I just finished reading the business brickyard by Howard Mann. (I would get all kinky right there but I’m writing from my phone so google it.)
This a I great little books on the fundamentals of running a business. There are a lot of applicable point for church leadership as well. I would recommend it. When I acquired the book it was a free e-book download at only 63 pages it’s totally worth the read.
This week all the news has been about McCain’s VP pick, Gov. Sarah Palin. There have been voices on both sides as to whether or not this was good pick for McCain.
I don’t want to endorse either candidate on my blog, who you vote for is your business. But I will say this, by picking Gov. Palin McCain has brought attention to his candidacy that really wasn’t there. My opinion as to why McCain wasn’t getting attention was because he is the least exciting or charismatic public speaker I have ever seen. So to draw attention away from his lack of charisma and Obama’s abundance of Charisma, McCain had tried to change the game entirely.
This may prove to be a genius move for the campaign camp or it may bite them in the butt. Either way, surprise draws attention, and in politics it seems you are always fighting for attention.
I look at this story and I’m reminded that the worst thing in the world sometimes fir a leader us to be predictable. We need to zag when people expect us to zig. Not everytime, it’s good for people to know where we stand on core issues, but we also need to have the flexibility both mentally and organizationally to go in an unpredictible course. It could save our ministry, it could save our leadership, and it could change the game entirely.
Just some thoughts.
Well it’s Monday, my weekend was very busy, and today so far has been nice and not stressful.
Let’s re-cap, our beyond::afterhours event went well. It was spring break for some of our students so they didn’t have the same level of contact with their friends, so we didn’t have as many students come out, but we still had loads of fun. We had a bunch of group contests, and a sweet relay race. A couple of first time students were there also so that was really cool.
We finished our organized games and then we had a half hour of free time for students to hang out, play some X-BOX, board games, eat food, whatever. What I didn’t think would be such a huge hit was FourSquare, we had a line of people rockin’ the foursquare until after nine o’clock so that was really fun.
Then on Saturday I lead a break-out session at Evoke 08. I talked about Belonging and how everyone is looking for belonging. I was really surprised by how full the seesion was. I printed 40 handouts and only got a few back, and I know some people didn’t get a handout because they came in late. So that was really neat. Here is my outline.
Sunday was busy as usual, we had the most people at my house yet since we’ve moved back to my house. And it was a good time. So super busy weekend, but it was a lot of fun.
And by the way, WordPress, if you are reading this, I love the new dashboard. It’s very nice. IF you don’t use wordpress you should, it’s awesome. I know you blogger people like your analytics, and adwords, and whatever, but wordpress is just so fun to use.
Have a great day, I might post something later about what else made yesterday so phenomenal. Let’s just say my geek-o-meter was through the roof.
Read this post from Seth Godin.
Too often I think churches get in the habit of doing the work and lose sight of the story. Our overarching story is that Jesus died to save sinners, and he rose again to give us new life. That’s the story, so what’s the work that we are called to do?
These mindsets are not where churches want to end up, but they devolve over time as people lose sight of the story. These are the natural result of doing the work without paying attention to the story.
So what’s your churches story? What’s your story? What has Jesus done in your life? What is he doing in your life? That’s your story. Live it out, and work it out
Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger is a quick and clear read. The title is pretty good at explaining what the book is all about. The Authors posit that that church’s natural inclination is to become more and more complicated. Through years of growth, new models, new programs, most churches have found themselves with too much to do, too much to maintain, and too many wheels to keep spinning. And the sad thing is, this isn’t working.
The Authors examine what sets thriving churches apart from non-thriving churches and the conclusion that they put forward in this book is Simplicity. Churches that are growing, have a clear and simple process to help people become disciples of Jesus. Whereas churches that are not thriving do not have this simple mentality.
The idea is so counter intuitive to much of the church world that really wants to see that we have a bunch of programs to keep our people busy. But that isn’t effective, it eats time and resources. But when a church is simple then all the time and resources are devoted to just a few things, that they do great.
I don’t want to say too much about the meat of this book because I believe every church leader should read it. And as a church that is in the middle of a huge transformation process I thing our church can use these principles. It’s a pretty powerful idea, less is more. So yeah, read Simple Church.
