FlowerDust.net

FlowerDusters,

We lost a blog reader today.

Chris’ grandpa, who was an active reader of this blog (which always made me smile) passed away this Sunday afternoon.

Please pray for his family, who has already gone through some tough times recently, and that he can find a way to financially make the trip to KC for the funeral.

Chris is selling his amp on Craigslist (Fender Hot Rod Deville 2×12 - USA version) as one way to help.  So if you need an amp in amazing condition or know someone who does, there you go.  It appears the amp has been sold.  Supposedly the guy will pick it up tomorrow. Let’s hope so.

Thanks for your prayers and support.

i am not naturally a morning person, but when i wake up, i’m up and alert (typically).  sometimes i use sleep aids like lunesta or in really bad seasons, clonazepam, to help me sleep.

with the lunesta, i know i will wake up exactly 7 hours after i took the pill.

last night i took a lunesta at 9:10 pm, knowing i needed to be awake by 4:30 am in order to be out at our dickson campus by 8 am.  since it had been a while since i’d had a lunesta, i set two alarms.  however, 4:10 rolled around and i’ve been wide awake for the last twenty minutes.

since a lot of you are church staff members or volunteers, i was wondering…what time do you wake up on sunday to do your church thang?

as you know, i have lived in the south. in texas. the red river kind of south. not the south-south.

in the red river south, we have our own breed of rednecks. but alas, i am learning the south-south has yet another breed of rednecks altogether.

(by the way, i love rednecks. this is by no means an anti-redneck post. the ceiling of my car is coming unglued, i have a gravel driveway, and i shot my first rifle at the tender age of nine, so obviously i am somewhat born of this breed as well).

now, my friend shaun has talked about his redneck neighbor before. and his redneck neighbor even has a blog. one day, i hope to meet redneck neighbor. but until then, i have my own redneck neighbor to deal with, and i have a question to propose to y’all.

here’s the skinny.

my redneck neighbor’s driveway is next to my driveway. i see it when i leave. when i come home. when i go on my deck. when i take out the trash.

my redneck neighbor has a little planter wall. on this planter wall are several cans of budweiser…some askew, some crushed, some full of cigarette butts, and all piled up into a replica of pike’s peak.

[at one point, he had creatively made a budweiser-duct tape-sticks-cigarette butts effigy using a button with obama's face on it for the head. it was like a little budweiser obama stick figure. which was held up by a rusted folger's coffee can. this has now disappeared, leaving me a little disappointed.]

i am all about respecting other people’s property, but when his strewn bud cans and cigarette butts are in my line of sight, oh, forty-seven times a day, the OCD in me comes out and desperately wants to clean up this budweiser-duct tape-sticks-cigarette butts mountain the next time i take out the trash.

[using heavy duty yellow rubber gloves and a gallon of purell, of course.]

so my question to you is this…would cleaning up this nasty redneck trash pile be rude of me? or helpful to him? because you see, i of course am only doing this to love my neighbor. right?

ahem. right?

ht: indexed

i need your story. more importantly, others need your story.

they need to know they’re not alone.

so…i need your video.

nothing fancy. you and your iSight and YouTube or vimeo.

i am putting together some clips of church leaders who have burned out, think they might be, or have recovered for a small workshop i am teaching. what do you feel? what are the pressures you experience? do you miss your family? your relationship with christ?

or, are you a spouse of a church leader and you’re afraid your husband or wife is burning out? please share, too…

videos will be shown and only your first name will be used.

please shoot me an email or leave me a comment if you think you could sum up your story in about a minute’s time. i’d need these by next friday.

i would really appreciate it.

thanks!

i had been out of church for a good part of five years, involved in many things i shouldn’t have been involved in. my best friend and i had just moved from dallas to kansas city and i started crushing on a hot guitar player named chris. his band was playing at a church so we decided to go.

something happened in that church. i thought it was a panic attack but it ended up being god blowing my face off in a very clear way, calling me back. i hid in the back of the room behind a partition, trying to keep my heart rate under 250 and prevent myself from hyperventilating.

