PHILLIPSANTILLAN.COM

Author: Phillip Santillan

  • Don’t Waste Your Life

    “No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life….”

    Steve Jobs 1995 @ Stanford University Address

    • What are you living for?
    • If you faced God today would you be ready?

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&w=500&h=339]

  • The most practical book I’ve read…and more

    Over the past 7 years, my passion for reading has grown, and I would like to say that a huge part of my personal growth comes from mu commitment to always be a learner.

    So of all the books that sit on my shelf in my office, I always refer to the following on as one of the most practical books I have ever read.  It’s The Fiener Points of Leadership.

    Other than the Bible, I have not found a more practical book on leadership within a work environment.  I wish this book was given to me before I even started college, but who knows if any of it would have made sense.  There are a few books that I read at least once a year and this is one of them.

    For those who are curious, here is a list of the ones I re-read yearly for work-related enrichment:

    What are the most practical books you’ve read that have positively impacted your work-related personal growth?

  • Don’t be so quick to judge…

    So after church today I had an opportunity to play softball. I was pumped. I hadn’t played a good game of softball since I lived in Florida. So I pulled out my Wilson A2000 and headed over the ball field.  When I got there I lightly jogged onto the field and got that feeling that it was going to be a great game.  The weather was just warm enough to feel like summer but not so hot that it was uncomfortable.

    As I was warming up on the field I yelled over to a guy wearing long pants and said, “Hey, I can’t believe you’re wearing long pants in this weather.” To which he replied, “Yeah…I wear it because I can’t help but slide.”  To which I said, “Oh…makes sense.”

    I didn’t think much of it other than remembering saying to myself, “I would rather wear shorts and just not slide!”  Then it was my time at-bat.  I ripped one across the first baseline and rounded 2 bases.  The guys were yelling, “Keep going!” so I hustled to third…ecstatic that I was about to have a triple.  Then I saw the third baseman catch the ball and I knew that getting tagged out was inevitable. 

    So what did I do?  I did what I knew to do when you’re trying not to get tagged out.  I slid for third.  AND I WAS SAFE!!!  Safe, but jacked up. 

    Yeah.  So the lesson of the day?  Don’t judge the guy with long pants.  He’s actually a lot smarter than you 😉

  • A Soccer Story: I’m Official

    You can now call me “Coach.” (why does it look like I’ve got lazy eye)

    http://instagr.am/p/KCJsQ/?ref=nf

  • I Will Love You for the Rest of My Life

    This I promise you.

     

    I LOVE YOU BABE!

  • The Big Santillan Announcement

  • A Soccer Story: The Beginning

    Not many people who have known me over the past ten years may know this, but among the many loves in my life, I have a deep love of the game of soccer. Truth be told, as a short guy whose only physical strength was the ability to run fast and play aggressively, soccer was an obvious sport for me to get engaged in. Not to mention, it was a sport my dad loved to play. (ok…there wasn’t a sport my dad didn’t love, but that’s another story.)

    So, this year I have been able to dive back into a sport I loved and grew up playing by assisting in coaching a couple of teams this summer with a good friend of mine who has a HUGE resume of coaching competitive soccer.  I helped with coaching a Maple Grove park and rec team as well as assisting as much as I could with a MapleBrook Soccer team.  I learned so much this summer about the coaching side of soccer and I am really excited about a new opportunity to coach Armstrong High School’s freshman girls soccer.

    In more ways than one, this is really meaningful to me.

    First off, it’s going to be great to be back in the neighborhood I started my “real-world-life” in.  When I graduated from college, Robbinsdale was the first place I called “home”.

    Second, I am loving the opportunity to serve in the community in this way.  Even though it isn’t Maple Grove, Robbinsdale is literally like the next city over – and there’s something about getting involved in the community that excites me!  Don’t get me wrong…I LOVE and am so grateful for the call of God on my life to minister in a local expression of God’s Church in Maple Grove.

    But being involved in a world that is different from the one that I usually live in – a world where I wake up to a Christian home, leave to go to work with Christian co-workers, primarily have lunch and meetings with other followers of Christ, and then go home to my Christian wife to get ready for our Christian baby-sitter to watch our kids while we go to our Christian Bible study with Christian friends – the public school environment reminds me of why I got involved in ministry.

    I love the opportunity to be a follower of Christ who sees that his greatest calling in not to be removed from the world, but to live in the world.  To tangibly be a light.  To not forget to do the work of an evangelist even though I am called to the work of ministry.

    I am so grateful for this opportunity – and it kinda reminds me of my days in student ministry, which is another reason I am really excited.

    So stay close and hopefully, you’ll enjoy bearing the journey with me.   Tryouts start August 15th, so look for blog updates and keep me in your prayers =)

  • Happy Birthday Brennan

    I love you son!

    Everyday I think about how wonderful these first days were, and look forward to the days I have with you in the future!

