Beginnings of a Leader

It's been a busy week between packing up the office, school, and ministry work. I've been learning leadership. This is my first blog in a while so I'll give you guys an update. I'm back at Mission Baltimore for my second year as a student, also known as my leadership year. This year is dedicated to learning how to become a leader through knowledge and experience. We're going through the “21 Laws of Leadership” by John Maxwell right now and it's a great study. These 21 Laws are the most important things you need to know about leadership.

Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less., that's the law of influence; probably one of the most important things one needs to know about leadership. If you think that you can be a leader just because you have a title then you are sadly mistaken. The proof of your leadership is not in a title but in how many people are willing to respect you enough to follow you. In order to gain respect you have to give it...that's how you gain the loyalty of your followers.

All of that being said...a leader must have one thing for sure or their leadership will fall apart; integrity. The Law of Solid Ground says: “Trust Is the Foundation of Leadership.” Your followers have to trust you, and in order to do that one has to have integrity. The final thing I'll say for this week is that good leaders raise up and seek out other good leaders. They don't just sit on what they have, they increase their Lid or their effectiveness. The Law of the Lid says: “Leadership Determines the Level of Effectiveness.” You can only raise up those under you to a level that you've been to yourself. If your lid is never raised...your effectiveness never increases.

Personal Ministry

For my personal ministry this month I did four hours of service to the Mission Baltimore community.  It all started with me and Ben going to look for cookies that we had to bake for the employees at the Dollar General next to the training center.   Not finding any we then decided to just go to the guy’s house and clean the driveway.  We took Sasha’s car over there because we had to clean that as well. 

The first thing we cleaned was the driveway.  We started off just sweeping it but when we realized that was taking too long, I took the hose down and started spraying all of the stuff off.  That took about an hour and then we moved on to Sasha’s car.  Ben was cleaning the inside of the car, vacuuming and organizing etc, while I was still spraying the driveway.  After we both finished, we then worked together to wash her car.  Ben used the sponge to wash the car while I rinsed it off.  Afterwards we put everything back in the car and drove over.  For a second we thought we had run out of gas but luckily we hadn’t.  Getting back to the office we got the van and went to Wal-Mart to get some cookie dough to bake the cookies. 

The next thing we had to do was…a little nasty… cleaning the lipstick out of Whitney’s rug.  Ew.  That’s the only word I have for it.  I thought guys were nasty but this rug was intense.  It had lipstick all in it.  There was dirt and hair and lint.  I honestly thought lipstick was supposed to go on your mouth not your feet.  I mean…how do you get it all over a rug?  On the FLOOR?  But oh well, we cleaned it.  We cleaned it the best we could anyway. 

After we got done with the rug Ben and I went back to the guy’s house to bake the cookies.  While we were baking cookies we wrote affirmations for all of the Mission Baltimore students.  Ben drew a picture of a Manatee for Stacey and I wrote a Mother’s Day card for Mrs. Rhonda; one of the employee’s at Dollar General.  She’s been like a mother to all of us and she’s a wonderful woman so we thought it would be nice to give something back to her.  When we give it to her tonight we’re going to invite her to church.  She 

 works the night shift today so we have to wait a little while.  

All of these services were done in the four hour span between 9 and 1.

Cleansing Stream....

Well, what can I say about the cleansing stream retreat?  Better yet...what can I say good about the retreat? lol The one thing good I got out of it was the session on purity.  That is always a good subject to address for Christians because most of the time we feel like we can't talk about those kinds of things.  We feel dirty because we deal with these things and that is how the enemy takes hold.  He makes us think we are alone in our fight and so we never address the real issues.  Addressing that issue was a good thing.

Now, to move on to what was a little off about the retreat.  Well, the one thing that really turned me off to the whole thing was when one of the speakers said that there is a generational curse on all illegitimate children that are conceived.  This curse supposedly lasts for 400 years and creates a rift when it comes to intimacy with God.  The fact that he said that made me feel a little off in the first place but he backed it with a verse in Deuteronomy.  Now anyone with biblical knowledge should know that those laws are, first of all, old testament laws that were wiped away when Jesus died and rose again.  Second, those laws were for the Jews...last time I checked...I'm not a Jew.  Honestly, if you go and look at Acts 15 it will explain all you really need to know about that.  Paul and Barnabas are basically having a debate about the  Old Testament law that the Pharisees were trying to make the gentiles follow.  The Pharisees were saying that unless you were circumcised under the law of Moses then you couldn't be saved.  Obviously that wasn't true so Paul and Barnabas explained this to them.  In verse 10 of Chapter 15 they said to the Pharisees "Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear."

