I have never been a fan of the performance review…the employee evaluation…the slow death brought about behind closed doors and over a fake pine desk… Yes, I realize I am being entirely overdramatic. But truth be told, my stomach is a little crampier than normal.

My 90-day review at Lake Pointe is tomorrow.

Fortunately, I work in a great environment & actually felt comfortable emailing my boss and expressing my nervousness. He replied back, “No worries.” I feel better. A little.

Something I have been learning is I am not perfect. I will always have room to improve in some area. I guess it’s something I’m not really learning but rather I’m learning to accept.

I just hate hearing it from someone else.

A Proverb says:

“Healthy correction is good, and if you accept it, you will be wise. You hurt only yourself by rejecting instruction, but it makes good sense to accept it.”

I suppose it’s pride that keeps me from accepting my faults. It’s not that I think I’m perfect; I know I am FAR from it. But if I realize my shortcomings…and you realize my shortcomings…let’s just trust each other enough that I’ll work on improving those areas…must we really discuss them?

We should. And we will. And I will pray for the courage to swallow the bad, ingest it entirely and work on the things I need to work on.

What do you think about employee evaluations? Do you dread them? Love them?

Have you ever been surprised in one - bad or good?

Have a great Friday…

First of all, the radio show I was on last Sunday (Power Talk on PowerFM here in DFW) speaking on women & porn addiction is posted. You can listen to it by clicking here.

Moving on…Last night, Chris and I got to volunteer at the Livin It Skate Demo put on by Lake Pointe’s Skate Church. I’d guess there was a good 600 or so people of all ages - from little kids to a 70-something pastor I met. The skating was phenomenal (and I know NOTHING about skating).

They did a gospel presentation at the end of the demo, and I was able to talk to a girl named Sky who accepted Christ. Sky’s in foster care until her 18th birthday, which is Tuesday. After she turns 18, she doesn’t know what she’s going to do. I’ve talked to a guy on staff who helps resource people in her situation and he helped me get some things started for her. Please pray for her, if you have a chance. She’s terrified, depressed & lonely. Please pray God will surround her with people who will help her see her purpose in life.

If you want to see more pictures from this event, click on the guy below. I asked him to show off for me so I could get some cool shots. He did a marvelous job.

It’s officially been a week since I began my journey as a Lake Pointe staffer. Throughout the past five days, and even beyond that - throughout the past two months of communicating with them - I have been amazed by some things you don’t typically see, working in a church.

Below, are some of those things that have been consistently communicated in many avenues.

Prayer: Call me Captain Obvious, or even puritanical and idealistic, but a focus on prayer should be central and at the forefront of a church staff. (You think?) From my first conversation with Wes & Christina back in February which started out with prayer - to the time today as a staff walking and praying over the worship center for the people coming in over Easter, prayer has intentionally been made an obvious priority. Each month there is an Elder and Staff focus on prayer (April is for marriages to be strengthened) and a weekly list is published for the entire church to use.

Reaching Out: I realize every local church has different ways and means of reaching different people. Something that Chris & I personally believe in supporting is global missions. Lake Pointe has close to (if not over) 100 global missions trips available for people to serve on. A considerable amount of the money people give is sent out to help others in a variety of different ways.

Using your gifts & passions: Whenever I started interviewing, I asked for a job description. Wes said there really wasn’t one, but that we’d sit down and go over my strengths AND my passions and see where they led. If they fit in, great - but if not - there are other opportunities to use them, whatever they are. And sure enough, after some discussion we found working the media content creator position wasn’t the primo fit. So, they connected me with their communications director and here I am today. At first, I thought maybe that was just Wes’ philosophy for his team, but after talking to other people in other departments, it’s just the way it works. They know people’s passions, dreams, and strengths develop and even change and they realize in order for someone to be most effective, it’s best to put them in that perfect place. Many people who work there now have shifted through other positions and their responsibilities have changed as they have grown not only professionally, but spiritually as well.

TRUE Community: I say TRUE because we all know what it’s like to be in forced community. Where you have to join a small group or Bible study out of obligation to avoid feeling guilty. The first example of this was the Super Bowl party Chris & I attended when we were down here the first time, back in February. Everyone accepted us with open arms (and lots of food - technically, Lake Pointe is Baptist you know…) and we felt free to be ourselves. Everyone I’ve met is casual and laid back and there is no hoity-toity or “fake nice” pretense lingering on my perception tastebuds. Even after we had said no to moving here initially, the media team (staff AND volunteers) kept in touch faithfully without any expectation that we’d even see them again. The communications team (there are 7 of us between full time & part time) hangs out and has fun in the office and outside too. Going out to lunch (or even just eating in together) is common. Kim (a designer) asked if we wanted to go play old school BINGO Friday night. Everyone is great!

