Archive for January, 2008
Give it up.
It has always been interesting to me to look at the trends of cash flow in churches. I just heard a sermon about how a church was close to half-a-million in the hole (their a very large church). The pastor gave a state of the church address and the giving increased and they ended the year with a surplus (Where the heck was all that money before?).
Now a lot of people would think of this as a wonderful story in God’s provision. Which it is. But I also see it as a sad state of the people’s hearts. I’ve seen this in our own church. The church is having trouble making the budget (which is based off peoples giving from the previous year), the pastor gives a hint at the joy of giving (which it is), and the giving goes back up.
Why does it always take and emergency for the church to give? Why do we have to be reminded to give? Why does it always take a drastic event in our lives in order for us to be generous? Why are we so stingy with our money and possessions?
This is something that is always at the front of my mind. I know what it is like to be in ministry and to know that you could spread the cause of Jesus in great ways….but….you don’t have the finances. I would say that this is sometimes one of the biggest stumbling blocks in ministry. You know God is calling you to do something, but you can’t see how you would be able to finance it.
And you and me being the good Christians we are (or not) say, “If God is calling you to do something, don’t worry because He will provide.” But what we really mean behind those words are, “If God is calling you to do something, don’t worry because He will provide…through someone other than me.”
I had a moment of enlightenment when I was in college. I was a poor college student (which for some is a load of crap statement…but that is another blog), and I went out to eat with a group guys. At the end of the meal, an older gentleman in the group payed for the meal. I remember telling him how I wish I could do the same. And he responded in the kindest of words, “If you aren’t generous when you have nothing, then you won’t be generous when you have everything.”
It’s stuck with me to this day. That was a changing point in my life. Before then, I was only generous and giving when I had extra money (which was like never). From that point on, I have tried my best to give at every opportunity I had. My generosity comes before my excess.
I think this is what Jesus is calling us to do as Christians. He tells us in Matthew that He will take care of us. Therefore, we should invest in the things that are of His heart. As we invest in Him, we grow closer to Jesus, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
We shouldn’t be generous only when we have money or see a need. We should be generous all the time. Churches should never have to worry about money. It should be the only non-profit organization in the world that should never have to worry about their cash flow. The word Christian should be synonymous with generous.
The funny thing is that once I started being more generous…the more I enjoyed it. I just hope that you would give it a chance.
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Books to Read
I know some of you aren’t big book readers out there (which is weird…because you’re reading a blog), but I want to know what some of your favorite books are and why. They could be life changing books or just something fun to read. Here are a few of my recent favorites (not a comprehensive list).
Sex God - Rob Bell - One of the best books on sexuality and God out there (I don’t know if there are any others)
Planting Missional Churches - Ed Stetzer - Just a great book on what a missional church should look like. It’s very eye opening.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling - When I got done reading the series, I just wanted to stand up and yell, “I told you so.” (in fact I think I did) The final book was everything I hoped the story would be. (this might be a post in itself later on)
Blue Like Jazz - Donal Miller - Can’t explain it…just go buy it and read it. Right now.
Now it’s your turn…
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Early Morning Flights Suck!
So I have to go to Phoenix today for some training (in fact, I’m writting this in the airport right now). Yes. UPS is flying me to Phoenix for just the day (it doesn’t make sense….but they are paying for it….so I’ll go). So, this means that I had to get up at the butt crack of dawn to catch my flight.
I really don’t like getting up this early in the morning. I’m just not a happy person. Plus, all the errors with the airport seem to be amplified. The security gaurd’s stupidity is stupider (as well is my spelling…maybe), the happy morning people are even more detestable, and the coffee tastes horrible.
Plus, you determine (once again) that you are only going to show up at the airport 30 min before your flight from now on. Because you get here an hour and a half before your flight and get through security in five minutes (I’m not exgagerating). But you know the one time that you do, you will miss your flight and go back to square one again (plus it gives you time to blog).
Maybe they still tell everyone to show up early because they have to make consideration for that one idiot that doesn’t realize he needs to empty his pockets of metal before going through the metal detector (He has his house keys, some loose change, and a lead pipe in his pockets and he can’t understand why it is beeping at him). I mean it’s 5:30 in the morning and even in my sleep deprived coma, I can figure out how to empty my pockets.
They should just say, “pleas show up 45-60 minutes before your flight. Unless you are an idiot…then please don’t fly.” I think life would be better for all of us. They should do this for most places that have lines. There should be a normal line and a “We’re forced to serve you…so please get in this line” line.
Ohhh well. I doubt it will ever happen. All the good ideas eventually get stopped by government or the like (like Shannon’s idea to castrate any male that is disrespectful to a female….just didn’t seem to go over well). But we can always dream.
Until then, I’ll just repent for being so angry at the guy that couldn’t empty his pockets. “Forgive me Jesus for being so angry at the guy that couldn’t empty his pockets….even though he was an idiot.”
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Sweeny Todd
Shannon and I saw Sweeney Todd yesterday. I don’t recommend it for anyone under the age of 17. And I don’t recommend it for anyone with a week stomach. For everyone else…go see this movie now. I totally loved it.
Shannon and I were joking though about how many cast members from Harry Potter was in the movie. You had Sirius Snape, Wormtail, and Bellatrix. I was telling Shannon maybe Sweeney Todd is just some missing chapters from the Harry Potter series. I was waiting for someone to pull out a wand at any moment. Instead he just kept cutting throats and making meat pies.
You have to admit that would make one pretty big plot twist though.
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LibraryThing
If you’re like me, you like to read. If you like to read, then you probable have a few books. If you have a few books, then you should probable have a way of keeping track of what you have. So I present to you LibraryThing.com. I just found out about this place last night and I’m loving it.
