my daughter is considering returning to the ATL area…hope that didn’t surprise anyone…she wants to live in ATLANTA not Dallas…i know that freaks my wife out…so i did some digging and found these statistics:

Comparison of Crime: ATLANTA AND DALLAS, GA

CRIME                                   ATL               DALLAS    SAME% IN DALLAS

VIOLENT CRIME                1624                 1481                      330

MURDER                              26                           0                              0

RAPE                                     30                           29                           9

ROBBERY                             719                         157                      225

ASSAULT                              849                      1294!                     240

PROPERTY CRIME             7286                  3285                       2175

BURGLARY                          1781                       668                         535

LARCENY                              4053                    2461               1215

VEHICLE                               1412                       157                         420

how do i interpret this…Dallas, GA is a more dangeous place to live than Atlanta, GA…

you are more likely to be murdered, have your car stolen, and be robbed in Atlanta…

you are more likely to be raped, assaulted, have property damaged, be burglarized, or have someone commit larceny against you in Dallas, GA and by wiiiiiidddddeeee margins.

if Dallas had the same crime rate as ATL there would have been only 9 rapes, 240 assaults, 535 burglaries, 2175 property crimes…

are any of you getting my point…i know the city scares the                   h__ __ __  (that hot place) don’t want to offend my brothern and sistern) out of people…but perhaps you are safer in the city…even in the case of murders, I wonder how many of those were random or how many knew their attacker…as in that’s my dope dealer or husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend…the Christian community and largely white people abandoned the cities because they were such a dangeous place…the church moved out…

maybe it’s time to reconsider where we need a church!

just finished Defying Gravity,,,How to Survive the Storms of Pastoral Ministry by Daniel Henderson…2 or 3 things in there i will definitely use next time someone asks me about leadership… 5 marks of interpersonal integrity…how to have a vital biblical identity… and factors that lead to an emergency landing (really useful)… gauging where you are in ministry… also sent a quote to someone that is trying to make decisions about  God’s will…good stuff

in my quiet time currently picked up a book the other day… Praying the Names of God by Ann Spangler… loving this book… just got started as a part of quiet time…26 names of God, their meaning, and how to use pray through them…they are mostly the Hebrew designations but she has added the NT meanings to most of them…scanned through all 26 before beginning the quiet time component…my favoite so far…used only one time in conversation with Hagar after she had run from Abraham and Sarai…El Roi means the “God who sees me…” even when Hagar was on the run El Roi saw her, promised her protection, and promised to bless her…there is El Roi who sees you and watches over you no matter where you are in life…thank you El Roi for being Yahweh Yireh (God provides)…

don’t forget if you’re looking to up your game in church planting… the School of Church Planting begins Aug 14…email me for info: jima@westridge.com

church planting is a unique ministry…it seems as if everyone thinks they are a church planter…deacons/elders giving you trouble…start a church…get fired…start a church…want to change worship styles and the church rebels…start your own…

the truth…not every called pastor is called to be a church planter…there are a specific set of skills and systems that go into starting a church…and a being a successful pastor does not always prepare you for being a  successful church planter…

ask yourself…”have i ever started a club, business, ministry with no money…no members…no staff…?” if you haven’t starting a church is difficult…”have i ever had to live by faith…” i’m not talking about faith that the sun will rise tomorrow…or that the children will obey…or get into college…i’m talking about faith that if God doesn’t touch someone’s life my family may not eat this week…or the mortgage might not get paid…if not planting a church is going to be difficult because your faith in daily provision will be tested…”have you ever cast vision that other’s attacked as being unrealistic but you did it anyway?…”have you ever had friends in ministry turn on you?”, etc, etc.

if you are called you also need to be equipped…you may even need to check out to see if church planting is for you…Clark Howard encourages people that are considering starting a business or franchise to go and work in that industry before starting the business… i think that is good advice for a church planter…go work for or volunteer as a staff member before taking on the role of lead church planter…at the very least find someone to walk you through and help you prepare for planting a church…

to that end…WRC is doing it again…starting August 14…the next School of Church Planting begins…if you’re interested…give me a call or email me… starting our 6th year of preparing church planters to launch well…770 222 2125…ext 333, jima@westridge.com

prepare yourself for the task ahead…

Oswald Chambers said, “If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed–you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.”

tough thought…i know this is true for me…i thought for many years that i had all the answers for everyone’s questions…easy Biblical but out of context verses…trite…then when the storm hit it took a loooonnnngggggg time to come to grips with the thought that “hey God…this isn’t how it’s supposed to be”

do the right thing…listen to the right people…worship in the right church…follow God’s will…pray…read the bible… worship… discipleship… fellowship…don’t smoke, drink, cuss, or chew, or go with girls that do…and God’s supposed to answer all of our prayers… we’re never supposed to have problems… the kids will all be beautiful and smart… the wife will always be satisfied and grateful to be married to a man like me… i’ll always have the right job… always be able to make the house payment… always have food on the table… where did i go wrong?

