Inside Mandy’s Head

Offering for Haiti

Saturday, January 16th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments

The last few days I have had a quote that has been stuck in my head that I heard in a conference back in September.  

“The church isn’t here to meet our needs, we are here to meet the needs of the world.”

We have all seen the destruction in Haiti & tomorrow, PCC is going to take a special offering to partner with Samaritans Purse.   Samaritans Purse is already in Haiti and have been helping in the relief efforts.   They are doing amazing things down there and bringing hope to the people of Haiti.  

Below is the link to see all the work that Samaritans Purse has been doing in Haiti so far.

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/Samaritans_Purse_Today/

PCC, please spend some time in prayer today on how you can be apart of this special offering tomorrow.  You can also hop over to Jason’s blog (www.jason.prescottchristian.com) for additional information.

It’s a new year….

Monday, January 11th, 2010 | Personal Thoughts | No Comments

In my last post I shared with you my “self growth” project from last year by not drinking any pop.   As this new year has started, I have been thinking of what I can do this year as my “self growth” project.   I have decided to challenge myself with a reading project.    If you know me at all, you know I HATE reading books!!!    I can read short materials like blogs or articles, but give me a 100+page book and it will most likely just sit on the book shelf.   Cliff notes in high school were my best friend…..I perfected skimming in college…..and most of the books on my bookshelf in my office are for show.  

However, it is good to stretch yourself and challenge yourself to do something that will require discipline.    This will mean that I will have to plan time during the day to read and I will have to shut the TV off at night (EEEKKKK!!!!) every once in a while and pick up a book and read.  

Last week I had the privledge of speaking at one of the Christian schools in town and I challenged them to a “growth project.”   My orginal goal was to read six books this year, but afterwards a girl came up to me and in her lovely words pretty much told me that wasn’t good enough….so I’m uping it up to nine books.   Below are the nine books I’m committing to read this year.    I’m posting them to keep myself accountable of this decision.  

1.   Deadly Viper Character Assassins- by Mike Foster & Jud Wilhite    (Love these guys and the ministry they have going on with People of the Second Chance….check it out at http://potsc.com/)

2 & 3.  Quitting Church by Julia Duin & Real Church by Larry Crabb   (interesting books about people who have been burned by “the church” and their search for what church really is….excited to see what insights I can gain from these two books)

4.   If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat- John Ortberg   (one of our Life Groups is doing a study of this book this semester, and as I was preparing for this studying it really challenged me in some areas of my life)

5.  Mad Church Disease-  Anne Jackson  (This will be a book I pick up every year and read through…read it for the first time last year and it was AMAZING!   It’s about burnout and how to avoid it and get through it if you find yourself in the middle of it)

6.  Plan B-  Pete Wilson  (So excited for this book to come out this spring…..Pete is an amazing pastor in Nashville that I follow on his blog, twitter and through his podcasts)

7.  Killing Cockroaches- Tony Morgan   (This is  book that I bought a while back that has been sitting on my bookshelf “for show”….it’s about time I took it down and read it!…..it has recieved great reviews)

8 & 9.   Counterfeit Gods & The Prodigal God- Timothy Keller   (I have heard great things about this author, so I am excited to check these books out)

So there you have it…..that’s my reading list for the year.     How about you?    What are you doing to “Grow” this year?