You know what I am doing today? Paying bills (well trying), cleaning my house, doing laundry, helping our lawn guy with our landscaping project, ah…the mundane but necessary work of a homeowner. Has anyone out there done their own landscaping? I am trying to save money by doing it with a friend who used to have a landscaping business but trust me I got my work cut out for me. Any opinions on what would make it look good? I was thinking of European Fan Palm in the front of my house, Pentas around the palm by my hedges, marigolds edging my driveway and in front of home. Please, help a sister out, look at my photo album of my home and if you’ve done any type of landscaping, let me know what you think. Better yet, even if you have not done any landscaping, what DO you think would look nice. I have a corner property at the entrance to our community so imagine the PRESSURE! How about an SOS (Summer of Service) here with a broke sister in Pembroke Pines, FL! Live around me, come on by! I will appreciate any and all comments. Except the comment about the fact that I desperately need landscaping…’cause uh, I know!

What do you do when you feel like a step-child of God’s? Walking in some type of bubble wondering what you did to piss God off and why there always seems to be another challenge awaiting you. I feel like that sometimes. Yesterday I did. I went to bed crying. I really want to trust HIM more especially since I am feeling this incredible pull to help “other” people out in “their” journey with God. I feel alone, thinking thoughts to myself, wondering when and if, visions will materialize. I for one have seem so many just die. I remember reading a book by Andy Stanley where he said something like any visions that die where not from God [don’t quote me but something like that]. So then I start to think…is it me God or is it really you? I go through daily life waking up thankful for the air I breathe, my children are not in the hospital, my husband loves me, I have good friends but yet with this feeling of incompleteness that I have not finished what I am to do. I wonder if it is this church plant thing…I wonder if its to do something for multi-handicapped children like my younger son…I wonder if it is to build the Center for Emerging Female Leadership…I always wonder. I hardly ever get an answer…just other questions. Perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps I should just let the writer of this great story [God] lead me to my next chapter without me trying to read the end of the book. I do scan books alot you know. Too impatient and busy to read it cover to cover. Perhaps that is exactly what God wants me to do. Take it one page at a time because the great story of Liz Rios is yet to be finished and it will be a great one as all HIS stories are. It may not be a best-seller ala MY LIFE by Bill Clinton but ‘my life’ will attract someone one day. I wonder what the story will say. You see…I always wonder.

Ok while I have folks who will disagree with me on this commercial, I totally love it. I am sappy like that. This commercial makes me think about my husband. No, he is not perfect. I been married to him for 14 years. With him for 16 years. Two children with him. He is my bestest friend and the clown of the house. In this day that is Father’s Day, I honor him. He is the best dad my kids could have ever had, trust me the ones I could have married would have had my kids in therapy for years. But he is more than a dad of great caliber, he is a wonderful husband. Ok, he may have done so screw ups in the past but dag, he owed it, faced up to it, and dealt with it. I admire that in him. He was not chicken squat. But most importantly, as the quote says, “I am because he is”. Ok overly romantic I know. But I feel that way, those are my feelings and I own them. He is so supportive and his support has allowed me to become the woman I am today. He is the man beside the woman. So there are moments when I lose myself in thought thinking of my love for this guy…and I find myself saying, like the woman in the commercial, “I love this man, I love this man…” Thought you should know. Happy Father’s Day Hon.

“We lead from the essence of who we are as a person.” –Lillas Brown (as cited by Kouzes and Posner, 2002, The Leadership Challenge, p. 43)

Having gone to many leadership trainings, seminars, conferences, I feel like sometimes we got it all backwards. I am pursuing my doctorate in education in the field of Organizational Leadership, I say this to say, its been a real education. Not the type where you stand before leaders whose egos are huge and they are living in illusions of grandeur. No, not the type of learning by osmosis from a leader who has spiritually abused so many there is a trail of bodies in their path. Just real inspirational type of stuff.

There is loads of stuff to read on leadership. Like Good to Great , servant leadership, the leadership model of Jesus, the five practices of exemplary leadership and the list can go on and on.

However, as I continue to walk and embrace this call I feel I have to walk with people and create a culture where its ok to be weird, ok to have lots of interests and not sure where God wants you much less what he wants to do with you, I want to lead from within. Everything I have gone through has made me more compassionate, more patient, more able to see the humanity in me [i.e. the screw up I can be most of the time] which enables me to embrace the humanity in my brother or sister. I just want to BE. So much of today’s church is about “going”, “involving”, “promoting”, “title-ling”…you get the picture. Alot of people thinking they are better than others. “If you think you are better than others, when you really aren’t, you are wrong.” (Gal. 6:3, CEV). Nothing is easier than self-deceit. (Demosthenes).

All this to say that I want to be better INSIDE, my heart, my soul. I want to continue to evaluate ME. That may mean I don’t fit in sometimes. That may mean I won’t be liked at times. But hey, so was Jesus. He walked the same journey. So read about leadership, I’m supposed to be an expert at it by the time I get the three letters behind my name Ed.D. BUT I want my walk and talk to proclaim my connectedness to the true essense of leadership before,after and always.. I want L-O-V-E to be the essense of where I lead from not E-d-D. Education is good don’t get me wrong but the person it does not make. You got to work on your inner being before you should ever attempt to lead from within. Not that you’ll be perfect but that you’ll not be in self-deceit. Selah.

