We celebrated Stacey's birthday this week. She had a good birthday. We ate some good food, spent most of the day together...spending time with me always guarantees a good day....and she got to do some clothes shopping.
This past week I gave my first professional invocation at a special event. I was invited to a banquet by one of the churches ministry partners. I channeled 28 years of being a pastor's son and flipped the preacher-pray-in-public switch. In my studies through the years there are a couple of keys to the public prayer:
1. Use words like everyone, community, all, children, world and together.
2. Bless as many people as possible.
3. Talk about the greatness of the past, and ask for greatness in the future.
4. Use terms like gracious, gentle, kind, love, beautiful, lovely and loving.
5. Avoid saying words that make people stop and process like "you are a swell God" or "Lord you are really cool"
6. Avoid corporate buzzwords such as "God we thank you for returning on our investment everytime!" or "God your brand is unmatched!"
7. Always acknowledge the current natural disaster.
8. Go long enough to sound like you're a professional but don't put anybody to sleep.
9. Remember to bless the food, that's the real reason you're there.
10. Most importantly remember to bless the organization. If you don't, you probably won't be asked back.
11. Oh yeah one more, make sure you turn off your ringtone, the last thing you need happening is for Jailhouse Rock to start playing in your prison ministry achievers banquet prayer.
Finally, as promised I've been scouring the news to find this weeks person who will receive the chip. If you remember from the previous post, the chip doesn't allow you to reproduce. This is a product our world needs as evidenced by:
Operation Wedding
Classy.
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