Big Is The New Small

I remember having a conversation with a pastor friend of mine who happens to be a female.  She was sharing the various unique things that women in the church struggle with and things they have confided in her.  One of the things that she shared made me have one of those “hmm” moments.  She stated that women that she’s talked w/ in various churches struggle with the fact that They Think Their Pastor’s Sexy!  Not to be confused with the popular country music song “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.” Not only do they think their Pastor’s Sexy, but they struggle with their mind and eyes wandering into inappropriate places.  It becomes a challenge because they will have these lustful thoughts as their pastor is speaking. The same can be true for men with a female pastors or lust in general.

Many pastors teach the concept out of the book Every Mans Battle called “Bouncing Your Eyes.” In other words, don’t keep your eyes focused on someone of the opposite sex for too long.   Keeping your eyes moving can keep you out of trouble.  This is something that is stereotypically geared towards guys… but what about the ladies?  There is a book called Every Womans Battle, although I have not heard anything about the content.

After my conversation with my female pastor friend, it’s probably fair for me to make the assumption that there are women sitting in pews and seats of churches all around the country that may be struggling with the inability to “Bounce Their Eyes;”  especially as their eyes are having to be fixated on their “Sexy Pastor,” who happens to be in front of them for relatively lengthy periods of time each and every week.  The fact that their pastor is a man of God, tells great stories and seems to be rather put together only increases the the sexiness factor.

The thoughts running through their head might be something like this: He’s Hot, I like that suit, Are those True Religion Jeans, He’s so spiritual, I wish my husband treated me like that, He’s so Handsome, Nice Hair, He dresses so fly, I can tell he’s been working out, He’s so considerate, I know he’s married but, I would, I wonder if I can share that with him, I bet he… After thinking these thoughts, their mind wanders for a moment or two or three or four and unfortunately, this cycle can repeat itself on a weekly basis.  The Bible says this: ”But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28  Ladies this passage applies to you as well, so please Stop Lusting After Your Pastor!

God created us with a unique ability to train and control our eyes, actions and mind.  Exercise your ability and gain control.

Do women get a pass? Is this a problem? How does play into the overall adultery scheme of things? Share your thoughts.

Mali Music – The Job Experience [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO] from Anthony Brooks on Vimeo.

Check out this music video by @MaliMusic, listen to the lyrics, embrace the story line and feel the cinematography. What do you think about this song and this video? What stood out to you, what moved you? Share your thoughts!

As we go about our busy days, filled with many things, choices, options, decisions and distractions; A simple question we must ask ourselves is “What’s The Purpose?”

If the answer to that question is lame, selfish, you find yourself making up an answer or you can’t come up with an answer at all, it may be time to do something different and change directions.

What’s The Purpose?

• What’s The Purpose Of The Relationship?
• What’s The Purpose Of The Sinful Behavior?
• What’s The Purpose Of Spending More Time At Work Than With Your Family?
• What’s The Purpose Of A Promotion at Work That Constitutes A Demotion Of Family?
• What’s The Purpose Of Your Different Personalities Depending On Your Audience?
• What’s The Purpose Of Talking About What You Want To Do, Instead Of Doing It?
• What’s The Purpose In Having Another Drink?
• What’s The Purpose In Always Pointing Out What Others Are Doing Wrong?
• What’s The Purpose Of What You Are Doing Today?
• What’s The Purpose Of What You Plan On Doing Tomorrow?
• What’s The Purpose? What’s The Purpose? What’s The Purpose?

I was planning on writing a blogpost about leadership this morning; however during my 3B-Time Bible, Books & Blogs God gave me something a little different.  It’s basically some sentences to help define who “I Am” and who “You Are.”

These sentences by themselves are quite simple, yet if the heart behind them is truly embraced, the results are profound.