It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him. ~Joseph Joubert

God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed. ~Saint Augustine

I have been hearing God talk to me lately. NO I didn’t hear him but I felt him tell me recently to stop visualizing the people that will come to Sanctuary [the church plant that is emerging]. I didn’t understand. But then I realized that my problem has been that I want everything so organized but the community that will emerge will rise from what I would deem as chaos. I hate chaos. I am very organized! I like to plan everything. Then another thought hit me. I have not learned to stop planning. So God allows my plans to go into chaos to help me survive so I can yet again learn to trust him. I can’t plant a church if I can’t trust him with the goings on of my life. I thought I did trust him but in reality I was comfortable, “of course I can trust Him then!”. The other issue was that I kept envisioning a place for us to meet as so important to the start. Then I was going through the book, The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball and he reminded me as I have heard many times before, “going to church aka building is a theologically incorrect statement.” No where in the New Testament are the words “went to church” stated. Kimball says “the church is the people of God who gather together with a sense of mission” (Acts 14:27). He goes on to say, “WE CAN’T GO TO CHURCH BECAUSE WE ARE THE CHURCH.” Another BAM session from God, I was focusing on the wrong thing. As I released that thought about having to find a place so we can start meeting this summer, I felt at peace. What came to me was that I as the lead cultivator of this community am responsible for the development and nourishment of the culture I believe to be God’s vision for this yet to emerge community. Those who believe in the values and mission as well as the people we are, will be attracted to Sanctuary, the people…not the building….not the programs…not the other things associated with the traditional church. I know not what will emerge but I feel confident today to say that a missional community of hungry seekers and disenfranchised damaged faithers will find us with masks off and no pizazz to take the glory away from God that usually showcases man. We’ll grow together.We’ll learn together. We’ll walk together. Yeah. I feel good today. The journey is tough and God is always in teaching mode. I receive His gentle nudge today. I cry. I am humbled again by God’s choosing of such a confused soul. He loves me so. Lord help me to display your love for others, let this new community emerge as you wish. Selah.

“God puts greater value on his relationship with us than on our comfort and affluence.” Gary Thomas, Authentic Faith

So here I am, taking a moment as I return from work to sit down at my desk and just search for God to speak to me. I am tired. I feel a bit down. I am pondering what God wants to do with me and my family. Why all the ups and downs. And them BAM…that quote from Gary Thomas’ book Authentic Faith [not for the faint-hearted] hit me. Ok, me and God got some talkin’ to do.

CBE got a cool tshirt for the gender equality folk. Get it.

I just got off the phone with Jen who is writing an article for CBE and it left me thinking. Thinking about why we women need other people’s approval so much. Especially those of us in denominations we feel are not really “us” anymore yet we stay because other people respect the denomination and I guess we want to be respected and we equate that with being “approved for the work of the Lord” by this body of mostly men who say “yeah, you have ministry in you.” Oh please. Half of the men who were involved with my “credentialling” never even went to an event that I put together, heard me preach or teach or even seen me pray and minister to another. As a matter of fact, I didn’t get “approved” to go the next level of the credentialling process because as my denominational executive put it “I was known around the city but not known in my denomination!” I know God had a pit in His stomach that day. Every day, I grow closer and closer to just walking away. I wrote to my BIG CHEESE denominational superintendent when I moved to FL to introduce myself and my husband and asked for a meeting. No response. I called a few times. No response. I faxed a letter. No response. The other day I get a letter from the district treasurer telling me “hey you have not tithed in three months.” And for me that was sooooooooooooo sad. They didn’t want to get to know me, put a face on my name BUT they want my money. I grow more and more to believe that God already sanctioned what I do. The people around me believe in my ministry. They believe in the calling of God over my life. I am not a wacko who thinks God called me. Ministry has been fruitful and people have been impacted. So why do I continue to subject myself to the irresponsible man-fearing [not God-fearing] men who pull all their favors to get re-elected for years at a time to be Lord over the “wanna-be” ordained. There is a world out there of good, God-fearing people who don’t want to wear long skirts and tailored suits to church on Sunday [at least not all the time], who don’t want to be so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. Geesh, as the church continues to reinvent itself and it becomes more of a mass of people and not a massive building with a massive budget, perhaps someone will take notice. But the question for us is…who cares if they don’t. Some people need those systems to keep them in place, to tell them what to think and who to hang out with. Some people need God to do that for them. There is a place for everyone. For the perfect church person and the vagabond christian, for the one who just wants to be and flow with the move of God and for the one that wants to be pastor in five steps or less. The struggle continues and perhaps it will never be really settled but I am tried of trying to get other people’s approvals. They are not there when I have to walk this christian journey all by myself and am wrestling with God and my faith. So who needs them after? Understand what I am saying, we need people who are trying to be authentic first and foremost with themselves and then with others as part of the journey. HOWEVER, we don’t need others to tell us we are ok. Searching for other people’s approvals just makes us miserable ministry follk. I for one say no mas. And as always, I know I will be called a rebel, a loose cannon, whatever…but I know in my soul, I am at peace with God. Send OPA on its way!

It is good for us to remember that its not about us. Read Rick Warren’s take on this. It makes me feel better sometimes when I know it ain’t about me…I sure am a mess sometimes.

Check out this visualization of Psalm 23. A new way to look at a beloved Psalm.