Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
To be a vibrant Catholic Community
unified in its commitment
to growing disciples for Christ
Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney
Mob: 0417 279 437
Mob: 0417 279 437
Priest in Residence: Fr Phil McCormack
Mob: 0437 521 257
Mob: 0437 521 257
Postal Address: PO Box 362
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160
Email: merseyleven@aohtas.org.au
Secretary: Annie Davies / Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair: Jenny Garnsey
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com
Parish Office Closed until Tuesday 23rd January,
2018
OLOL Piety Shop will be closed until 4th
February, 2018
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Parents are asked to contact the Parish Office to make arrangements for attending a Baptismal Preparation Session and booking a Baptism date.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation: Ulverstone - Fridays (10am - 10:30am)
Devonport - Saturday (5:15pm – 5:45pm)
Care and Concern: If you are aware of anyone who is sick or in need of assistance in the Parish please visit them. Then, if they are willing and give permission, could you please pass on their names to the Parish Office. We have a group of parishioners who are part of the Care and Concern Group who are willing and able to provide some backup and support to them. Unfortunately, because of privacy issues, the Parish Office is not able to give out details unless prior permission has been given.
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Eucharistic Adoration - Devonport: Every Friday 10am - 12noon, concluding with Stations of the Cross and Angelus
Benediction with Adoration Devonport: First Friday of each month.
Legion of Mary: Wednesdays 11am Sacred Heart Church Community Room, Ulverstone
Prayer Group: Charismatic Renewal – In Recess until Monday 15TH January, 2018
Healing Mass sponsored by CCR will be held at St Mary’s Church Penguin on Thursday 8th February, 2018
Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.
Parish Prayer
Heavenly Father,
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Weekday Masses 8th - 12th January 2018
Monday: No Mass
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Vic Slavin, Rex Bates, David Welch & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Tony
McKenna, Joan Slater, Georgia Lewtas, Fr Tim O’Toole CP, Bob Wallace, Sr.
Joy Hanrahan, Tony Marshall, Zoe Duncan, Margaret Devine, Ken Denison, Donald
Cooper.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 3rd - 9th
January
Readings this week – The Epiphany
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
Readings next week – 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
Humility
The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing wrote in the
language of the common people because the book’s purpose is to give practical
guidance for direct experience of God. Education or high social status is not
required, only a sincere longing, a “blind stirring of love,” to encounter God.
The author discourages those who are gossips, the overly scrupulous, and the
merely curious from reading the book. “However,” continues the writer in the
foreword, “there are some presently engaged in the active life who are being
prepared by grace to grasp the message of this book. I am thinking of those who
feel the mysterious action of the Spirit in their inmost being stirring them to
love. I do not say that they continually feel this stirring, as experienced
contemplatives do, but now and again they taste something of contemplative love
in the very core of their being. Should such folk read this book, I believe
they will be greatly encouraged and reassured.” [1]
The author believes that the spiritual journey demands full
self-awareness and honesty, a perpetual shadow-boxing with our own weaknesses
and imperfections. While physical withdrawal from the world is not the key,
letting go of attachments to people, expectations, and the need to split everything
into subject and object (I am me because I am not you) is. This requires the
discipline of contemplative practice. Rather than teaching passivity, the path
into the cloud of unknowing calls for active intent, willingness, and
practice—knowing enough to not need to know more, which ironically becomes a
kind of endless, deeper knowing.
Much of our contemplative practice will feel like failure,
but the author encourages anyone who commits to “being a true contemplative” to
“choose to be humbled by the amazing glory and goodness of God, who is perfect,
rather than by your own sinfulness, which is imperfect. In other words, focus
on God’s excellence, rather than on your own inferiority. Those who are
perfectly humble lack nothing, physically or spiritually, because God is all
abundance. Yes, those who have [God] need nothing else in this life.” [2]
Loving is the deepest kind of knowing that transcends the
usual “operating system” which sees from differentiation and separation. Only
surrendering humbly to this path of love will result in the discovery that God
is not the object of our longing and love, but is the loving itself. As
Teilhard and the author of The Cloud teach, God is the force that is binding,
moving, sustaining, and transforming us with every breath and every
evolutionary shift on our planet.
