Archives For Images

Behind the Food: Auntie Anne’s Pretzels

4.2.2011 — 2 Comments

If you’re a human being with working tastebuds and don’t happen to be allergic to chicken, chances are you’ve heard of and fallen in love with Chick-Fil-A. Often referred to as “Christian Chicken” by people like me who love the food AND love the story behind the chicken (ie, founder Truett Cathy’s personal faith in Jesus Christ), Chick-Fil-A is a favorite restaurant for our family.

Thanks to a recent Twitter-follow from user, “@annebelier” I uncovered another faith-based history of another frequented-by-our-family food-establishment that until now I had no idea about.

Turns out that @annebeiler is the account of Anne Beiler, founder of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels!

From The Beiler’s website:

To support Jonas’ [Anne’s husband] vision to help others, Anne bought a concession stand at a local farmers’ market in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. She sold everything from pizza to ice cream, but it was the hand-rolled soft pretzels that customers couldn’t get enough of. Because of the demand, Anne dropped the rest of the products and concentrated on perfecting the pretzel. Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels was born.

A little clicking-and-reading around revealed to me that the Beilers are Christians with a passion for loving God and loving people.

A glimpse of “their story”, also from their website:

The Beilers have always believed in leading by example, doing business with integrity, and giving back to the community. While at Auntie Anne’s, they demonstrated their business principles with the acronym, LIGHT: Lead by example; Invest in employees; Give freely; Honor God; and Treat all business contacts with integrity. These principles continue to LIGHT their way as they follow their passion to serve people, strengthen families, and build community.

I also discovered that Mrs. Beiler has written a book, “Twist of Faith”, published by Thomas Nelson back in 2008. I’ve already added it to my ever-growing wishlist and hope to eventually make time to learn more about the story of Anne Beiler, her love for Jesus and her love for pretzels. (Is it wrong to also hope that there is also a discount coupon in the back of the book somewhere?)

The book’s description:

Anne Smucker Beiler was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where she attended a two-room Amish school. Bred into the fabric of her close-knit family and into her soul were the elements of sincere Christian faith, an excellent work ethic, and an eye for good business opportunity. Anne’s journey is a remarkable story of failure and success. She persevered through a series of difficult personal struggles-including the tragic death of her second child, being betrayed by someone she trusted implicitly, and a terrible six-year depression-to become the leading female franchise owner in the United States. Anne is one of the few women who have founded national companies in America. What makes her story most extraordinary is her determination to help others by telling her full story-the good, the bad and the ugly.

Anne blogs at thebeilers.blogspot.com.

In General, Images, Linkage, Ministry
permalink

Minute To Win It Resources, downloadable Blueprints

3.24.2011

The show “Minute To Win It” debuted on NBC back in March, 2010. Since then, people from around the world have been introducing the quirky, fun, and satisfying 60-second games in their churches, youth groups, staff-retreats, conferences, and business-meetings as a way of livening up the crowd and creating a fun atmosphere.

In my previous church as a youth pastor, Minute To Win It games were a highlight of our youth group gatherings. I’ve even blogged some videos of our students doing some of the games.

I also started collecting resources from across the Internet to help others use the idea behind the show to introduce Minute To Win It in their own context.

I’ve also received lots of email requests for the BluePrint videos, sound track, graphics, timer, etc. And I’ve tried to share those resources with as many people as possible. Some of the sharing-methods have been less-than-adequate, so I’m trying again.

I recently uploaded everything I’ve created and found readily available on the Internet in regards to Minute To Win It. It is all available here for download. From a 60-second timer to the blueprint instruction videos, and even some graphics I have created – everything I have is available here for instant download. If you find any of these resources useful, I’d love for you to leave a comment letting me know where and how you are using them.

Special thanks to my buddy Shane for helping me for the last year to manage this growing list of resources that I’ve been continuing to amass.

UPDATE (September 23, 2011) | Currently, the ONLY way to download these blueprints and other resources for Minute To Win It is to wait for the bandwidth from box.net to reset each month. If you have ideas/suggestions on how I could host these files for FREE elsewhere without the restrictions we’re getting from box.net, please leave a comment.

