(Artwork from kshs.org)

When I was a kid there was no such thing as a “home improvement store.” Well, I guess there really was but it wasn’t called that. We called them hardware stores.

Hardware stores were rarely a shopping destination for women. Men went to hardware stores to buy a part or a tool to fix something that was broke. Women weren’t comfortable in hardware stores. They were crowded, junky, and dusty. Women didn’t know the lingo. They didn’t know the difference between a thingamajig and a hickeydoodle. They didn’t want to walk down the dirty aisles where their dress might brush up against a greasy whatchamacallit and be ruined.

Hardware stores were like barber shops, i.e., for men only, and home improvement in those days was called “fixing what’s broke.”

Today, thanks to Lowe’s, Home Depot, and HGTV, home improvement stores are in almost every city. It’s not unusual at all to see women strolling through Lowe’s with a shopping cart selecting paint colors, carpets, ceiling fans, or commodes.

The home improvement phenomenon has become a part of our American culture. And why not? If you own a home, it makes sense to improve it. The value of the home increases when you paint, reroof, replace, and repair your living quarters. These changes not only increase the home’s value, but they also make the home more enjoyable and pleasing.

However, if some people treated their homes like they treat themselves, they would live in deteriorating shacks.

Why do I say that? Because we tend to resist change. Many people don’t like to change. They like their comfortable routines not realizing that routine sometimes leads to a rut which leads to rot.

But change is necessary if we are to improve our lives. If it makes sense to increase the value and quality of life by improving your home, doesn’t it make sense that improving your life will increase the value and quality of your life?

I have two friends who recently stopped smoking. Not only has this one thing saved them from spending about ten dollars a day on cigarettes, but they have also increased the quality of their lives and likely extended the length of their lives.

One change has made a lot of difference in their lives.

Why, then, do we sometimes refuse to improve ourselves? Why don’t we jump at the chance to increase or own value and self-worth?

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is an author and professor at Harvard Business School. She cites ten reasons why people resist change.

1. Loss of control – Change may take things out of your hands.
2. Fear of uncertainty – People prefer to remain mired in misery than head to an unknown.
3. Surprises – Surprise birthday parties are fun. Sudden changes are not.
4. Change of routine – We are creatures of habit.
5. Loss of face – Change is an admission that what you were doing before wasn’t good. Some folks can’t face that.
6. Concerns about competence – Can I do it? Can I handle this new thing? Will I be embarrassed if I cannot convert to the new system?
7. More work – Change sometimes creates more work.
8. Ripple effects – Change creates ripples and reaches into other areas of our lives and the lives of others. We fear what effect the ripples might have.
9. Ghosts from the past – Change sometimes brings up failed efforts from previous attempts or stories of others who tried and failed.
10. Pain – Change can be painful whether it’s sore muscles from a new exercise routine or the loss of a job because you were replaced at work by a robot.

While these may be real fears and reasons why change is not welcome, it is also a real truth that the things you are afraid to change may not be adding value to your life or improving it in any way.

If you’re spending $60,000 dollars a year but you only make $50,000 a year, you are digging a deep hole of debt.

If you’re smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, you’re shortening your life, sacrificing its quality, and spending about $300 a month on cancer sticks.

If you’re the average American watching 4.5 hours of television every day, you’re spending a lot of time on stuff that brings little or no value to your life.

Change may be difficult but not to change may be more difficult.

You can choose to improve your life like you choose to improve your home or you can choose to ignore the things that need improving and live in a deteriorating shack.

It’s your choice. To change or not to change – that is the question.

You can read more about changing your perspective – and your life – in my two FREE eBooks: Quest for a New Perspective and 2 Big Questions, 1 Amazing Life!

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(photo from searchenginepeople.com)

In the late 1930′s, General Motors board chairman Alfred Sloan led a discussion and vote on a new and exciting idea. The room became electric with enthusiasm. “We’ll make a lot of money,” they said. “We’ll bury the competition,” a board member said. “We should implement this as soon as possible,” another said.

