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Tag: leadership (Page 17 of 19)

Easiest Way To Get To Me

February 16, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I have been doing a bit more reading lately and it’s been really good stuff, and one of the ways that I process information is by writing down what I read and applying it to real life. Recently I came across the idea that we are most easily tempted to do wrong in one of three ways: approval, appetite and ambition. It’s absolutely uncanny that these three categories actually encompass so much of what drives us in life. Interestingly enough the three areas that we struggle with the most in life are the three ways Satan tried to get Jesus to fall as well.

Appetite

Food is an essential part of life to be sure. We all need food to survive. But often our fear of not having the right stuff or enough stuff can drive us to do weird things! And appetite isn’t just about food. It’s about our need and desire for more. Appetite is about gathering for ourselves in a way that makes the created stuff more important than the creator. Need an example? You don’t have to go far.

I mean seriously if you’re being honest you have to admit the toilet paper shortage of 2020 was a bit ridiculous to put it very mildly. People in the world were scared that when the pandemic, an upper respiratory virus, hit in early 2020 they needed to control as much as they could. Store shelves were ransacked. Banks were filled with people drawing out money at alarming rates. Guns and ammo were impossible to find. And toilet paper was gone! The appetite of the American people became so consumed with a self-serving attitude that we gathered when we should have shared.

Turn these stones into bread was the temptation Satan gave to Jesus. You’re hungry do something about it. Fill that appetite with what pleases you and makes you feel better. Instead of falling for the idol of appetite, Jesus relied on the provision of his Father. We would be well served if we focused on what we have instead of what we want. Then our appetite god is less likely to get away from us.

Approval

It’s great to be recognized isn’t it? I mean you put in a lot of work on a project. You do a good job. You succeed in what your boss wanted from you. A little ‘atta boy’ or pat on the back wouldn’t hurt anything would it? I don’t mean getting your name in lights and having the world shout your name from the mountains but a thank you isn’t too bad a thing is it?

The god of approval can be a dangerous and slippery slope. While there isn’t a real problem with a thank you now and again the issue of approval turns sour when we seek the approval of everyone around us thereby seizing our actions out of fear that we won’t gain that approval. Taken to another level we’re supposed to seek the approval of God rather than men.

When Satan was tempting Jesus, he tried to get him to get teh approval of the crowds. Go and throw yourself off this peak and let them all see how great and powerful you are. Jesus didn’t take the bait. He didn’t fall for it. Instead he rested in the approval he received from his Father. This approval is the one we need to seek as well. The approval of those around us will vary based on their emotional status and how they feel in the moment. But God is consistent and his approval of us isn’t tied to what we do but what Jesus already did for us.

Ambition

The final area of temptation to which we often fall is ambition which when taken too far is pride. This area of ambition being a problem is when we try to climb the ladder of success at the expense of all those around us. Or when our ambition is all about making a name for ourselves. This is when things get bad.

Jesus faced this same thing too. When he was with Satan in the wilderness, the carrot of self aggrandizement was waved before Jesus. Satan tried to offer to Jesus all the power he could imagine. If you please me then you get all this. Jesus wanted nothing of it. He knew that his ambition wasn’t in himself but in the promise and provision of his Father.

So there you have it. All of them are good in moderation but good taken too far is evil. Curb your appetite. Seek approval from God alone. And remember that your ambition should be for service not gratification.

How Adaptable Are You?

February 10, 2021 / / 0 Comments

When you’re good at something, it’s a safe bet to just sit on that talent and do as much as you can that rests in your sweet spot. But what happens when you need to step out of that sweet spot and into a little less familiar or comfortable territory? How adaptable are you?

Learning new skills and doing new things is an important part of life and the maturity process. But often it seems the more we know the more we realize we really don’t know.

One of the challenges in life is determining how best to relate to people of different cultural, economic and traditional backgrounds effectively. We need to be willing and able to be flexible and adapt to different scenarios in life in an effort to better reach the people in our circle of influence. To do this we need to take a few key steps to ensure we’re doing this right.

First, we need to know who we are and what we believe. The better foundation you have in life, the more well informed your decisions will be. Having good intentions is one thing. But if our good intentions and adaptability aren’t built on a strong foundation of truth, then we’ll quickly go the wrong direction. So know who you are and what you believe.

