KevMcCord

Six Years At Oasis

Back in 2003 my family moved to South Florida to serve at the Church of Pembroke Pines under the leadership of Founding Pastor Guy Melton.  Along the way the name changed to Oasis Church of S. Florida, we added a second and third campus, and we started 7 Nights of Worship.  My job through all of this was to provide leadership to the support teams in a rapidly changing and growing church.  I was fortunate to be part of the strategic planning process that took our church into these uncharted waters!  I know of no church that is more unique, diverse, exciting, and risk-taking than Oasis.  None of that would matter if Oasis were not committed to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with South Florida. My time at Oasis has been incredibly rewarding.

This Sunday, November 29th, will be my last weekend as Administrative Pastor at Oasis Church.  This comes as no surprise to me or Pastor Guy.  I started at 4 days a week and steadily decreased my time in the office until I was only spending a single day each week onsite.  During my entire 6 year tenure I've worked supporting other churches through my company, Think Ministry Inc.

The time has finally arrived for me to transition off of the staff at Oasis Church.  Starting in December I will be a regular member of Oasis Church.  The opportunities we have at my new company require my full attention in the coming months.  I would appreciate your prayers in this endeavor.  I'll blog more about it in due time.

Meanwhile, I feel blessed that I do not have to say good-bye to Oasis!  Suzie is still the KidsWorld Director.  We will still participate in the church, but I am saying good-bye to my duties, responsibilities, and privileges as Administrative Pastor.

For those of you who have supported and ministered alongside of me at Oasis I want to say a sincere thank-you!  To the staff at Oasis Church, I will miss the fun meetings and regular interactions.  I intend to be that guy in the church who cheers you on!  I know your calling and your passion and how hard each of you work to make Oasis the excellent ministry it is.

In Christ,

Kevin

Some things I learned this week.

I need to affirm who God is.  I need to affirm who I am in Christ.  I need to affirm who other believer's are in Christ.  My dad taught me that through his actions and then reminded me of it on his blog.

The silent treatment is VERY LOUD in the ears of one who sins.  A simple Facebook message weeks ago to a brother who had fallen made a big difference to him.  I didn't condone what he did or minimize it.  I just told him Jesus was still enough and that he should respond to those willing to walk him through restoration.  I learned this was effective because he told me so.

A small crisis can destroy the illusion of calm in my spirit. I'm such an immature Christian.  I learned this during a fire alarm just before eating some great oatmeal.

My family is getting on Twitter!  My mom and dad and sister and brother-in-law all joined up.  I'm finding new people to follow all the time.  I love my local church family and now I'm interacting with a growing group of Christian brother's and sisters around the world.  I'm slowly getting to know them on Twitter.

I hope you are learning a lot right now.

It's quiet. It's going to stay quiet

I'm focusing on a few other writing projects so the blog is going to be suspended for a while.  See you all on the other side of my deadlines!

I probably will update Twitter occasionally.

I'll definitely be updating my page on the www.VisitOasis.org website.  In fact, I put up 4 articles there this morning.

Gratitude

You probably don't speak Portuguese, but if you took a few minutes and watched this YouTube video you'd sense the gratitude and pure joy that a group of people have for what they learned from my dad's book (www.TheSatisfyingLife.com) and the course he teaches where he shares the vinyard (John 15) as a metaphor for the Christian life and he reminds us that we are no more able to produce our discipleship than we are able to produce our salvaiton.  Both are possible only because of Jesus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGL81nUZ9S0

The people in the video represent the second and third generations of people who are now moving that message forward in Brazil.  This is exciting because dad WASN'T present when the course was taught. 

Dad's book and the course are in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.  These kinds of stories are a weekly thing now from many parts of the world, but sending the message via YouTube was a new wrinkle.

A Day Away

Saturday I took the day away from the laptop.  I didn't quite put the phone away, but it felt good to spend a day away from work!  Aren't we supposed to do that like every week?

In particular, it was nice to spend a good poriton of the day in the yard with the family and some friends we've discovered who live in our neighborhood, have boys Mason's age, and share many things in common with us including a passion to minister to people out of the abundant love Jesus so freely gives to us!

