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2 Years ago I wrote this on an older blog:

Leona and I checked in at 3:45 into triage. We were there for only 15 minutes, and then they wheeled her into Labor and Delivery. After two FAILED epidurals (yes…that means she felt it all – my wife is “superhuman”!!!) , and 30 minutes of pushing, Emily finally made her entrance at 5:52 pm. She was 6 Pounds 4 Ounces. We thought Brennan was small! Here are the pictures that help tell our story.

The best nurses in the world: Joy and Lya (pronounced Leah…it’s Hungarian…I think)

Joy, Lya, and the Anesthesiologist that couldn’t “make it happen” (But we still love him)

And here she is!

The Santillan Family

To all the staff at Winnie Palmer…we love you!

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Brilliant…

Simply brilliant!

Just read this account of John Wesley at a meeting:

“Mr. Smyth read prayers, and gave out hymns which were sung by fifteen or twenty fine singers; the rest of the congregation listening with much attention and as much devotion as they would have done to an opera.  But is this Christian worship?  Or ought it ever to be suffered in a Christian church?”

So the question is…

What should Christian worship in the church setting look like?

When I heard Andy Stanley say that his greatest leadership decision was to realize that God has called him to love his family and not the church, it was both uncomfortable and freeing. For so long I’ve watched pastors and peers in ministry say they keep their marriage is their first priority, but do things like ignore their wives phone calls or say they keep their family #1 and cheat on family time for ministry time.

I knew that something was wrong with that picture, but I didn’t see a model of anything otherwise. So what did I do? I followed it. I followed it all the way to the point hurting me and my family. I was so busy building God’s church that I wasn’t doing a good job building and leading my family. That was until I was challenged by a mentor to find out what God’s priorities for my life are. That’s how my wife and I came up with this.

Then I came to Maple Grove Evangelical Free Church.

I witnessed a Senior pastor who – no matter who he was talking to – would stop the conversation if his wife was calling and gave me the permission to do the same! I was loved by an elder board who were constantly checking to see if my family and I were doing well. I had an executive pastor who was always challenging me to watch my hours and not to forget to keep the priority of my family. He would actually ask me on a regular basis, “How is your wife feeling?”

Then my senior pastor gave me a DVD with Andy Stanley talking about his greatest leadership decision and Wayne Cordeiro speaking on the topic of living leadership out of spiritual, emotional, and physical health – to not be a “Dead Leader Running.”

Andy Stanley made a statement that basically said that God asked him to love his wife, not the church. He said that when he realized that it was his job to love his family and that God would build the church, it was freeing to him.

I think this is true for anyone – even if you aren’t working in ministry. I think that too often we get caught up in our careers that we forget that our #1 job is being a husband/father or being a mother/wife.

What if it is true?

What if concentrating on loving and leading your family would be the key to having success in your workplace?

What if loving and leading your family is the real solution to finding the joy you’re looking for in your career?

What if loving and leading your family is the thing that God is waiting for you to do, so HE can be the God supplies your needs?

What if?

I felt like my life was out of my control, and I had no idea how to get control or slow things down. I felt once again at the mercy of someone else’s bad decisions and life choices… The pace of our lives was exhausting, and there were no brakes anywhere in sight.

Finally, we did crash. I said, “NO MORE.” I had had enough of single parenting and giving up so much of myself for the sake of the ministry. I left our church. I told my husband I wanted a marriage, a father for our children, and a church that brought me life, not death.

If you’ve wondered were I’ve been, or why I’ll have spurts of blog articles, and then none, it’s only because I don’t want to end up with this life.  I don’t want these words to be the words I see my wife writing in an article one day.  I want to make sure that I keep these commitments. I want to be more than man who say he committed to being a follower, a husband and a father before a pastor…

I want to live it

What’s the life you don’t want to live? Or maybe I should ask, what’s the life you want to live – the life you know you should be living?

Just do it.

What happens when form precedes function?

What happens when your memories exceeds your dreams?

Take Union Station in Washington D.C.  Read the History.

It reminds of a story I heard that goes like this:

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now, the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club’s decoration, and there was a symbolic lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held. About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some of them had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.
THE END?

Thinking of you today!

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Two words.

Wonder and Amazement.

As they listen, their secret thoughts will be exposed, and they will fall to their knees and worship God, declaring, “God is truly here among you.”
(1 Corinthians 14:25)

When was the last time unbelievers walked into our church and they said, ‘God is truly here?”

1 Corinthians 14 tells us that it is good to be led by God’s Spirit, but also shows us that there is a powerful, God-ordained place in being intentional in how we “do church.”  So the questions I ask myself this morning are:

• How does God want to intentionally reach those who come into our church?
• What is it that I am doing that is not only led by God’s Spirit, but is logically and strategically planned so that God could move in the hearts and mind of people without me getting in the way?

Dear Lord, please let our church be a place where people are found saying, “God is truly in this place.”  Amen.