The second part is to know who we’re trying to reach. I don’t mean to just know their name, although that’s important for sure! But we need to know who they are, what makes them tick, what are their passions, interests and desires. Don’t assume that just because we know their name we know what they’re thinking or what they want in life. The better we know the person and the stronger the relationship between us, the more we’ll know what they need not just what we think they want.

Finally, we need to ask ourselves what part of me needs to be put aside for the sake of this relationship growing in Christ. The idea is what personal ambition, liberty, desire do I need to sacrifice to better serve this person and help them encounter the love of Christ more fully.

I hope this short summary helps you better serve those around you. For more information on adaptability and becoming better suited to reach people effectively, check out this message.

Invitation & Challenge

February 10, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I’m currently cramming through a book to join a group that’s been together for a few months already and need to get caught up. And this dichotomy shows up in the first couple of chapters. It’s the dichotomy of invitation and challenge. Now that doesn’t mean a lot at face value but if you give me about 4 mins of your time and read this there’s stuff here that can apply to just about everyone’s life.

So the idea of invitation and challenge was brought up in the context of breaking a horse. I’m really not a big fan of here terminology of breaking something but I hope you know what that means. Simply put, it’s making a wild horse a little less wild. Some would do this by beating the horse and breaking their spirit. Some would do this by attempting to ride them in a body of water making it harder for the horse to kick and buck the off. But the book uses a different analogy and that’s how a horse is welcomed into a herd in the wild.

It’s something that the author calls invitation and challenge. The idea behind invitation and challenge is pretty simple, and it is super helpful in how we raise up leaders and even teach our children how to grow and mature. In what follows I will unpack the two sides of invitation and challenge and apply them to basic relationship and leadership settings.

There is a back and forth that needs to happen in every relationship. It is all about welcoming and getting to know the other person on their terms. And then offering up a challenge of sorts to show there are expectation and who ultimately has authority.

Invitation is welcoming someone in and drawing them close. In the illustration of the horses used above, the outsider horse is greeted by a female horse from the herd. The mare would turn sideways and in a show of vulnerability would bare her side. This is the weakest part of the horse if you didn’t know. By turning she was indicating that she came with no ill intention and is willing to let the outsider horse come closer. As the outsider draws in a little, the mare turns forward facing and enters into a stare down of sorts.

This is the challenge. This is a show of power and strength. While the outsider may be larger or stronger or faster, the mare carries with her the authority of the entire herd. She is not easily moved and if so she has the rest of the group behind her.

This goes back and forth between invitation and challenge as the outsider draws ever closer yet is kept in check by the mare’s direct stare from time to time. Eventually the outsider is “broken” into the herd and all is good.

Now as we translate that into our relationships with our children, coworkers, employees, neighbors, etc. The principles remain the same. We need to be gentle and open and welcoming. We need to be vulnerable and willing to let our guard down a little bit. We need to be more intentional about our sense of invitation when it comes to these and frankly all relationships.

But at the same time we need space to challenge one another. We need to set rules for our children to obey. We need to keep employees on task and coworkers need held accountable.

So as we go through life there needs to be a more intentional trade off between invitation and challenge. As Christians this is a great model for discipleship and growing in our faith development. We need to invite into a relationship with others. Jesus did this with the twelve disciples. But he didn’t let them get too comfy because soon he woudl send them out to do the stuff he was talking about. He told them that they would have to change. The old needs to go away and the new needs to be born into us.

This is the amazing and fantastic dichotomy of saint and sinner. We’re invited in through grace which is the good news of God. And because of that invitation our lives look different. It’s what James talked about in the bible. A faith without works is dead. There must be a life change that happens when we follow up on God’s invitation.

There’s a lot here so we’ll end at that. Invitation and challenge find a balance and strengthen relationships. Super simple just not always easy.

Mountains & Molehills

January 20, 2021 / / 0 Comments

What a selfish, egotistical, pride filled bunch we’ve become! I mean seriously, here we are talking about national security and throwing millions of dollars at an inauguration event where no one is even allowed to attend. The media and many in our world and crying about a group of people entering into the capitol building. The only news we hear in America anymore is what happened in those moments when the capitol was breeched and a virus that continues to linger in our country.

