Vetrean Pastor, Life time Learner, Problem Solver, Servant-Leader and Motivational Speaker.

Trayvon Martin: Why I Am Fearful To Have A Son « IAmMarielleT

I am not a mother, but I hope to be one day. I reflect on the many conversations I want to have and life lessons that I want to teach my kids, especially my son. I envision teaching my son that he is to always respect and value a woman. I envision teaching him how to stand tall and be proud of who he is. I envision teaching him how to be a God-fearing individual and to respect all. I envision instilling in him the value of hard work and striving to be the best that he can be; to work hard in school and take his education seriously. Then, my mind creeps to that dreaded “talk” I will have to give him one day. No, not the “talk” about sex (my husband will be handling this topic) but the “how to survive and make it home as a Black male” talk.

I will have to look at my son and teach him to never run in public, especially with something in his hands because people will think he is stealing. I will have to teach my son that there are certain neighborhoods he can’t be in at night. I will have to teach him if and when he is driving and is pulled over by the police, to simply respond to them “yes, sir’ and “no sir” with both his hands highly visible on the steering wheel. I will have to look at my son and tell him “no matter how great of a kid you are; no matter how wonderful of a student and overall human being you are when you walk out of this house, to some, none of that will matter. To many, you will be viewed as a thug and unfortunately, just another nigger.” I dread the thought of having this conversation, but I know that if I want to see my son healthy and alive, it is one I will have to have.

It terrifies me to know that no matter how hard my husband and I will work to make sure our children are protected; that our son is protected, we can’t protect him from the racist element of the world. We can only teach him how to try to survive it. It devastates me to no end that it won’t matter how great the family is my son comes from and how amazing of an individual he is, he will be reduced to a stereotypical image of a Black male who is considered to be a worthless human being. It breaks my heart that this will be my son’s reality and unfortunately, this will perhaps be his son’s reality.

via iammariellet.com

COOL VIDEO!!!ELMA REPORT.......I WILL NOT BE DISCOURAGED!!!!EVEN THOUGH NOBODY RESPONDS TO MY ALTAR CALL FOUR WEEKS..... IN A ROW!!!!Check this video out!!!WOW!!!!!!!! Opera duo Charlotte and Jonathan....Especially if you struggle with your weight!!!!!!

 

1. This video GOT SOME DUST OF MY EYES and made me have a "black baptiscostal moment" rejoicing at the power of God despite the negative "voices" of the enemy. Christ will build His church despite the pull of Satan. 
2. Just before watching this movie, I was lamenting in my office in Elma that nobody responding to my call for salavation in the past four SUNDAYS!!!!
3. I was discouraged tONIGHT when I saw young men  selling drugs right in front of my apartment (in Elma, WA) directly across the street from our church. (Satan, seriously????Our God is greater.He will kick your .....!!!)
4. My heart sank!!! I could not believe that Satan will engineer people to destroy lives right between two churches. GOD  have MERCY!!! HEAL ELMA!!!!Elma for Jesus!!!!! Pastor James needs prayer support......
5. BUT WAIT!!!!!! THAT IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY!!!!
6. God has gifted numerous people in our church to accomplish His work as we obey HIS WORD!!!!!
7. What we are doing is more important that "Britain Got Talent".WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!!! CHRIST HAS PROMISED TO BUILD HIS CHURCH!!!!
8. God is bringing people to Himself. All kinds of people to Himself.....
9. After church TODAY!!!! numerous people told me they have invited people for Easter. People hugged me and told me God is rocking their MINDS WITH JOHN 3:16!!!!!!!!!!
10. We are praying that God will send us 80 people on Easter Sunday.
11. We believe that God is totally in-charge  and can do great things through us. We are excited that God will do amazing things for us!!!!!!YEAH GOD!!!!!!!!
12. We are riding a wave, a wave of the grace and amazing goodness of GOOD God great God of Isreal. 

Amazing NEWS!!!!

1. Over 55 people in Church today....we will celebrate and give God the glory.
2. We will not listen to the naysayers about this "being the honey moon" or "it will wear out in 1 year".
3. A young solider and his wife attended our services....we honored He and his wife for serving our country. Thank God for men and women who are willing to fight for our freedom. Freedom is not free baby!!!!!!
4. We will party hard and rejoice in the goodness of the Lord.Grays harbor county will continue to see what God is doing throught First Baptist Church Elma.
5. We will join the lord in His work in and around Gray's Harbor County...
6. Jesus is Alive!!!!THE TOMB IS EMPTY!!!!!WE WILL proclaim His word in our lives. God is good!!! Our anthem forever will be!!!!!!!!!!!

ELMA FOR JESUS 2012..

Grace and Peace

Pastor James Owolabi

3/25/2012

Hey Brothers....Young men......20 “little things” that could change your marriage

Doug, you made me mad last week because I was too dumb to notice the simple things I wasn’t doing. After I left you I made a list of 20 doable things that I would pursue this week.”

Here’s his list:
1. Clean up my dishes
2. Not leave clothes on the side of my bed
3. Put the toothpaste in the drawer (I usually leave it out)
4. To hug/kiss her right when I come in the house
5. Fill-up the gas in her car
6. Not watch TV in bed when she’s trying to sleep
7. Write her a short note and put in her briefcase
8. Don’t read the mail and leave the envelopes out
9. Put stuff back in the refrigerator
10. Walk the dog at night so she doesn’t have to
11. Be more affectionate
12. Listen to music instead of sports’ radio while we’re getting ready
13. Turn the lights off when I leave a room
14. Offer to help the kids with their homework
15. Comment and affirm her more often
16. Ask her if I could do the shopping this week
17. Don’t bring my phone to the dinner table
18. Care more deeply about her day
19. Make the bed
20. Bring home flowers/dessert/gift one night a week

via www.dougfields.com

Seven Reasons I LOVE Our Children’s Ministry! :: Perry Noble | Leadership, Vision & Creativity

#1 – It’s clean!  No nasty carpet!  No smells that make you want to projectile vomit.  No dirty floors!!!  I know that our kid’s area is clean…and that matters to every parent.