In General, Images, Linkage, Ministry, Tech, Videos
permalink

Family Night – Feeding the Ducks

3.19.2011 — 1 Comment

I spent a majority of today in the office. It was a beautiful day, I wanted to spend time at home with my family, but like often happens, I was behind on some necessary church-work and had to spend the day in the office.

When I finally finished my to-do list, I ran home and offered Jess a spur-of-the-moment evening out of the house. She jumped at the opportunity. Within minutes the kids were dressed for the cooler evening and we were on the way to our “surprise”.

When we arrived at the duck pond here in Shippensburg, Ella exclaimed, “I love this place – I’ve been dreaming of coming here!” That phrase launched us into a terrific evening together just as a family.


More photos from tonight are here.

In Family, General, Images
permalink

On being a pastor’s kid AND a pastor with kids.

2.24.2011 — 11 Comments

My dad has been a pastor for my entire life. That fact instantly places me into the “pastor’s kid” category with the likes of Katy Perry, the Jonas Brothers, NBA coach Phil Jackson, and even famed actor Denzel Washington.

Growing up in the church there were obvious expectations about me and my sisters as a result in us being PK’s. I think we knew about most of the expectations from those within and those outside of the church, but my parents did a great job of sheltering us from some of those expectations and allowed us to grow up “normal”.

As a pastor’s kid, I honestly tried to convince myself to never become a pastor. I was willing to break the family tradition of going into the ministry even with a grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers who pastored local congregations. I’m thankful that the Lord had other plans and I can honestly say that I don’t believe my own father ever “pressured” me to become a pastor.

Sure there was the “listen to this Injoy Life Club tape by Dr. James Maxwell and write me a page-full of notes and I’ll give you $5″ ploy to challenge me in ministry-related leadership. That ‘job’ of listening to those tapes and writing out those notes netted me numerous opportunities to visit the fireworks stands and feed my pyromania. Thanks, Dad!

Even without “pressure” to become a pastor or go into some sort of full-time ministry opportunity, there is something natural now that I am, in fact, IN full-time ministry in a local church setting. I attribute some of it to growing up ‘in’ the church. Sometimes quite literally – when the church and our home were connected by a simple doorway, some of the rooms in the church were our playrooms!

I’m thankful for those years growing up and singing as a family, visits with my dad to the nursing home, hospitals, and people’s homes. I’m thankful for seeing ministry played out not just from the pulpit but also in real-time in our living room and around the kitchen table.

And I’m proud to carry on the ministry-life heritage that the Lord has blessed numerous generations of the Sheets-family with. I’m humbled (and often petrified) that God would choose to have me pastor a congregation in a community like ours.

And I’m willing. I’m willing to continue to commit my whole-life to His service – to do His will – to follow His leading. And to lead my family as a God-fearing, Christ-following dad who also happens to be a pastor.

And of course I’ll speculate about what my kids’ experience with the church will mean for their futures. My prayer is that they too will experience Jesus first and fall in love with Him so that they can learn to love His broken church as much as He does.

Last night before worship team practice, Ella & Ezra were dancing around on the stage (as all good pastor’s kids learn to do) and they both picked up microphones to mimic Mommy & Daddy…


Ella also blessed us with a verse of “Jesus Loves Me”.

In Family, General, Images, Ministry, Videos
permalink

I LOVE SHIP

2.13.2011 — 1 Comment


For three hours on Saturday, I was joined by a few men from our church at a local gas station for about three hours as we offered to top-off the washer fluid reservoirs of unsuspecting patrons.

We called the act “LOVE SHIP” and it’s the second event of its kind that our church has done in the past couple of months (we handed out 288 double-rolls of Scotch tape a few weeks before Christmas). We also launched a “landing page” website: http://iloveship.com and began advertising it during this outreach. We’re hoping that people will be drawn to the website and there can find out more about why a group of people were out loving their neighbors in the mid 20-degree weather.

I was grateful for a few conversations yesterday and more-so for the experience of trying something like this for the first time and learning a thing or two for the next time! I was also thankful for our guys from the church that gave up a few hours of their Saturday to serve our community in this way!

In Images, Ministry
permalink