When Sloan saw that the vote was unanimous, he announced that he was tabling the motion until the next month’s meeting. “I don’t like what’s happening to our thinking,” he said.

“We’re getting locked into looking at this idea in just one way and this is a dangerous way to make decisions,” Sloan told the board. “I want each of you to spend the next month studying this proposal from a different perspective.”

When the board met the next month, the proposal was discussed again. It was voted down.

Sometimes we easily fall in line with the majority. If the group is moving left, we tend to move left. If the group is going up, we will follow the group up. Conformity isn’t always a good thing.

There are benefits to conforming, however. As a member of a society that drives a car regularly, I’m grateful that we conform to traffic rules and laws. I’m glad everyone drives on the right side of the road. I’m glad everyone (usually) obeys traffic lights.

Lots of our behaviors conform to the people around us. We must pronounce words a certain way in order to communicate with others. We stand in a check-out line in an orderly fashion at a store. We bus our own tables after we’ve eaten at a fast-food restaurant.

Centuries ago, St. Augustine was confused. In Milan, he observed the Sabbath on Saturday. When he visited Rome, he discovered that the Romans observed the Sabbath on Sunday. Augustine asked his mentor, Bishop Ambrose, for advice. Ambrose told him, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

Conforming to society can be a good thing, but we can choose to be different in areas of our life when the direction of the group is not so wise.

In church world, where I live, churches meet in many different places. Some churches meet in homes, others meet in restaurants, some rent school buildings, some churches build frugal metal buildings, and other churches meet in ornate palaces.

But it’s not about where you meet, it’s about why you meet.

When it comes to being different you need to ask yourself, “Why?” Why do you desire to be different? Don’t be different just to be different or to draw attention to yourself. Be different to make a difference.

Being different can be as simple as drinking fair trade coffee to do your small part in the cause of global work equality or it can be as radical as selling all of your belongings and moving to another country to work with the poor.

Being different means not conforming and doing things just because everyone else does it. Being different means following your heart, your passions, and your convictions so that you can lead a happy, fruitful, and productive life regardless of the majority’s opinion.

Being different can mean:

• not trying to keep up with the Joneses.
• living on 80% of your income instead of 110%.
• limiting the amount of clothes in your closet. (See Project 333)
• not buying a new car every three years.
• taking a week of vacation to work on a mission.
• maintaining moral, ethical, and sexual purity. (Unfortunately, this is becoming rare.)

Before you conform to the crowd, ask yourself, “Why?” Saying “Yes!” just because everyone else is saying yes is not a good reason.

For more on this topic, check out: What’s Different About Me? and Why Should I Be Different? and my eBook Quest for a New Perspective. It’s a free download!

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Fabretto envisions a prosperous Nicaragua where all children and adolescents have meaningful opportunities to grow and learn, in communities that offer access to quality education, so that they may reach their full potential. For more than 50 years, Fabretto has built relationships within the Nicaraguan urban and rural communities served in order to provide hope and a better future to the children and youth in need. Today, the organization serves more than 12,500 children and youth through seven Fabretto-owned centers and 50-plus rural schools.

Nicaragua, a country of nearly 6 million people, is juxtaposed between beautifully inspiring scenery of volcanoes, pristine lakes, and beaches with the harsh reality of extreme poverty that tarnishes the country’s cities, towns and villages and burdens its people with difficulties unconceivable in the developed world.

Unfortunately, Nicaragua offers little in the way of a social safety net for the disadvantaged. Today, Fabretto has become a vital partner in providing an ever growing number of Nicaraguans with a more just and dignified life, offering new opportunities and new hopes to those in greatest need, through programs in education, health, food security, and nutrition.

Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country on the continent, suffering from some of the worst poverty conditions in the Western Hemisphere. Official unemployment rates are reported at 9%, however, underemployment is rampant with over 60% of the work force laboring in the informal sector, where they receive minimal pay and no social benefits.

Education in the country is also deficient with roughly 43% of those enrolled in primary school making it to the 6th grade according to UNICEF. Of the students who manage to finish primary school (6th grade), only a third will graduate from high school. In the rural areas, that number drops significantly. In many rural communities, less than ten percent of young people finish high school.

Over 70% of Nicaraguans are trapped in poverty, with roughly 48% living on $1.25 a day and another 27% on $2.00 a day, crippling the ability of a typical family of four to provide even half of the basic food, hygiene products, and educational supplies necessary to subsist and provide a healthy livelihood for their children. As a result, 1 out of every 4 children in Nicaragua suffers from some form of malnutrition affecting not only their physical abilities but their learning capacity as well (in some rural areas that number is 2 out of every 4).

Under these conditions, Nicaraguans are in a constant uphill battle to subsist and live a more dignified life. Fabretto is dedicated unconditionally to equipping and aiding children, adolescents and families with the necessary tools to break the cycle of poverty so that they may improve their lives, their communities and their country.

Mission 227 has made a contribution to Fabretto. I would encourage you to consider doing the same.

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Note: The content of this post was taken largely from the Fabretto website. I made a few edits.

Google Reader shuts down July 1

In case you don’t already know, Google is shutting down Google Reader on July 1. If you read Quest for a New Perspective on Google Reader, you’ll need to use another source. (If you don’t know what a RSS feed is and you’ve never heard of Google Reader, you probably don’t need to read this.)

The easiest thing to do is subscribe in the box on the right side to receive posts via email. You’ll also receive my series of emails titled 5 Ways to be a World Changer.

After that, you just get two emails a week from me. I rarely pester subscribers with email and I absolutely do NOT share this list.

If you’d like to use a Reader-type program, I’ve been using feedly.com. It will automatically transfer the current sites you’ve subscribed to on Google Reader. I like it because it seems a lot cleaner and easier to read. And, of course, it’s free.

I don’t want to lose readers just because Google decided Reader wasn’t profitable. I need you to read Q4NP and share it with your friends!

Thank you!!

As Stephen King approached the top of the hill, all of a sudden the Dodge van appeared riding down the shoulder of the road headed straight at him.

After flying 14 feet in the air and landing in a ditch, King had an “epiphany.” As he lay there broken and bleeding with “his lap on sideways” – almost dying – he realized “you can’t take it with you.” He had credit cards in his wallet but they could do nothing for him. He was a multi-millionaire but his money meant nothing at that point. “I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life’s simple truths. We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we’re still just as broke.”

King wrote later that those moments in a ditch were an awakening of sorts. He realized how little money meant. He realized that he could tell time just as good with a Timex. He didn’t need a Rolex. He realized that he needed to become more of a giver in this life and not just a consumer. He realized that giving would allow him to live on even after he dies.

He realized how blessed we are to live in a wealthy nation. We are rich but don’t know it. In the same article where he wrote about his accident, King describes a family enjoying an outdoor barbecue. You know the scene. Dad is standing over a grill full of meat. Mom is setting the table with potato salad, cole slaw, and chocolate cake. The kids are playing on a beautiful green lawn waiting for dad to yell, “Come and get it!”

Now imagine hungry people from around the world standing at the fence silently watching. The family at the picnic is America and those hungry people on the other side of the fence are much of the rest of the world.

King continued to make his point. “This is how many people around the world see us. It’s not a pretty picture. But we have the power to make a difference.”

I pray that you or I don’t have to live through what Stephen King experienced to learn the value of life and giving. Take it from a guy who has lived the dream of being a best-selling, multi-millionaire author. You can’t take your money and your stuff with you. But you can make a difference with it while you’re here – and even after you’re gone.

