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

20 things you'll never hear at your funeral. | Sammy Adebiyi

1. You know we really wish she gave less, risked less and served less.

2. Mummy and Daddy had a huge impact on my life because they made so much money. (greatest hits)

3. He had by far the best house and the newest nicest car in the neighborhood.

4. Nobody in the world has ever gone through what He went through.

5. You know what's amazing about this guy? He lived life to the fullest and he did it all on his own. He didn't even need anyone. (friendship) 

6.  She attempted and accomplished so many great things in her life but she never failed once. (fail)

7. My husband was so amazing because he was always right. I never heard him say sorry because He never had to say sorry. (sorry)

8. I wish dad would said he was proud of me less and I never understood why mom wanted to spend so much time with me. (disgraceful dad)

9. She changed the world by pointing out what was wrong with what others were doing. She never played on the team but she was a master critic of the game from the bleachers and the world is a better place for it. (shut up or play)

10. None of us would be here if He hadn't taken life too seriously. We are indebted to the fact that he never laughed, played or had any significant fun. (laugh) 

11. It's incredible how she managed to do great things for God without having to first be faithful in the small insignificant things. (waiting) 

12. My dad was the best in the world because he always made sure we lived way above our income.

13. She was so skinny and wore a size __. He was so ripped! (him)

14. He tried to be the best in the world at what he did and succeeded. There was none better. 

15. She stood for many things and was beloved by everyone. (haters)

16. He was always on fire for God. No deserts, doubts or waiting periods. Just mountain tops. (doubt)

17. Daddy was my hero because I never saw him cry or show weakness
. (dudes)

18. (S)he was so happy and lived a satisfying life because (s)he was GREAT in bed and experienced every sexual pleasure possible. (sex) 

via sammyadebiyi.com

Why You Should Raise Your Kids in the City | This Is Our City | Christianity Today

The darkness of the city is easy to see. In the first few years we lived here my sons saw, from the vantage point of the back of our van where they were waiting for us to come out of the evening service, a robbery suspect chased down the sidewalk, caught, and spread-eagled, handcuffed, and Mirandized on the hood of the car parked behind us. We drove past hookers in silver lamé bikinis and stilettos, watched over by their pimp, on our way home. We watched one man knock another one out in a fistfight at a street fair; and, memorably, a well-dressed man in the financial district drunkenly fall to his knees, vomit all over himself, and then stagger off.

Naturally, these incidents were the subject of lengthy family conversation and discussion. That sin should be so visible, and appear in its true, ugly colors, is of inestimable value in a culture that glamorizes depraved behavior, laughing off drunkenness and promiscuity as "partying," and mocking those who don't participate. I never had to give one lecture on the evils of drunkenness to boys who had seen them live, in living color, for themselves.

But in the city, your kids see sin and its consequences while you are still with them and can help them process it. Eventually they're going to encounter it for themselves, usually when they leave the protected environment of home for the big wide world—just when you are no longer around to discuss things.

I have had parents counter this suggestion by saying that, as valuable as processing the ugliness of this broken world with your children might be, there is such a thing as seeing too much, too soon. Possibly so, but my daughter-in-law (with degrees in education from Vanderbilt and Harvard in primary and secondary education, and with experience in teaching both) pointed something out to me: If children are really that young, too young for some sights, they simply won't see them, or understand what they're seeing. Children find a great deal of the world inexplicable, so the very young are not usually in danger of being damaged by fleeting glimpses of the sordid world. By the time they are old enough to notice what they're seeing, it's time for parents to be talking to them about it, anyway. And it's usually way younger than you thought!

via www.christianitytoday.com

What do I think of interacial marriage????Good questions!!!!!!!Watch the video below........

 

Fellowship Memphis > Our Dream...I love this!!!!! Praying for Fellowship Memphis.......

Our Dream

We do not dream of building a big church. What keeps us up at night is not the prospect of buying forty acres, starting a school or establishing our own Fellowship Memphis sports leagues. We do not get excited about being a silo of truth, where informing people about God and His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit becomes the primary mark of our ministry. Information is good, even necessary, but is not the ultimate passion of our hearts. When it comes to the Scriptures, our part of the country has more than enough informed people. What keeps us up at night? What drove us to move our families to Memphis and take on the exhilarating (and sometimes excruciating) task of planting a church in the second most segregated city in the country? Why did we intentionally choose to find a location right in the heart of Memphis, a city which is known for poor education, a higher than normal poverty rate and rampant crime? Because our hearts long to gather, equip and unleash an army of Christ-followers who, in being the church, will leave footprints from Germantown to Mud Island, and from Millington to Mississippi to the glory of God. We dream, even to the point of tears, to provide a medicating balm to the "black eye" of Memphis. From slavery to the assassination of Dr. King and beyond, Memphis has garnered the unfortunate reputation of racism. By standing on the authority of the Bible, and modeling diversity within our walls, we long to be a model to Memphians, the Mid-South and the world of diversity, racial reconciliation and racial harmony. To a world that says blacks and whites worshipping and doing life together in Memphis could never happen, we dream, labor and sacrifice all that we are by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the authority of the blood of Jesus to say, "Yes it can! Yes it will!" Our dreams are big. So big, that they are beyond us. As one author notes, we are dreaming and laboring for a time we cannot see. Our children will see it, though. They'll see better school systems, lower poverty and crime rates, and the destruction of systemic racism. And they will see a common sight - African-American's, White's, Latino's, Asians and beyond doing life with one another. Loving each other. Walking with each other under the banner of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That's what keeps us up at night.