Can a New Rule Save My Eyesight?

I love working on a computer.  The thing I enjoy the most is designing complex reports for ministry analysis.  I also spend hours writing emails, blog posts, researching, and more.

Consequently, I can sit at my computer and get distracted doing a dozen good things without getting done the 2 or 3 that really matter.  That leads to working on the important things late at night.  The cycle is bad for anyone, but it is especially bad for someone with the eyesight problems I have.

So, I need a new personal policy.  I'm making an effort to have a list of things prioritized before I sit at my computer to work.  In fact, if the list involves a report I need to design I need to have that report drawn out on paper first.  If it involves a blog I want to have the title and big picture written down.

The bottom line is that I need to spend less time in front of the screen (my wife is laughing right now).

This sounds simple, but I haven't been doing much beyond to-do lists outside my computer for years.  I now need to find a ruler and some pencils and figure out how to un-digitize some part of my planning process.  It feels strange indeed. 

Now, where is my eraser.

Church Solutions Re-post

I recently bragged that someone was going to re-publish a blog post I wrote.  As you might expect the blog they re-posted took me no time to write and was mainly just a mid-afternoon afterthought.  If I had sat down to plan a blog worthy of being picked up, I would surely have failed.

My Google Alert on my church's former name made me aware that they already put it on their website today.  If you read the original post you won't find anything new.  Not sure if it will be in the print publication, but I can only hope I get to be in a magazine or newspaper while those are still legal (and viable).

I'm still holding out hope someone will pick up Pastor Power or Loyalty Embezzled, but those just don't make you feel warm and fuzzy.

352 Posts You Only Saw 249

This blog is now 7 months old.  It isn't my first blog, but I made a clean break with my past ramblings.

This is the 352nd post I started in those 7 months.  I only published 249.  I should have only published about 49.  The vast majority of the 103 posts were never finished. For the remainder I felt I might lose a job or become the target of Greenpeace or Peta or another terrorist organization if they came to light.

I plan to give my wife permission to publish them all posthumously.  So here's hoping I die before cryogenics gets worked out.

Published

I once got $50 for an article I submitted.  That was the beginning, middle, and end of my career as a professional writer in the previous millenium.

10 years later it has happened again, but my rate has dropped.  I am going to get $0.00, but it seems I'm back in print.  I posted a blog titled Old Church Can Change.  My pastor referenced it, someone saw it, and now it is going to run in print.

My ego forces me to both mention this now and remind you later when it hits the racks of Christian Bookstores WORLD WIDE.  Nevermind that I can't remember going to a Christian bookstore in the past year and that I don't subscribe to a single magazine.

Frankly, if they had asked I would have offered Loyalty Embezzled as as better article, but they didn't ask.

Kids, what can we learn about this?  Keep writing and every 10 years or so someone may or may not pay you for what you write.

Wisdom For Tough Times

Dad continues to amaze me.  This week he is going to Portugal to talk about The Satisfying Life we can experience by abiding in Christ.  Meanwhile he threw up a simple blog post that is right on target for those who are looking for the right words and the right perspective to offer loved ones going through difficult times.

In just 3 years dad has had an opportunity to influence Christians in Brazil, Peru, India, China, the USA, and now Portugal.  There was no PR team.  He just went from one conversation to another reminding each person with whom he talked that we have the DNA of the Christian life in us if we have Jesus in us.  Dad's simple refrain is that abiding in Christ is as simple as receiving (Faith), rejoicing (Hope), and releasing (Love).  In this way we can enjoy a moment by moment relationship with Christ and produce fruit for those around us.

As his son I see how far he has come in that journey.  It even irks me that I can't get a rise from him anymore!  At the same time, he is lovingly waiting and encouraging me to depend more fully on Christ and to work less at making the outcome I desire a reality.

If you ask how my mom is participating that journey, she is behind him just as she is in this picture.  She supports him and quietly wins souls for Christ by having one conversation at a time and loving one person at a time.  She isn't going to Portugal with dad this time, but she won't be idle in Brazil.