References:
Taste is subjective. Keep that in mind as I share with you the ten books that most touched me this past year. That isn’t necessarily a recommendation that you read them. They may leave you cold, or angry at me that I praised them. Be your own critic here and one who isn’t afraid to be critical of my taste. Nobody buys everything that’s advertised in a store.
So, what ten books most touched me this year?
First, I single out some wonderful religious biographies:
Kate Hennessey’s, Dorothy Day, The World Will be Saved by Beauty. To my mind, this book is a treasure. As Dorothy Day’s granddaughter, Kate Hennessey had a privileged, intimate relationship with Dorothy, but that relationship also had its headaches and heartaches. Dorothy was a complex person who when called a saint, reacted by saying: “I don’t want to be dismissed that lightly!” This book captures both the saint and the woman resistant to that label.
Jim Forest, At Play in the Lion’s Den – A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan. A great insight as to who Daniel Berrigan was as a man, as Jesuit, as a friend, and as a prophet. There will be numerous biographies still written on Berrigan, but none, I venture to say, will surpass this one. Forest knows his subject well.
Suzanne M. Wolfe, The Confessions of X, A Novel. This is fictional biography, a story of St. Augustine’s mistress, Augustine’s love for her, their child, and St. Monica’s role in breaking up that relationship. Not historical, but researched well-enough to make it credible.
Next, some religious autobiographies:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Coach Wooden and Me, Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court.You may wonder why I list this book as religious autobiography, but it only needs to be read to answer that question. This isn’t a sports book, but a book that reflects deeply on life, meaning, friendship, race, and religion. Raised a Roman Catholic, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shares very candidly on what prompted his religious move to Islam. There are lessons to be learned here. This is a wonderfully warm story amidst all the pain it shares.
Macy Halford, My Utmost, A Devotional Memoir. As an Evangelical Christian, Halford grew up with a deep faith, but one that wasn’t strongly challenged in her youth. As a young woman she moved to New York and then later to Paris to become a writer. Surrounded now mostly by friends and colleagues who consider faith a naiveté, she struggled to root her childhood faith more deeply so as to withstand the challenge of the new world she lives in. Her struggle and her eventual solid landing within the faith of her childhood can be a help to all us, regardless of denomination, as we struggle to keep our faith in an overly-adult world.
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption. Bryan Stevenson is a Harvard-educated lawyer who has chosen to put his talents to work in helping the poor, in this case, prisoners on death row who don’t have any means of helping themselves. The issues of racism, poverty, inequality, and how we blind ourselves to them, are front and center in this powerful book.
Nina Riggs, The Bright Hour – A Memoir of Living and Dying. Nina Riggs died in February and this book shares her blogs as she, a young mother with two preteen children, journeys through terminal cancer, alongside her best friend, also a young mother, who is dying of cancer as well. They died a week apart. While Riggs doesn’t write out of an explicit faith, she faces both life and death with a courage, buoyancy, and wit that will make a saint envious. A delightful, deep book: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry – and you’ll learn how death can be faced.
A fine book in the area of Existentialism:
Sarah Blackwell, At the Existentialist Café, Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails. This is one of the best books written on Existentialism that’s accessible to a non-professional reader. It will introduce you to the giants of Existential philosophy: Sartre, Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Camus, Husserl, and Jaspers. Bakewell believes you will understand a thinker’s philosophy much more accurately if you also have a picture of his or her life: “Ideas are interesting, but people are vastly more so.” Those without a background in philosophy will get lost occasionally but if you continue reading you will soon find yourselves again fascinated by the lives of these famous, colorful thinkers.
Finally, two books in spirituality, where the author’s pedigree is sufficient recommendation:
Tomas Halik, I Want You to Be – On The God of Love. Halik, a Czechoslovakian priest, is a renowned spiritual writer, winner of the Templeton Prize. This is a book of rare insight and depth.