via www.fellowshipmemphis.org

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.

 

Seth Godin: Leaders Should Write Their Thoughts Each Day

 

 

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

It may the best teacher but ....Experience is a Brutal teacher....."I would rather learn from other people's mistake.......

Lord.... I really want to be teachable. I want to learn from your heart.  I do not want to only learn from  my experience. I want other people to pay my "dumb tax". I want to stand on the shoulder of the generation before me and learn from them. I do not want to tear down a wall before asking why the wall was built.  Lord thank you for my mentors and thank you for the men and women in my life who speak the truth when I do not want to hear it. Lord give me the humility to listen to my teachers. God may  I never stop learning. 

Proverbs 9:9: Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.

 

"Experience is often a brutal teacher. Experience eats up your most valuable commondity: time. Learning from experience can eat up years. It can steal an entire stage of life. Experienc can leave scars, inescapable memories, and regret. Sure, we will all live and learn. But living and learning dont erase regret. And regret is more than memory. It is more than cerebral. It's emotional. Regret has the potential to create powerful emotion-emotions that have the potential to drive us a person right back to the behavior that created the regret to begin with. If regret can be avoided, It should be".-Andy Stanley from 'The Principle of the Path'

1. Lord make my heart teacheable.
2. Lord give me a new heart daily.
3. Lord my heart is prone to wander.
4.  Lord aid my mind that loves wandering into places where your grace is seems invisible.
5. God feed my soul with your truth daily. 
6. Speak words to my  heart when it is broken oh Lord!!!
7. You only Lord are my rock!!!!!

Leading Blog: Maxwell's 5 Levels of Leadership

As shown below, the first level is POSITION. At this level, people follow you because they have to. Your influence comes from your position. While that’s not bad—you probably got the position because of your leadership potential—you don’t want to stay here. Leadership is about relationships and leaders will make it their business to develop them.

The second level is PERMISSION. People follow you because they want to. Permission is about building relationships. It focuses on the value of each person and opens up communication. Connecting with others begins with connecting with and growing yourself. Understanding that the first person I must get along with is me, the first person to cause me problems is me, the first person that must change is me, and the first person that can make a difference is me.

Level three – PRODUCTION – recognizes that relationships alone are not enough. A leader is tasked with getting things done. Production level leaders are followed because of what they have done for the organization. They get things done. Their credibility is based on their example. The ability to get results alone doesn’t make you a leader. Leaders are measured by what the entire group accomplishes and not by the individual efforts of the person in charge. Leaders develop their people into a team to get results. To get to the next level you must develop your people.

The fourth level is PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT. Leaders become great because they empower others. They develop more leaders. “Production may win games, but People Development wins championships.” People development assures that growth can be sustained. Self-centered, insecure leaders neglect this stage in their development.

Maxwell estimates that less than 1 percent of all leaders ever reach Level 5 – THE PINNACLE. Leaders at this level understand that the highest goal of leadership is to develop more leaders, not to gain followers or do work. Level 5 leaders develop Level 4 leaders. Developing leaders that can in turn develop leaders is hard work and takes a great deal of skill, focus, and a lifetime commitment. But those leaders that do create Level 5 organizations. They create opportunities that other leaders don’t. Level 5 leaders leverage their own leadership through others. People follow these leaders because of what they are and what they represent. “When you lead an organization, you can’t be focused on just fulfilling the vision or getting work done.”

via www.leadershipnow.com

In appreciation of Steve: Think different, remixed « Observatory

Last week, I noted that if one were to combine the words to Apple’s Crazy Ones ad with historical images of Steve Jobs, it would make perfect sense.

Well, I thought I’d take a crack at it myself.

Here’s my little tribute to Steve. Hope you enjoy.

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify and vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Tags: ken segall, steve jobs, steve jobs resignation

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2011 at 6:05 pm and is filed under apple, creative, observatory, steve jobs. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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via kensegall.com