Archive for February, 2010

I have a friend who left a comment that seemed to question my intelligence about the incident that took place here. I want to explain myself. To borrow from Paul Harvey, here’s the rest of the story…

Our friends, Ralph and Christy Ramsey with their daughter Hannah, came to visit us in Virginia. It was a week after our last big snow, and there was more than 16″ on the ground in some places. After they arrived on Thursday, we all were planning a great sledding extravaganza on Friday. Being from the Dallas area, it was a little surreal that they got 9″ of snow there on the day they were flying out.

Ralph and I have been great friends since Carolyn and I got married in 1992. They were a young couple at First Baptist Church Garland, Texas where I served first as a lowly youth intern and then as a lowly Singles & Young Adult Minister. After I discovered that Ralph was rather gullible, he became one of our circle of friends primary targets for practical jokes. That is, until we realized that there’s not much point in playing jokes on Ralph since he so often does it to himself.

Ralph seems to always get hurt whenever we’re up to something. If you could amputate your leg with a ballpoint pen and a feather, Ralph would manage to do it. In fact, I’m convinced that many of the inane warning labels we see on products these days are simply because of accident prone folks like Ralph. He’s also exceptionally good at putting his foot in his mouth – a talent that I love to exploit.

However, it did seem like a good idea at the time on Friday when he suggested we video our daughters and wives sledding down the hill. Then he threw in a twist. Let’s (that would be me, Sam and Ralph) lock arms at the base of the hill and play “sled chicken.”

We were sledding near Lark Lane where there was a huge, snow-packed hill, and you could achieve near Space Shuttle launch speeds coming down the hill with a mere piece of plastic under you. So Ralph set up the video camera behind us, and the three of us locked arms to face the sledding missiles.

My rationale went something like this:

• Humor Ralph and don’t shoot down one of his “ideas.”
• Take some great close ups of  the girls coming down the hill with Carolyn’s fancy Canon which she had asked me to hold.
• The odds of us getting hit were minute. Most of us were falling off the sleds before we reached the point we were standing.
• Ralph’s ideas never work.

So there we stood. I’ve included the video again for your study of the event.

There are few observations I’d like to make about the incident above now that you’ve witnessed it:

• It is impossibly difficult to tell how fast someone is going on a sled heading towards you when you are zoomed in taking pictures of them.
• The response time of pulling the camera from your eyes, calculating the proximity of a rocketing sled, telling your body which way to go to avoid impact and then moving is almost negligible.
• If you should attempt to escape injury by leaping to the right where your son and friend are pushing you into the sled’s path, you will most likely fail.
• One’s feet are not meant to occupy the same space where one’s head was previously in a 2 second span.
• A Canon D40 with zoom lens does not make an adequate cushion for your ribs but in fact can survive such an impact with no adverse affects.
• A 42 year-old man’s ribs are able to absorb a Canon D40 mass impression without breaking.
• It’s disconcerting to hear one’s daughter more concerned about the aforementioned camera than she is her father who is lying a quivering mass of wounded flesh.

Now, watch this version of the video in order for me to point out a few more observations that are only intelligible in slow motion:

• My wife’s and Christy ear-to-ear evil grins.
• How high my feet got.
• The sudden realization after I bring the camera down from my eyes that I am in trouble.
• Ralph’s bracing himself to push me into the path of the sled.
• How narrowly Sam missed being plowed over as well.

Ralph was supremely proud of himself. Heck, I would have been too. It was a flawless plan and execution. The odds of that happening are astronomical – especially with the two of us involved.

Now that you know “the rest of the story,” I hope you agree with me that I am in no way to be second-guessed for my participation in the incident. It was all a fluke. You would do the same thing if you were in my shoes. Right?

Our church was thrilled and blessed to be able to host the Glory in the Highest Concert in December. Thanks to Legacy campus ministry, we were able to use Burruss Auditorium at VT. It featured Shane & Shane, Phil Wickham and Bethany Dillon.

They were all incredible, and we were amazed at the turnout and how encouraging the response was.

Our worship leader posted the following YouTube video today of a remix he did of Phil Wickham’s song “Beautiful.” I half expected to find Cody telling knock-knock jokes or something when I clicked on the link. However, I was impressed. You watch and tell me what you think:

Just in the past six months, it’s been amazing how the Lord has knitted together an incredible team of like-minded servants in Northstar Church to not only work together for God’s glory but to deeply enjoy one another’s company.

I’m grateful for how God has worked to lead us to Virginia, and I just had to brag on Cody in particular with this post. He’s an amazingly talented, humble, fun, and reflective young man. He and his better half, LaRae just bought their first house. Carolyn and I are celebrating the implications of that purchase as being they truly sense the Lord leading them to continue their ministry among the people of Northstar and the Burgs.

We’re all very fortunate and blessed to have someone who has such talent and a teachable spirit working among us.

Each and every Sunday, the worship service at our church is conducted in a way that inspires heartfelt worship of Christ. If you’ve not had the opportunity to join us yet, I’d encourage you to do so. The preaching is just so-so… ;)

It’s a long story that I’ll supply later this week when I get to it, but without any further ado, here’s “The Fall 2010.”

The Fall – Real time from Jeff Noble on Vimeo.

And in slow motion:

The Fall 2010 from Jeff Noble on Vimeo.

Courageous Leadership

So… Bill Hybels is the founding and lead pastor of Willowcreek Church in Barrington, Illinois. His church averages 23,000 attendees on the weekends, and its the 4th largest church in the U.S. He founded the church out of a burden for reaching youth and young people back in 1975, and it’s obviously exploded under his leadership.

Hybels says that this book took him 40 years to write. I can see why. It’s crammed with simple, practical observations on leading, leading well and leading poorly. He not only identifies some key thoughts on being a leader, but he also is able to commend credible characteristics of developing other leaders.

He is both self-revealing and self-deprecating in his book. And it works. It doesn’t come across as a pastor who’s hit the big time, and simply smiles at you, urging you to have your best life now. But he comes across as a real guy. A pastor unashamed to communicate that life is hard and that sometimes even pastors need counseling.

He has 3 C’s that he looks for as he identifies and blesses a leader for ministry that are extremely helpful:
• Character
• Competence
• Chemistry
Character is essential because no matter how good (competent) someone is, if their character is not well-formed, if they’re not a person of integrity, they can tarnish and ruin a ministry and church faster than Arkansas weather changes. Chemistry is vital, Bybels says, simply because if you’re a team player, then the people on the team need to be able to relate and work well together.

Overall, I think Courageous Leadershipbelongs on the bookshelf of every Christian leader – but only after its been well read, underlined and dog-eared. Hybels is not an inspirational writer with marvelous turns of phrases like Lucado. Nor is he theologically mind-bending like a Piper. Yet, his upfront, plain-talk style gives you a sense not of a seminary professor who’s never been there, but of an ordinary guy sharing leadership principles from his arsenal of personal experience.