Monday, February 20, 2012

Manager


Last week I had the opportunity to take a behind the scenes tour of the Baltimore Ravens training facility. We saw everything from the locker room to the weight room, from the the classrooms to the indoor practice facility. It was incredible. One of the highlights was getting to hear General Manager Ozzie Newsome share a bit about leadership.

One thing that stood out to me was his sense of accountability to the owner. He said that he was getting ready to have his annual meeting with the owner - something he called "a trip to the principal's office." Even someone as high up in an organization as Mr. Newsome still has to be accountable.

And that got me thinking. This week at STORYCHURCH we began a new series called "Treasure." My message this week was about how the biblical view of money and possessions is that we are MANAGERS not OWNERS. Everything under the heavens belongs to God. My car is actually God's car. My lumpy couch is actually God's lumpy couch. My role? I'm the manager. In fact, I like to think of myself as the "General Manager of the Copeland franchise." It's my job to spend the money, to take care of those who rely on me, to make sure my family is staying focused on what we are trying to accomplish as a family. But at the end of the day I'm just a manager. God is the owner. And I'm accountable to Him for what I do with what He's given me.

Jesus teaches us about this in Matthew 25:14-30. Three servants get entrusted with their Master's wealth. The Master goes away for a bit and eventually returns to settle accounts with his servants. He wants to know what they did with what He had given them. Two of the servants put those resources to work and actually earned more. One of them did nothing with it and actually buried it in the ground. The first two get rewarded with even greater things, while that third servant has everything taken from him because he proved that he wasn't a very good manager.

I don't know about you, but I want to be someone the Master can entrust with even greater things.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Tools


I love reading from other people what helps them be more efficient and more productive. Here's a couple of things that are helping me lately:

Seriously it is unbelievable. It's the only such tool that I actually pay for the premium service (though the free version is absolutely enough for most people).

In case you don't know, Evernote is basically a place to store anything and everything you need to remember. You use "tags" to organize things. Everything in it is searchable, including photos!

I currently forward every email that I want to keep to my evernote (every evernote user has a unique email address they can forward things to and it goes straight into their evernote account). I have also set up my printer/scanner so that I can scan every important document or receipt or photo or magazine article straight into Evernote - and then I THROW IT AWAY! Seriously. No more paper files.

I also have an evernote extension on my web browser so that every time I see something cool online - a blog post, a picture, an idea of any kind - I simply click the evernote button and it is now forever in my evernote account. No more bookmarking everything, no more trying to remember where I saw that post before.

The ipad and iphone apps are amazing and everything is synced instantly so it's all available no matter when or where I need it.

So I'm one of those guys who loves the physical book. I love to feel it in my hands, I love to write on its pages and I love to be able to see my progress through a book. So going to an e-reader has been something I've really hesitated to do. But in a very short time I'm beginning to see the HUGE benefits to reading on my ipad.

First, if I continue to go this route - my entire book collection will eventually be with me at all times. Pretty cool. AND it will be searchable. Ever try and find that one quote from Andy Stanley but you aren't sure which chapter, or maybe not even sure which book it was in? Problem solved.

Second, the notes. So this is taking some time to adjust to - but I still have the option of highlighting and making notes on everything I read. Typing in my thoughts, using a stylus to highlight - these are new things I have to still get used to. But the benefit is this - everyone who has a kindle account (free through amazon.com) has a dedicated kindle page with all the books you've read and everything you've highlighted and every note you've made. Not only are those notes and highlights searchable on the ipad or kindle, but they are also searchable online. AND HERE'S THE KICKER - since they are on a webpage, I can "clip" them (an Evernote extension) and send them to my Evernote account. Which means, all of my notes for a particular book, and every highlighted paragraph or line is now right there in my Evernote account with a dedicated note for that book. And yes, it's searchable.

I've just recently started using this site, but if you use social media or blog or anything like that then this page is brilliant. It is basically a tool to help you organize your online presence. Through it you can create rules for everything you do online. IFTTT stands for "If this, then that". For example, I have a rule setup to where everytime I post a picture to my Instagram account, it adds that picture to a photo album on my Facebook account. I set it up once, and never have to worry about it again. You can set up rules for twitter, for your blog, for Facebook, or for any other account you use. It's amazing.

Anyway, that's a few things I'm using right now that are making my life more manageable. What tools are you using and how are you using them?

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