Dealing with Doubt

For the past several weeks we did a series in the book of Daniel about Daniel and his four friends; guys who lived their life in light of a question: "What would someone in my shoes do who was completely convinced that God was in control?"

All four guys were able to walk away from a posh buffet in Daniel 1; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were able to face a fiery furnace in Daniel 3; Daniel was able to stare down hungry lions in Daniel 6 because they lived their lives with character, convictions, and courage, doing what anyone would do in their shoes who was completely convinced God was in control.

This morning, a mom asked me if I ever thought that at some point in the middle of those circumstances those guys had a moment of crisis and thought "What the heck have I done?"

Obviously, Scripture doesn't tell us. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think those guys might have had a moment or two of sweaty palms and dry mouth.

But here's the thing: they moved forward anyway because they were completely convinced God was in control. When that's the starting point, even moments of doubt become opportunities for personal worship.

When there's no chance that God might not show up, there's no opportunity to trust that He will.

Doubt can be a powerful force in the life of the believer, either positively or negatively. When unattended, doubt can be paralyzing. When it's leveraged, it can be a tool God uses to keep us focused on our need for Him.

When You Blow It

As a huge baseball fan, I have been fascinated to watch the fallout from the perfect game that wasn't last Wednesday night. If you missed it, a virtually unknown pitcher for the Detroit Tigers named Armando Gallaraga was robbed of a perfect game (no walks, no hits) by veteran umpire Jim Joyce with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. If Joyce gets the call right, the game is over and Gallaraga goes down in the history books as having done something that only a handful of pitchers have ever done. But, Joyce blew the call by a mile.

After the game, Joyce faced the media. You can listen to his comments here (beware, there is some adult language).

I tell you what: Jim Joyce is a man. He may be a blind man, but he's a man.

No excuses. No justifying. No blame shifting. He says, "I missed it... The biggest call of my career and I blew it."

Jim Joyce got it right. Not the call - the response to the call once he realized he had blown it.

Nobody makes the right call every time. Sometimes we blow it when it matters the most. In those times, it isn't your accuracy rate that makes you a leader; it's the way you respond. Good for Jim Joyce.

Leading and Defining Change

One of the major areas where I'm doing a lot of thinking these days because of some of my continuing education is in the area of leading change. Lots of organizations - secular, sacred, for-profit, non-profit - don't do change well.

I think the number one reason change fails in organizations is that those leading the change fail to define precisely what kind of change they're leading toward. If the goal and the path aren't defined on the front end, the only way they'll be reached is by accident.

When it comes to change, there are at least 4 different kinds of change:

1. Re-packaging - This is when an organization is keeping the exact same thing but giving it a different look. This kind of change rarely works because the only change it provides is cosmetic. Still, on occasion, all that is needed is a facelift and re-packaging is the direction to go.

2. Re-branding - Similar to re-packaging in that neither affect any kind of wholesale change to the actual product or philosophy, although re-branding carries more than just a cosmetic punch. Re-branding usually involves re-packaging something in such a way that an attribute that was present but previously unnoticed is brought to light.

3. Re-modeling - Re-modeling takes an existing structure but refashions it to meet a new purpose. This is often tricky in organizations because just as in remodeling a house, certain load-bearing structures may not be movable. Re-modeling often involves a complete change in the look, purpose, and feel of an organization, program, or philosophy.

4. Renovation - Renovation involves the complete rebuilding of an organization or program that might or might not resemble the previous structure at all.

All of these have benefits and all of these have perils. The biggest peril, however, comes when organizations or leaders miss which type of change they're leading. If you're aiming for re-modeling but only re-package, you'll crash and burn. If you're aiming for re-packaging and communicate renovation, the organization might not ever recover.

Dog Fights

I've been working through some new mentoring material with several guys from our church. Last week one of those guys and I were having breakfast, talking about why Christians still struggle with doing things deep down we don't want to do.

As we talked about Galatians 5:16-17, he came up with this analogy:

"If you'll forgive the association, it's like a dog fight. It's always going to be messy, but there's one way to ensure victory: If you only feed one dog, that dog is bound to win. Starve one dog and he's sure to lose."

He's got a point. Which dog are you feeding?

Efficiency of Discipleship

A lot of models for spiritual growth within churches involve a primary teacher and a group of people who sit around and listen. Obviously, those environments have some significant benefits: they usually use the gifts of a "master teacher" who has invested a significant amount of time planning and can be more easily held accountable for the validity of his message. Also, they ensure the entire group is being led in a similar direction. Those environments are critical for keeping everyone on the same page.

However, if your goal is truly spiritual growth, smaller environments will always yield better results. In fact, rather than a person sitting under a master teacher for their spiritual growth, people will grow more as soon as they can become the master teacher for someone else.