Henri Nouwen, Beyond the Mirror, Reflections on Death and Life. Nouwen needs no introduction, though this is a unique book within his corpus, chronicling his near-death experience after a serious accident.
Taste may be subjective, but these are good books!
Disillusion: a New Year Resolution
This article was written in 2012 but the question remains the same – how successfully have you kept to your resolutions? Maybe the key to a revitalised start to the year lies in an honest appraisal of our hopes and expectations. Gerard J. Hughes encourages us not to be scared of becoming disillusioned, but rather to cherish the realism that allows us to find God in all things. Gerard J. Hughes SJ was head of the philosophy department at Heythrop College, University of London, and is currently tutor in philosophy at Campion Hall, Oxford. He is the author of Aristotle on Ethics, Is God to Blame? and Fidelity without Fundamentalism (DLT, 2010).
As a kind of scene-setting for reflecting on God becoming man for our sake, Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises suggests that the person making the Exercises should try to see our planet through God’s eyes, to better understand what it was that prompted the incarnation. On similar lines, it has become commonplace at Christmas and New Year for spiritual leaders – Pope, Archbishop and perhaps all of us in our own small ways – to contemplate our world and try to express what we see. The criticisms most frequently heard are that we have become materialist, obsessed with money or success; or that we are entirely secular in our outlook, interested in science, but with little or no time for religion or indeed any version of the ‘inner life’.
You can read the complete article by clicking here
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
as we use our gifts to serve you.
as we strive to bear witness
Amen.
Weekday Masses 8th - 12th January 2018
Monday: No Mass
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Tuesday: 9:30am Penguin
Wednesday: 9:30am Latrobe
Thursday: 12noon Devonport
Friday: 9:30am Ulverstone
Next Weekend 13th - 14th January 2018
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Saturday Vigil: 6:00pm Penguin
Devonport
Sunday Mass: 8:30am Port Sorell
9:00am Ulverstone
10:30am Devonport
11:00am Sheffield
5:00pm Latrobe
Your prayers
are asked for the sick: Vic Slavin, Rex Bates, David Welch & …
Let us pray for those who have died recently:
Tony
McKenna, Joan Slater, Georgia Lewtas, Fr Tim O’Toole CP, Bob Wallace, Sr.
Joy Hanrahan, Tony Marshall, Zoe Duncan, Margaret Devine, Ken Denison, Donald
Cooper.
Let us pray
for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 3rd - 9th
January
Joshua Delaney, Elizabeth Delaney, Tess
Landers, Alfred Harrison, Virginia Miller, Nancy Bramich, Catherine Gibbons,
Graham Hollister, Agnes & William Marshall, Ronald Bramich, Ellen Fay
May they Rest in Peace
Readings this week – The Epiphany
First Reading: Isaiah 60:1-6
Second Reading: Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6
Gospel: Matthew 2:1-12
PREGO REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL:
As I come to prayer, I remind myself that as I sit here
now, God is gazing on me with love and holding me in being.
I ask the Holy
Spirit to help me pray today, and guide me as I journey into the New Year
ahead.
I read the Gospel slowly, pondering the Scripture with both my mind and
heart.
I may read the text several times, noticing what touches me.
Whilst the
journey of the Magi may be familiar, I allow myself to come to the Gospel
afresh, letting my heart be moved ... an image resonate deeply ... an emotion
come to the surface.
Our loving God became a little human being, a vulnerable
baby, for love of me.
Can I allow myself to be touched by such love? I reflect
on my own journey of faith over the past year.
Where have I met the Lord?
When
have I lived times of joy and wonder?
Where have I experienced doubts and times
of difficulty?
I talk to Jesus about my life, the year past and the year ahead.
I end my prayer by thanking God for the gifts and blessings of the year past,
and ask for the help and grace I need in the year ahead.
