Just about every year that I have been in ministry at least once, I will take some time to review the past year. Yesterday and today I updated my calendars (it’s back-to-school time you know), and in order to do this you have to look back over the past year. I look for events that need to be repeated (added to the current calendar) and evaluate events that don’t need to make it to this year.

While I did not intentionally set this pattern of yearly evaluation, I have found it to be very helpful. If you don’t have a time to step back (out of the system) and ask the hard questions, you will continue to do what you know (what you are familiar with). Often times when you keep repeating something simply because it was on last years calendar, and don’t evaluate, it will eventually lose it effectiveness and freshness. Get your people to ask, “Why are we doing this again?”

Also, people’s schedules are so busy – so if you keep adding things but never take anything away, the calendar becomes crowed and people will just tire out. So, focus on what’s the best and let the good and the bad go to wherever deleted items go in cyberspace.

So, for this year, I have decided to cut a couple of events (that to be honest probably won’t even be missed) and I am adding some new ideas and events to the calendar. I also think there is something to trying new things, simply to try something new. (By the way, it doesn’t always have to something “new”, it can be something old just repackaged.)

Anyway, the future is bright or at least clear of clutter.

The boys have started school again and H-G has her first day on Friday. Today Joshua could hardly contain his excitement as he got off the bus. A "toof" that has been holding on for weeks finally came out at lunch time. The school nurse gave him a little plastic tooth holder to put his tooth in, and it actually made it home. Tonight the Tooth Fairy has to score a Sacajawea dollar. I know there is one somewhere in the house.

From time to time I ask my kids random questions (i.e. favorite color, favorite princess, etc..) But tonight I got an answer to "what's your favorite animal" that I did not expect. Let me just say, there is no way one of those is going to be in our house as a pet.

Joshua and Caleb attended Clown Camp this week at the YMCA. My first thought when I heard about the idea as “you have to teach a six year how to clown around?” – it seems to come natural. But they loved this past week. And yes, there are some things that should only be done by “professionals” For example, they learned the traditional ‘slap.’ Joshua and Caleb were shown by a professional how to fake a slap and how to receive a fake slap. When the boys showed us, we laughed, but later when H-G tried to do what she saw her brothers do she actually slapped Kimberly in the face (which wasn’t funny). So they learned how to do the slap, stomp a foot, the elevator behind a sheet trick, and many other gags and tomfoolery.

I am currently studying Ecclesiastes in my quiet time and one of the things that has stood out in the first seven chapters is that we should enjoy life while you can, because you don’t know what the future holds. So this week there was much laughter in our home.

Ecclesiastes 7:14 “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.”