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John Wesley (from wikipedia.org)

As a young man, John Wesley calculated that 28 pounds a year would care for his own personal needs. Since prices remained basically the same, he was able to keep at that level of expenditure throughout his lifetime.

When Wesley first made that decision, his income was 30 pounds a year. In later years sales from his books would often earn him 1400 pounds a year, but he still lived on 28 pounds and gave the rest away.

Wesley was a single man for most of his life and had no children so he did not deal with the financial challenges of raising a family. But the idea is good. What if you determined a base family budget, adjusting for children and inflation, and lived on that amount? And what if any additional income was given away?

Richard J. Foster proposes this and other ways of thinking in his classic book, Freedom of Simplicity.

What if a family decides on a lean, trim, and realistic budget that provides for retirement, education, and other concerns and then gives any excess to the Church or other worthy causes?

What if a husband and wife discipline themselves to live on one income and give away the second one? What if a couple lived on one salary and supported a missionary family with the other salary? What would happen to the worldwide missionary enterprise if each Christian couple gave their second salary to missions?

What if you evaluated your income and determined ways to simplify your life and budget so that you can live on half of your salary? What if you gave away the other half of your income?

What if you put a lump-sum of money in an investment product, i.e., stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, etc. and regularly gave the earnings to a worthy cause? What if you flipped a car or a house for the purposes of giving away the proceeds instead of keeping the profit for yourself?

What if you had another source of income like a part-time job at night or weekends or a home-based business that went straight to charity?

We often think that the ministry of money is for the wealthy. But it is not. No doubt large donations are welcome and often needed by worthy organizations but ministries and organizations are supported largely by ordinary people with limited budgets.

The requirement to be a generous giver isn’t a large inheritance, a successful business, an informative stock tip, or a lucky lottery ticket.

The requirement to be a generous giver isn’t great resources, but a humble willingness to be a blessing.

What if?

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In her classic book, Living The Simple Life, Elaine St. James illustrates how a bookkeeper lives happily in a 400 square foot cabin with no running water or electricity in rural Alaska. Her water supply and refrigerator is a mountain creek that runs by her cabin.

St. James also cites how Barbra Streisand simplified her life by selling five of her seven houses and her Tiffany lamp collection.

Simplifying is different for everyone. Simply put (pun intended), simplifying is about taking control of your life. It involves taking an inventory of the time wasters of life and taking that time back. Simplifying examines things like how you spend your money, how many articles of clothing you have, where you live, how you earn a living, how many toys the kids have, etc.

Simplifying your life usually involves small changes that some people may never notice. Sure, there are dramatic, sweeping changes that you can do to simplify your life like selling your house and moving into a trailer in the woods. But most of the time it’s the small decisions about how you can improve your everyday life that lead to a healthy, happy, and simple life.

Simplifying can mean getting rid of unnecessary stuff or it can involve adding things to your life. In the past couple of months, I’ve made some small changes that have resulted in simplifying our lives.

One change required subtraction. The other change involved addition.

I’d been tempted to cancel our home telephone for a long time. Since we both have cellphones we rarely used it. Telemarketers used it to annoy us throughout the day. A few family members and friends called us on that number but it was easy to tell them to call us on our cellphones. Canceling that service saved us $50 a month.

The other change is something that I told myself that I would never do. I hired a lawn service. With the $50 saved and some other monthly bills that were lowered lately, I decided to use that money to have someone else do the basics in the yard every other week, i.e., mow, edge, and blow.

If you’re a long time reader, you may recall my post a couple of years ago about simplifying the yard. Our yard is not that big and I’m not lazy. But it does require a good bit of time to maintain. Considering that the only day Beth and I have off together is Saturday and considering that I often have to work a little on Saturday mornings, it doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to deal with yard work.

The lawn service takes care of the basic needs now which allows me time to do the extra things in the yard like trim hedges, fix sprinklers, plant flowers, etc. In the past, it’s been hard to get to the extra things because I had to do the basic stuff first.

