Competition

I recently read an article on how the United States has becomes consumed with competition. We as Americans have been taught that we have to be the best at everything we do, or we are worthless. Every two years we have a world-wide competition called the Olympics, and at some point during the day they will display a news bulletin with the running medal count. I don't know if other countries do this, but I believe that we do this in America to remind ourselves of how much we are beating the rest of the world.

As a minister I see this competitive attitude dominating the church. Pastors feel a need to 1-up their fellow pastors. Youth pastors have to do bigger events than the youth pastor down the road. Worship leaders have to record a CD before the other church does.

But I wonder to myself, where has this competition gotten us? Are we really where we want to be as a society? Are our churches finding success in fulfilling the Great Commission or are we basing our success in comparison to other churches.

I have never been a competitive person. All my life I have strived to stay humble in all circumstances. I know that I have fallen short many times, but it is still a goal of mine. Personally, I don't feel like I have to win every time I attempt something. My goal is not to be the best, and most of the time I don't even want people to know that I did something worthy of recognition or praise. This may sound funny, but I don't play to win. I play to enjoy the game, and often I get ridiculed for that.

Over the years I've been criticized for not being a ladder climber. I've been admonished for not taking a more proactive role in different aspects of life. I've been called "less of a man" because I refuse to play with the "big boys". People have criticized me for not having recorded a CD already or for not doing more with my music. I understand what they are trying to say, but most of the time I feel they are coming from that competitive point of view which I would prefer to stay out of.

My attitude has always been and will continue to be to just trust God to take me and to place me where He wants me to be. I've always believed that those doors that I have to pry open were never meant for me to walk through. I will not be a ladder climber, and I will not fight my way to the top.

Do I have unfulfilled dreams? Too many to count. Do I have goals in life? Absolutely. But what price am I willing to pay to achieve those goals and dreams? I would rather be patient and wait for God to make it happen than try to get there on my own and leave a trail of hurt, deceit and regret along the way.

If that makes me less of a man to some that's okay, because I know who I am, and I know who God has made me to be. I choose to take God's plan for me over man's.

My Crazy Sunday

Today is Sunday, July 17. We have been house shopping for quite sometime, but have never been able to find anything to fit our family and our budget. Deanna is constantly looking online. Well, a few weeks ago she found this home that looked really interesting on the listing. It was listed as a two-story, 3 bedroom 2 bath, and it was an awesome price. The only real negative in the listing was a comment about some fire damage, but at that price, we really wanted to see it.

Last week after church Deanna and I were kidless, so we decided to drive by and look at it. As we pulled up to it we could see that it definitely needed some curb appeal, but it looked quite promising. Deanna called the realtor and we set up an appointment to see it today at two o'clock.

When we woke up to get ready for church our 6-year old, Aaron, said that he was not feeling well. He was complaining about his head, stomach, and jaws hurting. We figured he had some new teeth coming in, but we had him bring a trash can in the van just in case.

We made it through church, which by the way we had a great birthday cake for our pastor's wife, Robin. We left church at one o'clock to go to the house. It was only 12 minutes to the house, so we arrived quite early. While we were waiting in the van we were startled by the most horrifying sound in the back seat...the sound of a 6 year old projectile vomiting. He finally got the trash can up to his mouth, but not before he had spewed all over his clothes.

I instantly jumped to the back and began stripping him right there in the middle of the street. At this point we decided that it would not be good to proceed with seeing the home since we had a naked kid in the back seat. However, Deanna had left her phone at home, so she had to call her parents to get the number. Well, during the phone call while I am still out in the street trying to take care of Aaron's clothing, Aaron had grabbed his trash can and spilled the vomit all over the seat.

I'm not sure what happened next. All I know was that Deanna screamed, and was instantly in the back seat. Suddenly I looked up and guess who pulled in to the driveway...early. Yep, the realtors had arrived. I should also say that we had not yet met them personally, so this was going to be a doozy of a first impression. I was bent over in the street cleaning Aaron's clothes, Deanna was bent over in the back of the van cleaning the seat, and Aaron was naked and wrapped in a jacket. It was a little embarrassing, but they were parents, so they completely understood.

We finally got everything cleaned up and asked Leah to stay in the van with Aaron while we went inside. When we entered the house, I could not believe what I was seeing. The house was huge. It was larger than anything I have ever lived in. What was supposed to be a 3/2 home turned out to be a 5 bedroom/3.5 bath. The basement was finished with 2 bedrooms and a full bath. When we walked to the back, there was a large deck with an in-ground swimming pool.