a very spunky girl with bright red hair came up and out of nowhere, asked if she could pray for me. just what i needed. another religious crazy person. at 21, i had vowed to keep anyone religious far from my heart. however, i obliged. she prayed for things nobody would have known about, including my future involvement in ministry.

over the course of a few months, she suckered me into volunteering in that church’s youth ministry. a year later, i was hired on full time, and now, almost five years after that church-induced panic attack, i’ve been in full time vocational ministry.

in that time, we’ve both gotten married to the loves of our lives (she was my maid of honor) and have moved miles away from our families. me, only to nashville but her to south africa, where she and her husband feed babies and buy food and love the least and the dying.

she lives and breathes in life and death all the time, and she had a post today i thought everyone should read.

go say hi to my friend kristi. give her a hug. she is in the trenches and more faithful to being obedient than probably anyone else i have ever met.

visit kristi’s blog here.

last week, i mentioned something chris had said about living in america but not living an american lifestyle. over the last few months, we have made some drastic changes that have helped us look at needs vs. wants vs. reality differently.

in oklahoma city, we lived in a brand new luxury apartment in downtown. when we moved to nashville, we could have moved into a cottage in the famous downtown franklin (read: trendy and expensive) or into a 1970’s townhome in older west nashville, sight unseen.

we chose the townhome. it’s a few hundred dollars a month cheaper. and it has wood paneling. which i have grown to love.

yet i am still tempted. i am still plagued. with the speaking engagements, and inevitable public appearances that come with widely releasing a book, i feel i must look a certain way. dress a certain way. have my hair a certain way. lose those “last 10 pounds.”

because i feel as if i don’t, people won’t take me seriously.

i am a jeans a tee shirt kind of girl. i don’t always match. on purpose. i love my flip flops. it literally takes a wedding or a funeral to get me dressed up. it really hasn’t mattered much to me…until now.

i have to admit, i’m feeling the pressure.

would it be so terrible to wear my (nice) jeans and my (nice) shirt when i talk to pastors who are old enough to be my dad? will they take me seriously? will my glasses make me look smarter, or be a barrier for eye contact? will they notice that i’m 28? does it matter i’m a girl with nine hours of college credit, and only three of those were a bible class that i barely passed? should i get my nails done?

[welcome to the inside of my mind]

it would be easy for me to drop a grand on a new wardrobe that would make me look like i have my stuff together. i could look really sharp, no doubt. i could hire someone who knows something about how to dress people so i don’t feel so darn self conscious.

but i really don’t think that would truthfully represent me — all of me.

yet i feel the pressure. and i’m struggling with it. i think deep down inside, i know it doesn’t matter. but i so feel that it does…

do you?

NOTE: this is a long post, but HANG IN THERE. VERY COOL STUFF AHEAD!!!!

first, you guys donated

$2,332

to the compassion global crisis food fund. in just a couple of days. HOLY SMOKES, y’all.

i have to admit…sometimes it’s easy for me to see how big the problem is, and you all gave me so much hope. which isn’t what it was about, but it happened anyway. it was so encouraging to see you care the way you did.

=====

second, yesterday at cross point was very cool in quite a few ways. we celebrated our volunteers (read more here and here). i have never enjoyed working next to so many people. everyone worked so hard, from setting up and planning, to last minute video tweaks, to doing dishes, cutting cake, and taking out trash.

pete announced four very cool initiatives we are focusing on as a church. (you can read more about the specifics here on his blog).

-we are adding a fourth service. for those of you unfamiliar with the church, we currently lease an auditorium (with pews - it rocks) from a baptist church and space presents challenges, especially with parking.