So I don’t like to take myself to seriously, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who really gets the joke in my head, and so I like to laugh and I like being around people who like to laugh. I can’t stand people who take themselves too seriously. Life’s to short for that.
That’s why reading about Mike Huckabee’s campaign plane’s game of nap tag was so refreshing. Something that has really come across in the Huckabee campaign is that this guy is a real person, and I can follow a real person.
I have worked with too many people who try to keep appearances, or who don’t want to let people know who they really are. That’s one of the things that make Jesus so attractive to me.
Here’s the Son of God, who could have come as a conquering king and kicked but and been really serious and scary (which is what many of us believe God is like.) But he didn’t Jesus came as a little baby boy, he grew up in obscurity as a carpenter’s son, and when he started his public ministry, he gathered a bunch of regular dudes around him and showed them the way of the Kingdom. He laughed, he told jokes, he made friends.
Now Jesus had some very serious moments and some very serious conversations and those moments are so emphasized because they were unusual. My dad is a jokester, but growing up when he was serious I knew he meant it.
I think the problem with the overly serious is that we become numb to them, they become more static that we tune out.
So relax, have fun, laugh at the Joke in your Head. Smile more. Jesus has set you free from being overly serious, follow the Jesus way, give people nicknames, tell bad puns. But don’t be afraid of the truth, and don’t be afraid to speak up when called for. But have fun along the way.
Yesterday was our annual Vision Day, each year we have focused ona different aspect of our overarching vision and mission. One Year, Mission Statement, Next, Purposes and Model, and this year we focused on our core values.
In case you are wondering our core values are:
In an effort to emphasize how each of these values play out in the context of our community we captured three different family stories on video and played them during the service.
Each story was an incredible display of God’s goodness in the midst of the messiness of life, and keeping with our theme that the church is the hope of the world, we saw how Jesus bride really came through for each of these families. Pretty cool.
The whole sermon audio is available here.
Here are the links to the videos
All in all I felt like vision day went well this year, we had a few technical issues, but the impact wasn’t lessened by them. If you were there I’d love to hear your thoughts, leave a comment.
As a part of the leadership journey that I am on, we were asked to read Practicing Greatness by Reggie McNeal. A few years ago i read the Present Future, which is also by McNeal (and I should probably read it again). So I was familiar with his work and his style. Practicing Greatness is a quick and easy read, but there is a lot to digest in it.
The basic plot is this, what are the practices or disciplines of great leaders. And what does that look like in various contexts. The use of anecdotal examples is very helpful, and I kept finding myself in both the negative and positive examples. Reading this book challenged me to really look at what practices I need to develop in my life. Of the 7 listed I think that Decision Making and belonging are my two weak points. I make decisions but I know it takes me forever to feel comfortable with that. And I am an independent person by nature but I need to develop relationships that I can truly belong to and with. And I am working on that.
I was also challenged by the Chapter on the Discipline of Mission. i know what the mission of every christian is, but I need to constantly drag my life back the mission that God has put on my heart, which is teach people about Jesus and his incredible grace. That’s my mission, so whatever I do I need to be making sure that I am living up to my mission.
This is truly a must read for all spiritual leaders.
Great post from mark batterson here. I think one of the reasons that we see so many insecure leaders is that we want to measure up to the success of the world rather than obedience to God. That is a tough thing to manage, but it’s the most important part of leadership. What is God calling you to do? Is the question that we have to continually ask ourselves. Not how can we grow our empire? But How can we be trusted with the portion of God’s empire that he has given us?
I know it’s already two days ago but some times I just need a little time to process and think and stuff.
Tuesday I was really expecting to do a lot of work-work during the day, it didn’t work out that way for me but I did get a lot of great wisdom thrown at me. It was great.
I started out going to staff meeting and remembering that we were going to have a guest with us, I totally forgot about that, but it was all good. Dan Serdahl from Newlife Kitsap came over and shared a little bit of his journey and the Newlife’s Journey.
The first thing that I need to say about Dan is that he is someone who is 100% present when he is talking to you. He really cared about who was talking, and he remembered details about each person.
I’m just going to bullet point my notes from what he said, they’re a little disjointed but I there is some definite gold in there.
So those are a few notes. It was a great time, super encouraging.
Then I met with my youth ministry prof from Northwest University and he challenged me to think a little differently about ministry, and how we are doing things. All in all tuesday was a very great day.
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