Mark Triplett

Welcome 2010!

2010-01-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

2009 was a year of changes & turmoil. From our form of government changing from a republic to socialism to great changes in our economic standing, there was a lot to be concerned about. People losing jobs, families under more and more pressure, how can we survive?

Some thoughts come to mind; first, there is only one way we can than that's through our Lord. Next, another way we can deal with it is that we need to lose our fear of failure. We do not because we are afraid to wither fail or not be successful in the attempt. I for one, promise to try new things every week. Stepping out and not being afraid to fail. It's a new and frightening thought.

Watch out 2010, with the Lord in charge, it's gonna be an awesome year!!

Disgusted....

2009-06-26T18:13:00.000-07:00

On Friday, June 26, 2009 I saw the end of our nation as we know it.

In the midst of the biggest destruction of our liberty by the democratic controlled congress, ALL of the news networks including the "conservative" Fox News went wall to wall to cover the unfortunate deaths of 2 celebrities. While I mourn with the families of Ms. Fawcett and Mr. Jackson, the importance of what the democratic controlled congress did today far outweighed in importance of the 2 deaths.

I'm disgusted with the entire 525 members of congress. I will do everything I can to unseat every one of you who voted for this horrible piece of legislation. I will give my money and time to see that all of you will never serve another term again. I'm one person without a lot of money and I fear now a lot less, but I can call, email, blog and complain.

Praise God I know who my security rests even though I can't bring to words the heaviness of my heart and what today means to my children.

God have mercy on us, we certainly don't deserve it.

What's Your Favorite Day?

2008-08-29T07:04:00.000-07:00

I would like to know what your favorite day of the week is. Do you even have a favorite day?

Mine is easy, it’s Sunday! Monday thru Saturday is devoted to what a I call my “day job”, producing the weekly program. Friday is the one day that my wife and I have a day together while our boys are at school, Saturday is errands and shopping, But Sunday! It’s the day I get up the earliest and get to do the thing I love to do most, lead my team and direct the Sunday morning services in the Auditorium for the broadcast and on the big screens for the people in there.

I’ve done production on Sundays in churches for most of my adult life. And I look forward to it so much that I usually have trouble sleeping because I don’t want to be late. I guess Senior Pastors and Bible Study teachers have the same thoughts. They just can’t wait to get into God’s house, be with good friends, meet new friends and especially help plant the seeds for people to find Jesus!

So… what day is your favorite?

Nothing Like Keeping My Posts a Year Apart

2008-07-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a note I sent to my Video Team yesterday...
___________________

Hey folks, demonstrating that something can be read 2 ways, Bro. Chuck sent up an e-mail dated about a month ago of what I thought was a complaint of how slowly Bro. John's messages were posted on the website. I got ticked, wadded up the note and tossed it.

I saw Chuck just a few minutes ago and he said, "did you see the e-mail I sent to you?" He was excited because in the same paragraph I saw the complaint, he saw the complement. I only saw "encourage your production folks to hurry up", he only saw, "this ministry is important to us outside of Houston and its an encouragement to us who move away from home..."

Wow, humbling moment.

If it ever seems like I keep see only the trees instead of forest, please let me know. I often miss the positives because I deal with nothing but deadlines everyday.

Everyone of you who comes on Sundays, Wednesdays or when ever I forget to get a crew at the last minute is a blessing to me and this church. Everyone of you helps to spread the gospel of Jesus to those that we will never meet in this life.

Thanks so much for everything you do
_________________________

I need to keep from being so negative, Lord help me see the Forest AND the trees. And don't let me miss the small things tha you have for me.

It Really Has Been A Long Time.....

2007-06-12T05:03:00.000-07:00

I guess if you read the last post from March of 2006, I needed prayer. If you did thanks! I'm now the producer of a weekly television program for my church. It goes on the air August 6 of theis year.

I guess I now need prayer to have everything ready to go by that date.

In that past year, our church celebrated it's 40th anniversary, created a weekly TV program, hired, fired and then hired another to replace me in the position I had for the past 7 years.

More detales to come, but hopefully it won't take 15 months between posts.

Please Pray!!!

2006-03-25T17:17:00.000-08:00

Long time no post….

Life is getting complicated. I’m faced with some major decisions at church and I need to know how I can or cannot fit.

Our executive pastor basically took me to the principal’s office and pretty much told me to get with the program as planned or make a change. The what were discussing is not important. What I think about it is not important. What he thinks about it is not important. What does God think about it? That’s important.

The decision has been made for the church so whether or not I’m behind it does not matter. With what we discussed, I could follow. It looks exciting, right down my alley. Lots of work but its definitely in my area of expertise and I know I can do a good job. The question is if I want to go along for the ride. Am I willing to take my family with me? I’ve been down this road before and had my life totally thrown upside down by depending on a man to lead and not depending on God to lead. It almost cost me everything. What or who can I listen to?

Dear God, please give me the holy 2 x 4 between my eyes to let me see!

Life Changes…

2006-02-07T18:44:00.000-08:00

Why is it that every now and then our lives are brought to a fork in a road? We are faced with a major, life-changing choice. Either one will will bring about cataclysmic change to our life.

