kylegilbert

This is a photo I took of my son at a birthday party this past weekend.  I sure do love this little monkey!

For a couple of months, we’ve been operating with four workstations in our office. Two spots are for our financial team, and the other two are for our communications team (an interesting combo for sure). Together, we called ourselves the “Office of Awesome.”

This week, our office got even a little more awesome. We turned the workstations around to face the walls and opened everything up in the middle.

For over a decade now, I’ve managed my finances through an envelope system (dividing income into budgeted spending categories), and I’ve found it to be very helpful – keeping us out of debt, helping us to spend within our income, and helping Keri and I not fight about money.  Unfortunately, there aren’t many solutions out there that make it easy to do while also using credit and debit cards (we pay off the balance each month).  I started out using a spreadsheet, but switched to software about eight years ago.  It worked great at the time, but it still required several hours of work each week to stay current.

A couple of months ago, I started searching for a replacement to my out-of-date software.  I began with Quicken and a few others, but it was challenging to get them to really use an envelope system.

Then, about three weeks ago, I stumbled upon a system called Mvelopes that is absolutely terrific.

• It’s web-based, so I don’t have to worry about crashes or updates.
• It’s very easy to set up and use.
• It connects to my bank accounts and saves me the effort of having to manually enter expenditures.

It’s not cheap, but there’s a free trial.  For the time this is saving me each week, it’s worth the money.

If you have challenges keeping up with your money and sticking to a budget, you really should give this a try.

Here are some videos that show you how it works.

And, lastly, before you ask:  No, I’m not getting any kind of kickback for this post.    I’m just putting this on here with the hope that it will be a useful resource for others like it has been for me.

This is a hilarious video, and it reminded me to share the news that a great online Scripture resource called YouVersion has recently been redesigned and is now out of beta. If you haven’t seen it already, you really need to check it out. (If you’ve been under a rock, they also have great free applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry.)

I’ve had a pretty bad attitude most of the day, and I think it had something to do with my shoes.  You see, I tried to wear flip flops today, and as I’ve noted before, I’ve got some issues with my feet.  I love the openness, but the strap between my toes drove me nuts all day (not to mention all the flopping, and almost having them fall off on the stairs).  I’m not sure I’m going to make it.

Josh tells me that I’ve got to give them a week.  We’ll see.

Josh Whitehead asked me to write a post for his blog today. If you’re interested in specific details of the iCampus, you can can check that out here.

If you’ve never read any articles or books by Andy Stanley, you’re really missing out.  When it comes to communicating leadership principles, the guy is a genius.  To see what I’m talking about, just read this short quote from an article in Leadership Magazine.  It’s brilliant.

It took me several years to figure this out. As a young leader I was tormented by the assumption that I should know what to do in every situation. If I were a good leader, I would reason, I would know exactly what to do. After all, I am the leader! Leaders are supposed to be able to stand up at any given moment and give direction with absolute certainty. Or so I thought.

Time and experience have taught me differently. There will be very few occasions when you are absolutely certain about anything. You will consistently be called upon to make decisions with limited information. That being the case, your goal should not be to eliminate uncertainty. Instead, you must develop the art of being clear in the face of uncertainty. The art of clarity involves giving explicit and precise direction in spite of limited information and unpredictable outcomes.

My three-year-old daughter has an amazing imagination.  She demonstrates it in different ways, but for several months now, she’s been telling us about her imaginary friends.  The best part is that the stories are incredibly detailed – what they’re doing, their likes and dislikes, and what they want to be when they grow up.

A few days ago, she and Keri were talking about Yuki (that’s one of her imaginary friends – most of the time, the stories are about Ollie and Yuki, but there are others too).  My daughter told Keri that Yuki “worships other gods.”  Keri used it as an opportunity to talk to her about God’s commandment that we not worship false Gods.

Today, my daughter told Keri that she talked to Yuki about it:

“I told Yuki about the real God… that he shouldn’t worship gods that can’t see or hear.  So now he knows.

So Jesus changed his heart, and now he worships the real God.  Isn’t that great?!”

So when Keri called me on the phone, she said, “I think Yuki got saved today.”

As funny as this is, it’s interesting to see the way that our daughter is thinking through and applying the stories we tell her.  This seems to be a combination of her Bible story book about Elijah and the priests of Baal, the story of Zacchaeus and his heart transformation, and the stories I’ve told her about people at church whose hearts have been changed by God.

I just read a great article about church innovation.  It was a Q & A with Bobby Gruenewald at LifeChurch.tv.  I found two comments in particular to be very interesting, and I wanted to share them here:

Some are saying that online social networking and virtual sites… may actually be harming genuine community.  What do you think?

A lot of people are predicting what consequences online community is going to have.  But that happens with every new technology.  When the telephone was new in the early 20th century, there were bold predictions that it would negatively impact how people interact.  But very few of those predictions came true.

With technology and culture changing so rapidly, how can a church keep pace?

Some organizations take three to five years to change, so to keep pace they would have to predict what things will look like years from now and begin making adjustments now.  That’s really inefficient.  The alternative is to be an adaptive organization and nimble enough to adjust within a few months to what’s actually happening.

If you’re a parent or ever plan to be a parent, what is your biggest dream for your kids? What aspiration is at the top when you consider their futures? Does it involve their ability in sports or academics? Is it related to their talents or social skills? Do you hope they will make a lot of money? Is it something based on your own failings?

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve come to a very strong personal conclusion. I’ve made plenty of mistakes as a parent, but there are two things about which I want my kids to be perfectly certain:

1. More than anything else, I want them to live for the glory of God – fully committed to Jesus Christ.
2. No matter what, I love them and treasure them with all of my heart.

You see, when it comes to these two things, I don’t want my kids to have to guess.

So to make that happen, here are a few items that I’m implementing:

• Mentioning these things in passing as we hang out and play together.
• Teaching the stories of Scripture to my kids and helping them to enjoy the Bible.
• Reinforcing these things when we pray together.
• Talking about these things in more detail when I can tell that their hearts are open and attentive.