It’s an experiment at this point. Ask me in a few months how it’s working out. I can tell you already that it brings peace of mind when I realize that I don’t have to devote an entire Saturday afternoon to the yard. I can spend an hour or two here and there to do the “extras” knowing that the basic chores are done.

For some people, this move doesn’t simplify. It complicates. Adding a lawn service to an already tight budget may bring stress. In this case, I took money that had formerly been designated to other monthly bills and used it to give myself more time to do other things.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll see a “Yard of the Month” sign in my lawn any time soon because you won’t! But it does mean that I’ve put more time back in my life that was formerly devoted to yard work. I’m excited about that.

Have you examined your life lately? Have you evaluated your budget? Your schedule? Your health? Where can you make positive changes in your life? Changes that will simplify and changes that will lead to a healthy, happy, and simple life?

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Two ladies in the jungles of Madagascar need help. Leoni and Bev have spent more than a decade of their lives furiously working to give the people on this island nation a Bible in their own language.

Madagascar sits off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. It is a country of around 22 million people. Most of the people of Madagascar practice animistic worship.

Leoni and Bev are working hard to get the story of God’s love in the hands of these people in their own languages.

Like so many other countries in this part of the world, numerous languages are spoken. In Madagascar, there are currently ten different translation efforts underway and six more are waiting to be launched.

Imagine not having a Bible in your own language. Imagine not having a written source of God’s encouragement and wisdom. Imagine not having the ability to seek out the deeper things of God and his grace toward us.

This is what Leoni and Bev are doing. As missionaries with Wycliffe, they are working hard to learn the languages in Madagascar and then relay the message of God’s love in a language they can understand.

Mission 227 is making a contribution to this work in Madagascar. Maybe you can too.

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It’s spring which means that it’s wedding season. As a pastor, this is the time of year when I perform a lot of wedding ceremonies. I have several scheduled over the next two months.

Prior to each wedding, I spend ample time with each couple to discuss, not just the wedding itself, but marriage. What’s interesting is that a lot of the counsel that I give today was shared with Beth and me 30 years ago. I figure that it’s worked well for us – it will work well for others.

You may be wondering, “Gene, I feel like you’re going off topic. I thought this website was about being different to make a difference? I thought you wrote about faith matters, simple living, and global needs?”

Here’s my answer. If you’re married or in a deep relationship and hoping to soon be married, the greatest thing you can do with your spouse is have a successful marriage. When you have an outstanding relationship with each other, it makes life simpler. When you ground your marriage spiritually, it deepens your faith. When you’re partnering together for good, you make a difference across the street and across the globe.

How does having a great marriage simplify your life? Compare two couples that you know. One couple with a solid marriage and another couple who bicker, complain, fight, and constantly have drama. Which couple lives a simpler life? The ones who don’t have constant drama.

Many times we can strengthen our marriages by correcting some common mistakes. Do you make these marriage mistakes?

• Failing to have open, honest, and genuine communication. Communication is the key to your marriage. I believe that if you can communicate with each other, you can handle any challenge that will come your way whether it’s a financial problem, a family issue, a sexual hangup, or any other potential conflict. Having real, authentic communication is foundational to a successful marriage.
• Failing to understand each others rhythms. This was huge in the early days of our marriage. I like to stay up late. Beth does not. She likes to get up early. I get up early, but I don’t want to talk until about 8 AM. In the early days, I might talk about money at 10:00 at night. Beth was not engaged which would sometimes lead to frustration. Learning the best times to communicate is essential. Beth knows I’m not a morning person. I know she’s not a night owl. We know the best times to talk.
• Failing to understand each others personalities. If you’re an extrovert, don’t expect your introverted spouse to enjoy extroverted things. If you like competition, don’t expect your non-competitive spouse to compete with you. If you are unorganized, expect your organized spouse’s reply to your messy closet.
• Failing to agree on financial issues. Don’t let money rob the joy from your marriage – especially debt. Learn the 10/10/80 Plan. Give 10%. Save 10%. Live on 80%.
• Failing to share in the household responsibilities. Don’t expect your spouse to do everything around the house. Help each other. Do your agreed upon duties. Bear each other’s burdens. I confess that I haven’t done well in this department over much of our marriage. But I’m pretty sure Beth would tell you that I’m better. When I look back on our early years of marriage, I’m ashamed at how little I did to help her. God bless her. I have an incredible – and patient – wife!
• Failing to grow together spiritually. There is no doubt in my mind that Beth and I have been happily married for 30 years mainly because we are one spiritually. We believe the same things. We strive for spiritual growth. We work toward being effective servants of God (not perfect, effective). We stretch each other spiritually. We monitor each others spiritual journey. We love God more than we love each other.

