Today is a very important day.  It’s the day Mac users from all around the world visit the veritable “Mecca” of Mac-dom (a.k.a. Moscone West Expo Center in San Francisco), and many more gather with them via text and video feeds online.  Today is the day of the Macworld keynote address by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs.

Yes, every single blogger here uses a Mac.  We’re totally sold.  Why has Apple been able to gain such rabidly fanatical users?  The answer comes in a quote from H.J. Heinz (the ketchup guy) many years ago: “To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.“  That’s why.  Computers and MP3 players weren’t anything new when Apple released their versions of them, but they did them radically well.  They did something so well, that the users that stuck with them were fanatics.

In the past 25 years, personal computers have gone from a few thousand users to over 1 billion users.  There are almost as many computer users as Christians in the world.  Christians took 2000 years, PCs took 25.  Why the difference?  Because PCs were so revolutionary, they spread like wildfire.

What if you could get the kids and parents in your ministry to be just that fanatical?  Aim for it.  Tell your kids that their faith is nothing to be ashamed of, but is to be shared with everyone how absolutely amazing it is.   Push your kids to that level.  You might be surprised to see a sudden explosion of growth.  Kids are the church of today, and can spread God’s love now.  But childhood is so vitally important in faith formation, you may, as a childrens’ pastor, reach more people than you could ever imagine through one small child.

Keep pushing.  Keep proclaiming.  Keep praying.

No, Evan has not lost his mind.  OK, so maybe I have, but that’s beside the point.

Tonight our church had our Christmas program.  On January 6.  Not in December.  What happened, you ask?  Well, we had to cancel church due to a massive pile of snow that fell from the sky to the ground here in Indiana on the week (Dec. 16) we had intended to have it.  So we had a Christmas program in January.

I’ll admit, it was a little weird singing Christmas songs and looking at Christmas decorations in January.  There was just something about it, though, that made it special.  Like our pastor said at the end of the service, “Christmas is not about December 16.  Christmas is not about December 24.  Christmas is not about December 25.  Christmas is about the love of God.” (more…)

Luke 10:40 (ESV): “But Martha was distracted with much serving…”

This week in the devotional book that our youth group uses there was a devotional about being too busy. The author (Nathan Barker) said:
“Being [distracted] doesn’t mean you’re doing bad things or doing things for the wrong reason. It just simply means that you are not doing what you should be doing, because you’re distracted with something else…Once you’ve become [distracted], it is only a matter of time before you become burnt out. Burn out doesn’t happen because we’re busy, it happens because we are busy without the power of God on us. We have no power because we have no prayer. We have no boldness because we have no Bible. Remember, no amount of work for the Lord can replace your walk with the Lord.”

Those few statements spoke a world to me. I don’t get exhausted with ministry because I am busy, it is because I am doing the things that are not in God’s will. Wow.  To think that if we simply stopped doing things that were not in God’s will, our lives would be so much easier.  If only it were easy to do that.

When we become too focused on “doing Christianity” rather than “living Christianity”, that’s when the downfall comes.

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I love coffee. I am the only one in my family that likes coffee (my mom says it’s a bad habit I picked up from Ryan). But I hate the room temperature coffee that we have in the Sunday School classrooms at our church. It gets brewed before 7:30, and sits for at least 2 hours, and I typically, if at all, don’t get to drink it until 10:45 or 11, so there’s only so much I can complain about. Now, I do appreciate that someone gets there early to make it, but it’s just nasty 3 hours later. (I have submitted a petition to put a Starbucks in the church, but Ryan just laughed at me.) I like coffee either icy cold or steamy hot, but room temperature? Blech. No, double blech.

So why am I ranting about coffee on a ministry blog? Because Jesus doesn’t like icky coffee. OK, so actually he doesn’t like lukewarm Christians (or ministries!). But you get the idea.

Revelation 3:15-16 (ESV)- “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

That passage was Jesus talking to the church in Laodicea (I had to respell that about 15 times). He was speaking specifically to the church members, but he was imploring them, “Either be cold or hot, but not room temperature!” He was basically telling them to either be all for him, or all against him, but somewhere in between was unacceptable. He didn’t want them to simply be “room temperature”, changing based on the environment they were in, because it looked bad! It was a poor testimony. Jesus was out and out telling these people that he would rather that they not tell others about him and live a life of sin than tell other about him and have a poor testimony! Wow!

Apply this to your ministry. Jesus wants you to have a remarkable ministry. He would rather that you did not do ministry at all, than give it a half-hearted, pathetic attempt and call it ministry. What it the reputation of your ministry with the kids of the community? Is it cool and welcoming, or old-fashioned and stodgy? If your ministry has a bad rep, ask what you could do to fix it! Don’t simply change the tone of your ministry based on the “room temperature”, the “trends in ministry”, but change it to meet the needs of kids to make an eternal impact. Have kids in your ministry, and parents as well, who remark on your ministry. The promise of “sitting on the Throne of God with Jesus” sure sounds better than “getting spit out like room temperature coffee”, doesn’t it?

Lately I’ve been reading the book Purple Cow by Seth Godin (buy the book on Amazon.com).  Ryan Frank is letting me borrow it now that he’s done reading it.  In case you missed his book review on it earlier, it’s all about being remarkable.

Several years back, Apple (maker of the iPhone!  Evan is accepting donations to purchase his own.  ;)) ran an ad campaign called Think Different. The ad follows:

The ad is all about just being crazy enough to change things.  Now, normally, reading a business marketing book followed by a heavy dose of Bible reading may not be considered normal, but that’s what I did last night.  I was reading 1 Corinthians 3:18-23 for my nightly devotions.  Here’s what that passage says (ESV):

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