Sweeten Life Systems Update

Our board met yesterday and it was quite an experience. One member was in Norway one in Florida, one in Wisconsin and another is in Moscow, Russia. We were able to connect most of our members one way or another.

Rick Brown CPA is our treasurer and he was in Florida on business but called in to give his report. It is terrific to such talented and gifted board members.

Galina Chentsova attended for two hours via video phone from Moscow. She joined Jens-Petter Jorgensen as an International Representative. It was amazing to see and hear Galina so clearly from several thousand miles away. And, it is free. Before long we will add video conferencing to our schedule of training in Russia. (The photo is of our book, Listening for Heaven's Sake in Russian. It was originally called Apples of Gold)

My Skype name is gary.r.sweeten

What is your Skype name?

Great Things in 2009




The health of Sweeten Life Systems is good. God is blessing us and expanding our influence both in the open and behind the scenes. We received a grant to develop systems to support for families with special needs children.


In 2009 we will emphasize the Families of God.
1. The historic Family of Grand Parents and past
2. The Family of Origin of Parents and Siblings
3. The Nuclear Family of Parents and Children
4. The Extended Family of Relatives
5. The Church Family of Families
6. The Work Family
7. The Neighborhood Family of Friends


You will note the word "SYSTEMS" in our name. That is . We know that any event traumatic or great, that impacts one member of a family impacts every member. We are unique in intervening in families to upbuild the entire system. Thus, we have a biblical approach.


Important Family Event

Come to The Healing Center on Century Circle, near The Vineyard Community Church, on Saturday afternoon, January 24 at 1:00 to 4:00 PM to get an introduction to Family Systems thinking and how to support families in need. "It Takes Village".

More information later.

Gary Sweeten
http://www.sweetenlife.com/

Skype is Wonderful

I have been discovering the wonders of Skype, a free system of audio/video calling, for the last few weeks. Jim Donovan and I have talked twice and I finally got hooked up with Galina in Moscow, Russia today.

I had a few problems with my camera because I opened it up on the desk top and that interferes with the Skype hook up. I finally got my camera to operate two ways today so I could see both Galina and her daughter Anya as clear as bells. Now get this: It is free for both audio and video calls.

Go to http://www.skype.com/ and read all about it.

Gary Sweeten

www.sweetenlife.com

Who Are The Church Workers?

Who are the workers in your local church?

Who are called by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to be the workers?

What other roles are laid out by the Bible for various people in your church?

Why are so few churches working?

What do you think YOU are supposaed to be doing?

Socialism in our Future

It is hard for me to believe that the strongest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world would intentionally choose to destroy its economic and spiritual values by promoting socialism, but I fear I may have been wrong. For the past eight years the Republican Party, long noted as the party of Free Market Capitalism, has spent our money like a congregation of drunken pirates. "W" has thrown money at all kinds of projects with the willing support of the Left Wing Socialists we call The Democrat Party.

Is Ron Paul the only Capitalist running for the Presidency? The Democrat hopefuls are trying to outdo one another with wild promises of profligate spending for every partisan group in the country in a blatant attempt to buy our votes. Senator Clinton even went on CNN and called the oil company's profits "Obscene" and promised to take them away from the stockholders and distribute it to "The People".

Shades of Lenin and Trotsky! Do these people not realize how destructive that kind of policy is? Has she never visited or studied the USSR, Cambodia, China or the Eastern Bloc to see the devastation wrought by Socialism and the confiscation of private property? Those countries are still economic disasters. Is that what she wants for us?

America has the best economic system in the world because of capital investments and hard work. Why destroy it with policies that have failed miserably everywhere they have been attempted? Dependency destroys. Responsibility brings freedom.

Better and Better

Six days each week I get an electronic version of the Wall Street Journal. I wish I could write as well as they. The writers almost always report on non-fiction topics but they rarely fail to keep me reading and interested.

My favorite is The Opinion Journal in the morning and The Best of the Web in the afternoon. Here is the link so you can get it yourself. OpinionJournal OpinionJournal@wsj.com

On another less dramatic topic, I am speaking at New Life Church in Sharonville this Sunday morning at the 9:30 AM Adult Class and at the Worship Service an hour later. In the class I will address the Spiritual Stages of Development. I will be very surprised if there are not a high percentage of Seasoned Saints among the church because Michael Boys has taught the people well.

For worship I will focus on the approach Jesus took to evangelize his neighborhood and surrounding cities. The chapter of interest is Luke 10: At the conclusion, Dr. Luke says that the approach used by Jesus to get His Apostles to reach outside themselves was very productive.