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFLUZqeiOp4&w=480&h=390]

  • Book Review: Switch by Chip and Dan Heath

    Point #1. You need to buy/read this book

    The subtitle of Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Switch, is “How to change things when change is hard.”  I first heard this book at the willow creek leadership summit I was at last year.  And after hearing a keynote address regarding this book, I knew I had to have it.  It wasn’t until borders went out of business did I get the book since it’s $26 price tag was not that all appealing.

    SO what do I think about this book?  Well, first of all – this book would have been worth the $26 if I hadn’t got it 75% off at the Borders going out of business sale.  Why?

    There isn’t quite anything that motivates me than the idea of change.

    Don’t ask me why.  I thought this was something that has developed over time as I grew as a leader and grew as a reader.  But after finding a grade school soliloquy I wrote entitled “Why is Change Hard?” I realized very quickly that I have always been a person open to change.  And why is that?  Because the belief that things can change – that things can be better than they are right now in the near future – is what motivates me to live.

    Because I live life from this paradigm I often see myself at the helm of movements for change, and my experience has been that…well…it’s hard to change things when change is hard.  This book has been not only VERY insightful, but very practical.  Micheal Hyatt does a good job giving you the bullet points of the book here, so I’m not going to waste my time to repeat them.  Instead, I’ll give you some of my favorite quotes.

    • 3 Surprising things about change
      • What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem
      • What looks like laziness is often exhaustion
      • What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity
    • SMART goals (Specific, Measurable,  Actionable, Relevant, and Timely) presume the emotion. In looking for a goal that reaches the Elephant – that hits people in the gut – you can’t bank on SMART goals.
    • When you think about the people whose behavior needs to change, ask whether they would agree with this statement: “I aspire to be the kind of person who would make this change.”
    • Everything looks like a failure in the middle [of change]
    • Fundamental Attribution Error…our inclination to attribute people’s behaviors to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in.

    Seriously…there is so much good stuff in this book.  I highly recommend this book no matter who you are or what you do for a living.  If you desire to make any difference in the world, that means change.  And if you want to navigate change effectively, I believe the principals in this book are irrerplaceable.

  • Book Review: How to Start a New Service by Charles Arn

    This book found itself on my desk today because of changes that are happening in the fall at Maple Grove Free Church.  Because of the growth that we are seeing in our church we are running out of room and are in need of implementing a new service.  So this fall we are planning to start an 8:15am service.

    A staff person who had this book, How to Start a New Service (though had never read it) thought it might be a helpful resource.  I will say that after reading it I thought it was a helpful book, but not helpful towards giving us information regarding the direction we are moving this fall.  Actually, within the first few chapters of the book, the writer actually says that this book is not for churches that are looking to implement a new service – meaning an additional service identical to one that is already existing – as much as it is for churches that are looking to add a new service that is quite different for the type of services they are doing now.

    It was very interesting to read this book, seeing that last fall we actually implemented this type of change.  We used to be a church with only one style of worship service, but now we are a service of two styles.  Here are some notes I took during my reading of the book:

    • pg 15 Do not add a church service if community it the highest priority of your church
    • If your leaders and/or members…are primarily committed to preserving “one happy family,” an attempt to begin a new service will be frustrating and probably fail.
    • churches in the 60-80 percent range of sanctuary capacity-the point at which a new service is most likely to negatively affect the growth of the existing services
    • Members must ask, Who is the new service for?  Why are we starting a new service?  How are these new people going to be reached?
    • Pg 28 regarding new visitors….Are we a church that has a culture of inviting people?  Are we a culture that embraces the visitor?
    • Pg 31.  A mistake some churches make in an effort to broaden the generational and/or spiritual range of people attracted to their existing service(s) is to diversify the music or liturgical style.  In so doing, however, most churches actualy diminish the effectiveness of their present service(s) among every people group including their predominant one
    • PG 67 The visionaries go to more progressive churches and the stalwarts to more traditional ones.  The question is: Who would you rather keep?
    • pg 92 research says that 96% of all church services in america focus on either baby boomer christians (1946-64) or Senior christians (pre 1946)
    • pg 135 about going from 2 services to 3
      • Adding a 3rd service at 8:30am … places two burdens on your new service – it will tend to start small because it is new and it will tend to remain small because it is early.
    • PG 142-143 Among researchers and church growth authorities, there is almost universal consensus that planting a new church is the best means of reaching new people with the Good News.
    • pg 153-154 The keys to designing services
      • The service is not the message, the service is the message
      • Well attended services are well prepared services

    Overall this was a pretty good book, and by the metrics found here, you could say that our church has successfully navigated what could have potentially been a change with negative ramifications.  I will admit that there were many points at which the books information or suggestions sounded very outdated.  It was obvious that the information was when I finally looked at the front of the book and found it was published in 1997.

    So while this was a good and enjoyable read, I don’t really recommend it.  There are tons of other resources that have more relevancy for ministry in the year 2011.