That's the good part. Remember, the listing had mentioned some fire damage. The home had a pretty bad smoke smell. The fire had been contained primarily to the basement, so the upper two floors were well in tact. However, the worst was yet to come. I don't know if the former owners left in rage or if it had been vandalized, but the home was completely destroyed. Every wall in the house had a huge hole punched in, and they had splattered paint and graffiti everywhere. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. The brick fireplace, the two huge bookcases, the ceiling fans, the ceiling, the walls, doors, kitchen counters and cabinets and bathrooms. Everything had been covered in red, yellow, and black paint. I couldn't believe anyone would ever do something like that.

The house is still perfect for our family. We would have our own rooms, and more importantly we would be 12 minutes from our church/job instead of 30 minutes. We're not sure how far we are going to go with this, but we are praying about it.

What a crazy way to spend Sunday afternoon.

PS. I'm sorry, Deanna. I love you.

Where's the Faith?

I don't like to preach, so that is not my intent in this blog, but recently I've been thinking. I know, right?

As I'm writing this my oldest, Warren, is in Buffalo New York at a two-week ministry internship and missions trip. Because of the nature of this program, Warren only get's to call home one time a day for about 30 minutes. If you know Warren, he doesn't normally need 30 minutes. He normally doesn't need 5. However, yesterday (July 7) he called, and we couldn't ever get a word in because he was so excited and fired up about all that he had done and experience.

In short, God has really been working on his heart. Things that we have been praying about for years are now starting to happen. His eyes are being opened and he is experiencing God is a way that he's never known.

The night before he called us his group was in a service called Journey to the Throne. It was all about experiencing God and his presence. Warren was praying for one specific thing during this time, and before the service was over one of the other members of the group had received a word from the Lord and called out that very thing that Warren was praying about. For the first time I think he understood that God really can and does speak to us and he knows us by name.

In addition to this thing that Warren was praying for, he was also praying for our family. He was praying for his grandma Baker and her physical state. He was praying for his grandpa Baker and his sleeping difficulties. He prayed for his mom about a problem she has with one of her hands.

Before he called us, he had tried to call his Grandma and Grandpa to see how they were feeling. You see, Warren had experience God's presence so strongly that he just believed that when he prayed for them, they were going to feel better. He then called us and told us about all of the previous night's events. As we were talking, Deanna had told Warren to keep praying, and specifically to pray for her heart. I won't go into detail, but Deanna has had a lot of heart problems this year. When Warren heard that he said, "Oh, I forgot about your heart. I forgot to pray for your heart."

"Well, just remember to pray for it, because it's really hurting me," Deanna replied.

So Warren (or this new person in Warren's body) said, "Okay, so can I pray for you now." And right there on the phone Warren began to pray for his mom.

Now, being a pastor I have to do that quite often, but for my 16 year old to stop and ask his mom if he can pray for her. I couldn't believe it.

But remember, Warren had been in the presence of God, and he just believed that when he prayed, God was going to move. So my question is, do we really believe that God will answer our prayers. How many times do we try to meet our own needs and end up falling flat on our face. Or how many times do we recite a prayer, but we really have more doubt than faith? James said that when we doubt we should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Even Jesus himself said, "Have faith and don't doubt."

Doubt can bring immediate cancellation to our prayers. Who are we to doubt that the God who created the universe won't listen to His children? We've got to have faith in every situation. The prayer of faith can move mountains.

So I ask you, "Where's the faith?"

All About Warren

Yes, I know it's been almost a year since my last post. I'm not very good at keeping up with these types of things. However, lately I've been thinking about how I can become more consistent with my blogging, and I've come up with NOTHING. I have a hard time seeing outside of my waffle square, and I don't notice everything going on around me.

So I thought I would dedicate some blogs to my family, so this one is all about my oldest son, Warren. Yesterday, on July 3, we dropped off Warren at the airport to go to Buffalo, NY for a two week internship with John Tasch ministries. This was the first time, he's ever gone and done something like this for this long completely on his own, so it was kind of nerve racking seeing him off at the airport by himself. As we've been planning this trip for him, I've been thinking about the last sixteen years of Warren's life.

When Warren was dedicated to the Lord at just a few months old his Uncle Dave prophesied over him that he would be an ambassador for the Lord. Now, I realize that we are all called to be ambassadors, but I believe that this word goes far beyond our everyday mandate. Warren has always had very strong leadership abilities. I can remember taking him to the Burger King playland at the age of 3 and he would have all the kids in that place following him and doing what he asked them to do.

Warren has always had great rhythm. I can remember leading worship at Gateway Tabernacle in downtown St. Louis, and Warren would be back in the sound booth with his grandpa. He would be standing on the counter so he could see over the top and he would be drumming on the ledge with pencils. And believe me, he would be going to town with those pencils. Later on when he would have an opportunity to play around on bongos or congas, he would automatically start pounding out rhythms that a normal 5 and 6 year old should not be hearing. I was always amazed at how good he was.