These 7 Little “I Am’s” Will Change Your Life

• 1. I Am A Follower Of Christ
• 2. I Am Created For A Purpose
• 3. I Am More Than A Conqueror
• 4. I Am Held Accountable For My Actions
• 5. I Am Defined By What God Thinks Of Me and Not What People Think
• 6. I Am Called To Love and Make A Difference In The Lives Of Others
• 7. I Am A Work In Progress

Life is about Moments & Memories.  The things you do in today’s moments will be tomorrow’s memories.  It’s important that we embrace every single moment, understanding it’s true potential for lasting memories.  If you talk to anyone that has lost someone they loved, they will always talk about the Moments & Memories that they had with that person.  The same thing is true for the parents that look back and remember when their children were toddlers and next thing you know they are graduating from high school.

All of our moments are precious gifts from God.  Take some time today to look at your moments at work, with your kids, your friends and your spouse differently.  Realize that those special moments are special gifts that will produce special memories.  Think about your child’s 1st step, piano recital, gymnastics meet, when they made a decision to follow Christ, football games, basketball games, open house at school, trick or treating, college graduation, their wedding day and the list goes on and on.

No matter what you do, do it from the perspective of asking these two questions:  Are the things that I’m doing in today’s moments creating the right memories for tomorrow?  Am I finding the God moments even in the little things?

Below are a couple of videos from this past Saturday of my 8yo son Jayden running the ball, one is a little swing pass and the other is a trap.  I love coaching this group of boys and they have come a long way this season, as a matter of fact this past Saturday was the semi-finals and our 26-25 victory put us in the Championship Game this weekend.  Such great Moments & Memories.

After we win the Championship Game this coming weekend (prophetically speaking), I get the opportunity to drive 2.5 hours to officiate a wedding of a great couple with a really bright future.

“If you long for the perfect moment, the perfect moment will pass you by.”

Great Moments & Great Memories.

Share your thoughts on Moments & Memories.  You can also share your thoughts on my son’s two plays in the above videos.

It has been amazing how well the message of #ChurchDiversity has been received around the country and even around the world.  It’s been a true blessing to be able to speak at churches, colleges and conferences all around the country about Diversity in the Church.  It has been great to see churches from 24 states add their name to this list of churches of being committed to Church Diversity.

My buddy Chase put together a couple of Book Trailers that have received over 5,000 views.  I wanted to take the video illustration of the church diversity message in my book to the realm of spoken word, so I called upon two friends to make it happen. I asked my man David Bowden to write an original spoken word piece, not only did he write one, he penned the amazing piece in the above video titled “Diversity’s Symphony.”  My man Samson Varughese from Emanate Media brought David’s words to life in this video.

I love the the richness of this piece, I’ll definitely be using it when I’m speaking at some of my speaking engagements.  If you, your church is interested in having me speak to your organization, church or group about diversity or any other subject, please send Ashley Smith an e-mail ashley(at)bigisthenewsmall.com or fill out a contact form here. We are currently scheduling dates for the end of the summer and fall.

Share your thoughts on this video.  Feel free to share it with your friends as the goal is to continue to lay the heartbeat of this movement on the hearts of God’s sons and daughters.

Whenever I first began to wrestle with thought and calling to be a part of seeing the church more unified, I really wrestled with the idea of how the idea of Church Diversity can be a felt need for a broad affinity group.  In other words I didn’t want this message to simply be for ministry leaders, but rather congregants, Christians and non Christians at-large.

As I’ve began traveling around the country and sharing the message of unity in the church and the idea of embracing church diversity, it’s been great to see the genuine care and concern for change.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to share the message of loving all people and diversity at my good friend Shawn Lovejoy’s church, Mountain Lake Church. Mountain Lake is located just outside of Atlanta in Cumming Georgia (Forsyth County).  It was the first location that my new book Church Diversity : Sunday The Most Segregated Day Of The Week has been sold.  It was great to hear all of the stories of baggage, awkwardness and people genuinely wanting to be a part of changing the face and heart of the church.

My prayer has always been for God to let this message penetrate the hearts of His people.  My prayers have been answered over and over.  I was answered again this morning when I received an e-mail from someone who attended yesterdays service and bought a copy of my book.  I think this story is a powerful illustration of how quickly you can break down racial challenges with truth, openness, confrontation, biblical correction and love.

Here was the note that I received:

Scott WOW man! You were awesome yesterday at church. I just wanted to write you and tell you thanks for coming to MLC yesterday. Our church and me needed to hear that. Our community is a prominently white area, it has been for a while and with that comes alot of racism.

