blog posts I’ve ever written. In fact, my blogging days go back almost 5 years during my time at Emmanuel Bible College (xanga, anyone?).

Yet it seems to me that this part of my journey is starting to close. It started when I left my position as Associate Director of Music at Connexus Community Church. Upon my departure, I closed down the blog I had been keeping, “Journeys of a Rookie Worship Pastor.” I had built a fairly solid readership, had several hundred blog posts, and had participated in some amazing discussions. It was also the first time I really began to see the value of blogging when it comes to networking. However, because of the change in my personal life, I felt I needed to embark on a new direction in my blog-life. 

This decision led to a blog redesign and refocus. My posts started focusing more on design-related items. I posted a few “gallery” style posts that generated a ton of traffic but absolutely no discussion. I tried writing some tutorials, but I had nothing to write that hadn’t already been discussed. I decided that rather than writing about design, I would actually do some design for the blog. I released two WordPress child themes for the Thematic Theme Framework. I realized, though, that while these themes made my blog look spiffy, they did nothing to enhance the content. 

And now here I am again, re-evaluating. I’m at a weird place in my life. I have a strong feeling about what I want to do for a living, but have no idea what the best route to go about it is. I feel like I have so many gifts and ideas that are just waiting to be developed, but see no avenue to properly do so. I have been spending as much time as I can reading and learning, and I want to share those things with others. 

I spent some time this weekend stripping back the layers to this site. I’m hoping to expose more of myself, to engage in authentic dialogue and to encourage you to do the same. This is a new chapter in my life. I’m calling it “Revealed.”

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I’ve grown up in a fairly well-to-do family. We didn’t live extravagantly, but we were never in great need. My father is a genius when it comes to finances. His mother looked after their family’s finances, using the tested-and-true envelope system. They would walk 5 miles to save a nickel. My father picked up a lot of the lessons my grandmother taught him. He got out of debt quick and was able to retire with my mother at the age of 30 (this was 5 years before they had me, their first child). My father just recently retired again, and is now able to do anything he wants. 

My girlfriend and I were at the grocery store late last night. An elderly lady was working the cash register. I realized as I watched her work that she likely didn’t want to be working at 11pm on a Tuesday night. It’s highly unlikely that she finds the job that fulfilling. I would guess she would do just about anything if she didn’t have to be there.

This woman is one of thousands of elderly people who were unable to save enough money for retirement, and who are now working insane jobs and hours just to make ends meet. 

The thing about poverty is that it is not just children in Africa who are affected by it. We encounter it every single day. Unlike what the media has to say about it, the homeless are not the only ones struggling with poverty. People all over the country are piled in debt. Families are struggling to feed their families. Children are showing up to school in old hand-me-down clothes.

Many people today have pointed to new organizations that are doing great things to help curb poverty in our world. While many of these organizations are innovative and doing amazing things, there is one organization that should and could be doing a lot better. The church has existed for over 2000 years. Literally billions of people have professed to believe in the message of Jesus. It makes me wonder, then, with all of the money and resources and talent that the church encompasses, how is it possible that poverty even exists?

When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation.

And here’s why: I was hungry and you fed me, 

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,  I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit,  I was in prison and you came to me.”

Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, “Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?” Then the King will say, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.” I know I don’t do this. I know I don’t love the least. I don’t have any answers how to make this better. 

Do you?

 

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