I’m sure some of you are thinking I’m still living in the idealistic world of Lake Pointe, only breathing in the good stuff to get my high - that I’m infatuated and sleeping in the honeymoon suite. And while maybe some of it is true, the newness of the job and people are refreshing and inspiring, I grew up a preacher’s kid, I’ve worked in churches or para-church organizations, and I’ve visited friends who work in churches. Each church is always a little different in the vibe they project and I can honestly say not one time in my experience here have I felt uncomfortable or unable to be myself, and that is not a common thing. Usually I’m overly concerned and protective of getting hurt or what people think of me.

Sure, Lake Pointe has its faults and blemishes and room to improve - but so do I, and I am eternally grateful for the opportunities they have give Chris and me to heal, grow, learn, screw up and succeed - all for one great purpose.

I met Matt Mungle back in 1999 or 2000, I really don’t remember exactly when or where or how, but it had to do with the Dallas radio station 89.7 PowerFM and bands…or…a company I worked for called GroceryWorks. If that was the case, I was in marketing and did on-air live GroceryWorks plugs for several radio stations here in the DFW area (Mix, Kiss, and I really don’t remember them all to be honest.) It was incredibly fun and as shy as I am about speaking in public, radio never freaked me out since people can’t really see you…

Anyway, through the years, Matt and I have kept in touch and I noticed in January, he added me to his “top 8″ on Myspace. When he did, he sent me this message:

—————– Original Message —————–
From: The Mungle
Date: Jan 14, 2006 9:11 PM

… how are you feeling these days. I have been so busy I haven’t had time to ask. I hope you are having a great 2006. This will no doubt be a huge year of change. Im just telling you up front. It is the curse of being number one in my top 8 ;-)

Happy day yo.

—————– End Message —————–

Now, little did Matt or myself know that only a week after this message, I would be resigning from Westside, two weeks later interviewing at Lake Pointe, a month later, interviewing there again, or two weeks after that moving to Texas.

At this point, I’d like to say thanks, Matt…as much as I laughed at your “top 8″ curse when you emailed me…I gotta say now it’s a little freaky! But I’m glad you were right.

Well, we are here! We pulled in close to 3pm Saturday, got our keys and had the guys from Two Men & a Truck unload us. My family came out and hung around for a couple hours before making the 80 mile trip back to their house in Mansfield.

The weather here is beautiful and we have already met a few of our neighbors and talked with them a little bit. Stan lives up above us and is originally from Cleveland, retired and single; Andy & his family live across the breezeway, but only for another month as their house burned down and they’ll be moving when their new house is ready.

Today we are going to go by IKEA to get some necessities, and then down to Mansfield to do some laundry as our washer and dryer won’t be delivered until Wednesday.

Emotionally, everything hit as we drove across the last few miles of Oklahoma but once we got into the Metro area, I felt like I was at home again. For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in West Texas & spent 1996-2001 here in DFW.

I start my new job at Lake Pointe on Tuesday! And I uploaded some pictures of our going away party. You can tell which ones were taken earlier in the night because I look awake, but by 10pm, I started looking exhausted, as did Chris. You can see them here.

Play time is over now…must start being productive!

Friends, Romans, Countrymen - lend me your eyes….

Welp, we got off to a late start leaving. I THOUGHT we had gotten rid of so much, but yet we still managed to fill up the 16′ truck & Rodeo completely, with Chris’ dad taking the leftovers to be picked up at a later date.

The drive through Kansas and Oklahoma has been mildly uneventful. Just imagine what life is like, crusing down I-35 going no faster than 57mph. That’s right folks…With all the weight we are hauling, our little truck (we named it “Meat” - long story) couldn’t make it up to even 60. So…if you have never enjoyed the KS Turnpike at 55mph, you have simply NOT LIVED!

We left the metro around 6:30pm and it is now, according to the official Holiday Inn time, 2:32am. So…8 hours to OKC! In all honesty, it flew by so fast and we are going to sleep in until about 9am tomorrow. Oh, also after getting everything loaded, I decided there was no WAY we are unloading all our stuff ourselves tomorrow. So, thanks to Robert at 2 Men & a Truck, all our belongings will be professionally carried in by a moving team and we will sit in lawn chairs with umbrella drinks and watch them sweat. As for Chris, he’s asleep - our cats are sniffing around the room and I’m about to go beat up our extremely loud neighbors (all in love and kindness of course.)

Thank you for your prayers…

Much love,
Chris & Anne