Two more quick thoughts

1) Read the following quote from a session by Mark Batterson - Seth Godin says, "If you are not remarkable, you are invisible." So many of us as church leaders aren't doing anything remarkable.

A lot of my favorite quotes tend to come from him recently. The point for me is that we need to be doing some remarkable things as a church, otherwise who cares. Are we invisible to the community around us? Need any more motivation to shake up the status quo? I don't!

2) Had lunch with a friend that I've known a long time today. We used to work together for a couple of years and have maintained a friendship through all of the job and location changes between us. There have been some major things that have impacted him over the last several years that we hadn't really talked about. Didn't know whether to bring those up or not since it has been probably at least a year since we last talked. Decided last night that life is too short to waste time not talking about the important things. So glad I did. It was good to hear his heart and to honestly talk about the struggles he has faced in dealing with those situations. Kind of where my heart has been heading for some time. Transparency and realness are rarely easy, but it is lot healthier than ignoring the problems or stuffing them. We also talked about another co-worker/friend we had worked with during that time who committed suicide several years ago. He was the one who rarely showed that things bothered him. Always the one to make us laugh. I wondered at some points if there was something going on with him but didn't want to be blunt or risk the awkward questions. Wonder if the outcome would have been different if I was willing to risk my uncomrfortableness to be real and ask what was going on? We don't have time to hint about the things going on in our lives, it is time to be transparent. Have something going on with you, then find someone and tell them about it. Wondering if someone is hurting, then ask them. Let's get on with being a real community.