A Year in the Life of Organization

In 2012 I am on a mission to organize my life more completely. I am using the Friday section of this blog to announce tools I plan to use and chronicle the changes I am making. Here is one…

This year I am on a mission to better organize my life. I realized that to be successful in my ministry it had to be done. One of the things that desperately needed to change was my weight. I was constantly tired. I never felt good. I knew that I needed to get the pounds down both for my health and my productivity.

When I begin 2012 I was somewhere over 315 lbs. I don’t know where I really was because when I started our scale only went to 299 lbs., and then it stopped. After working on weight loss for a week or more I decided I needed to know so I bought a scale. I began at 315.? something lbs. As of this writing (March 6) I have lost 26 lbs.

When I began this process I did not want it to be a diet. Dieting in my mind leads you to loose weight for a period of time. I wanted this to be a lifestyle change. I wanted to change my eating patterns and my lack of exercise. I knew I would have fail days, but I wanted them to rare and not the norm. I began with some goals. I wanted to get to 290 lbs. by March. I was able to accomplish that goal. With that I wanted to begin walking and then running. I haven’t yet done that, but plan to soon. I am trying to figure out when the best time in my day will be for that.

I feel I have done pretty well at my lifestyle change and am excited with the changes. One thing I can attribute is something called FatSecret. I was looking for an app that would help me manage my weight loss. I downloaded the first one I found and soon fell in love. I also found the internet version of FatSecret and fell even more in love. FatSecret is an amazing tool. Between the app and the website I am able to track and record my food intake, my exercise, my weight loss, create recipes, journal and connect in community.

The best part of FatSecret is the ability to keep track of my food intake. I can do this multiple ways. I am able to use the website and search for or enter the food I have eaten for the day. I can enter it by searching their amazing database by food types, brands, restaurants, and many more. I can also enter it by using my phone in similar ways as well as using the barcode scanner on my phone and then selecting the number of servings I am consuming. This is truly a neat way to use the tool. One the website and my phone I am able to see something like this ~

On the day of this writing this is the food that I had already consumed for the day. This has become amazingly helpful through this process.

There is so much you can use FatSecret for. I plan to share more throughout the year about all you can do with FatSecret. I hope this serves as an introduction to an amazing free tool you can use online at your continence.

 

The Photo used above belongs to Jonathan D. Blundell’s Photostream

A Year in the Life of Organization

Don’t fret, while I have not been submitting things to the blog, I have not failed at my organizational goals. I started out the year with many goals at hand. Probably too many. Below is the list of what I can think of:

• More blogging with structure
• Loosing weight with a goal of 90 lbs. total and then seeing where that leaves me
• Spending more time in personal Bible study outside of my reading for lessons, sermons, devotionals, etc..
• How I spend my time with Crystal and Alivia – (My job requires hours in the evening, I have to find out how to best love, enjoy, invest, and share myself with them and my ministry. This is about proper balance)
• Spending more time reading and less with the TV
• Reading marriage books
• Reading church growth books
• Reading Christian living books
• Reading and organizing how I read blogs
• Structuring the transition process here at church
• Organizing my week around the things I know need to be done.
• Cleaning and keeping my office clean

As you can see I had a lot of aspirations as I began this year. All of them are valid, and all must be accomplished at some point. However, I may have tried to tackle too many at one time. This year in the life of organization is about learning what works for me, my family, and my ministry to make me a better man and leader of Christ’s church here in Lebanon. What this process has taught is what I need to organize first before moving on to the next thing. I have begun to organize them this way;

1. Spending more time in personal Bible study
2. Organizing how I spend my time with Crystal and Alivia
3. Loosing weight
4. Structuring the transition process at West Side
5. Spending more time reading
6. Organizing my work week
7. More blogging
8. Cleaning my office

So far I have done very well on a few, and getting better on others.

I have missed just a few days this year in my daily Bible reading. Part of that was due to sever back pain I experienced. During that I couldn’t focus to remember what I was reading. I was however able to catch up and am still on track to complete this plan on December 30th.

I have also done really well loosing weight. To date I have lost a total of 26 lbs. I have had my good days and bad days. I have learned what a good portion size is and even traveled to Georgia with out gaining any weight while eating out. I have reached a plateau, but that has only reinforced in my mind that I have to be strict at this and make this a lifestyle change, and realize it won’t happen in just a couple of months.

I am struggling with the time commitment between church and family. I am praying that it is only the season we are going through. At West Side we are in major transition. We recently introduced a new ministry system, are planning and implementing a two worship service approach, starting a worship band, launching and teaching about our vision and mission, as well as many other subtle changes. All this requires an immense amount of time and commitment. Balancing this out is part of my learning curve. I have done great some weeks and horrible other weeks.

Those are the three that I am working on the most, the rest will come in time. This has been a fun and revealing process for me. Next week I plan to share the tool I am using to help me loose weight.

Happening in Christianity

When I blog, I have a weekly format that I like to follow. While I don’t do it a ton, I have a schedule for the days of the week so that topics are somewhat organized. I haven’t done so lately because the creative juices have been drained with all the transitions we are experiencing here at West Side.

On Tuesday’s I like to share any concerns or problems I have that are going on in the Christian community. However, Today is not one of those days. This is the opposite of a concern, this is a celebration of what is going on one of Christ’s Churches.

Verve Church exist in Las Vegas with the purposes of stripping church and seeking life seeking to reach people for Jesus who live and work on the strip in Vegas. Verve seeks to go where other churches haven’t and to reach people who never dreamed of following Christ. Verve just celebrated their second birthday this past weekend. In doing so, they showed this video at their services. Please follow this link http://www.vinceantonucci.com/2012/03/verve-happs.html and read the story and watch the video.

If you want to find out more information about the ministry of Verve and what is taking place in the life of the church I encourage you to follow their Pastor Vince Antonucci’s blog.