Later I went into Mom and Dad’s bedroom to thank them, and I caught them eating a little turkey.

I guess that wasn’t really the best Thanksgiving.

Wow, how this year has flown by. Here we are getting ready for Thanksgiving. I know that I haven’t finished my story that I started on this blog, but I just wanted to post some things that are going on. I will get back to the story later.

• For those of you who don’t know, my daughter Michaela is home for awhile. We brought her home from the mission field for a little vacation and when she came back, she was sick. Many of you know she had swine flu this summer. Well, when she got off the plane in September, she had a bad staph infection, ringworm, and high blood pressure. So we decided to keep her home for awhile until she built her health back up. She is volunteering in the church office for now. The plan is to send her back to Bali in January, where she will be working at an orphanage and volunteering at Elevate Bali, the youth center our church supports.
• This last Sunday we started a new series called “The Poet: Inspiration from the Psalms.” Throughout this series we are doing daily devotions with a Psalm. You can subscribe to it by going here.
• What a great Night of Worship last night. Thanks to Matt Menendez and the band for a very intimate time with Jesus.
• Tonight I have a Life Group I started this summer. It is called the Shoreline Academy of Leadership. It runs for 8 months and is a intensive leadership prep course. It’s so exciting to see people discovering their gifts to lead. If you weren’t invited this time, don’t worry, we will offer it again next year.
• Darlene and I leave for a week in Washington and Oregon on Sunday. On Sunday we are having lunch with a new church plant team in Seattle, the city they are planting in in February. Next we are headed for 2 nights to her sister’s house on Lopez Island. Then we will spend a couple of nights in Ilwaco, WA, with a couple of Shoreliners who were transferred there and watch Shoreline services with some others in the furthest Life Group away from Destin. After that, we close out our final 2 days in Portland leading a church planters round table. We are very excited about that, as well as being in the great northwest, as we have never been there.
• We will be back next Saturday and I will be speaking on Psalm 91 the following day.
• We have some exciting plans for our Christmas series. You do not want to miss it - especially the 20th of December. It could change your Christmas traditions.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving and hopefully it will be the best one yet… and with a turkey.

Deep Thought: Here’s a good thing to do if you go to a party and you don’t know anybody: First, take out the garbage. Then go around and collect any extra garbage that people might have, like a crumpled-up napkin, and take that out, too. Pretty soon people will want to meet this busy garbage guy.

I am pretty sure this is the tactic that Nehemiah employed when he first moved back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. Then when he became popular enough as that garbage guy, he introduced them to the vision of rebuilding the walls. He introduced the vision of rebuilding the walls by showing them the problem. The problem was the gates were burned and the walls were destroyed. Now that he had identified the problem, the next element of vision was the solution. He brought that next in verse 17 of the 2nd chapter of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 2:17 “Come, let us rebuild the walls of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach.”

This is how it should be. The walls of this city lay in rubble. The solution: let’s rebuild them. Why? So we will no longer a reproach. The solution addresses the problem and accomplishes the vision – that Jerusalem is no longer a reproach.

That’s how we got Shoreline’s vision; we saw that people didn’t want to have anything to do with God because of their  perception of God. For the most part, their perception of God was formed by the church and by Christians. We saw how it is, wrong perception of God and how it should be; they should have a better understanding of who God is and  how He desires to be closer to them . So the solution was to change people’s perception of God. Hence the vision, changing people’s perception of God by changing their perception of church.

If they have a different perception of the church, they will like going to church. Then they’ll make friends and get invited to parties and then they won’t have to be the garbage man because they will know people.

Side note: Don’t forget Shoreline Insider tomorrow night at the Destin Community Center @ 7pm. Snacks and child care will be provided.

It has always amazed me at how he and other whittlers can see the finished work of art from whittling out a chunk of wood… or in this case the toy boat. That is the way it is with vision. That is what we have been talking about: vision.

Last week, we started with a series of posts talking about meeting the needs of some children in central Florida and the  vision that ensued after seeing the needs of these kids. If you have not read them, I would recommend you go back and read them starting with the post from August 24 entitled Unruly Salmon in Kids Church.

