Friday is Top Five Day

love the songs we sing at north point.  i love the variety.  i love the power.  i love the volume.  i pretty much can’t wait to show up on sunday mornings just to sing.  we do high energy songs.  we do some amazing mid-tempo songs that start slow and quiet and build.  we do slower, more contemplative songs.  all of them designed to lead us to a deeper and more profound experience in the presence of an awesome god.

here are some of my very favorite high energy songs we do that didn’t make my top five:

• Our Love is Loud
• My Glorious
• All Creation
• Today is the Day
• Let God Arise
• Forever
• The Quest

so here’s my top five high energy songs we do:

5.   Blessed Be Your Name - Matt Redman  (there is no song we sing with more passion)

4.   Not To Us - Chris Tomlin  (“the universe spinning and singing…it’s all for you”…as good as it gets!)

3.   Everyday - Joel Houston (even though we don’t sing it very often)

2.   All Because of Jesus - Steve Fee  (we could sing this every sunday, as far as i’m concerned)

1.   Singer’s Song - Martin Smith of Delirious  (best music memory of my thirteen years in texas)

those are mine.  what songs would you add?  (you don’t have to add five!)

Sunday sermon

my sermon from this past sunday was a little different than normal… not that any of them are particularly normal!

there are some things that i am absolutely convinced of:

• my dogs are annoying.
• hd television is cool.  very cool.
• my wife is the best wife ever.
• dieting sucks.
• no matter how good it looks, the padres and the chargers always let me down.
• but i will never turn my back on them!
• my list could go on, but that’s not the point today…

i am also totally convinced that god has designed us for relationship.  it is hard-wired into our spiritual dna.  we are not meant to be alone.  we are not meant to be isolated.  we are never better than we are together.  life is not meant to be lived in secret.  it’s just not.

we don’t like sermons about accountability.  we definitely don’t like to be told we need to be in a small group.  most of us shudder at the thought of sitting with someone else and talking about the details of our life.  but somebody’s got to bring up the difficult topics and ask us how we’re doing…or might never happen.  honestly, it won’t ever happen.

i didn’t like asking the questions sunday morning.  it was one of the most uncomfortable times i have ever had standing in front of our church family.  the looks on faces ranged from astonishment to embarrassment to fear.

but it had to be done.

let me know if you want a copy of the questions.  i would love to send them to you…so you can begin asking someone their answers.

if you didn’t hear the sermon, you can check it out on our church website:  www.npcc.cc

Monday Morning Quarterback

it’s time for a change!

starting today, north point is raising the bar for communication.

we are starting a new blog called the np community.

it will be the new place to find out what’s going on in our church family…and a lot more.  we’ll be using the np community instead of the weekly np enews.  you’ll see pictures.  it will be interactive.  we think you’ll be challenged…inspired…and drawn deeper into np family life.

if we have your email address, you will be automatically subscribed to it.  after you’ve checked it out, you can simply unsubscribe,  if you don’t want to keep getting it (but, that’ll never happen…).

if you don’t start getting the np community in the next couple of days,  make sure you contact us and we’ll get you hooked up.

oh yeah, you can find monday morning quarterback at the np community blog right now…

Friday is Top Five Day

some days i wonder, “is it me?”…

yesterday, some thieves broke into the porter tire storage yard.  guess who stores their brand new 5×8 super duper enclosed trailer in their yard for protection?  guess who just got their fifth (yeah, you heard it right)…fifth trailer stolen?

have i told you lately that, in spite of everything, i love north point?  i do.  i really do.

so anyway, this recent venture into the world of crime got me to thinking (especially since my re-post a couple of days ago) about things i have had stolen in my life.  it’s happened enough that i can build a legit “top five” list of the day.  is that sick, or what?

so here goes…my personal “top five” things that i have had stolen in my life:

5.  a walkman - not just any walkman, mind you… (i think it’s amazing that the current generation of young people have no idea what a walkman is!).  in 1990, i spent about a month in india and i brought my walkman to listen to cassette tapes of music and sermons during the long hours of travel.  i was making a 13-hour second-class rail trip through central india, when a little kid reached through the window of my rail car and swiped it right in front of me, while the train slowed down going through a village.  great memory…

4.  an ovation custom balladeer acoustic-electric guitar – you can read my post from wednesday for the details.  this is the first one that i had stolen in 1977.   it cost me a fortune back in those days.  no insurance.  this was bad.  took me quite a while to get over it.

3.  my original gold wedding band – one night in 1988, i took my ring off and put it in my small duffel bag before i played a softball game.  i’ll never know, for sure, what happened, but the next morning, when i went to the bag to retrieve it, it was gone.  forever.  sad day.

2.  a vintage guild d-4 acoustic guitar - from 1990-1995,  we were part of a new church plant in the inner city of east san diego (while i worked full-time for amor ministries, leading trips into mexico on short term mission trips).  the week before we loaded up our belongings and moved to texas, the greatest guitar i have ever owned was pilfered from our church building during our last bible study where we said good-bye to all of our friends for the last time.  i knew who stole it, but i couldn’t prove it.  because we were leaving so soon, i didn’t have time to go visit the pawn shops in our neighborhood to find it.  urgg….that guitar was worth more than drug money.

