Great video from our creative team. Laughed really hard, especially since so many of my friends’ kids were the “actors”.
http://www.vimeo.com/5239013See the full message on Temptation at www.watermarkradio.com
Yesterday, Canyon Creek students returned to school after missing nearly a week and a half due to the swine flu scare. You would think that by now, this would no longer be newsworthy, but sure enough news crews were there yesterday morning as I dropped my daughter off for school. As I walked back to my car, I was approached and they asked me a few questions. First of all, it is never a good idea to asks me anything before 8am or before I’ve had a cup of coffee. I answered the usual questions about whether I felt safe sending my child back to school (of course), whether it had been a hardship on my family (well, keeping three kids at home for a week isn’t really “hardship”, although my wife probably has a different opinion), and then the question I most wanted them to ask… do you think this entire thing was overblown or am I glad the schools took the appropriate action?
This is the question that really gets to me. Canyon Creek was closed because a student had the flu. In Fort Worth, eighty thousand kids were taken out of school for a week because of a single kid with the swine flu. Now, I don’t want to say that the school districts overreacted… had they done nothing and the flu had been more serious we would be outraged, but the bigger concern is just how worried we became about something we didn’t fully understand.
So how did I answer the question? “While I don’t think the action was all that necessary in retrospect, my bigger concern was why this is so newsworthy. Three thousand kids die EVERY DAY from Malaria in Africa alone, malnutrition is the cause of over half of the deaths of children worldwide… in fact 34,000 children die from malnutrition EVERY DAY (which is about the number that the flu kills every YEAR).
So is it wrong for us to be concerned about the welfare of our kids? Certainly not. But is it newsworthy while thousands die daily and don’t have a voice? I don’t think so.
Imagine that… the quote about being glad my kids were back in school made the news. The quote about the plight of kids around the world? Not so much.
Part of our job in IT is to lead ministries in how to use technology. Here is a quick email about an event that we are doing with our staff at Watermark next week.
Mark your calendars for noon next Thursday, May 14th for “Ask a Geek”.
Ever wonder what your friends are talking about when they mention Hulu? Do you think Twitter is a gardening tool? Have you wanted to blog but were afraid of being labeled as a blogger? Want to be able to determine the links between SocialThing, CrazyEgg, Yoono, YouTube, Jiglu, Thoof, Zilo, OpenSocial, Facebook Connect and FriendFeed? Confused? You’re not alone.
Join us next Thursday at lunchtime for a brown bag session where you can ask ANY question about technology. If you’re curious about how you can use some of these tools in your ministry, or just want to better understand the technology that surrounds us every day, this is your chance ask questions and explore. We live in a time where technology is everywhere, so come learn how you might be able to leverage some of these tools for ministry.
Perhaps this is the most important thing that we can do for our ministries. I often tell our team that we want to organize our technology so that we spend twenty percent of our time in maintenance mode and eighty percent of our time being technology evangelists. We should always be innovators.
Yesterday, several thousand folks from Watermark Community Church took the day off from “going to church” so that we could “be the church” to the city of Dallas. We boarded school buses until they were all full, and then the rest of us drove to schools all over Dallas to serve.
My oldest daughter and I headed out to Hamilton Park Elementary where we joined an army of volunteers. We cleaned desks, washed windows, cleaned marker boards, picked up and emptied trash… all while having a great time with other folks that we are connected with at Watermark. It was great to see the body of Christ come together. You can read more at the Dallas News article or read people’s stories at the Watermark External Focus blog.
I was reminded of a good lesson today. It was the kind of lesson that kicks you in the knees when you realize that you have to sometimes live out the very lessons that you teach your kids.
This morning my wife was at Wal-mart with our two youngest kiddos, when my four year-old found a dollar bill. Like most girls her age, a dollar is the same as a million bucks, and opens up a world of opportunities; trips to Disneyworld, new toys, etc… But her “mean Mommy” made her give it back. So, out of her little hand went the dollar bill along with a lesson about honesty which is worth more than a dollar. (and Mommy bought her candy, a nice touch.)
And there there was my day…
At Watermark we have been in the process of renewing our licensing for our Aruba wireless controller and needing to upgrade our licensing to support the additional access points for the new building. We have received the upgrade quotes, and the entire bill will run nearly twelve thousand dollars for the license upgrade. It’s a significant chunk of change… a lot more money than I want to spend. However, today I found out that Aruba made a mistake, a big mistake. After spending a bit of time looking at our wireless controller, I discovered that instead of the 48 access point license that we bought several years ago, Aruba somehow mistakenly had given us the very license keys (for 128 APs) that we need for the new building. It was like finding a twelve thousand dollar bill on the floor at Wal-mart… Except that it couldn’t be right? Could it? So I called Aruba to find out for sure… and sure enough, both sales and the system engineer confirmed that the license is valid.
Except now they know what I know…and now that they know that I have something I didn’t pay for, I still have to renew my support on Aruba. Renewing my support means paying for the upgrade after all because I can’t just do the 48AP support renewal and pretend that everyone is happy. They can’t do it, and neither can I. It just wouldn’t be right.
I believe that I work hard to steward the resources that God has blessed us with at Watermark. It would have been really nice to have saved that money. I would have really liked Aruba to have come back with a “it was our mistake, so you don’t need to pay the difference, just use it…” But they didn’t and I was selfishly a little disappointed. I’m guess I’m hopeful that they will give us a better deal on the price because of our honesty.
Then again, we don’t do the right thing because we hope to get something for free, or a better deal. We do the right thing because God tells us to. In Luke 16:10 Jesus tells the disciples, “Who can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” (NIV) Paul in his first epistle to Timothy says to “Cling to your faith, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their conscience; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked.” (1 Tim 1:19 NLT)
So whether it is a dollar on the floor or twelve thousand dollars tied up in obscure licensing mistakes… Honest always is the best policy.
Questions; How have you wrestled with these types of situations? How did you handle it? What areas of growth have you seen personally from behaving honestly?
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