But where was the coverage of the other atrocities around the world? Where are the posts in outrage over the 750 innocent killed in an attack in Ethiopia earlier this week? Where is the rage over the injustice that is levied upon men, women and children just because of their faith practices?

We’ve become so much a group of navel gazers that we can’t see the world around us. What has happened to us?! When did we start to care more about one man in or out of office that we forgot the world around us? When did my perceived problems become more important than the needs of those around me?

So many people flooded their social media feeds with remembrances of Martin Luther King Jr. yet were dead silent about the loss of life around the world. We talk about peace when our communities don’t have peace but when people out of our view don’t have peace we could care less. We grandstand on unifying people of every race, creed, color and gender; but do nothing when people of various races, creeds, colors and either gender are mocked, persecuted and killed just because of their heritage.

If we’re going to sit in our ivory towers and throw accusation grenades at the world around us, then we better put that pin back in and consider falling on that grenade ourselves. Don’t say you care about justice when you’re silent about injustice that doesn’t affect you. Don’t elevate one life while demeaning another. Don’t criticize people who don’t see the world the same way as you until you’re willing to honestly view your own part in the problem.

Don’t levy accusations without self evaluation.

True the invasion on our capitol was terrible. I don’t deny that. But in the grand scheme of life that was nothing. Many of those who are screaming and yelling about the violence weren’t impacted by the violence directly. How dare we sit in our 1st world societies with our technology and all of our creature comforts and be so self absorbed that we don’t even see the world around us? Perhaps we should be willing to say the names of the 750 killed in Ethiopia as loud as we shout the names of others in our world.

Pause and honestly look at your life. Are you making a mountain out of a molehill? Are you making a molehill out of a mountain? What role did you play in building that mountain? Think America. This is not who we are. It’s time to get back to our roots because this isn’t it!

So Many MLK Quotes

January 19, 2021 / / 0 Comments
12 of the most inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. quotes - Business Insider

If your social media feeds were anything like mine, they were filled with quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. Some of those quotes are really powerful and all of them are very true! I love seeing these quotes and would love it even more if we’d live by them instead of using them as mere advertisements.

But I do want to speak to those of you who quoted this man and threw his words all over the internet for one day out of the year. Do you live these words every other day? Do you actually believe the words King spoke? Do you think they are real?

I don’t think many of you do. I’m not trying to be negative or pessimistic or even judgmental. Just look at your feed last week or the week before. Did you fill your status on Facebook with how horrific the people were that went into the capital? Did you tweet about the man in the office on the other side of your political views as the enemy? Did you curse the other side for their violent and disturbing displays while defending those who did the same thing on your side of the aisle?

If you quote Martin Luther King, Jr. one day and throw stones at your neighbor the next you are part of the problem.

Friends we are not given the right to pick and choose what we wnat to believe and when we want to believe it. We need to be consistent. If you believe that Martin Luther King Jr. was a good man then quit spreading the well put together memes and start living the words on those memes. Quit dividing against your neighbor one day, only to shout how love conquers hate the next day.

If you really want to honor the legacy of men and women who have reformed our country into a better version of itself, then stop quoting them and start living how they lived. Be the difference maker don’t just say the words of a previous difference maker.

Look I get it! This isn’t the country you grew up in. There are ideologies around that don’t align with yours. There are people who live differently than you live. People aren’t always fair. Evil wins some days. And some people just flat suck at humanity. But get over yourself! When all you do is condemn the other person then lob these pithy statements from a really great man but don’t change how you see the world then you are the problem.

Stop with the quotes if you’re not going to live what the quote says! Just live the quote you want to display on your page. It will mean more and perhaps someone might actually be impacted because the words on your Facebook page won’t change anyone’s life if they don’t show up in your real life.

Is This Significant?

November 11, 2020 / / 0 Comments
Pisces: misunderstood genius! | Neon signs, Neon words, Neon quotes

What a year 2020 has become! I don’t know if anyone could have predicted the dumpster fire that this year has turned out to be. It sure doesn’t seem like anything is as it should be right now. But is any of this significant?

