My Personal Guitar Hero

Most of you who read this blog know that I occasionally play guitar for the praiseteam at Palm Valley Church (that is until Derrick Logan came waltzing in with his tall, spiky hair and soul patch, and showed the world that there are far better guitarists out there. Just kidding buddy -- you rock major big-time bad).

What many of you don't know is that I owe just about anything I know about guitar to my fellow praiseteam member Jason Palmer (shown above shredding some insane licks on his axe). I am really a very "special ed" type of guitar learner (MiMR for you educators out there). It has just never been something that comes naturally to me.

Ever since right after college, Jason has slowly shown me how to play guitar. It all started when we played together for Sunday Night Alive (a contemporary service trying to make it in the Presbyterian world -- don't ask, please). He led the band with his bass and I was the [snicker, snicker] lead guitarist. Basically, we started playing songs that only used the notes G, C, and D -- and we played them at about half-pace.

As time went on, I entered into the magnificent world known as, "Notes Other than G, C, or D". From there, I journeyed through "The Land of Bar Chords", a place full of inward cursing and kicking things out of frustration. We also visited "Tempo Town" and "Rhythm Ridge" from time-to-time. Finally, after all my travels, I began to resemble an actual guitarist. Then the contemporary service went bye-bye.

Years later, I joined PVCs team and grew as a guitarist a little more each week that I was on. About 9 months after that, Jason and Nikki started coming to Palm Valley and I prodded him to join the team. He was leery at first, but finally relented. Now, we get the chance to play together semi-regularly and he continues to help me refine my skills.

My newest venture is to become more adept at the electric guitar. It is different in many ways than playing an acoustic. Sometimes it feels like I'm starting over again. But I know that I have the best guitar teacher I have known helping me along -- and that makes me feel more confident when it comes time to melt some faces!

Thanks Jay. You rock!

A Vision for 2007 (Part 1)

Earlier this week, the church staff at Palm Valley met together as Pastor Greg presented the vision for ministry for the coming year. The vision he outlined included tools to help us strive toward our ultimate mission of leading people to become fully devoted followers of Christ. Since one of my personal goals is to become a more effective leader at Palm Valley Church, I though I would take the tools he gave us and reflect on them personally in an effort to more effectively apply them to my life.

1. Work with Passion

For me, working with passion means that I need to realize each day that my work might catch the eye of a hurting person and offer them a step toward healing that they never knew was there. My work might help a person who has become cynical about church feel more comfortable because we have created a church environment they can actually relate to. My work might make it easier for someone to invite a lost friend to church.

If I continually cultivate passion for what I do, it will show in my work and ultimately help to touch lives.

2. Lead with Integrity

We all know in our heads what the perfect boss should be like, how the perfect leader would act. But put us in a position of leadership and we oftentimes find that becoming a leader of excellence takes a great deal of self-discipline and is nowhere near as easy as we thought it would be

Leading with integrity means that we develop a consistency that characterizes our lives, public and private. I know that, in order to focus on being a good leader at church, I need to also focus on paying my bills on time or helping with dishes at home. A true leader is able to strike a balance between excelling at work and excelling at home. That is my goal.

3. Develop and Unleash Leaders

This one is tough for me at times. On one hand, I love enabling people to take initiative and step out in leadership; on the other hand, I also have difficulty letting go of control because I tend to be a perfectionist. I guess you could say that I do a better job at development and a poorer job at unleashing.

With the "Seize the Moment" campaign coming up, I am going to be forced (in a good way) to rely on others to help me. During this time, it is my goal to identify, develop, and unleash leaders who will then go and do the same. I want to loosen my grip on my ministry so that potential leaders have room to spring up around me.

4. Cast Vision Regularly and Creatively

When we lose sight of our vision, we become discouraged and tired. Ministry begins to feel like a job. Setup and teardown begins to tire me more and make me grumpy. But when I focus on the fact that by rolling out mats or running cables I am creating an environment that may lead someone to Christ, the burden of it seems so light and I actually begin to enjoy it (don't tell Mark or Greg).