-we are beginning a third campus (but we don’t know where…or really when…but we’re so excited we just couldn’t wait for the details to share)

-we are partnering with habitat for humanity to build three houses this fall. this is going to take several hundred volunteers and i love seeing the people of cross point serve together!

and…if i can have a favorite, this is mine…

-currently, cross point gives 10% of it’s income straight to missions. we have committed to increase that by 1%, every year, for the next 10 years. so in 2018, we will be giving 20% of our income straight to missions.

pete had a great idea to get other churches on board with this kind of sacrificial and incremental missions giving. we want to see 100 other churches get on board and we think in that ten years, these churches will give over $100,000,000 to missions simply by increasing it by 1% every year.

we realize it’s not all about the money, but where your treasure is, your heart follows. we truly believe this can be a life changing, church changing experience.

if this sounds like something your church would be interested in doing, please shoot me an email at anne@crosspoint.tv.

so…yes…it has been an amazing weekend!!!!

i’ll admit. sometimes when tony comments, it makes me mad. he likes pushing buttons.

but i also have learned that deep down inside, he’s a sappy teddy bear. (see, that’s what you get for making sarcastic comments…i publicly call you a sappy teddy bear. that’ll teach you.)

all kidding aside, tony has offered to match a $300 donation $400 to compassion’s global food crisis fund.

so, if you donated last night or can donate now, please do so and leave a comment with the amount you donated. if you would prefer to stay anonymous, just put in fake information in the comment name and email field.

but seriously…here is an opportunity for at least $600 to be given to help feed people who desperately need it…that is feeding over fifteen families!

let’s do it! you guys have always rocked on stuff like this. i really wanted to eat out with my husband today, but i’m going to put that $25 in the fund right now.

your turn!

so let’s all donate something and make this sappy teddy bear match our $300 $400 in donations.

We are already at over $800 $1000 $1100 $1200 $1600 over $1800, but don’t let that stop you from giving!!!! Let’s get as many kids fed as we can. You guys never cease to amaze me by your generosity!!!

according to feedburner, there are about 700 more subscribers to this blog than there was when i went to africa back in february with compassion international. so, if you are new, i really encourage you to read about that trip (it’s in reverse chronological order).

what was amazing was the opportunity to meet linet, one of the children chris and i sponsor. she is beautiful. shy. smirky. and the smartest girl in her class.

it has been a little over six months since i returned, yet my heart has only grown heavier for children living in poverty, and especially those in uganda. just last week, chris and i watched a documentary about orphans in uganda. i freaking cried during the whole thing. sometimes they were happy tears. sometimes they were tears of longing to be back there. sometimes they were tears because i was devastated by the unfairness of it all.

i got an email today about the global food crisis. we all know it’s affected places like haiti and ethiopia and india. but my email today talked about the crisis affecting uganda.

it’s affecting our little girl there.

so i just wanted to give you this link this weekend…if you can donate anything at all to the global food crisis fund. it’s in an emergency state. any amount will help. $5. $10. $50. just click here.

thank you.

it may sound like it from what i’ve written before, but i’m really not about trying to pass the buck. i realize leaders have a responsibility to find accountability and talk about their issues.

but what is it that makes leaders feel unsafe to share sin in the church world?

why did hundreds of pastors and church leaders who took my mad church disease survey last year say that they were afraid of accountability, or that they have it but they lie in that relationship?

what can we do to make people feel less judged and more loved when they confess?

that fear holds so many people back methinks.

sometimes people get busted. and sometimes people confess.

either way, it seems that a lot of the time, those people don’t receive grace.

i think of john edwards. kind of busted, and kind of confessed. the healer song guy confessed. and yet, a majority of people just drag them through the mud or cry about how disappointed they are.

i will never forget two separate days in my life when i had to walk through dealing with serious confessions.

my former boss, a pastor, and very good friend confessed quickly to an affair he had with another very good friend of mine. yes, it felt like my heart had been ripped out but surprisingly, i felt unexpected joy (??!!) because i knew he had just taken a step closer to freedom and restoration.

two years later, another friend, who was almost like a father figure to me and my pastor confessed to his long term affair. my heart broke, but again, i still found some very random peace knowing that someone else was walking toward freedom.