Now Warren has been playing drums for me in our current worship team for the last three years, and he is awesome. Sometimes I get a little frustrated because what I hear for a song and what he hears for the same song don't always match, but he always seems to make it sound great.

To understand Warren's personality sometimes is a great task. Warren loves to have fun. He
loves his friends, and he loves being the life of the party. We home school all of our kids, so needless to say, Warren doesn't get the "friend" time that he would like to have. So when we are at church or friend's homes he definitely makes up for lost time. Warren has always been able to entertain himself, and has always had an overactive imagination. We had him in public school for a couple of years in Panama City, FL, and he would often get in trouble because he had turned his pencils into an army of cars and was too busy playing with them to listen or do his work.

Warren has always been good with his hands. School has always been difficult for him because he would rather be doing things with his hands than sitting at the kitchen table and reading and writing. He loves putting together equipment that comes disassembled in the box, and even more than that he loves wiring and rewiring his speakers to get the best surround sound he can from his ipod or stereo or whatever else he is listening to.

Warren and I have not always seen eye to eye. His personality and mine are completely different, and I have often struggled to understand what is going on in his head. I'm a quiet easy going, go-with-the-flow guy, and Warren definitely is NOT. He is all about carving his own path, he can be quite loud and and boisterous. But that is what people love about him.

I'm so excited about what the next two weeks hold in store for Warren. As I said earlier he is in Buffalo, NY at a two-week internship with John Tasch ministries. The first week is all about strengthening his spiritual life. He is going to be worshiping, having devotions, praying, and practicing for ministering in Buffalo. The second week is an all out missions trip to the inner-city of Buffalo. He is in for the ride of his life, and I can't wait to see the change in his life when he comes home.

I know that God has great plans for his life, and we haven't even scratched the surface of what God has in store for him.

I love you, Warren, and I'm proud of the young man that you are becoming.

Hobbies

I have never had a real hobby. Frankly, because I haven't had the time and couldn't afford them. I love music, that's all I think about. I even lay in bed at night unable to sleep because I'm usually thinking about the project I'm currently working on. But when I'm doing some type of music every waking minute of the day I would like to have something different to do on occasion.

If you know me at all then you know I don't like sports. And when I say I don't like sports I mean I would rather watch mold grow than watch any kind of sports on TV. Yes, I realize that I live in a huge baseball town with one of the best baseball teams in the country, but I could care less about the Cardinals, Rams, Blues, or anyone else.

Now, however, I have two things that I have just fallen in love with. I look forward to do these things every chance I get. Again, if you know me at all, then you know these two things are completely out of my character.

The first thing I love doing is lifting weights at the gym. I LOVE going to the gym. And I don't just play around on the machines. I like playing with the big boys. I've almost become addicted to the bench press. The most fun thing about working out for me is the challenge. I'm constantly challenging myself to see if I can do better than I did last time. If you read my last post about having confidence, this is something that I have found that is giving me confidence in myself. The gym has provided me with something to say "Look where I was a year ago, and look where I am now." I truly love it.

My other new love is shooting hand guns. Again, if you know me, this is completely out of my character. As a kid I hated hunting. I didn't even like playing with my dad's shot guns. They were just too frightening for me. So you might be wondering how I got into this hobby.

Well, we live in an area of St. Louis that is going downhill and fast. Our community is on the news quite often about a shooting, or carjacking, or some sort of crime. That coupled with a couple of other issues, my wife an I decided to purchase a couple of hand guns. Now, we can't wait to get out to the shooting range and blow off some steam. I have found that it is a huge stress reliever for me, and I love the challenge of the target practice.

I don't have much of a collection at the moment. I have a 9mm and my wife has a 38 special. My wife, being all girl, had to get pink grips for hers. We get some funny stares from the men when they see her gun, but her answer is always the same, "It may be pink, but it still shoots the same."

I had to laugh. We were at the range the other day and we were shooting at one end. Deanna noticed a couple of ladies clear on the other side of the lane, and it appeared they were beginners at shooting, so during a cease fire she decided to go and talk with them. One of the ladies said, "Are you the one down there with the pink gun?" I thought it was funny that word had traveled all the way down the line about the pink gun.

So the bottom line is, don't mess with me. Just kidding.

So now you know a little bit about how a worship pastor blows off steam. Yes, I love my music but now I'm a body building, gun shooting, piano playing fool.

"New Year" Resolution

I've never been one for New Years resolutions. It's not that I have trouble keeping them it's more that I can't figure out what's most important. This birthday has been different for me. I've been thinking a lot about my weaknesses and the things in my life that I am not satisfied with.