I am not going to lie you opened my eyes yesterday. I have grown up in forsyth county so I have been put in that “black people are bad” crap all my life. And I believed it. I have used some words that I don’t want to write but hearing you speak yesterday was intense!

God knew I needed to hear that. I was going to lay out of church yesterday but something told me I needed to go, and I did not know we were going to have a guest speaker. I will not look at race the same way after yesterday. My family went to northpoint mall after church and I found myself saying hey and holding the door for black people. Usually I don’t do that. I guess you can say I am not racist anymore. And I am not going to allow myself to get to that point again.

The people I hang out with that are, well lets just say they will see your book in my car and they will be invited to church. If they come or not is not up to me but I am inviting them.

Dude you changed my outlook on alot of things yesterday man, and I thank you for that. You are an awesome man of god and I pray that other people left MLC yesterday looking at their life and saying wow why am I this way? I need to change that about me. Again THANKS scott. Love you brother! God bless.

This was encouraging & inspiring to me…  Share Your Thoughts?

There is good amount of research out there that claims that Facebook is the cause affairs and divorce. According to the online research, divorces have been on the rise since social media sites like Facebook have become increasingly popular, research claims.

These social connection sites are being utilized more and more by unhappy individuals to seek out and have an affair and cheat on their partner. Facebook is being cited in almost 1 out of 5 online divorce petitions lawyers have claimed.

My personal thoughts are that facebook and social sites don’t cause affairs and divorces.  It’s the people using the sites that create the positive or negative affects of the sites based upon their behavior.  I think making Facebook the problem takes the responsibility out of the hands of the real culprit, those allowing Facebook to lead to sin.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not naive to think that Facebook isn’t a tool for adulteress behavior.  As a matter of fact I’ve had many people in my office that have used this tool for inappropriate behavior, resulting in devastation to their marriage.

The bottom line is Facebook and other online social sites are neutral.  These sites don’t cause anything, they are simply a tool.  Just like a gun doesn’t cause murders, the inappropriate use of the gun causes murders.  If the gun is used properly it’s a tool that saves lives, puts food on the table and used for sporting.  The same is true for Facebook, as it has many more positives than negatives.

Facebook Does Not Cause Affairs and Divorce… People Do!

Below are 7 methods to help married couples create positive barriers into their online presence:

• Universal passwords for e-mail and social media account log-ins
• Joint online accounts with joint photos
• Encourage utilization and sharing of one another’s account
• No Ex Policy (Ex boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, acquaintances… can’t be on your friends list)
• Ask the question, “Would my spouse be okay with this message, email or post?”
• Openness and honesty (Know your struggles)
• Delete your account

There are many different ways to minimize the risk and not allow a hint of inappropriate behavior to step into your marriage.  Guard your hearts or they will end up like the image in this post. {bro ken}

Share your thoughts experiences on whether or not Facebook causes affairs and divorce. What methods have you used that have proven to be effective?

Do you know what today is?  It’s our anniversary… Some of you may be too young to remember that old Tony Toni Tone song.  It’s stuck in my head right now because today is my anniversary. You can check out the old video here and the song will be stuck in your head as well.  I met the love of my life in 1996 and shortly after meeting, I told her that she was going to marry me one day. Some people called me cocky, I called it prophetic.

I thought I would share this video from a year ago today, where our two son’s surprised us by starting their own restaurant called Anniversary Cafe.  It’s the sweetest thing ever.

I love Jesus, LaKendria & my sons!

Happy Anniversary!

14 Tweetable Love Quotes

1. Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!  ~Thomas Hood
2. The few hours I spend with you are worth the thousand hours I spend without you!
3. Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.
4. You need trust to love, but first you need to love in order to trust.
5. Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
6. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.  ~Lao Tzu
7. I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.  ~Mother Teresa
8. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
9. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
10. The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
11. If you want to be loved, be lovable.
12. Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.
13. You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. ~Dr. Seuss
14. Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not. ~C.S. Lewis

Share your favorite love quotes or thoughts on any of the above!