From the Mind of MandoRon

I thought I would share this afternoon’s handywork…

The cat was designed by Jada.  She even drew the outline on the pumpkin herself.

As you can tell by the title, what you are reading is not my original post.

Yesterday, I went on a bit of blogging tirade.  It all started when I received a bit of mail that touched on a nerve… stepped on one of my pet peeves, if you will.

So I wrote a rather scathing rebuke for all the world to read and agree with. 

Was I right? Probably.  Was airing it out in public the right thing to do?  No.

Luckily, I have a rule never to post anything while I’m ticked and my wife lectured me about why I shouldn’t.

1 Peter 3:8 says “Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude.”  He was talking to me too.

Things were a little different today at GracePoint.  As you pulled into the parking lot, there was nobody to show you where to park.  No greeters at the door.  No coffee.  No video screens.  No ushers.  No band. 

Today was a “No-Show Sunday”.  No volunteers were scheduled except to support the kids’ areas.  The staff was trying to make a point about how important it is to get plugged into the GP Army and serve.  Mike hammered the point home pretty hard in his message.

Rather than a full band this week, Kevin Herrington lead worship solo with just an acoustic guitar and a stripped down sound system.  He did an awesome job!  And while these are all songs that we’ve used before, the music was considerably different than a normal GP service. 

The setlist:

• Your Grace is Enough by Chris Tomlin
• No One Like You by David Crowder Band
• How Great is Our God by Chris Tomlin
• Indescribable by Chris Tomlin
• Give It All Away by Aaron Shust (offering)

Next week, we’ll kick things back up!

To see what other churches are doing, be sure to check out Fred’s Sunday Setlist Blog Carnival!

I recently came across a great article on creativity from Patrick Leoncini that I wanted to share.  In case you don’t know, Patrick is an incredible author and a great speaker on the subject of leadership and business.  His books include: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Silos Politics and Turfwars, The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, and Death by Meeting.

I highly recommend subscribing to his free email newsletter called Pat’s Point of View.  You can sign up on The Table Group’s homepage.

Pat’s most recent POV is titled “The Enemy of Innovation and Creativity”.  He argues (successfully, in my opinion) that the business world spends so much time trying to improve efficiency, that creativity and innovation get squelched.  The creative process, by definition, is woefully inefficient.  You end up wasting a lot of time when you’re trying to create something.  But he points out that some inefficiency is necessary in order to successfully innovate. 

Go read the article, then come back.

A few quotes that I want to point out:

“I’ve become convinced that the only way to be really creative and innovative in life is to be joyfully inefficient.”

“Few people have the self-esteem and courage to continue being inefficient when others are calling them out as being flaky, irresponsible and unreasonable.”

“If we’re serious about innovation, we have to celebrate—yes, celebrate—the inefficiency of the people who we rely on for new ideas, even if it means they are late for meetings, they waste a little time or money and they leave the lights on when they go home. “

Interestingly… when I first read the article, my first thought was to my own songwriting endeavors.  Not my daily job.

I focus so much energy on trying to be efficient with my time, trying to learn to play new songs, and trying to organize schedules and setlists for the band at church, that I leave myself very little time (if any) to just plink around with my mandolin or guitar and create something new.  It’s almost like I need to schedule some “free time” just to mess around with no purpose. 

Interestingly, most of the songs that I’ve written have come out of a time like that.  I’ll accidentally play a chord progession that I like, and then lyrics pop into my head while playing the accidental chords over and over.

So I’m trying to make time for me to be creative musically.  And I’m trying to encourage the “flaky artists” that I know to keep being “flaky artists”, and not worry about the details.  Let someone else handle them.

How about you?  Do you set aside time to be inefficiently creative?  Or does it just come naturally?

Yesterday was Parent-Teacher Conference day.  I don’t know why, but I always feel compelled to go buy an anti-school t-shirt to wear.  Like a Pink Floyd shirt that says “We Don’t Need No Education!” or “Hey! Teacher! Leave Those Kids Alone!”  Or maybe something like “My Kid Can Beat Up Your Honors Student”.  Next time, I think I’ll stand out front of the school and sell shirts that read “Give Your Kids a Real Education… Homeschool”.  Andrea thought it would be cool to show off lots of tattoos.  Unfortunately, we only have one between both of us…

And I never know how to react either.  The teacher usually says something like, ”Your child is the most brilliant, most well-behaved student that I’ve ever had the pleasure to instruct.”  How am I supposed to respond?  Smile, and nod?  “Surely, you must have my child confused with someone else… you do realize we’re talking about Jett”?  “I know, she gets it all from me?”  Feign embarassment?  I just don’t know!

Seriously though, we were looking forward to the conferences for two reasons: one, Jett is in kindergarten and we were curious what his teacher would have to say; and two, Jada skipped second grade so we wanted to know how she was acclimating to the challenge of third grade.

Jett is doing very well in kindergarten, as we thought he would.  He’s even starting to read a little.  His teacher had nothing but wonderful things to say about him.

Jada is also doing very well.  Apparently she is having no trouble with skipping a grade, although it’s taking a while to adjust to being challenged.  She’s never really been challenged before.  But Jada is stepping up to the plate, and knocking the ball out of the park.  She’s been making 100’s on most of her work, including their first unit test in math.  And she received mostly 4’s on her report card, except for 3’s in writing and PE.  (Scale of 1 to 4… no letter grades for some reason…)  We figured she might struggle for a few months, but would catch up with everone else by the end of the year.  Apparently, it didn’t take long at all.