For the past few weeks, it seems every conversation I've had and everything I've read keeps taking me back to one thing...Confidence. Confidence is something that I am seriously lacking. I lack confidence as a musician, a minister, a husband, and a father. I've always been insecure in just about every area of my life. Several things recently, however, have contributed to these insecurities. I struggle to provide for my family the way I want, we don't have a place of our own to call home, and this year we were not able to take a family vacation. I know these things are all trivial in the grand scheme of things, but they are all ways that I want to make my family happy and provide a good life for them. When I can't do that my confidence level plummets.

I also struggle as a musician. I don't know how it is in other professions, but in the music profession there is constant comparison, mainly because we are constantly bombarded with music, and the music is just getting better and better while I feel like I'm stuck in the same style and not growing in my skills.

Confidence, or the lack of, has always been a serious issue for me, and it's one that I'm not really sure how to overcome. So what does this have to do with a New Year resolution? Well, in short, my resolution for year 34 is to figure out how to have confidence in a constantly improving world, and more than that, how to have confidence when my life goals go unattained.

My theme verse, coincidentally, comes from Psalm 34. I felt the Lord leading me to this chapter in prayer the other day. Allow me to share some verses from this chapter.

Verse 1: I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Verse 2: My soul shall make it's boast in the Lord.
Verse 4: I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears (insecurities).
Verse 10b: But those who fear the Lord shall not lack any good thing.

As the Lord was directing me to this passage in prayer it seems that He was telling me some crucial things to help me have confidence.
1. I need to have praise on my lips at all times. When I am praising, He becomes greater while all the trivial things in life become smaller and smaller.
2. If I can't boast in anything of myself, I can surely boast and be confident in the Lord
3. When I seek the Lord, he will surely hear me and deliver me from all my fears, anxieties, insecurities, etc.
4. When I do seek the Lord, I will not lack any good thing.

Honestly, I don't know what lies ahead for this new year in my life, but I have a word from the Lord to hold on to, and sometimes that's all it takes. He has promised that His word will never fail, so I have to trust in that word.

So when you think of me, please say a prayer. But I also anticipate to end 34 more confidently than I started.

New Year, New Blog

So today is my 34th birthday. Nothing special about that. I still have a regular work day and we won’t do any kind of special celebration until the weekend. However, today, I am going to try something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I am going to start a blog. I don’t even know if I have enough to say on a regular basis but I’m going to give it a go.

I’ve been motivated by a couple of friends. My fried, Robin started one a few weeks ago, and it is so much fun to read. My friend/nephew (in-law), Dave Cummings, started one about life as a 2nd grade teacher, and it is so interesting to read his perspective on things. I’m not trying to be a copycat here, but I’ve been wanting to blog about my life as a worship leader/pastor/teacher/husband/dad. Will anyone read it? I don’t know, but it’s a way to get some things off my chest.

I’ve blogged a few devotionals in the past, but this time I want it to be more about dealing with life and ministry and everything else that goes along with that.

For the past few months I’ve been going through a lot of changes. I don’t know if it’s the working of God or just my own quirks, but I’ve been taking a step back and examining why I do what I do. Why am I a worship pastor? Why do I do the things I do as a worship pastor? Are the things I’m doing as a worship pastor pleasing to God? I guess you could sum it all up by saying that I’m tired of “church” as usual.

If all I’m doing as a worship pastor is singing songs just because that’s the way we’ve always done things in church then there are many other venues I could find to sing and to be a musician. As a worship pastor (and as a worshiper for that matter) I was never called to sing songs. I was never called to be a professional musician. I was called to love God and bring others to a place of loving God. I’ve been called to take people up the mountain of God, not to stay the same. I’ve been doing this long enough that I could pick songs to get people excited. I could pull out just the right song to tug on the heart strings. But what good would that be. That’s not leadership, that’s manipulation.

I want people to love God because they want to love God. I want people to realize that they have been redeemed from the curse of sin. I want the broken to experience the healing power of Jesus Christ, and I want those that are seeking for answers to realize that those answers can be found in Jesus. That’s why I want to lead worship. That’s why I want to be in ministry.

So my goal is to be different than I was at 33. Above anything else I want people to say that Russell Henderson is a worshiper and a lover of Jesus Christ. I want 34 to be a time of new beginnings. I’ve been praying for a home for 4 years. I don’t know if that will happen this year, but I’m going to love God anyway. There’s a lot of things that I’ve been hoping to be different for a long time. Whether those things change this year or not is for God to decide. But I will trust that His ways are perfect, and I will worship Him anyway.

So stay tuned. It’s still early in the morning, so who knows what will happen today. TTYL.