So, Nehemiah was in agony over the condition of his hometown, Jerusalem. He got permission from the king he worked for, Artexerxes, to take a trip to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls, which was the first step in restoring the glory of Jerusalem. After spending some time inspecting the walls to calculate the amount of work it was going to take, he called the remaining people of Jerusalem together and said this:

Nehemiah 2:17 “Then I said to them, ‘You see the situation we are in, that Jerusalem is desolate and its gates burned by fire.”

The first thing Nehemiah did was identify the problem.  He described to them how it was; “Here is the current situation, the walls are crumbled and are useless and the gates are also burned to the ground rendering them useless.”

Why would Nehemiah have felt it was necessary to make such a statement? They knew the condition of the walls. Some of the people listening to Nehemiah had lived in Jerusalem all their lives. They passed in and out of the burned gates every day. They didn’t need him telling them their gates were burned.

Nehemiah’s words were a wake-up call. In essence he was saying, “Open your eyes! Things are bad! We’re in trouble.” His fresh set of eyes brought a new perspective. And without much prodding, the people of Jerusalem took a fresh new look at their situation. In that moment they were able to see their city through Nehemiah’s eyes. And once that happened, they caught his vision.

That is the way vision works. It is seeing how things are and seeing them how they could be. Clearly identifying the problem helps others to get on board with the vision. It is like my great-uncle Jerry. He could clearly identify the problem: that there was a toy boat trapped within the other toy boat and it needed to be released. And he could only do that by whittling that toy boat out of the other toy boat.

One thing is for sure, though: fear has nothing to do with vision. If you think about it, neither does that opening story. Vision is seeing how things are and how they should be. That is the way it was looking at these kids in the housing projects of central Florida. I could see how things were… kids with inadequate clothing, a lack of beds, not enough food, no mentoring, and a weak structure to support those that want to break out of the cycle of selling drugs. That is how the vision for ministry in these neighborhoods started. That is how all vision for ministry starts. Seeing how things are and also seeing through the eyes of vision how they should be. The end result of the vision for ministry in these neighborhoods resulted in the birthing of such ministries as Sidewalk Sunday School, a bus ministry, a clothing closet, a food pantry, and somewhat of a mentoring ministry.

You really can’t talk about vision biblically without talking about Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a Hebrew slave who served as a servant to the king of Persia,  Artaxerxes. He had heard from some travelers about the condition of his hometown, Jerusalem, which was once famous for its splendor and glory and now lay in rubble, destroyed by neighboring countries.

The plight for his hometown tore Nehemiah up. Because of that, he was moved with a vision to see Jerusalem restored to its former glory. His vision: He saw how things were; Jerusalem in rubble. But he also saw how they should or could be; Jerusalem reliving its former glory with its walls intact, its gates standing strong, and its people protected. That is vision.

Now if your vision is of your partner as Dracula, that is probably leftover residue from your party years. Next time, we will see what Nehemiah did with that vision.

It was the movie Dangerous Minds, not to be confused with the movie Beautiful Minds, which is a good movie, but it was Dangerous Minds, also not to be confused with Dangerous Mimes, which is a not too well known but ruthless gang in LA (they call themselves the Silent Killers, but I digress). Anyway, it was the movie Dangerous Minds that inspired us to start visiting these kids in their neighborhoods and homes.

So, I began to visit kids every Friday afternoon. Sometimes I would ride my bike down there, other times I would drive. At first, I would get stopped by the police. They thought I was either a white boy lost in the wrong neighborhood (not good) or I was there to buy crack (also not good). But after awhile, they got to know me and encouraged me. Actually everybody got to know me, including the crack dealers, who were most of these kids’ big brothers, sisters, aunties, and even their moms. They liked me, as well, because they would say, “If you can keep them from doing what I am doing, power to you.”

It got to where every Friday afternoon the kids would be waiting for me. I would play with them, encourage them, and be excited for their grades or sporting accomplishments. I would brag on them to their moms and even listen to their moms’ issues and give them some counsel if the timing was right.