In fact, Jesus was quoted as saying, "I saw the devil thrust down from heaven". Now that is some powerful witnessing. What in the world did they do to make such wonderful advances? Tune in Sunday and find out.

Age and Work

As you may know I have started a new ministry thrust to that group of people I call Seasoned Believers. This consists of men and women who are forty and above who have served the Lord faithfully for two or three decades.

The following article tells about how this group's leaving the workforce will affect us all.

The Graying Before the Boomer Exodus

Thursday, August 02, 2007 2:26 PM/EST
The Graying Before the Boomer Exodus

Nary a day goes by that a press release doesn't cross eWEEK inboxes about the aging of the IT work force, and the potential havoc that will be wrecked upon the workplace when Baby Boomers retire, taking their substantial business knowledge and bulging head count with them.
A Forrester study released this week further investigated this conundrum, laying out steps that CIOs should be taking now to prepare for a wave of retirements set to begin around 2015.
Or will they?

While there is little doubt that Baby Boomers will indeed retire at some point in the future, and the numbers of younger IT professionals entering the field have little chance of compensating for the voluminous loss, there are other sociological trends that are whittling away at the once-unwavering notion that all U.S. workers retire at 65.

By the year 2020, there will be more workers over age 55 grinding away than at any other time in U.S. history, according to an article on MSNBC Aug. 1. The U.S. workplace will be transformed by an explosion of flexible work schedules and a host of technologies that make work life easier, leading to a swath of Boomers spending their golden years at work.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the number of workers age 65 or older will double to almost 10 million within 10 years, and will account for 6.4 percent of the total working population. And—hold your hats—the number of individuals toiling away past the age of 75 will account for 1.2 percent of the work force, or 2 million workers.

In 2005, 24 million, or 17 percent of all U.S. workers were over 55 and this is projected to surge to 38 million, or 24 percent of workers by the year 2017.

The positive aspects of a graying work force stand to include more flexible schedules, job sharing, telecommuting and less overtime, things working moms and dads have been requesting for years, but the real tipping point could be an aging work force.

An aging work force might also have other potential impact: videoconferencing could boom, as older workers find it harder to travel for business trips, as could a need for large screen computers and large-lettered keyboards to accommodate diminished eyesight.

Yet, IT—and in particular skilled software engineers—stands to be especially hard hit by impending labor shortages, as will aerospace, defense, the power industry and health care.
Furthermore, intergenerational conflicts in the workplace are expected to hit a fever pitch, as 69 percent of Baby Boomers anticipate working past retirement age, according to the AARP. Older workers may resent that they still can't afford to retire while younger workers may feel that they are being taken less seriously because of their age.

"It's like a train wreck in slow motion," Tamara Erickson, co-author of the "Work force Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent," told MSNBC about the impending shortage of workers and the challenges employers will face

How do we Christian leaders respond to the huge age wave? Close our eyes? Panic?

Nope, we need to join with others to creatively look at options and alternatives to a boring retirement or an exhausting new career.

New Ministry Thrust and Focus

Ever since I was touched anew by the Holy Spirit in 1958 I have had a great passion to see Christians grow up into what the Apostle Paul referred to as "Adults" in I Corinthians 13. He said that "When I was a child I thought childish thoughts and walked a childish walk. But when I grew up an became an adult I put away childish things."

There are way too many Believers who have not been able to "Put away childish things." This is causing problems in the Christian community because it leads to immature members and, far worse, immature leaders.

My new ministry thrust will be to recruit and train Seasoned Believers, those who have known and served God for several years, and help them move on in life. I am calling it, Unleashing Seasoned Believers to Love and Enjoy the Lord. Sweeten Life Systems will emphasize that part of the Christian community.

People are living much longer now have more hours before and after work than ever before. In fact, some statisticians estimate that over the past 100 years the amount of time people have use as they please has grown by 2/3.

Just a century ago, about 2/3 of the time people were busy doing things that they had to do to survive. Only about 1/3 of the time were they able to freely choose what they did.

Now, those numbers are rapidly being reversed. People spend only about 1/3 of their lives in activities that are required to survive and 2/3 on leisure, volunteering, watching TV and films, playing sports or games and travel or shopping.

But too much time off is not only boring it is emotionally dangerous. As the old saying goes, "Idle time is the devil's workshop." Finding meaningful and satisfying things to do is required for people to have a sense of Significance and Accomplishment.

What are you going to do to give back and feel better about yourself?

Contact me if you are interested in finding out what we are planning.