there are obviously consequences and pain that come along with confession…i mean, when you confess, obviously you’ve screwed up somewhere along the journey. and sin does break the heart of god and causes problems in relationships. sometimes it’s even impossible to mend those human relationships.

people will let you down. i’d like to challenge you to suck it up a bit when you’re hurt or disappointed by someone who’s fallen.

instead realize that their confession is actually a huge part of them becoming restored. it’s a huge step toward holiness.

and that should be celebrated.

this is hilarious. go to yearbookyourself.com and you too, can experience your photogenicness throughout the decades. thanks to lee for this. he sent some to pete.

the bad thing is the middle picture really does look like my freshman year in high school…woohoo, 1994 and spiral perms!

what was your worst hair?? bonus points if you can link over to a picture of it.

what’s your favorite talk/message ever? please include a link if you know where you can download it.

(by the way, you can now subscribe to comments, so…have fun with that!)

my friend, the friendly atheist, wanted to ask you guys a question:

What are the biggest obstacles you have to becoming an atheist?

I know you’re not trying to become atheists, but I guess I’m looking for things like “Something must have created the Universe, and if God didn’t do it, then what?” or “Atheists have no meaning in their life”… something that’s NOT “I believe what the Bible says.”

i’m curious, too…

what makes the american church stand out from the american culture?

chris and i recently watched a great documentary called ABC Africa, which was filmed in uganda

after watching it, chris said,

“i don’t mind living in america. i just don’t want to live an american life.”

pretty smart, huh?

discuss…

last week, i had a great phone call with mike foster, one of my deadly viper cohorts and soon-to-be co-conference speaker when we both speak at ministry com in september.

something we talked about was, of course, the conference, and i confessed my continued trepidation of public speaking.

let me rephrase that: my continued trepidation of the expectations of public speaking.

it’s not that i’m just scared of it…i know it’s not where i’m naturally gifted, and i’m fine with that. i love communicating, but i am much more effective doing it via ink and paper.

i never planned on becoming any kind of public speaker. and something that is taking a little getting used to is the sense of being thrust (almost literally) from a shy girl behind this blog into a perceived expert in front of people who communicate verbally weekly for a living.

there is a huge difference between speaking to a few thousand people on a blog and a few thousand people from a stage.

for one, right now, i’m not wearing make up.

now, everybody says it’s the content that really matters…but as a casual observer of conference feedback, if someone doesn’t nail their session in an epitome of engaging perfection, for the most part, people seem to care more about their presentation than their actual content.

(as an example, i wasn’t there, but heard that patrick lencioni was fairly awkward and uncomfortable presenting at catalyst last year. not one person told me what he talked about, only that he seemed really scattered in his delivery. that’s all i ever heard.)

people expect that when you’re a good writer, you’re a good speaker. that when you’re bold and confident in your presentation online, you’re bold and confident in person. so let me be the first to smash the crud out of that expectation, at least for me, and say the gap between the two is huge.

so, what i can promise?

i can promise that i’ve been working hard and praying hard for months over the few speaking engagements i have. i can promise that i’m not going to pretend to be as engaging or as eloquent as pete or craig or seth or the millions of other speakers i admire. i can promise that i am just going to be me. quiet and a little awkward, but positive that i’ll be doing my best.

and sweating. probably a lot.

have you heard of wordles? what you do is copy and paste in any amount of text and it will pull out the most commonly used words and organize them in size, largest (most used) to smallest.

i thought it would be fun to see what words i used the most in mad church disease, so i copied and pasted in the entire manuscript. almost 50,000 words.

and here are the most commonly used words (click to see full size):

hopefully this gives you a little sneak peek into the major themes of the book…they are working on the interior design of the book right now, and i’ve got to say i can’t wait to see the final layout. they are implementing some really cool design ideas!

anyhoo, just thought i’d share.

for this lovely friday, i decided to go look at some referring keyphrases that have brought people to my site in the last couple of months.

some random favorites:

“i let the nun shave my head.”

“i am the lady who pooped in the elavator.”

