Tony Hill’s - Blog

From all my reading and listening this week I’m finding a common theme that I believe God is trying to communicate to me and for me to understand… and that is:

Learning to create margin in all the arenas of my life.

I first came across this while reading The Best Question Ever. Andy talks about creating margin for things that may tempt you in life. A lot of times we trying to find that dividing line of right and wrong and see how close we can get to it without doing the wrong thing. The problem is that without margin between the line of right and wrong (where we tend to closely hang out at), it allows us to cross that line very easily when we are in moments of weakness. By creating margin (setting your own personal boundaries), when we are in those moments of weakness, it’s much easier to avoid crossing that line of right and wrong because we are so far away from it anyways. And if we do cross our own margin line (our own boundaries we have set), it gives us time and the opportunity to get back on the other side before we actually cross over the real line of right and wrong.

I ran across this same principle today from Leo , but instead of margin he used the term ‘pare it down’. Then Tony Morgan responded to this and shared some of things in his life he has marginalized and what that leaves time for.

So I took this principle and ran with it… realizing that all our arenas of life needs margin.

Just a few months ago my wife and I made the decision together for her not to teach dance at night after she had already worked a full day. We did this to create margin. When she used to work a full time job and teach dance, there really wasn’t much time for ‘us’. We had come really close to that line… Not the line of right and wrong as in sin, but the line of what’s the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do in the relm of spending time with your spouse and being a good steward of your time, etc.. Now that she has margin with her free time at nights, it allows not only time for ‘us’ time, but it gives her time to have opportunities to meet with leaders in her ministry, counseling, friends and other unexpected God-ordained things to come up and for her to be able to tend to.

Then of course you can apply this same principle to your finances. Most people live paycheck to paycheck. If we don’t save money to create margin of what we have and what we spend, it doesn’t allow us to pay for unexpected things that come up such as emergencies, organizations that need money, etc..

I could go on and on about all the different arenas of life you can apply this princple to, but I always find that it’s best to get people going on an idea or principle and then let them figure out how they can apply it to their life. Otherwise, they will just read it and forget it, if they don’t actually think about how they can apply it.

On Sunday Mel and I were at Barnes and Noble (one of my favorite places now) and I was going through the ‘religion & spirituality’ section and found a book by Andy Stanley I had never heard of called ‘The Best Question Ever’. I opened up the book and started to flip through it thinking I would just go find the question he’s talking about, then put the book back and write it down. Well I stood there for over 5 minutes flipping through and I just couldn’t find it. So I got impatient and I just bought the book and took it home.

Yesterday and today I’ve been plowing through this book and having to force myself to put it down. (Yes I finally found the best question ever several chapters in…) actually, it’s one question turned into three questions.

This is such an eye opening book. It really has me thinking and questioning on what I’m doing with my life; God, time, money, relationships, etc.. and how I can use this question to be wise in my decision making in every arena of life.

I also noticed this morning that North Point Ministries podcast just started The Best Question Ever series… what great timing. So, I HIGHLY recommend you either go read the book, listen to the podcast or do both to let this all really sink in.

Look for the review sometime soon…

Last week I was drove past a church and thought to myself, I would never want to go inside there. This church had a very beautiful, new brick building with immaculate landscaping. The reason why I would never want to go there is because I know I’m a messy person.. I’m not perfect and being at a church that looked perfect on the inside and out would really remind of that and I would more than likely try to appear perfect so I could blend in with the building and all the other fakers so I wouldn’t feel bad about myself.

I think this is a ‘clean’, almost opposite representation of the broken window theory. If it appears to look clean and perfect on the outside, the pastor and staff appear clean and perfect, then everyone else will too. The problem is, none of us are perfect. We are all messy and dirty inside and out and that’s not going to change.

So here’s my main thought behind all of this:

I think this new generation of churches shouldn’t have their own building for ‘church’.