i know that is a question that i have asked of God…i know that is a question that almost everyone that is honest with themselves has asked at one time or another…

now you have three options when going through God’s refining process…deny it…fight it…or learn from it… 

church planter/pastor you will be squeezed…how will you respond?… this may determine the kind of church you will start… i can guarantee this though…that after you have been squeezed and you have learned from it you will be a better person, dad, husband, pastor, friend… “consider it all joy brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and allow endurance to have its perfect result that you will be perfect and complete and lacking in nothing…”

now am i a chardonnay or a pinot noir…

first day back in the office…if anyone cares…it is good to be back…although i’ve probably lost my huge following…:)

it is hard trying to catch up after being away for 30 days…i am such a dork…i didn’t open my computer but maybe 3 or 4 times in the entire month…i actually loved it…i know the computer makes life easier and communication simpler but…just but…

rested, a lot…communicated as little as possible with anyone not named akins or carver…i did meet a few people for consultation but not many…attended a few church plants…WRC church plants seem to be doing well based on the 3 i got to visit…all in different cities…all within the last 18 months…

went to Vegas…before anyone asks…yes i gambled…12 bucks…i am a high roller after all…just had to try it once…found it pretty boring…slot machines anyway…didn’t or wouldn’t spend the money to get on a poker table…i know i’m not that good to compete with those guys…i absolutely do not see what the attraction to slot machines are, but people sit there and spends 100’s of dollars and hours upon hours hitting a button and watching a wheel spin and stop and doing it again…there is absolutely no skill involved…just plain dumb luck…no thanks…we did see KA (cirque d soleil), blue man group (strange), tony and tina’s wedding, grand canyon, dude ranch, bodies, titanic, bellagio’s fountains, the eiffel tower, old las vegas, the tigers of siegfried and roy, the lions of MGM (a show in itself, if you saw my facebook), ate at Emeril’s, Smith and Wollensky (best steak ever), and Wolfgang Puck…learned that Vegas is the least handicapped friendly city in the USA that i have visited…108 is hot even if there is no humidity…there is no such thing as a cool wind when it’s 108…i got tired of the World Cup very quickly…it’s still soccer no matter what the rest of the world calls it…and it is still boring…USA won 1 game and won it’s group and scored like 5 goals in 1000 minutes of “football” booorrrriiiinnnngggg!..i know i just lost a few followers with those comments…bring on college football!

as for church planting…which i still do sometimes…the next class starts on Aug 14…if you know someone that may be interested have them get in contact with me …jima@westridge.com…

just finished my first week of sabbatical…this probably makes me a real loser but i did NOT turn on my computer the entire week!…if it couldn’t be done on the iphone…it didn’t get done…i survived…

first, i worked most of the week in my yard…i am not made for manual labor…too heavy…to lazy…not in shape…too hot…but we now have a rock and pine island in my front yard…the back yard will be fixed on the next sabbatical… just kidding wife of mine…

second…completed plans for our 30 year anniversary trip to Las Vegas…

third…visited one of our church plants in Chattanooga…they’re doing well…but the consultant in me has some observations…be talking to Shane soon…

fourth…30 year anniversary…went out to eat at a nice restaurant in Atlanta…they seat a couple behind us…late 40’s probably… attractive…then he started talking…for 1.5 hours he berated and threatened this woman…”you are stupid…incompetent…you don’t know what you’re doing…” loudly…incessantly…the entire restaurant could hear him…she at one point said he might be getting too loud at which time he only got worse in his criticism…he had this strange accent that told me he was not from around here…probably north of Philly I would say …i really wanted to shake the guy down, but we were in a nice restaurant on our anniversary and didn’t want to end up in a fight…two things…Tanya threatened to turn around and say, “honey i’ve been married for 30 years…you don’t have to put up with that.” and 2. it made me look really good as a man…good for a few more years….

fifth…i had to get out today and communicate with someone that wasn’t selling me pine straw or bricks…maybe i’ll update again next week….