I just really feel like people need to study their bible...it would prevent a lot of confusion on the obvious matters.

Body Shop

It's the last week of body shop and I did some completely off the wall stuff to be completely honest.  This week I swam at the beach for about two hours and then later this week I played basketball for about two hours.  Swimming consisted of being hit by waves while trying to perform different things such as hand stands and push ups.  We just wanted to see if we could stay up against the waves....it didn't really work.  As far as basketball goes..well if you know how to play the game then you know what I did.  As this is the last body shop post of the year I feel like I should say something profound...but nothing really comes to mind so if any of you find these posts interesting then I'll keep you updated on my workouts over the summer.  Other than that it's been a good year.  See ya later!

Under The Rock

I learned quite a bit this past week being in Abaco.  I saw everything from poverty to political unrest.  Kids that never quit, to ones receiving Christ.  The kids were incredible and a lot of fun to be around.  What was funny was how respectful they are despite their living conditions.  That amazed me.  They have so little but they are still so respectful but here in America kids are so rude and they have so much.  But one of the biggest things I learned was about the music in the Bahamas.  Particularly the worship music.  Not even the Bahamians themselves, but from the Haitians in the village of peas and mud.

Josh, Stacey, and Sasha with the Peas and Mud kids

The first night of our trip I was fortunate enough to be able to go and experience a service in Peas and Mud which is a Haitian refugee camp.  The church we were at was called Feed My Sheep and when I first got there I really didn't know what to expect.  Something I learned quickly was that the Haitians don't start the service or come to church at a designated time...they started coming in at different parts during the service and it all started when the band members got there.  Now this entire service was in three different languages.  It was in French, Creole, and English.  The English they spoke was very little so I couldn't understand most of the service but the worship songs were very interesting to hear in different languages.  Most of the songs they did were in French but there was one song they did, the last song before the speaker came up, that was in Creole.  During this song they really got in to it.  I was told after that it was because the song was in their heart language of Creole instead of English or French.  I have never heard anything more beautiful than all of those people coming together in that room and worshiping God.  It was incredible and it was completely different than the way we worshiped.  If you had taken all the sound out of the room it would look like a normal pentecostal worship setting...but once you put all those voices in, you get something truly incredible.  They worship with such a heart despite their poverty and hardship.  That is what amazed me so much.  I was humbled more than I'd ever been in my life.

Drum 101

Well, we took a drum class this week and while I did know most of what we learned, I did get quite a bit out of it.  Pastor David Hare has been coming in for the past two weeks to teach us about music.  Last week we took a piano class and a music theory class.  So, as you can tell we have been given all kinds of lessons in music.  It's a lot of information to take in especially for people who aren't musicians but for those who are it just adds to or reinforces the knowledge that we already have.

I've been playing drums for years, but mostly on a kit.  I never really had anyone to teach me the fundamentals of what percussion was.  Things like low position, medium position, and high position.  I always did those things but never knew what they were called.  I was lucky enough however to have had someone teach me percussion rudiments up to paradiddle's.  I learned those from a friend of mine in High School Marching band so I was still able to stay a little ahead of the game in the basics.  For those who don't know what a paradiddle is...it's a drum pattern of RLRR LRLL RLRR LRLL.  R standing for right meaning you hit with the right stick and L standing for left meaning you hit with the left stick.  All of this I had learned before but it was great to be able to reinforce the knowledge and get some practice with it that I hadn't gotten in a while.  One thing I do need to work on though is the fluidity of my left hand in comparison to my right.  I'm right handed so naturally hitting with my right stick is going to be a lot better than my left.  It'll be like when I had to learn how to kick with both feet in soccer.  It took me a while but I practiced it all the time and eventually was able to be good with both.

Anyway...I enjoy all of the music classes that we've been able to take because I love music and it's great to be able to learn and become more skilled at the things I do know.  You can never learn too much of something and you have to know it to get better.

Body Shop

This week we spent two hours with Tim on the LHS track and I spent one hour doing weight training.  With Tim we did a lot of endurance running and I clocked my mile in under 10 this time which shows a 20% increase from the beginning of the year.  The weight training I did was the normal stuff.  Bench presses, close bench presses, tricep extensions and dippers.  I also did bicep work and some core.  All of this works my endurance and my strength.