Over the past few days I’ve been looking back on what all has occurred throughout this monumental and earth shifting year. One thing that seems to keep coming back over and over again in my mind is one of the restrictions that many of our cities and states have implemented. Heck even the CDC has said this.

If you remember back to April and May of this year perhaps you’ll recall that we were all told to limit our gatherings to no more than 10 people. I think the reasoning was to limit the potential for spread of Covid and to make it easier to track back who all you’ve been with recently. At least that’s what I have understood from it all, and I didn’t think twice about it.

But recently I’ve heard a few different references to the number 10 and how it applies to the church and it’s got me thinking…is this significant? Is there a misunderstood genius behind all of this?

Now I’m not going to go all numerology on you or anything like that but let’s look at the history of the number 10 and why it might be significant here. In the Bible and in ancient Jewish tradition, the people were to come together to establish a synagogue or gathering of worshippers in a localized place. Well, enter what might be the significant part…

You had to have a minimum of, yep you guessed it, 10 people to constitute a synagogue. So what in the world might this mean?

Some might say that this is some demonic force trying to prevent God’s people from gathering in a mass numbers. While this could be? I’m not really sure that I buy that one. I don’t buy it because we’re still able to meet, albeit virtually but we’re still able to gather in many informal settings and the word is still able to be preached. Could the Devil be up to something? Of course he is! When isn’t he? But I think there might be another, and potentially more transforming thing happening here.

The ten mandate is still the case for some people. Much of the country has excluded places of worship from this mandate, but it does still apply in various locations to this day. But the number limitation holds for gatherings of people for many other purposes too. Enter the conspiracy theory portion of this post – don’t worry this is a positive conspiracy theory if that’s such a thing?

What if God was in control all along? Yeah I know he is but stick with me here. What if God was taking this whole pandemic craziness thing and using it as a way to allow some of our churches to stay within the guidelines while still doing, being and even growing the church?

Think about it – you can’t come to the church either because it’s not allowed based on this rule or because you’re just not comfortable in groups that large. But are you able and willing to be in a smaller group with a more controlled atmosphere? Could you gather and form your own grouping of say 10 people?

Ten doesn’t seem like that many, but God even said that for the sake of 10 faithful he would have delivered all of Sodom and Gomorrah. Whoa there’s that number again!

Could God be up to something? Are you unable to get back in your in-person worship space due to restrictions or comfort level? Are you willing to be one of 10? I think this is massively significant and something we need to be taking full advantage of in this weird and wild ride we call 2020. Want to be a group of 10…hit me up and we’ll see how we can resource you.

Who would have thought that something as simple as the number 10 could actually help?

Ok friends those are today’s random ramblings.

Yes. I Meant What I Said

November 11, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Something I said on Sunday has caused a few eyebrows to raise. Surely, you didn’t mean what you said – was one reply. I have a feeling more than just a few people were a bit caught off guard by something I said in a recent message, but yes I was very serious. So let me explain.

Assume I’m not getting it right.

This was the gist of one of my points on Sunday in my message titled What the world needs now. The context of that quote was that in my preaching and teaching on the Bible, please don’t just assume that I’m teaching right. Don’t think that just because I’ve been a pastor for 18 years, just because I know Greek and Hebrew, just because I put many, many hours into each week’s message preparation – don’t assume that I have it right.

I don’t say that so that you’ll look at me like a bad person or not believe what I am teaching. Quite the contrary. I want you to believe what I’m teaching. I want you to be able to trust the things in the lessons I teach and messages I preach. But I don’t want you to believe me just because you like me or because I’m a pastor or because I’ve been here for 7 years.

I want you to believe the messages because you’ve studied them and found them to be accurate. I want you to do the hard work of digging through the Bible the way I have to see what the Scripture has to teach us.

You see the point is all too often it’s easy to be Netflix Christians on Sunday morning. Think about it for a minute. When’s the last time you researched to see if that show you’ve been binge watching was based in any form of accuracy.

Is that how you treat the messages on Sunday? Or do you take the bible verses we talk about and trace them through the Bible? Do you look them up? Follow cross references? Do you challenge the points being made in the message to see if they fit the overall Biblical message?