Either a job change, marriage, divorce, the birth of a child, the death or illness of a close family member all represent what I call forks.

Without going into too much detail, both my wife and I, especially my wife, feel like a man with out a country. We both have lots of responsibility without any authority. We have tasks and people to manage, duties to do, but we have absolutely no voice in the process. Even when we face problems that we can easily solve, we can’t make the change to make it work.

Where does God come into this type of situation?

Is He giving us an opportunity to express our dissatisfaction by spreading our wings and making a change or is he giving us an opportunity to learn to be content?

When in this equation do we feel ourselves being led away or being led to stay?

We’re in that place right now. Standing dead center in the fork. Two choices to make; learning to be content, staying, waiting OR is this a sign for us to leave what’s comfortable and going forth, rejecting passivity and seeing what’s out there?

Lots of questions and no answers….

Prayers are coveted.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

New Year’s Day is always a great day! It’s always a time for new beginnings. And when you work in a church, it’s a time for either interminably long and boring staff meetings or going to a staff meeting like I went to today.

The church where I work will be celebrating its 40th anniversary this summer. I got a call from our pastor’s administrative assistant yesterday morning and was informed that I was invited to a 2 day long meeting with other staff members and ministers.

Like most of us in the technical arts, we try to avoid long meetings like the plague. So with heavy hearts, both of us in leadership of the technical ministry drug ourselves to what looked like would be a long, mind-numbing meeting.

With a pleasant surprise, this meeting turned into a great time of discussion, spiritual discernment and an awesome time of prayer.

Our pastor was seeking the staff’s input on vision for the church and the New Year. It was not a time of throwing out suggestions of new programs, capitol improvements to the church campus and the like. We were asked to answer 7 questions about the church and ourselves. We were also asked to truly open ourselves up to what the Lord wanted in our own lives and what He wanted for our ministry.

When we meet again next week, we will get into the specifics of direction and suggesting changes and things for the church, but our pastor really wanted us to set the stage for our discussion and to really open our hearts to become one as a staff and no matter what ultimately becomes of the discussion and our “pet projects”, we will stand as one and support what we think the Lord has let us to do.

The moral of today is, “Don’t judge a book by its cover!”

God bless you and may all of you have a happy new year!

The Christmas Program Season

2005-12-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

As I write this, my church, as in the one that I work at, is preparing to do our annual Christmas Festival. As a technical type, I ask, "Why do we do this every year?"

It's 3 or 4 months of preparation, followed by 2 weeks of total chaos followed by a week of not seeing your family and seeing my volunteer team and co-workers too much.

Is the price of sacrifice away from our loved ones at this time of year too much?

I've worked Pageants big and small for almost 20 years now and the older I get, the more I feel that it's a waste of time, effort and resources. Every year, our Christmas Tree is late going up and even though we promised our boys last year, lights are still not up on the house. Our program is one week later this year and we have next to no shopping done and we'll try to jam everything into 3 or 4 days next week.

My wife considers this time of year a 4 letter word and I'm starting to agree with her.

It starts bad because her birthday is on the 23rd of November. Last year, Thanksgiving fell on the 23rd and this year, it was the Wednesday before. It goes downhill from there. She's in the dental lab business and it always seems that people who have had 11 months to have their teeth fixed, pick the first 2 weeks of December to get the work done.

For 11 months, she'll maybe work late 2 or 3 days in that entire period, but in December, She's late almost every night, which of course, add to our collective "good" mood.

Sorry, not too many uplifting comments tonight, but all will be better on Monday! The program is over Sunday night!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

2005-11-25T08:46:00.000-08:00

What could be so offensive about these two words?

Words to most folks are just that, words.

To me, words mean things. Even parts of words. Take for example, the first five letters of Christmas. Could it be that these first five letters are so offensive that they must be deleted from all public discussion?

This time of year Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. We sing traditional songs of His birth, we read of His birth in the Bible, we create dramatic productions and motion pictures of his birth, life, death and resurrection. We celebrate His life by erecting Christmas trees, we celebrate His position as the Light of the World by putting up Christmas lights around our homes. We exchange gifts because we remember His gift of salvation through His Son's shedding of innocent blood in exchange for our having to pay the penalty for our sins.

It's not holiday songs, holiday trees, holiday lights or holiday gifts, it's CHRISTMAS!http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Remember this time of year for what it truly means!

Here's a couple of links that talk about the War on Christmas...
A Post from Darleen Click:
http://www.darleenclick.com/weblog/archives/2005/11/us_post_office.html

And a good book from John Gibson:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595230165/002-1050678-4889640?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance

My First Post & Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-24T19:38:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been threatening to do this "blog" thing for a couple of months now and I've finally run out of excuses to do it.

Hopefully my friends might find my semi-regular postings a better explanation on things in my life.

2005 has been a pivotal year in my and my family's journey in this life. This last March, my father got an unexplained ecoli infection and faced 3 really traumatic surgeries. Both of my sons and growing and my wife and I are facing our oldest very quickly approaching the teen years. My wife and I have never been closer and the Lord is showing me how to be a better man.

Please check in regularly and we'll go through this together!