Readings next week – 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
First Reading: 1 Samuel 3:3-10,19
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 6:13-5, 17-20
Gospel: John 1:35-42
Humility
This article has been collated from the daily email series from the Center for Action and Contemplation and Fr Richard Rohr OFM. You can subscribe and receive the emails by clicking here
The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing wrote in the
language of the common people because the book’s purpose is to give practical
guidance for direct experience of God. Education or high social status is not
required, only a sincere longing, a “blind stirring of love,” to encounter God.
The author discourages those who are gossips, the overly scrupulous, and the
merely curious from reading the book. “However,” continues the writer in the
foreword, “there are some presently engaged in the active life who are being
prepared by grace to grasp the message of this book. I am thinking of those who
feel the mysterious action of the Spirit in their inmost being stirring them to
love. I do not say that they continually feel this stirring, as experienced
contemplatives do, but now and again they taste something of contemplative love
in the very core of their being. Should such folk read this book, I believe
they will be greatly encouraged and reassured.” [1]
The author believes that the spiritual journey demands full
self-awareness and honesty, a perpetual shadow-boxing with our own weaknesses
and imperfections. While physical withdrawal from the world is not the key,
letting go of attachments to people, expectations, and the need to split everything
into subject and object (I am me because I am not you) is. This requires the
discipline of contemplative practice. Rather than teaching passivity, the path
into the cloud of unknowing calls for active intent, willingness, and
practice—knowing enough to not need to know more, which ironically becomes a
kind of endless, deeper knowing.
Much of our contemplative practice will feel like failure,
but the author encourages anyone who commits to “being a true contemplative” to
“choose to be humbled by the amazing glory and goodness of God, who is perfect,
rather than by your own sinfulness, which is imperfect. In other words, focus
on God’s excellence, rather than on your own inferiority. Those who are
perfectly humble lack nothing, physically or spiritually, because God is all
abundance. Yes, those who have [God] need nothing else in this life.” [2]
Loving is the deepest kind of knowing that transcends the
usual “operating system” which sees from differentiation and separation. Only
surrendering humbly to this path of love will result in the discovery that God
is not the object of our longing and love, but is the loving itself. As
Teilhard and the author of The Cloud teach, God is the force that is binding,
moving, sustaining, and transforming us with every breath and every
evolutionary shift on our planet.
References:
[1] The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling,
ed. William Johnston (Image Books: 1973), 44. From author’s prologue to Cloud.
[2] The Cloud of Unknowing, with The Book of Privy Counsel,
trans. Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Shambhala: 2009), 60. From chapter 23 of Cloud.
MY TOP TEN BOOKS FOR 2017
This article is taken from the Archives of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find the original article here
Taste is subjective. Keep that in mind as I share with you the ten books that most touched me this past year. That isn’t necessarily a recommendation that you read them. They may leave you cold, or angry at me that I praised them. Be your own critic here and one who isn’t afraid to be critical of my taste. Nobody buys everything that’s advertised in a store.
So, what ten books most touched me this year?
First, I single out some wonderful religious biographies:
Kate Hennessey’s, Dorothy Day, The World Will be Saved by Beauty. To my mind, this book is a treasure. As Dorothy Day’s granddaughter, Kate Hennessey had a privileged, intimate relationship with Dorothy, but that relationship also had its headaches and heartaches. Dorothy was a complex person who when called a saint, reacted by saying: “I don’t want to be dismissed that lightly!” This book captures both the saint and the woman resistant to that label.
Jim Forest, At Play in the Lion’s Den – A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan. A great insight as to who Daniel Berrigan was as a man, as Jesuit, as a friend, and as a prophet. There will be numerous biographies still written on Berrigan, but none, I venture to say, will surpass this one. Forest knows his subject well.
Suzanne M. Wolfe, The Confessions of X, A Novel. This is fictional biography, a story of St. Augustine’s mistress, Augustine’s love for her, their child, and St. Monica’s role in breaking up that relationship. Not historical, but researched well-enough to make it credible.
