Life. Liberty. And the pursuit of God.

Today the Dayspring staff began planning for Easter. We plan to have services at Bergfeld Park once again. Having planned several services at the park over the last year, today’s meeting went really well. There will be more details coming soon…

While eating dinner last night my son told me that when he grows up and is a preacher he is going to name his church “Marvin” (the previous church I served), but that the church would have lots of doughnuts (like Dayspring).

And as an aside he added that everyone would be allowed to bring their dogs to church. Now there is some creative marketing potential there – the boy is starting to think like a church planter!

I-tunes suggests titles for my sermons in order to classify them. This week it was “Siamese Dream – Smashing Pumpkins.” That must have been one heck of a sermon.

I received a simple note in the mail today from a person I have never met. The note simply read, “[someone] mentioned you needed assistance – maybe this will help. May your church grow!” Enclosed was a very nice donation to Dayspring.

What joy that note brought! The person mentioned in the note has never been to Dayspring and is not Methodist. And I have never met or heard of the person who sent the kind words and donation.

What purity of heart – no strings, no recognition, no underlying motive. Enclosed was a true wish that our church would do well, grow, and be fruitful in ministry. This donor could have given her money to a million places, but she gave to us. No wait, she gave it to God.

But I think the thing I was most excited about was the simple wish and note that our church would do well. I am grateful for the financial gift, but even more grateful for the purity of heart that was shown. What a blessing!

Our new Small Group Semester is underway at Dayspring. Sharla and I are hosting another one this semester. Our group has 20 people, which isn’t such a “small group,” but with that many there are several out each week.

We have a diverse group: a high schooler, college students, young families, singles, and older marrieds. I love the feel because it just seems like the church to me. We have different insight, experiences and wisdom to contribute to the conversation.

Groups formed by same stage of life are certainly needed (we have them) but it is a beautiful mess to see a diverse group come together and be the church.

Well, I took a week off blogging (although I’m not sure anyone noticed). I guess I’m back though I’m still not sure.

Anyway, we had a great Sunday morning. Last week we had some technical difficulties in the kid’s worship service. We could not check the equipment until this morning and it was still malfunctioning. Aaron had a backup plan in place and so we were able to switch gears and run everything smoothly in that area this week.

We had over 240 in worship this week. We had a joining day this morning and had 13 adults and 9 children join Dayspring. We hold a joining every five or six weeks. At the first of the year, I planned to receive at least 50 new members this year (or one person a week) and if the trend continues we will definitely meet that goal.

One of our members, Paul Boyd, gave the congregation an update on the progress of our property search this morning. We have found a tract of land and have a contract signed that gives us 90 days to look the property over and determine whether it is right for us. We should make a determination as to whether it fits our needs/vision within the next few weeks. If the answer is ‘yes it does’ then we will present it to the entire congregation for a final decision.

We will still be in the theater for a while, but I think everyone is excited about the possibilities for the future of Dayspring.

A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us.
- Maltbie Babcock (Babcock is the author of one of my favorite hymns This is My Father’s World).

What script are you repeating? I saw my son use a faulty script this evening. In response to a push from another child, he pushed back. We all work off scripts. Scripts are the way we view, understand, and navigate the world around us. Scripts allow us quickly to adjust to multiple situations because we already have the script (our response) available to us when a situation arises. So all we have to do is pull up an old script and then “presto” we know how to handle the situation.

Confusing? Think about it this way. Have you ever had a moment where you realize you just said something exactly the way your mother of father would have? We say a phrase or react in a certain manner and then think, “Crud, did I just really say that – that sounded like my parents.” Well, of course it sounded like your parents because as humans we inherit many of our scripts from them.

The way we view the world, how we engage in conversations, mistakes that we repeat, how we act toward our children or spouse, how we perceive work or our boss, all of these are scripts that we work from. We can subconsciously adopt a script, purposeful reject a script, or become self aware to the point of creating new ones.

We have all been in situations where a confrontation or conversation takes a direction and we know exactly where it is going. That is because we know the scripts that are being used. We have seen them used before and maybe we use them ourselves. But those involved in the conversation are rarely able to stop and move away from the script, instead they just repeat what they already know. This happens with race relations, politics, in the office, with our children, and in our marriages.

Now, scripts are not necessarily bad. We have to have some way to filter and respond to the world around us. The question is, are we using good or faulty scripts? If our scripts are flawed or faulty, they don’t improve without some serious work on our part. And the more we understand about the natural tendencies we have (our scripts) the better we are equipped to create new ones.

We understand the world based on learned scripts in life, but creating new scripts allows us to see and react to the world and life in new ways. Creating a new script is like seeing life through a new pair of glasses. We get to see that more is around us than we previously perceived. Life is more beautiful, more complex, more of a mystery than we thought. Scripts do help us “keep our sanity” to some degree. They allow us to move through our day without analyzing every detail of life to minutia, because our script has already determined what we think and how we will respond.

But if we begin to create new scripts for our lives then suddenly instead of two choices in a given situation, we have many. One of the things that is beneficial to all of us is the act of creating. Creating new scripts can be one of the most freeing processes of your life. This evening I tried to give my son a new script. We talked about how we cannot control other people’s actions we can only control ours. So, even if we are pushed, it does not mean we must push back. We talked about having control over our responses (scripts).

Why go replay the same scene over and over when you can create a new one, a healthier one, one that allows you to see and respond more like Christ? What scripts need to be rewritten in your life?

When Dayspring began, the UMC asked me to anticipate Dayspring’s attendance for the first three years. We are on-target with that goal. But now because Dayspring is doing some long range planning, I have been asked a number of times recently how large I anticipate Dayspring will be. That is a hard question to answer. Right now our three month rolling average is 225 exactly (I take accuracy in these numbers seriously).

What will our attendance be in 5 years or in 10 years? It is hard to guess without sounding arrogant or conversely self-effacing. It is also hard to guess because it depends on so many factors that are out of my control. Since we are changing so rapidly there are many days that I am not sure who Dayspring is or what Dayspring is becoming – just being honest here.

Stating my prediction makes me somehow feel like I am supplanting God in the process. And yet, I know that in order to proactively plan for the future, we need to make a serious assessment. Dayspring does not seek to be a mega church and I think there is only room for one in a town like Tyler. I do think, however, that we will be one of the healthier churches within just a couple of years, and yes I know health is not a necessary reflection of size.

It will be interesting. Place your bets!

In his IAMSECOND video, Pete Briscoe said “Emptiness happens when you get to the place that you thought would make you happy and it doesn’t, or the emptiness happens when you continually strive to get to that place and don’t reach it. It is two different kinds of emptiness, but emptiness nevertheless.”

German philosopher Georg Hegel first pointed out that while animals will risk their lives for food, humans will risk their food and lives for recognition. This need to be recognized lies at the heart of human nature. Everybody wants to be somebody and life consists of trying to attain that somebody status. We want to be recognized as a somebody. We want a place where everybody knows our name J. We want success. We want to be heroes because God has placed the potential for greatness within each one of us.

Tomorrow I unwrap some of these ideas as we explore how the scriptures define the kind of greatness which never leaves us empty.