This is what I meant when I encouraged you to not believe me or to assume I wasn’t getting it right. This isn’t true just for the Bible either. It’s kind of what critical thinking is all about. Don’t believe what the world is feeding you. Test it to see if it really is accurate.

Good vs. Evil

November 3, 2020 / / 0 Comments

What a battle it is out there! Things seem to be getting crazy in our world and things are spiraling faster and faster out of control. We’re in the midst of some of the most challenging times in our lives. What’s going on in life right now is the most foundational battle ever known to man. It’s the battle of good against evil.

But hold on! This battle may not be exactly what you think. The battle of good vs evil isn’t about one man against another or one party against another. It’s truly the battle of ultimate good facing off against ultimate evil.

I recently heard author, Jon Gordon, speak about one of his books. He was talking about this battle of good and evil referring to it through the lenses of what he called the 5 D’s. These five D’s are foundational to understanding who the real enemy is in life.

Doubt

At the outset, most conflict is brought on because some level of doubt is brought into view. We doubt if we’re loved. We doubt if we’re good enough. We doubt if they have our best intentions at heart. We doubt if what we have is good enough. Doubt is looking at what we don’t have instead of seeing everything we do have.

Distortion

When we start to doubt that what we have is enough it begins to distort the truth. We begin to believe the lies that these doubts bring up in our mind. They act like fog, preventing us from seeing what’s right in front of us with any clarity at all. We’re so overcome by the doubt factor that truth is distorted. But it doesn’t end there.

Discouragement

Beyond distortion sits the enemy of discouragement. When doubt settles in and prevents us from seeing reality as it stands in front of us, then we easily get discouraged. When we can’t see the clear path ahead of us we get disheartened and discouraged. You see none of this has to do with the people around us or the events happening to us. It’s really about vision and how we see things.

Distraction

When discouragement takes root in our lives, we lose focus altogether. Our attention moves to other things that are mundane at best and destructive at worst. We tend to major in the minors so to speak as discouragement gives birth to distraction. As we continue to battle against the enemy of doubt, we quickly lose all footing and slide off course into an unhealthy spiral distracting us from what’s important.

Division

Finally, when we’ve run the course of doubt, distortion, discouragement and distraction the final step is division. The ultimate goal of any war is division. The enemy wants to break down the unified front we have to problems. We’re living in a world that has become so fragmented that unity has all but left.

You see the problem isn’t the people around us. The problem is doubt. The enemy has brought doubt into our lives over so many things. But your friend with a different viewpoint on life is not your enemy. The president for whom you did not vote is not the enemy. The party with which you’re not affiliated is not the enemy. The enemy is the darkness of doubt that spirals all of this out of control causing so much chaos and fear and division.

Stay strong my friends. Hold each other close. Value friendship. Cherish differences. Be civil in disagreement. Most of all speak truth and focus on the things you do have instead of the things you lack.

Don’t Skip This Step

October 21, 2020 / / 0 Comments
person climbing concrete stairs
Photo by Clique Images on Unsplash

I’m going to admit that this post is very much directed at churches, pastors, and other leaders in church-topia. But if you’re not in one of those roles, I’d love for you to still read and hold those of us who are in these roles accountable. Because what we’re doing isn’t enough. I recently heard someone say we’re perfectly positioned to get what we’re currently getting. Or put another way we’ll keep getting what we’ve always gotten if we keep doing what we’ve always done.

So what needs to change?

As church people and church leaders we have big dreams for an Acts 2:47 kind of moment. That’s the moment when God added to their number daily those who were being saved. I mean who wouldn’t want that for the church they serve or even the church they attend!

I’ve been a pastor for over 18 years now and in every church I’ve ever served, we always wanted to reach more people so the kingdom of God would grow. We celebrated baptisms and new member classes. We would hold big welcome events when we brought in a new group of people to the church.

But when we weren’t seeing an increase in numbers we started to wonder what was wrong. What are we missing? Why isn’t God bringing them to us anymore? Why did attendance shrink? Why aren’t new people coming anymore?

This problem is only getting more vivid as we move through this post Covid reality. Churches are shrinking. Less than 75% of church members on average are returning to in person worship. Those who are staying home are saying it’s getting harder and harder to stay connected digitally because the digital time feels like the in person time just without the person connection.