Next, some religious autobiographies:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Coach Wooden and Me, Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court.You may wonder why I list this book as religious autobiography, but it only needs to be read to answer that question. This isn’t a sports book, but a book that reflects deeply on life, meaning, friendship, race, and religion. Raised a Roman Catholic, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shares very candidly on what prompted his religious move to Islam. There are lessons to be learned here. This is a wonderfully warm story amidst all the pain it shares.
Macy Halford, My Utmost, A Devotional Memoir. As an Evangelical Christian, Halford grew up with a deep faith, but one that wasn’t strongly challenged in her youth. As a young woman she moved to New York and then later to Paris to become a writer. Surrounded now mostly by friends and colleagues who consider faith a naiveté, she struggled to root her childhood faith more deeply so as to withstand the challenge of the new world she lives in. Her struggle and her eventual solid landing within the faith of her childhood can be a help to all us, regardless of denomination, as we struggle to keep our faith in an overly-adult world.
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption. Bryan Stevenson is a Harvard-educated lawyer who has chosen to put his talents to work in helping the poor, in this case, prisoners on death row who don’t have any means of helping themselves. The issues of racism, poverty, inequality, and how we blind ourselves to them, are front and center in this powerful book.
Nina Riggs, The Bright Hour – A Memoir of Living and Dying. Nina Riggs died in February and this book shares her blogs as she, a young mother with two preteen children, journeys through terminal cancer, alongside her best friend, also a young mother, who is dying of cancer as well. They died a week apart. While Riggs doesn’t write out of an explicit faith, she faces both life and death with a courage, buoyancy, and wit that will make a saint envious. A delightful, deep book: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry – and you’ll learn how death can be faced.
A fine book in the area of Existentialism:
Sarah Blackwell, At the Existentialist Café, Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails. This is one of the best books written on Existentialism that’s accessible to a non-professional reader. It will introduce you to the giants of Existential philosophy: Sartre, Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Camus, Husserl, and Jaspers. Bakewell believes you will understand a thinker’s philosophy much more accurately if you also have a picture of his or her life: “Ideas are interesting, but people are vastly more so.” Those without a background in philosophy will get lost occasionally but if you continue reading you will soon find yourselves again fascinated by the lives of these famous, colorful thinkers.
Finally, two books in spirituality, where the author’s pedigree is sufficient recommendation:
Tomas Halik, I Want You to Be – On The God of Love. Halik, a Czechoslovakian priest, is a renowned spiritual writer, winner of the Templeton Prize. This is a book of rare insight and depth.
Henri Nouwen, Beyond the Mirror, Reflections on Death and Life. Nouwen needs no introduction, though this is a unique book within his corpus, chronicling his near-death experience after a serious accident.
Taste may be subjective, but these are good books!
Disillusion: a New Year Resolution
This article was written in 2012 but the question remains the same – how successfully have you kept to your resolutions? Maybe the key to a revitalised start to the year lies in an honest appraisal of our hopes and expectations. Gerard J. Hughes encourages us not to be scared of becoming disillusioned, but rather to cherish the realism that allows us to find God in all things. Gerard J. Hughes SJ was head of the philosophy department at Heythrop College, University of London, and is currently tutor in philosophy at Campion Hall, Oxford. He is the author of Aristotle on Ethics, Is God to Blame? and Fidelity without Fundamentalism (DLT, 2010).
As a kind of scene-setting for reflecting on God becoming man for our sake, Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises suggests that the person making the Exercises should try to see our planet through God’s eyes, to better understand what it was that prompted the incarnation. On similar lines, it has become commonplace at Christmas and New Year for spiritual leaders – Pope, Archbishop and perhaps all of us in our own small ways – to contemplate our world and try to express what we see. The criticisms most frequently heard are that we have become materialist, obsessed with money or success; or that we are entirely secular in our outlook, interested in science, but with little or no time for religion or indeed any version of the ‘inner life’.