Also while visiting kids, I began to see needs. There were families that didn’t have enough food. I saw kids who didn’t have proper footwear. There was a family with 3 boys that didn’t have enough beds to sleep in and consequently the 3 boys slept on the concrete floors. I saw kids with a lack of proper clothes to wear. I also saw so many social needs; a lack of mentoring for these young boys, absent dads, no tutoring for the ones struggling in school, and no support system for those who liked to learn. Generally, just huge opportunities for getting into trouble.

Something had to be done. They needed some help. I couldn’t just stand back and gargle. Yes, that complimented my beauty, but it didn’t help them. Something needed to be done. But what?

I think I had jungle madness when, in Monday’s post, I said I would continue the story the next day. What was I thinking? I can barely blog once a week, let alone once a day.

Anyway, we were having a discipline problem in kids church after Alan, a member of the church who owned a bus, started bringing in kids from the local housing projects. They had no relationship with me and, to them, I was equivalent to the cafeteria lady or the PE coach. (Because those who can’t do - teach; and those who can’t teach - teach PE). What were we going to do? We didn’t want to reject these kids, but at the same time, we had church families keeping their kids out of kids church because of the riots and gang warfare. Not a good tool to get visitors to come back a 2nd time when their child was in a knife fight after the flannel graph lesson.

One evening while visiting my mom (she had HBO), I watched the movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Minds.  In the movie, Michelle, who played a high school teacher in a predominately black school in Los Angeles, also struggled with behavioral problems. A light bulb went on in my head when in one scene, she visited some of her students in their homes in the housing projects, not because they were in trouble, but because she wanted to let the mothers of these kids know just how wonderful they were. When she did this, the students began to rise up to the level of her belief in them. In the meantime, not only did the students’ grades go up, but the behavior problems disappeared.

You’ll have to findout in my next post what we were inspired to do after watching this movie. In the meantime, you must understand that I must get out of my underwear and go take a bath so as to immerse myself underwater so as not to be under worked or under appreciated at work.

The other day I thought back to when we worked in a ministry in Central FL, Darlene and I were very instrumental in starting some ministries in the community that are still operating today.  These ministries came about after seeing needs in the community.

In 1995, I became the full-time kids pastor at East Coast Christian Center. As we ministered to kids in the area where we were, we noticed a lot of need. A man in our church who had 3 daughters in the youth ministry purchased an old city bus for the the youth ministry. After awhile, the youth ministry got too big to use it anymore and it sat at his house. One of his neighbors, who attended another local church, approached him about picking up kids from the local housing projects and bringing them to their church. The neighbor asked if he would be interested in doing so. Alan, the man who owned the bus, jumped at the chance. He started a bus ministry and began bringing kids from the housing projects to this church.

About 6 weeks passed. One Sunday morning after making his route and pulling up to this church, the Senior Pastor was waiting out front for the bus to arrive. He informed Alan that they could no longer handle these kids and that he needed to take them home. Alan, not one to back down on a commitment to children who it seems have had everybody else in their lives abandon them, thought, “I know, I will take them to my church.”

It was my first day of kids church and Alan arrived unannounced with 45 kids from the housing projects. It was the longest 2 hours of my life. It became the start of  a huge discipline problem in our kids church. I knew I did not want to send them home and put myself and the church on the long list of people who made commitments to them only to quit after it got hard. But what were we going to do?

Tomorrow, I will tell you what we did because I have to go eat Flint now.

I want to share an e-mail that I received that really explains why we do what we do:

* * *

Pastor,
Hey to be honest I don’t know why I’m writing you this letter, well in part to say thanks. I moved to Destin two years ago. I was trying to hold together a marriage that was in crisis and well Destin seemed a nice change from [city, state]. When I was a kid I grew up in the church, I even toured with a Christian rock band in high school as a singer. When I was 18 my mom left my dad for our preacher. It was really a shocking moment in my life. It absolutely crushed my father and I don’t know if I even believed in God any more at that time. I had a full ride music scholarship to a Christian school but after a few months, I dropped out to go to [another city] to pick up singing there.

