“I have seen many men work without praying, though I have never seen any good come out of it; but I have never seen a man pray without working.” - James Hudson Taylor

Edwin Friedman is a well respected Jewish Rabbi. He has written several leadership books. I started reading “Friedman’s Fables,” which is a series of short stories that share a great deal of insight into the complexity of relationships & communication. The fables are separated into four parts & Dr. Friedman desires to reveal these four wrong ideas:

That communication is a cerebral phenomenon rather than an emotional process.
That insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change.
That resistance to your message can be overcome by trying harder.
That seriousness is deeper than playfulness.

Here is the intro to the first set of fables. I thought it was pretty cool!

“Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, & they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech. “

This is a sample picture from our new church directory.

Prayer requests & cool updates.

This next week I am getting together to brainstorm with some people in our church about the future of our church. We are going to dream & put onto paper 3 key things we feel like God is doing.

1) A DTS here in SC. After talking with some of my coaches we believe inviting 5 people to be a part of a year long DTS, put on by our church, in Santa Cruz is what God is doing. The DTS would be a mix of classroom & outreach into SC. The students would move here in order to be missionaries to our wonderful city, which I believe is on the cutting edge of culture; therefore, it provides an incredible opportunity for someone to grow in their Faith. The primary goal of the DTS wouldn't be church management, but that they would learn how to "know God & make him known" in Santa Cruz, which hopefully would result in some students seeing that they too could start a church.

2) Each Wed. 3 of us head downtown to love on the unlovables & hippy kidz. Through this we are brainstorming about starting a booth at the Farmer's Market in order to create a simple "storefront" where we would engage more people with Jesus. This is no simple task, but not impossible. We're not sure what we're gonna' sell, but there are some options. We've had this idea before & have seen the success with Yaks up in Redding. We'll see...

3) We want to get a college group started on campus. The largest group at UCSC is Inter-Varsity, which has 60-70 students (& we love Inter-Varsity) (Cal Poly...Campus Crusade...over 1000!). UC has roughly 13-15,000 students; so do the math: We need more groups on campus! Wow. I've recently been speaking with an alum who is stoked about getting something going on campus & I'm willing to go with him. Once again this is no simple task, but not impossible either.

Fun to have 3 ideas focused on "Knowing God & Making Him Known," in Surf City. Please pray that God would guide it.