You can read the complete article by clicking here
2018
This is taken from the weekly by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. you can read his blog by clicking here
I am a big believer in New Year Resolutions. Even the ones I don’t end up keeping are good for at least a few weeks. And the more people I tell the higher the accountability, so once again this year I am blogging my resolutions. Feel free to hold me to them.
- Read the Bible in a Year, Chronologically.
To read the Bible from beginning to end is great, but to read it in the order that events actually happened is even better. A wonderful guide is “The Great Adventure Bible Timeline” by my friend Jeff Cavins. Check it out for yourself, you will never approach the Bible in the same way again. I have a reading plan that will take me all the through the Bible in 365 days.
- Fill the Conference.
One of the great big events of 2018 is going to be the REBUILT Conference (featuring Jeff Cavins, by the way). This is the rebranded “Matter” conference, which we suspended during construction. We’re looking to fill all 1,000 seats on April 16 & 17 and will be working hard to make that happen.
- Work Out More/Walk & Stand More.
I am episodic in my exercise and workout routines. Definitely there are periods of discipline and dedication, followed by inactivity. Sadly, in recent months the latter has been the case. I used the excuse of the opening of the new church, which did take up quite a lot of additional time, but really there is no excuse and the New Year is the perfect opportunity to get things started again. I need to also push myself to walk and even just stand more for purposes of health and posture. In all of this my associate Tom is an incredible example and one I should follow.
- Invest in Staff.
We have a great staff and they do an incredible job. But they could probably use more investment of my time. With so much travel, as well as the construction schedule of the last year, this is perhaps another area that has been neglected on occasion. We are planning on spending some time with our friend Patrick Lencioni this winter to set some new goals for our ongoing effort to build a great staff culture.
- Begin Next Round of Strategic Planning.
Now that our new church is completed (and paid for) and we’ve had a moment to savor the achievement, it is time to look ahead. What does our campus, staff, schedule, strategy look like in 5 years? What challenges will we be facing ahead? What opportunities can we identify?
May God bless and keep you in 2018.
This is taken from the weekly by Fr Michael White, Pastor of the Church of the Nativity, Baltimore. you can read his blog by clicking here
I am a big believer in New Year Resolutions. Even the ones I don’t end up keeping are good for at least a few weeks. And the more people I tell the higher the accountability, so once again this year I am blogging my resolutions. Feel free to hold me to them.
- Read the Bible in a Year, Chronologically.
To read the Bible from beginning to end is great, but to read it in the order that events actually happened is even better. A wonderful guide is “The Great Adventure Bible Timeline” by my friend Jeff Cavins. Check it out for yourself, you will never approach the Bible in the same way again. I have a reading plan that will take me all the through the Bible in 365 days.
- Fill the Conference.
One of the great big events of 2018 is going to be the REBUILT Conference (featuring Jeff Cavins, by the way). This is the rebranded “Matter” conference, which we suspended during construction. We’re looking to fill all 1,000 seats on April 16 & 17 and will be working hard to make that happen.
- Work Out More/Walk & Stand More.
I am episodic in my exercise and workout routines. Definitely there are periods of discipline and dedication, followed by inactivity. Sadly, in recent months the latter has been the case. I used the excuse of the opening of the new church, which did take up quite a lot of additional time, but really there is no excuse and the New Year is the perfect opportunity to get things started again. I need to also push myself to walk and even just stand more for purposes of health and posture. In all of this my associate Tom is an incredible example and one I should follow.
- Invest in Staff.
We have a great staff and they do an incredible job. But they could probably use more investment of my time. With so much travel, as well as the construction schedule of the last year, this is perhaps another area that has been neglected on occasion. We are planning on spending some time with our friend Patrick Lencioni this winter to set some new goals for our ongoing effort to build a great staff culture.
- Begin Next Round of Strategic Planning.
Now that our new church is completed (and paid for) and we’ve had a moment to savor the achievement, it is time to look ahead. What does our campus, staff, schedule, strategy look like in 5 years? What challenges will we be facing ahead? What opportunities can we identify?
May God bless and keep you in 2018.
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