1.  my 1964 rawlings trap-eze baseball glove - ok, before you jump my case for putting this number one and not my wedding band, you just gotta know me.  when i was ten years old (1964), my father paid $47 for the best glove money could buy at that time.  it would be the equivalent of a $400 custom glove today.  no joke.  my father was a carpenter.  we were the picture of a blue-collar, lower-middle class, paycheck to paycheck family.  this glove cost a fortune, but my dad spared no expense for his little fledgling ball player.  it was way too big for my hand, but i grew into it and i played with that glove through my high school baseball playing days and when i began my 28-year softball playing career, that glove made the transition in major league fashion.

one night in 1998, after playing a softball game at lake park, someone stole it from the bench beside me.  in the blink of an eye, it was gone.  it was more than a ball glove.  it was a connection to my dad.  it was a connection to my youth.  it’s a personal connection to the great game that i no longer have.  it was the best glove ever.  i can still feel it on my hand.  i can close my eyes and smell the leather, as if it were right here in front of me.  i’m grateful for the memory, but it’s not the same.

i’ll be sad for a few minutes…     *tear goes down cheek*

ok, i’m better now.

how about you?  need some memory therapy?  what’s on your list of things you’ve had stolen?

The parable of the guitar…revisited

recently, i have met up with an old friend from the 70’s on facebook.  he saw a picture floating around out there of me playing an ovation guitar, so he wrote to ask if i was still playing it.  it made me remember that a couple of years ago, i wrote a post titled, “the parable of the guitar”.  i thought i’d share it with you again…

i went to guitar center last night to peruse the best they had to offer. i’m such a wannabe guitar hack… while i was there, i reminisced about some former guitars i’ve owned.

three different ovation custom balladeers, a vintage guild d4, a takamine eg series cutaway, and an olympia od5 made of white ash… the first ovation was stolen out of my car in the church parking lot before a sunday evening service 29 years ago. i replaced that ovation with an identical one (after saving up for six months!). at the same church building, that guitar was stolen right out of a classroom during a youth group “all-nighter”…some kids let a guy in the building during the middle of the night and he bagged it.

silly me, after saving up some more money (and some help from the youth group), i bought another ovation and kept better care of this one. in 1989, i traded it in on a vintage guild d4 from a little “hole-in-the-wall” guitar shop. i had watched it for nearly a year and finally saved up enough money to go with my trade in. favorite guitar i ever owned… the week before we moved to texas in 1995, it was stolen from the church we were serving in san diego. some kids we were working with stole it during a bible study and took it to a pawn shop for drug money. didn’t have time to stick around to find it…

when we moved to texas, it took a little while to save up some more money, but after a few months, i purchased my takamine. six or seven years ago, a youth minister from another church group tried to steal it down on a mexico mission trip. no joke! thanks to some stealth undercover work by ol’ buz, i got it back. a couple of years later, though, the guitar was fully submerged in water when the tip of a tornado touched down on our camping area during a summer junior camp. i still use that guitar, but it sounds like i’m playing in a fish bowl…

i bought my olympia guitar a few years ago, and, guess what? some local downtown lewisville hooligans broke into the north point church building and stole it! recently, i purchased another guitar…not a real expensive one…duh.

the moral of this story? church is not a safe place. definitely not for guitars. not for people, either.

Monday Morning Quarterback

here are some of the highlights from yesterday…

• one of my favorite things that happens in the first service is when the majority of people sit on one side and leave the middle open. it happened yesterday and it really threw me off more than normal. it’s just a quirky shortcoming on my part!
• we had a new guy come into the first service right after the first two songs, right before i started to preach. about half way through my sermon, he put on his coat, zipped up his bible, and walked out. talk about a confidence builder!
• i may not look like it, but i am usually pretty aware of what’s going on during my sermon. in my younger days, i would react (internally) to looks, body language, people checking their watches, whispering, people falling asleep, writing notes, getting up and walking out. you name it. i had to work at not taking it personally.
• now, when people are texting on their phones, nodding off, working on their crackberries, talking to their neighbors, or making their morning run for donuts and coffee, i find myself just being grateful they are here!
• should they be doing those things? is it my fault? am i boring? should i be doing something different? are they going to hell? no way…i hope not…probably, sometimes…for those people, maybe…not for that.
• had another “ralph” moment in the first service. you people that only come to the second hour are really missing out! let’s just say that ralph’s going to need a little practice on what to do when he gets a phone call during the service. he had his new ear piece, and when he got the call, we couldn’t hear the ring (that was good), but he also didn’t realize that all of us could hear him as he was talking. only at north point…
• logan’s a really funny guy. when he introduced himself in the welcome time by saying, “hi, i’m logan and i’m the youth minister frommmm, uhhh…here”, i thought i was going to bust out laughing right on stage.
• of all the songs we have learned over the past 13 years, “singer’s song” is easily in my top three favorites…for a few different reasons. it was one of the first great new songs from england that we started doing in youth ministry. it was challenging musically. the lyrics of the “bridge” are, hands down, some of the most profound ever written. and it is flat out fun to sing and play. i hope we are still doing this song in 2020!
• i had second thoughts about making a twelve minute commercial for the simple service initiative during the sermon. sometimes we just need to say things to each other as family. maybe that’s why the new guy left. i hope not.
• looking forward to starting a new series this coming sunday. i think it’s going to be great for our family.
• all in all, yesterday was a good day…especially for a vacation weekend.
• got to each lunch at raising cains. yes…a good day.

For our friends far away…

Friday is “Top Five Day”

here’s my list of the top five things i would be doing if i wasn’t actually listening to the sermon on sunday (assuming i wasn’t preaching it…)

5.  working on my schedule for the next week.  back when i used to use a day-timer (anybody remember those?), i used to love  messing with my calendar and planning stuff during this time.

4.  counting how many times the guy preaching says “uh”.

3.   sending text messages to people who were sleeping in

2.  see if a yawn is really contagious.

1.  close my eyes and re-live the basset hound day…in detail.

so what about you?  what are some of your tricks for making the time pass quickly.  go ahead.  my skin is pretty thick these days!

God, may this never be said of me…

this is a quote that stays with me all the time:

“Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions.”

- G.K. Chesterton

North Point Bathroom Prayer

so how are you doing in week one?