“when you get married, keep your mouth shut.”

“what can i use instead of a rubber glove?”

“i gain water weight after eating nachos.”

“naked lady shaped cake pan”

“spider laying eggs in my throat”

“naked worship for widows”

“ideas for my pantyhose slave man”

“will you explode if you don’t poop?”

why is there so much poop talk? i don’t talk about poop on my blog!

hmmm….

always entertaining, though.

if you have been around for very long, you know I LOVE THE WEATHER. ever since i saw my first tornado when i was five years old, i became obsessed. i would literally sit for hours and just watch the weather channel. no saturday morning cartoons for me. nope. give me mark mancuso anyday.

my love for weather, especially severe scary kinds, hasn’t died. i’ve blogged about a few big storms

here

and

here

and

here

and

here.

imagine my delight when i discovered one of my coworker’s husband, charlie, is a meteorologist on CBS!

and it’s not like he just talks about the weather…he lives and breathes it. we were at a fourth of july party and while the fireworks are going off, i looked down and he’s checking the radar on his phone. and he used the word mesocyclonic in conversation.

which i think is incredibly awesome.

slowly, a few of us pressured tried to get charlie to twitter.

i mean, how amazing would it be to get weather updates in a personal style, straight to my phone from my favorite weather guy? what if there was a tornado and the power was out and i needed to know if it was safe?

well, last night, he bit the bullet and signed up.

so, if you are in nashville and want to have your own personal weather guru on your phone, or if you just love weather, you should follow charlie on twitter!

while you’re clicking around, check out his blog, and his wife, eve’s blog.

what other fun but practical uses can you think of for twitter?

it was a marathon of musical proportion.

three shows last night in three different venues.

huge mug of chai (second one). i am so sleepy. i didn’t even do my hair this morning.

when’s the last time you acted like you were 20?

[edit: i couldn't take it anymore. i had to post it. yeah it's earlier than i said. i was just so excited!]

i really thought about titling this with the word “boobies” because statistics have shown that is the word that gets people to read your blog.

but anyway.

thank you for humoring my title and reading this.

i cannot tell you the number of times that i have heard people say blogging is so narcissistic, but it’s been a lot. i cannot tell you the amount of hate email i get because people think i like to cause fights by asking questions that aren’t always religiously correct, but it’s been a lot. if i’m not careful, i can let the few bad things outweigh the good.

and good? there is a lot.

today, i just wanted to share an important stat about YOU. not stats as in how many people subscribe to my RSS feed or give me technorati points or whatever.

but one important number.

$80,000.

in just six months, you guys have donated (through instant payments or gifts or commitments) $80,000.

one blog. just a few hundred people. six months. $80,000.

at least 40 children have been released from poverty from just this site (over 500 as a result of our blogging trip, which they tell me would equal about $960,000 based on the average sponsorship length!)

110 mosquito nets to help prevent malaria have been paid for and sent to third world countries

120 books have been purchased and sent to pastors in the dominican republic.

over $850 has been given to various causes like haitian rescue centers, mission trips, and people just barely scraping by.

$80,000.

that number blows me away. i am speechless yet cannot thank you guys enough for putting your money where your mouth is, literally. you have shown that faith is not about rules or theological opinions but about loving others.

so next time someone tells you that blogging is a waste of time, you can share with them otherwise.

wow. just, wow.

==

ps - if you want to sponsor a child through compassion international, and make that number 41, you can click here to meet some incredible and amazing kids.

tomorrow.

you will want to make sure to check back here tomorrow.

in the spirit of it being 8/13, i will schedule the post to go up at 8:13 am central time.

what’s this post about?

it’s about you.

you have done something incredible and i don’t think you even realize it.

8:13 tomorrow.

i can’t wait to see your faces.

last night, i asked you what you’d like to hear if you were attending a breakout session or workshop about burnout.

“how do i say no?” was probably one of the most answered responses.

so…now i get to ask you, why can’t we say no? should we say no? how can we discern when to say no?