LibraryThing.com is a place to store all you information on the books that you have. And it is so simple to do. You just enter either the title of the book or the ISBN, find the book in the corresponding search, and add it to your library. The let you do up to 100 books for free and then after that it is $10 a year for unlimited books.
I fell in love with this online app instantly. I don’t have a huge library, but Shannon and I are adding to it every week. It is slowly getting to that tipping point where I won’t be able to remember what books we have anymore. This will allow me to keep track of them and even search for certain topics.
I’ve already started adding my books and I’m about a fourth of the way through. If you want to check out my catalog, you can go to:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gregqualls
Try it out and tell me what you think about it.
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Survey Saturday….
A couple of blogs that I read like to do reader polls once a week. They put out a question and have their reader respond through the comments. I think I’m going to start doing this my self. The first one should post on Saturday (and I’ll probable do it every Saturday). But in the time being let me know what you think would be some good survey questions to ask.
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The Unknown Tenant
So last Thursday I was having lunch with some friends when I got a phone call from Shannon letting me know that she had just got served (in the legal sense…not in the dance sense). Apparently she had been home minding her own business when someone rang our doorbell.
When Shannon answered, this guy handed her a stack of papers letting us know that the house we are renting is being foreclosed on. We got a copy of the legal paperwork since we are living at the house. In fact on the paperwork, we are listed as “the unknown tenant.” I had to laugh. It has the feeling of a Robert Frost poem.
The Unknown Tenant
by Greg Qualls
To the unknown tenant
How hard life must be
To the unknown tenant
The future is cloudy
To the unknown tenant
Your house might be sold
To the unknown tenant
You’ll be out in the cold
To the unknown tenant
Dream big and be strong
To the unknown tenant
um yeah we’re forclosing on your house and there isn’t anything that you can do about it because you’re just a tenant and not the owner. In fact we don’t even know your name. You’re nameless. That’s gotta suck.
It doesn’t flow as good as a Robert Frost poem…but I think it works. Anyways…we found out yesterday though that the owner got everything cleared up with the mortgage company. So things are back to normal. We aren’t having to move. So that is good.
But I will always remember the time that I was….the unknown tenant.
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Lose your reputation - Give away a shot glass
I came across this article today about a church that is handing out shot glasses (with the phrase “give us a shot” on it) in a local bar to invite people to their church. I love to hear stories about churches doing things like this. I’m personally up for just starting a church service in the bar, but this is a step in the right direction.
You see this past Sunday our pastor spoke about the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. One of the things that he pointed out that really struck a chord with me was in verse 7. Jesus enters Jericho this famous rabbi who everyone loves. Then he decides to go against the grain of what all the religious people have been doing (separating themselves from sinners), and he tells the greatest sinner in town that he is going to go eat at his house (the den of iniquity….dum, dum, dum).
Then you see in verse 7, “And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”" I love that verse. With one act of love and compassion for a man that was the least to deserve it, Jesus looses his entire reputation. You constantly see him loosing his reputation because he would go where “righteous people” wouldn’t go and hang out with people that “righteous people” wouldn’t hang out with.
We need to do the same. Our churches need to the same.
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Let’s Talk about Sex Baby
Or about the baby’s sex.
So we ended up getting in on Saturday to have Shannon’s ultrasound instead of waiting until the 25th. Shannon and I were so excited because we knew that the baby was now big enough to find out the sex (see my previous baby post to find out my feelings about waiting to find out). So we got up early on Saturday and went to Shannon’s appointment.
The whole morning I was anxious knowing that I was about to find out the big news. The lady that did the procedure was really nice (you got to think that is pretty fun part of her job…getting to tell people what they are going to have). The baby on the other hand wasn’t being very cooperative. They kept moving around and had their legs crossed almost the whole time. The lady doing the procedure was having to do some ultrasound gymnastics just to get the pictures that she needed.
She didn’t get a really clear view, but with the shots that she did get, she was 75% sure that we are having a bouncing baby boy (emphasize the bouncing part…that kid was really moving around a lot). There is a small chance that it could end up being a girl…but I saw something purturding in the pictures that she took. We are both excited and really surprised. Shannon was really set on the fact that she thought we were having a girl. I think she is a little depressed, but we will love him just the same. And there is always a chance for more.
We have already picked out the name at the moment and we are calling him Asa Jackson Qualls. Asa is one of my favorite Bible people, and Shannon really liked the name Jackson to go with it. Things are really starting to sink in now. The nicest thing is that we can stop saying “him or her.” It’s going to be nice to just say “him” from here on out.
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If you haven’t noticed….
If you haven’t noticed, I made some changes to my website. To the naked eye it might look like I just changed the look of the website around a little bit. But I actually gutted it and started from scratch. The last two days have been pretty crazy.
This all started a few weeks ago when I was talking to my friend Dave Ortega about my blog. You see I had been messing around with my blog for a little over a year now. Dave encouraged me to really take it seriously. So I decided that I would (hence all the posts over the past few weeks). The only problem was that the back end software (Joomla) I was using for the site previously wasn’t made to do blogging (it did the job…but it wasn’t designed for it).So I decided it was time for a change. So I did some research, and switched to WordPress. The past two days I have been spending a fair amount of time uninstalling the old software, installing WordPress, converting the databases of posts, and editing the posts. So far I have been really happy.
There were some small glitches in the process though. I lost all my old comments (there weren’t that many so I’m not put out that much) and I lost some of my posts. If you notice that there is a post that is missing that you really liked, let me know and I will try to recover it for you. There are a few (my BTotD’s) that I’m going to recreate in the upcoming weeks, and I can add your’s to the list. Just leave me a comment.There are also some new features to this site which I hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think. I know so far I’m falling in love with my new site.Come back tomorrow…because we have some big news about the baby….yeah it’s what you think.
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