But first…here is one last excerpt…

As much as we may want to, we can never rid ourselves from our past – the good or the bad. And regardless of how normal or even how terrible your past might be, you have experienced those things for a reason. The successes, the failures, the joy and the pain are all beautifully woven together to make you who you are at this moment.

By taking our focus off of the dysfunctions of our past, and changing it to how God can work through us using our journey as a whole – our history, our present, and our future – we are less likely to burn out. Any time we become less and He becomes more, it’s His power being perfected in us.

You can preorder the book below.

**A few Facts About the Book**

• It’s a hardcover with no jacket. Along the lines of Rob Bell books, but with a little different shape.
• It includes questions and a study guide to help you walk through your own personal journey of healing from (or preventing) burnout.
• Several leaders contributed “Second Opinions” to the book (their own thoughts on aspects of burning out and restoration) including Bill Hybels, Wayne Cordeiro, Perry Noble, Mike Foster, Gary Kinnaman, Brandi Wilson, Matt Carter, Shawn Wood, and Craig Groeschel wrote the foreword.
• It will be somewhere right around 200 pages. We are shooting for 192.
• It will be chock-full of creative artwork and design on the inside.

So all that AND more for $16.99!

This is so exciting on many, many levels. Just a little over a year ago, the website for Mad Church Disease launched and people began sharing their stories..thousands of people! Thank YOU!

Now, a year later, well…here we are! If you preorder Mad Church Disease now, with Amazon, if the price goes any lower after you order it today, you will lock in the lower price (because…correct me if I’m wrong…but I don’t think it charges you until it ships, which will be February 1, 2009).

I’d like to announce the Mad Church Disease website will be completely relaunched later this year, and will include a forum for pastors, church leaders, their families, and volunteers to dialogue and encourage each other to pursue a holy, healthy ministry.

**CASE ORDERS**

If you would like to purchase a case (40 or more books) there is a 30% discount! Please email me and I will get you hooked up.

And it would rock if you could spread the word!

HT: nataliedee.com (*various items from this link may not be appropriate for all audiences.)

my husband will tell you it’s true.

i’m not *too* geekafied, but as i wander the streets of the blogosphere, i noticed a few things and thought i should contribute some knowledge (which has been passed down to me by many older, wiser, bloggers) and some things i’ve just learned on my own.

1. SUBSCRIBING TO BLOGS - i realize this is blogging 101, but you’d be surprised how many people are unfamiliar with RSS readers and email subscriptions.

do you bookmark all your favorite blogs or manually type them in when you visit them? save yourself a ton of time by subscribing.

you can do this easily by subscribing by email (click here to do that with my blog) and have my updates come straight to your inbox.

or, use an RSS reader like google reader or bloglines. all of your favorite blogs should have a subscribe button (mine is up top under my header that says “feed”) and by clicking on this on each of those blogs, you are pretty much consolidating all the blogs you read into one webpage! it is automatically updated whenever someone posts something.

i use google reader…here’s a screenshot. see how all the blogs i read are in that window? i can just scroll through them all to read them, and click on them if i want to leave a comment.

use a reader to subscribe to my blog by clicking here!

2. POST TITLES - see how in the URL bar it has my domain, then is followed by the date, and then the title of this post? this helps people find your blog through SEO (or search engine optimization). sometimes blogs use a numbering system instead…search engines don’t like that.

use thoughtful titles and you’ll have more people discover what you’re blogging about.

3. IMAGE TITLES - you know how when you upload pics from your camera, they are named DSC_009 or something? if you change that and use the same hyphenation technique as in #2, this will also help search engines (and especially image searches) find your blog. i’d like to bring some more exposure to compassion international, so for the sponsorship posts, i title my photos “compassion-international-uganda-childname.jpg”

name-your-pics-like-this.jpg and more people will find relevant content on your blog!

there are a million other little things that help make your blog easy to find and easy to read…but these are three important ones!

any tips you’d like to share?

i just had my mind blown.

here i was, on my own darn blog, and i see my own darn compassion international widget.

(it’s over there on the left. see it? yup.)

ok, so on it, i see this beautiful girl and i had to click. so i did.

and i am reading about rosemary. she is seven years old.

her household duties?

Carrying water, gardening and caring for children.

i look up again. seven? yes. she’s seven.

ok, so this is not uncommon. many children care for their siblings in africa. even younger ones.

and then, what do i read?

There are 9 children in the family.

NINE CHILDREN?! OH MY GOODNESS.

this girl helps care for her eight brothers & sisters!

and i keep reading…and learn this:

Half of the adults are unemployed but some work as subsistence farmers and earn the equivalent of $6 per month.

her family maybe makes six bucks a month. i spent that much on gas driving today!

=========

now, imagine with me a moment…(insert floaty, dreamy music here)…

someone sponsors rosemary. $32/month. that is six times what her parents make! her entire humongous family begins to see the benefits of having rosemary registered with compassion international.

but…not only that…

rosemary’s family hears about jesus! (this is a cool story about how a family came to know christ through a sponsored child).

ahhh-mazing?

indeed.

plus, can you imagine the incredible stories you are going to hear from a little girl with eight siblings? that is going to be some fun letter-exchanging going on right there.

ROSEMARY HAS BEEN SPONSORED! THANK YOU!!!sponsor rosemary now! note: please do not click the “select this child” button unless you are sure you would like to sponsor her, as doing so will make her page unavailable for an hour or so.

once upon a time, on april 4, i drove from birmingham to atlanta. when it came time to turn in for the night, i took residence on ragamuffin soul’s and whittaker woman’s couch.

i went into a back room to call my beloved husband, turned on the light, and saw this.

ummm….?