HCLM BLOG

I just received a copy of Ben Stein's final Column, this was the one where he wrote from a famous restaurant that had traditionally be the hangout for Hollywood Stars. In that final column he said that he was going to stop because things had changed. He no longer feels that the people who live in "insane luxury" and are paid millions of dollars to memorize lines and speak them back to an audience or a camera are the heroes that he once thought them to be. He then lists the type of people that he feels are the true heroes of today's society. His final thoughts are that to be heroic a life must be a life lived in service to others.

The root of this kind of thinking to me is that to be a hero is to do the difficult with little regard for our own welfare. Serving others can be this when it is done with recklus abandon! To live the heroic life is to put my needs and wants behind the needs of others. The hero leads the way, they lead not by asking others to give to them, but by offering to give themselves to others.
Great leaders have always known this, but it seems to just now have come into the foreground of leadership training. We are the heroes, when we care for ailing parents, or give ourselves completely to our spouse.

In this Easter season it is easy to see that Jesus was that type of hero and would lead us in that direction. But in the society that we live in today too many people still see heros as those who do whatever it takes to get what they want for themselves!
The "ME" generation produced a generation that looks up to those who put themselves first. Even in the current envirorment of "Change" as our country digs deep to pour Trillions of Dollars into the econamic bail outs and people are suffering as never before, I read yesterday that the government knows that more than 10% of those trillions will be lost to fraud, graff and con artists. Where are the Heroes? We need to let Jesus lead our lives and then let our lives shine on those around us. That is the only thing that can produce "Change".

What do you think?
Pastor Paul

Here it is Holy Week and I am blogging just so that I will not have to work on an Easter Sermon.

Today is Maundy Thursday and this morning the YMCA of Central Florida had its 15th annual Prayer Breakfast. They are able to get wonderful speakers and this year they had Bruce Wilkinson the author of the "Prayer of Jabez the stories that he told were good but it is true that sometimes the best authors are not the best speakers.This gathering was at First Baptist Church of Orlando, which is HUGE and they had almost 1000 people seated there for Breakfast. At one point they asked all of the pastors to stand, there were less than 25 in attendance. What is with Pastors!!

Last week Thursday we had a pastor's breakfast at Holy Cross for the Seminole county pastors to meet with County leaders and social ministry organizations. We had the Chairman of the County Commission and the head of the County Economic Development agency as our speakers, we had Patrick Morley of Man in the Mirror  as our devotional leader for the morning. We also had 20 of the county's social agencies with displays and people present to interact with the pastors. We sent out 350 invitations to the pastors of Seminole county and when it came time for breakfast we had 6 pastors including the three from Holy Cross. What is with Pastors!!!

Later in the week I ran into one of the Seminole Pastors and asked why he was not there and he explained that he was way too busy. Then later in the conversation he told me that he usually gets to play 18 holes of golf at least twice a week. What is with pastors!!!

We were trying to engage more churches in the Christian Sharing Center and we had a lawyer who was the board chairman and he said that he would put aside all of his Fridays for a year and take one pastor to lunch each week to talk about their churches involvement in the Christian Sharing Center. We called for two weeks straight and could not get a single pastor to agree to go to lunch, most would not even return our calls, let alone answer when we called the church office.What is with pastors????

It is hard for me to say just what they are spending their time doing, perhaps emails, blogs and websurfing! Some spend their time reading and preparing for sermons. I know that they make hospital calls and do some counselling but what about interaction with the community? How much should we see pastors outside of their churches? What should be their primary jobs? What do you think a pastor should do all week?