#2 – It’s safe!  Background checks have been ran on every staff member (in our church) and every volunteer that has any contact with children (or students!)  There is a volunteer security team that makes sure random people do not just walk through our kid’s area…and there is a solid check-in system where not just anyone can come pick the child up from their class, whoever checked them in must check them out.

#3 – It’s fun!  My four year old daughter LOVES CHURCH, LOVES IT!!!  I love the fact that “fun” is a value in our kid’s ministry!!!  Where in the world did we ever get the idea that kid’s must suffer through church?  Heaven is NOT boring, it’s going to be a massive party/celebration, church should be as well (especially for kids!)

#4 – Our Staff & Volunteers Are Awesome – Our children’s staff LOVE children!  Our volunteers love children!  They do not do what they do out of duty but rather delight!!!  If a staff member or volunteer the children’s area does not absolutely love children then they need to be moved to another area.  Kid’s can read right through an adult…and a ministry that isn’t based out of love for children will be unfruitful and ineffective.

#5 – Our Kid’s Know God’s Word – Every week on the way home from church I ask Charisse two questions (by the way, these are the two questions I’ve shared with our children’s ministry for over a decade in regards to what their vision should be for children’s ministry.  I have said that parents are going to ask their kids two questions every Sunday…which are…

• Did you have fun?  (This one is first 90% of the time!)
• What did you learn?

via www.perrynoble.com

8 WAYS TO HELP DEPRESSED CHRISTIANS [VIDEO] Nov 14, 2011 • By David Murray

8 WAYS TO HELP DEPRESSED CHRISTIANS [VIDEO]

Nov 14, 2011 • By David Murray • 3 Comments

  

Here are eight guidelines for helping depressed Christians. In the video I cover the following points:

1. Be prepared for it
2. Don’t assume it is caused by a specific personal sin
3. Check depth, width, and length of symptoms.
4. Don’t rush to medication and don’t rule out medication
5. Take holistic approach both to cause and cure
6. Give hope
7. Involve family & friends
8. Re-establish spiritual disciplines

 

I am quite sure Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross so I could drive a Hummer (or a buick ..or get a greencard...hot smoking wife who loves Jesus......).........God is angry with the wicked every day. Psalm 7:10-12.

My heart was broken when I watched this video on 11-7-2011. The prostitution of the gospel of Christ in my country breaks my heart. I am sure that Jesus did not die on the Cross so we could drive a Hummer. Would you kindly take 20 minutes to view this video and pray that God will judge these predators of the poor and bring them to justice. I pray that God will judge this false preachers soon. Would you also pray that God will take my wicked heart and replace it with a heart that is truly broken with the things that break the heart of God. I want God to be pleased with my life. Thank you Seyi Reynolds for an excellent well done job.

Psalm 7:10-12 My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.

 God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready.

 

THANK YOU NORTH MASON BIBLE CHURCH!!!!

 

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs - NYTimes.com.... This is one of the best articles I have read

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.

I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.

He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry

via www.nytimes.com

Our Greatest Need— D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation

Our Greatest Need

If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor.

But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.

— D. A. Carson,  A Call to Spiritual Reformation

via takeyourvitaminz.blogspot.com

Five tips for youth pastors in dealing with your senior leadership and wise words from Chris LoCurto's Blog

Five tips for youth pastors:

Pray for your Senior Pastor. Praise for your pastor out of a generous heart.

Ask permission before you share your view about a touchy issue. Remember the iceberg melts faster when the sun is out. 

Do not interrput their conversations. Seek to listen, See to understand while you learn to learn. Think then speak. Never be afraid to apologize for saying something stupid.

Leave your emotions outside the door before a meeting. Write down your thoughts before you share them. Share your thoughts with another mentor the same age as your senior leader.

Never confront your senior pastor publically. Praise publically, share concerns privately.

 

Here some more wise word from Chris LoCurto:

How To Communicate With A Leader With A Different Personality

By Chris LoCurto

It’s a great question, and truthfully, one most of us deal with. You’re not likely to work for someone with the same personality style you have. While a lot of leaders hire people like them, there’s still enough of a separation that each person’s style is different. Therefore, you need to discover the best way to work with one another. If both are well versed in personality styles and lean in each other’s direction, it’s not as hard. But when they’re not, try this:

• Get to know you – You have to first get to know you! If you don’t understand yourself, you can’t really understand why you act, react and process the way you do. And the key to giving information is understanding how you receive information. Once you know this, you can adjust your style to better communicate with others — not changing who you are, just adjusting how you communicate.

• Get to know your leader – A conversation takes two people…for most of us at least. So you need to understand the personality of the person you’re communicating with. How do they give and receive information? At what speed do they process? Do they have tendency to gather all the available information, or do they leave out the details?

• Get to writing – As you learn the strengths and weaknesses of the person you are communicating with, you can identify the areas that will either help or hurt you. In other words, if you are a high C personality, you need details, and that makes working with a high I personality difficult. They will bring excitement, enthusiasm and motivation, but it’s also possible they will leave out some details that you consider vital. So make a list of the things you need from this person every time you communicate with them. Then check the list off as you go.

• Get to resolve – Be sure to replay the conversation in your mind and ask yourself if you received all the information necessary for you to be successful. If not, address those points quickly.

As you do this you will set yourself up for success. But you should also work to convince your leader of the need to know their own personality style. Once they understand themselves, they can do a lot of the necessary work.

 

via chrislocurto.com