Shortly after I was married. I liked that I had a few kids. I started a business; on the outside life was good. I made a lot of money; had nice things; my wife and I were very social and had lots of friends, but inside I was as cold as a stone. I had trust issues stemming from my mother and the preacher, and on top of that my wife was an alcoholic getting worse by the day. So seven years into it with our marriage completely falling apart we moved to Destin. I guess it was fight or flight, well we ran! That’s I guess what first brought me to shoreline. I had hoped that some how God could fix everything, in the end my wife left me and the kids for some guy she met in rehab. I know it sounds crazy, but you can’t make this stuff up!! So we went back to [city]  for a while, my boyhood home, to kind of regroup. In that time I met [2nd wife] who is a Christian woman, she does not drink, just a great girl, sometimes crazy but you can’t get everything!!! We have been married almost a year, and when I came back to Destin we started back at shoreline. It has been really cool, my wife is from [Eastern European country]so your teaching has really helped her coming from an orthodox background. I want to tell you that you are the first pastor that I have had any respect for in ten years. Thank you for being real.

* * *

Love this stuff. People who are far from God being restored again into a relationship with God. I love that people like this will be in heaven. Hopefully, though, that cowboy won’t be there with a gun.

* The names have been omitted protect the identity. The cowboy is fictitious and any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental.

People make a big deal about what you call things. Okay, so it wasn’t a human skull, it was a deer skull. Same thing, right? Nope. Well, I am making a big deal about what I am called.

The other day, Sam and I were praying and we started asking ourselves some questions. And to our surprise, we started answering back. One of the things we asked is if we are not a traditional church, why do we use traditional terms for many of our elements? For instance, why do we call it the church office and why am I the senior pastor or lead pastor?

So, we changed some things. I am no longer the lead pastor, but instead I am the Head Honcho pastor. We chose that over the Big Cheese Pastor, the Lead Dog Pastor, and the Buck Stops Here Pastor. And from now on, our offices are no longer known as the offices. The offices of Shoreline are now to be referred to Shoreline’s Creative Laboratories or the Lab for short. Coming in quite close in the running were the Lair, Shoreline HQ, and the Batcave.

To answer your next question, no, Pastor Dani was not involved in this. We had to wait until he was on vacation. It’s funny, because I used to have to wait until my pastor was on vacation to make decisions like this when I was a youth pastor.

Well, I need to get back to the Lab and get busy studying my schematic (the Bible).

Head Honcho Pastor,

Eric

I don’t know if I’d make a good rich person. Don’t get me wrong, I think I would be good at spending money. I think I would be pretty good at eating at nice restaurants and tipping extravagantly. (Dream scene: “Here you go, here you go, here you go…”) I know I would be good at traveling 1st class. Where I get doubtful of my rich aspirations is in my attitude of gratefulness.

This week as a church staff, we saw God come through in the form of money. We decided to step out and take a risk this summer in a couple of ways. For one, at our volunteer appreciation banquet, called Volupalooza,  we gave all of our volunteers an iPod shuffle. The giveaway alone cost is in the neighborhood of $6,000. Right after that, the Rave e-mailed us and asked if we could pick up their sponsorship of the Free Family Film Festival, as their previous sponsor of this summer-long matinee for kids had dropped out at the last minute. Looking to always strengthen our relationship with the Rave, we picked up the cost of that $3,000 event. The 3rd big ticket item was the 1,000 Church at McGuire’s coozies we passed out at Crab Island on July 4th. All told, these events put us about $11,000 over budget for the month of July. Then two of the weeks of July, the contributions were way under budget. Such is summer time.

As a staff, we were praying because all that had to be paid today. God came through with $15,000 in the offering on Sunday, so we were able to pay our bills and stay on track. I just want to give God glory publicly and encourage you. Where do you need to trust God and allow Him to show Himself strong?

I might not make a good rich person now, but if God would like to train me, I would be willing to try.