And so many of our churches are pushing to go back to normal. It’s so easy to want to go back to regular in person worship. We want our coffee hour and our fellowship meals. We want to gather the way we used to between services and catch up on what’s going on in life. We want our Sundays back for crying out loud.

But we can’t have our Acts 2:47 moments without living in verse 46 first! Verse 46 is easily overlooked. We love verse 42 where we read how they devoted themselves to breaking of bread, fellowship, prayers and teaching. We expect God will add to our numbers daily in mass quantities. But what did they do with the fellowship, bread, prayers and teaching? Did they do it on Sundays? Did they keep it tucked away for an hour long expression of service and devotion one day a week? Here’s what Acts 2:47 says:

And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.

Do you see it? Day by day! They saw something that we have forgotten. Church is not an hour on Sunday. It’s not a building we go to on the weekend. It’s who we are. It’s the people with whom we surround ourselves.

Do you day by day with Jesus and those in your community of faith? Do you day by day in the promise of the temple? Do you day by day around the breaking of bread?

It’s really not as hard as we’ve made it out to be. There are so many ways to day by day! You don’t have to spend hours a day. You don’t have to be a bible scholar. You don’t have to host a small group or be at church 24/7! Two of my favorite ways to day by day are the S.O.A.P plan and the 5x5x5 plan. I’ll explain the 5x5x5 plan more in a future post but the gist is five minutes a day in the bible, do one of five simple tasks with the verses (highlight, memorize, etc), and do it five days a week.

These are just a couple ways that we can day by day with God and one another. I’ll unpack a few more options in the weeks to come. But for now start where you are and lean into God a little more today and soon you’ll be in a day by day situation too.

Flip the Curve

October 2, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Imagine for a moment one scenario with two potential outcomes. The scenario is simple you face a challenge. You get caught off guard. You’re thrown off track. Something comes out of no where and completely derails all of your plans. All of your momentum is halted. You come to what feels like a dead stop in an instant.

Sound familiar? I think we’ve all kind of lived this very scenario in our own ways. Graduations were canceled. Spring athletes never had their chance to perform their talents for family, friends and scouts. Summer activities were canceled. Businesses were closed. Churches stopped meeting in person. Family gatherings were stifled. Nearly everything we knew ground to a painful, screeching halt.

And if we’re being honest things aren’t really all that much better. The very thing that brought this calamity upon us is still with us. Fear is being handed out like it was candy to a group of children on halloween. The situation seems so bleak. Business are closing their doors. Churches are being split over how they handle the regulations. Families and friends are divided over where they stand on the issues facing our country.

When our situation is this dire there are two natural outcomes: crash and burn or pivot and soar. The rest of this post will address the issue as it pertains to churches but is really applicable to all scenarios.

In a recent article in Outreach Magazine, it’s been estimated that nearly 1 in 5 churches will likely close their doors within 18 months of the pandemic. This is awful to even think about. But how can we prevent this from being our reality in whatever field we find ourselves in?

If we keep doing the same things we’ve always done, we’ll get the same results we’ve grown to accept or even worse.

So to change the tide we need to pivot. The idea of pivoting in basketball is to keep one foot in place while moving the rest of your body in different directions to determine which way will benefit the team most.

Right now we’re in a situation that demands a pivot. The curve is trending downward. We’ve grown accustomed to being an organization that is all about Sunday morning. Gather together is the goal. Meeting is the mission. But what happens if we pivot our thinking?

The mission of the church never was to just gather and meet. Jesus said to make disciples. The mission of the church if we’re following the command of Jesus should be to go, baptize, teach. It’s all about growing the family of God.

If we don’t pivot our thinking we’re going to ride the plane right into the ground. But if we can keep one foot firmly rooted in the promises of God in scripture, then pivot our methods to see where He might be leading us we’ll be able to soar in ways we never thought imaginable.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll look at a few things we can do to pivot our thinking and approach our current situation not as a series of challenges but as opportunities that God has placed before us to help us soar.

As we end this post consider where you’ve been and what direction you’re headed now. Then evaluate why your church or organization really exists. That information will be helpful as we move forward next week.

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