Going back to the broken window theory.. or in this case the squeaky clean window theory . If we build a place for imperfect & messy people, it makes us feel like we have to be perfect when we are there, we are going against everything Jesus worked for and stood for. Jesus didn’t come to this earth/us (His own Kingdom) in the finest clothes, a crown and a beautiful palace. No, he was probably close to a middle class guy growing up doing normal things. And when he went into ministry, telling people the good news, he was a bum. He hung out with the externally messy people. He didn’t build a beautiful building to out in all day waiting for messy people to come inside (no, only the pharisees and all the people they intimidated did). He went out to where they were. The kingdom of God isn’t in a clean church. It’s in a dirty fallen world full of messy people who need a Savior.

I think there are some churches out there who ‘get it’. Take National Community Church (NCC) for instance. They meet in movie theaters. They are meeting people where they are already, where they hangout and spend their time. Other churches are meeting in schools. Talk about a messy place. Satan prowls in schools, he loves to screw up kids; get them on drugs, parties, sex, etc.. it’s Satan’s play ground. What a slap in his face when a church decides to bring Jesus in the middle of probably one of the dirties, sinful buildings in our communities.

I know some churches out there want to use a building to give back to the community. To provide a place for community events, conferences, etc… I think that’s great. But I think that should be all that building is used for. Building something the community needs and staffing people who can show God’s love is a great idea. Actually, NCC does that. They built an award winning coffee shop, a modern day ‘watering hole’ where all kinds of people come in. It gives the church an opportunity to tell them the good news in a non-threatening, meet me where and as I am, way.

I don’t think every church or person will understand this. That’s fine. I think some people need structure. They need a clean building where they can go do their outwardly clean things. But I also think a lot of people don’t go to church because they are intimidated, embarrassed, unworthy, ashamed and simply feel out of place to be in a ‘God’s Squeaky Clean, Holy House of Worship’. I want to reach these people. Our time is short and we’ve got to come up with new ways to meet all these messy and real people where they are. Christ was the perfect example of this, he showed us how to do it. Let’s follow his lead.

My interpretation of the four main ideas behind this book are:

• To know where your heart is in everything.
• That life is a opportunity and a challenge for constant growth.
• That we use every opportunity of every day to become Christ-like.
• We must be intentional about all of this.

Overall, I thought this was a good book. It’s not as exciting as others and I often had to force myself to get through it. But I did walk away with some new ideas & approaches to my spiritual life.

Below are some of the best notes/points I wrote down:

- We can almost turn any activity into a training exercise for spiritual discipline

- A disciplined person is not a highly systematic, scheduled, early riser person… it is someone who can do the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit.

- We must arrange our life so that sin no longer looks good to us.

- Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.

- Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us.

- It may be far better to think of wondering thoughts during prayer as stepping stones to prayer rather than barriers.

- The primary reason Jesus calls us to servant hood is not just because other people need our service. It is because of what happens to use when we serve.

- One reason we fail to hear God speak is because we are not attentive.

- The secret of life is pursuing one thing

- To have a well-ordered heart is to love: the right thing, to the right degree, in the right way, with the right kind of love.

- Jesus’ followers are those who intentionally arrange their lives around the goal of spiritual transformation - the development of a well-ordered heart.

- If we cannot be transformed, we will settle for being informed or conformed.

Monday my wife and I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary. Some people have told us that the first year of marriage is one of the toughest, others have said it’s the first couple of years . Melanie and I both agree that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be going in. I think a lot of this has to do with our backgrounds. We both came from home where our parents have a great marriage. They love God & each other and it’s obviously there is passion, commitment, trust, communication and they simply like spending time together. They’ve been a great example to us, to show us what a good marriage can look like.

I think one of our biggest challenges this first year was communication. It all comes down to how we communicate to each other in every situation. Every situation calls for a different way to communicate: what words to say, not to say and how to say them. We’ve learned about timing, tones, attitudes, reactions, patience, admit when we are wrong and how powerful words can be. We still don’t have those all down, I don’t really ever expect to since we will never be perfect on this earth, but I will surely try my hardest.

The thing that I loved the most about our first year was being in on the inside of someone’s life. All my life I’ve grown up around family, friends & best friends and they will only let you get so close, to know, hear and see so much about them. You never really get to know someone fully unless they reveal everything about themselves. This type of knowledge of someone, especially the opposite sex was designed to only be known in marriage. It’s been amazing to see inside the life of Melanie. To know most of her thoughts, opinions, feelings of sadness, happiness, anxiousness, joy, frustration, nervousness, etc.. To see her when she’s so excited she can’t hold it in and to see her when she’s completely down and all we can do is hold each other and cry. It’s a human experience unlike anything I’ve experienced and I’ve loved every minute of it.