in 1983, our pastor gave us the illustration of what I call the “love triangle.” Usually that term is a negative, but in this case it’s a positive. I share this with every couple in premarital counseling.

At the top of the love triangle is God. At each corner is the couple. If one spouse is growing closer to God but the other spouse is not, they do not grow much closer together as a couple. But when both couples are growing together spiritually, they also grow closer to each other as they grow closer to God.

This was a nice theory in 1983. I can tell you today that it is not a theory but it is truth. The love that Beth and I have for each other has multiplied 100 fold over the years. No doubt, it is because we have determined to have a Christ-centered marriage.

If you are making any of these marriage mistakes, I hope you can correct them and improve your marriage. Believe me, it will help make your marriage less stressful, more joyful, and simpler.

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I guess the smartphone gods are out to get me. If you would believe in such a thing.

After my last post, Social Media Overload: Don’t Let Your Smartphone Rule Your Life, my iPhone 4S decided to seek revenge. It wasn’t holding a charge. It went from 100% to 1% overnight while I was sleeping.

Then it wouldn’t power up at all – even when it was plugged in. When it did eventually power up, it quickly drained down again – even when it was plugged in.

I’ll spare you the details, but trust me, it was acting weird. When I walked into the Apple store bright and early Monday morning I asked the guy standing behind the Genius Bar, “Y’all got anything for a demon-possessed phone?” (If you’ve never been in an Apple store, the Genius Bar is in the back of the store complete with bar stools where you step up to the bar for help.)

He looked at me like I was crazy.

I said, “Is there an app for that?”

He thought about it and replied, “Do you have a Bible app on there?”

I learned a few things about smartphones Monday. That’s the point of this post. I’ll say that the kids at the Apple store (yes, kids!) were nothing but nice and accommodating and eventually I got a brand new iPhone 4S to replace my demonic phone. The two guys that helped me had never seen a phone do what mine was doing.

Here’s what I learned when my smartphone ruined my day:

• Have a backup calendar. All of my appointments vanished. Thank goodness I also use an old-fashioned calendar.
• Sync your phone often. I hadn’t synced mine since November.
• The cloud doesn’t store everything. I use Apple’s iCloud feature but there were still some things missing on my new phone.
• If you have anything on your phone you don’t want people to see, be careful. I have nothing to hide on my phone but I did notice how the guys saw what apps I had and looked in my photo stream as they were helping me. That could be humiliating if you think your stuff is for your eyes only.
• Nothing’s perfect. As amazing as these little computers are, they are still electrical gadgets that get bugs in them. And you never know when they’re going to peter out on you.
• Enjoy the peace that comes without your smartphone. This may be the most difficult task of all.

I know these are first-world problems. But they are problems nonetheless. We I have gotten really dependent on these dang things and since we recently cancelled our land line to save $50 per month, I depend on my phone now more than ever.

In my last post, I encouraged an occasional digital fast. I took one over the weekend thanks to my demon-possessed phone. Next time, I’d rather fast on my terms.

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