got to lead the WRC staff in prayer this morning…i always love the opportunity to pray with folks…don’t know if the staff liked it, but it’s always fun for me…Daniel Henderson, Fresh Encounter, changed the way i do prayer with a group…

one thing Dr. Henderson says is that we don’t have conversations with God…we each pray our separate prayers, run through our lists and concerns and no one ever really talks to one another…Dr. Henderson suggests that when we pray we begin with God…that we pray scripture because when we pray scripture over someone or a situation we can be assured we are praying God’s will…and that we all focus on the same subject, agreeing together…and it may be what we know as prayer but we may read scripture, or we may sing a song that is related to the prayers being prayed…i love it when we are all praying the same prayers and agreeing together….makes prayer more real for me…

after a time of praying to God, thanksgiving, praise, worship then we focus on prayer requests…we take the prayer requests from Sunday’s communication cards and pray over them…then we pray over the staff, programs, for blessing and provision from God over what we do here at WRC…finally we pray for ourselves…

This is the promise we prayed this morning…Ph 4:6 Do not be anxious for anything but in prayer and petitions let your request be known to God…

if you would like the staff to pray for you…put it on a comment card and turn it in on Sunday…or i think there is now a place on the website…remember James says, The faithful and fervent prayer of the righteous man accomplishes much. surely when the whole staff prays God can find a righteous man in our midst each time…so we’ll accomplish much…let us know how we can pray for you…

church planters…how do you pray?

Brenton Lehman arrived today…he is not completely new to WRC as he interned last summer at church@theridge …brenton has had an interesting two weeks…graduated from Liberty U…got married…honeymooned…moved to GA from VA…anyway after last summer i immediately began to pursue him for a longer internship…he is a quality guy that will one day soon plant a church in a city that will impact a community  for Christ!

last night flipping through the channels decided to watch the guy who travels around eating all sorts of %*&@#$% …he was in TX…eating at the state fair…the fried food capital of the world…last nite he ate: a deep fried banana and peanut butter sandwich and fried coca-cola doughnuts served with coca-cola whipped cream and straight coca-cola syrup…how do these guys avoid heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc, etc, etc…i have often said if the doctor ever tells me i’ve got six months to live…i am going to live at the Krispy Kreme and the Varsity and Baskin Robbins and i’ll end it all in three months…but i’ll die happy of course my pall bearers will regret it

gets me to thinking we become what we feed ourselves…which is why i’m diabetic, have stints, and take a ton of pills every day…it’s the same way in the church…we become who we listen to…where we get trained…what books we read…the old gigo saying works…what goes in – goes out…what are you self-feeding in your life that breeds health?…what are you reading that encourages you to be a better leader?…who do you spend time with that stretches you?…

bottom line…what are you feeding yourself that will make you healthier…financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

so, last night not much on tv…never did get into LOST…not much of a cartoon fan for fox…didn’t like country music on cbs…don’t like ny mets or yankees on espn…flipping through the channels and found the fattest woman in the world and fattest man in the world on discovery…sad

both had pretty much eaten themselves into destruction…according to the “special” there are 2 million super morbidly obese people in the USA…the woman died 2 weeks after surgery…the guy was surviving at the end of his hour…it was like a car wreck i couldn’t stop watching…

here’s my take for you pastors, church planters…there are those of you that think that you can just keep feeding yourself and that you’ll grow and grow and that you will get more of God and that there is no end to your spiritual growth and that is how we should measure church health…NOT!…yes you should feed yourself and get healthy…but if you never “leave the house” and you don’t grow outside of your house you will soon die a very unhealthy death…these two people had not left their homes in over two years…they invited people in to feed them…

you gotta get outside yourself…touch the lives of others outside your flock..if you don’t you die an untimely death…i know it’s a bad example but i had to make some sense of my time from last night…

this just in…received a copy of an article from that great rag of information the Marietta Daily Journal about the changing demographics of America…in the May 9 edition of the MDJ…the Brookings Institute reports that from the year 2000 to the year 2008 that:

1. there is a trend for the multi-ethnic poor and younger generation to be moving to the suburbs, especially true in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida.

2. that there is a trend for whites to be moving back to the city…”Washington D.C. and Atlanta posted the largest increase in white share since 2000, each up 5 percentage points to 44% and 36% respectively. Other white gains were in New York, San Franciso, and Boston and seven other cities in the top 100 metro areas.”

the description of these people are generally upscale, knowledge based individuals seeking jobs and avoiding commutes…the next census data should be a very interesting read for church planters…in the last several years it has been pretty difficult finding church planters that had a heart for the city…let me tell you i’m preaching to the choir here…20 years ago i could not envision raising my children in the city…anyway…maybe with the “white, upscale, smart people” moving back to the city some young white dudes are now going to hear God’s call to reach the city…i hope so…it will be a different church from what people of my generation remember…but that’s okay…even different from today’s “contemporary” church…in fact we probably haven’t seen it yet…can’t wait to see who God will raise up…

anybody ready to go…i know some neighborhoods in the ATL that could use you…