I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life getting to know this special woman God has created and to experience all the ups & downs life will bring us. In the end, I hope that each one will bring us closer together, closer to oneness.

- Tony
the luckiest man in the world

I haven’t done an internet related post in awhile.. so here’s a recent thought of mine.

I’ve noticed a trend with bands & artists - they only have a myspace to promote themselves and connect with their fans.

Myspace is an amazing tool to spread your music, connect with fans and get information out there - every artist needs to do it. But, it’s not a wise business decision to solely rely on myspace to do this. Here are my reasons why:

- You can’t control the ads people see next to your name. What would this reflect?

- You are leaving the momentum of your career in the hands of myspace. They could pull your profile at any moment or simply lose everything that you have uploaded.

- You have to agree to their terms, not yours.

- If myspace were to fail as a business, then you have to quickly develop another website and go promote somewhere else. Meanwhile, the bands & artists with their own sites are still promoting & connecting.

- It’s very insecure. Myspace accounts are hacked all the time. What would you do if your profile was hacked and everything was gone? Or they decided to promote another band through your page?

So, if you are an artist or in a band, it will be in your best interest to create your own website. As soon as you come up with your band name, you need to register a domain quickly. Ideally, when someone searches for your band name your website comes up #1, myspace #2.

In the end, myspace should be used as a tool, not a complete vechicle that controls your band. It would be like setting up a booth at every walmart in America where you can find new fans, promote, connect, etc.. but the problem here is that not everyone goes to walmart, someone could steal your booth & everything in it, or walmart could just tell you to simply leave.

After reading the last 2 chapters of Today Matters, it made me feel good inside that I’m sorta on the right track concerning personal growth. My journey towards personal growth started a few years ago when I ran into a well know blog (stevepavlina.com) on personal development. This blog opened up my eyes to a whole new world. I still read this blog occasionally, but of course becoming a Christ follower requires me to put a filter on the stuff that I read, especially this blog, since Steve gets in to spiritual things that I believe is not from or for God, so I have to be careful.

There are several other personal growth/development blogs that I read, one I really enjoy is zenhabits.net. Leo is a great writer and very passionate about life and family. But, I know that blogs can’t teach me everything so I started to pickup books for growth in all different areas of my life (faith, leadership, marriage, etc..).

Getting back to the point of this post. From reading John Maxwell’s book, I feel like I’m on the right track with my value for personal growth. Everyday I love digging into the bible and reading a book on growth. It’s something that I plan to continue until I die. I think we all should. It’s so easy to finish up school and start your career and to never pick up a book again to learn something knew and to never challenge ourselves or work at reaching our full God-given potential. I think we all want to put education behind us, but I think one of the secrets to a full life is to continue to grow in faith, wisdom & knowledge, starting with faith because “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge” - Prov 1:7

So today, I challenge you to look into their area of your life. Most brilliant men who had amazing contributions to this world valued personal growth. I think we can all take a lesson from them and make the time to learn and grow everyday.

I think it’s probably the wisest thing for me to not post anything political here, especially when it’s tied right to my name. This isn’t what this blog is for. Who knows when something could come back to bite me. I don’t want something from the past to become a barrier to my future. People get political over your past very easily.

So it’s out. Google has now created their own browser. Good for them. We will see how well this gets received. I think all the ‘techies’ will enjoy it. The user interface is very clean and seems effecient. If you use FireFox and have lots of plug-ins, this will alter the way you do internet and may not be the browser for you. If you user internet explorer… well this could be a good alternative for something less clunky. But I think unless Google heavily promotes across their channels it won’t pick up for mainstream users.

Do they have a hidden agenda?

I think we will find out soon enough. It is open source, so that helps the case that they don’t. But, they are an advertising company. They are known to build products and slap ads on them in some way. They might not do it with Chrome, but it may be a channel for them in the future to some of their other products.

I say try it out. If it’s effecient for you, then keep it. I will just patiently wait until they release a mac version.