If I am to raise leaders up and call people toward a goal, I will need to cast the vision. No one will work for Michael Gray, but they will work if they see that their efforts make a difference in the lives of others.

5. Honor Your Family

I love my wife more than anything, and I need to become more protective of my time with her. We used to work close to each other and commute together for 1 and 1/2 hours a day. I loved spending that time with her each day. We also had the entire weekend to ourselves. Now, we only spend evenings together (times where we are usually exhausted from the day) and only part of the weekends together (her days off are my days on).

An entire day with Heidi is a rare occurence.

While I love my job, I am going to have to learn to leave it from time to time for something I love far more. This may mean that something doesn't get done. That is tough for me. But I know that honoring my job above my wife is not honoring God -- even if I work for a church.

Hoopin' it Up (If You Can Call it That)

Well, I just returned from another evening of torture, I mean playing basketball, at LIFETIME Fitness. I do not use the word torture in a physical sense (though a fat guy playing full court ball is not easy on the body), rather in a mental sense. If I am going to be specific, I think maybe it is more of a masochism because no one is inflicting mental anguish on me; I am simply doing it to myself.

You see, in my head I play ball like I did when I was in high school. My mind makes crisp passes to my teammates, boxes out for monster rebounds, posts up strong in the paint, even drives to the hoop for the occasional dunk. In my head, I am a force to be reckoned with.

But then I get the ball in my hands and, for some reason, my brain disconnects completely from my brain stem. The grandiose images of me implementing my "skills" come face-to-face with the harsh reality that even the nerve endings in my body have become fat and lazy.

My brain tells my body, "There's Darius streaking to the hoop. Let's zip a pass to him and give him an assist!" but my nerve endings only receive, "There's Darius streaking. Wouldn't that be funny if he really was streaking? Wonder what's on CSI tonight?"

By that time, someone has stripped the ball from me and made a layup on the other end of the court. Darius is looking at me like I should probably be in sculpting Play-Dough snowmen with the kids in daycare. All I can do is say, "Sorry man, my brain stem is not fully connected to my brain." That usually doesn't inspire much confidence in my teammates. They don't pass me the ball much after that.

As you can see, the mental anguish is quite a hurdle for me. I'm going to keep at it though. One of these days I'm going to whip the ball to Big D and he's going to soar in for a layup, and when he turns to head back down court, he's going to point to me and say, "Nice pass Big Dawg."

Then I will know that my brain stem is making a comeback.

My Kind of Friday

I am just now wrapping up one of the most relaxing and enjoyable days that I have had in months. Today I had the chance to spend the entire day with Heidi -- an event that has become almost completely foreign to me. With our differing work schedules, we have almost completely forgotten what it is like to have a full day alone. I am off on Fridays -- she works. She is off on weekends -- I work. She is still on her Christmas break (she is a teacher) and I stayed at work yesterday until 10:00 to ensure that I could actually take today off.

I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is for me to spend time with my wife. She is so fun to be with and she completely eliminates any stress or frustration that I feel. She helps me to regenerate strength and a positive attitude, just by being near me. We didn't do anything particularly eventful today, we just had a whole day to ourselves. No work. No friends. No family. No church. No plans. Just us.

We slept in until 9:00. We drank our coffee in bed and played Mario Bros. on our new Nintendo DS (thanks Dad). We ate a late lunch at Panda Express. We got Jamba Juice for dessert. We went Christmas shopping (we are having a late Christmas with her family on Sunday). We took the long route home from the mall and just talked. We got home and watched 2 movies. We ordered Papa John's. We drank hot chocolate.

To some, this may seem like a wasted day.

For me, this was my kind of Friday.

Boise State @ the Fiesta Bowl

I just got finished watching the last of the Fiesta Bowl between Boise State and Oklahoma University. I am not tied to either of these teams in any way and I didn't watch much of the game, but I was floored by the way Boise State played at the end. Seeing a game come down to the wire is entertaining enough, but watching an underdog team win using a very tricksy playbook is absolutely amazing.

Congratulations Boise State. You earned it.