William Glasser did some studies in the area of retention and learning styles and estimates that we remember:

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

70% of what we discuss with others

80% of what we experience personally

95% of what we teach to someone else

If you really want someone to grow, simply hearing the message is horribly inefficient. Instead, put them in an environment where they are responsible for teaching someone else.

That's why the discipleship model works so well.

Watch Your Mouth

I had a great conversation with a guy last week who trusted Christ through the ministry of a televangelist. The guy happened to be talking about the gospel and the guy trusted Christ right there in his living room.

This particular televangelist is a goofball, honestly. His theology is out of control. But in this particular instance, God used the guy to reach my friend who is now growing spiritually like a weed.

Another of my friends, a pastor, made a snide comment about the "Oprahfication" of society during a sermon at one point only to find out that one of Oprah's best friends was a member of his church. (She's now a former member).

I'm all for confronting error. It's vital to ministry (Matthew 7:14; Acts 20:29). But a pastor has to be very careful choosing his words in talking ill of a person from the pulpit. And from time to time the pastor needs to call out specific people for specific errors in a public way.

With that said, it almost never serves a pastor well to talk poorly about a person from the pulpit. Those words are almost always misunderstood or misapplied and should be spoken judiciously even when they're necessary. Always.

Watch your mouth, and your tone. My friend needed to know that the televangelist who led him to Christ was a turkey - but the four or five pastors who reamed the televangelist from the pulpit nearly drove this guy away from the church altogether.

Loyalty

I love this quote by Colin Powell in "Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell" by Oren Harari:

"I want you to know you can count on me; I want to know that I can count on you. We may argue about which action to take, but I'll stick by you as we're arguing as long as you stick by me once a decision is made. No cover-your-butt moves are necessary from you; no knife-in-the-back will come from me."

That's great leadership.

Slow Hires

We're currently looking to fill a couple of big positions at the church where I serve. Particularly because of the season of ministry we're in, both positions are a "felt need" for us, and we would love to hire them quickly. But moving too quickly would be fatal.

Interviewing candidates is a lot like dating. I've never met a married couple who said, "You know, we probably knew each other too well before we got married." I've met a lot of divorced people who say "He wasn't the person I thought I was marrying."

You hope the person you hire will be with you for a long time. You'll see them and communicate with them almost every day. And you'll be careful to communicate those expectations to them before you hire them.

If you hurry to hire someone you'll eat your words, because you'll spend the next two years trying to figure out how to get rid of them. And you'll end up doing their job for them anyway. I'd rather do two jobs for an extra month than two jobs for an extra two years; I don't know about you.

Slow down on your hires. Take your time. You'll still make some hires you regret, but not nearly as many.

Good News of the Kingdom

Several weeks ago I did a series of posts about social justice and the Christian. It's a hot topic in Christianity these days, and of particular interest to me. There are some great things happening all over the world as Christians work to put their hands and feet where there mouths have been. That's a great thing.

However, it's really easy to mistake the fruit of the Message for the Message itself. We can answer the right questions the wrong way and end up worse off than we started.

One of the things that makes me absolutely crazy is when people talk about the "Gospel of the Kingdom" in connection with their social agenda without ever having any intention to talk about the specific message about Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.

The "Good News of the Kingdom" is not that the Kingdom is coming. It is not just that Jesus Christ is King. It is not that God is the Creator and will restore the earth to its original intent.

In fact, if you are not in a right relationship with God through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, those things are the worst news possible.

The Gospel of the Kingdom is that the King of the Universe is good and perfect and died for you so that you could experience life in a Kingdom (and eternity) that you don't deserve.

If the "Good News of the Kingdom" doesn't include the Person and work of Jesus, the message of the Kingdom is no Gospel at all.

Tangible Proof

Several years ago I had a conversation with a man who was having a hard time in his marriage. Like I do in any pastoral counseling conversation, I went straight to the Gospel. He said he had trusted Christ at one point in his life, but had a hard time with doubt. "I'm a scientist; I'm trained to look for tangible proof. So it's hard to trust my whole life to someone I can't see."

Ephesians 5:22-33 provides the answer to both his problems.

What if wives lived with their husbands in a voluntarily selfless way, even when the turkey didn't deserve it?

What if husbands sacrificed everything that was most important to him so he could meet the needs of his wife, even when she was a nagging, self-centered, money-spending, dripping faucet?

Their marriages would be better, and the world would have the tangible proof of the Gospel that they need.

The Right Mistakes

One of the things that will crater leadership more quickly than anything else is the fear of making mistakes.

Mistakes are a normal part of leadership development. If you play defense forever, you'll never win the game. As a leader - especially a young leader, I expect to make mistakes. I just want to make sure the mistakes I'm making are the right mistakes.

The right mistakes are:

1. Mistakes Related to Process, not Character - Picking the wrong direction when the factors are unknown will not disqualify you as a leader. Failing to be a leader people can trust, will.

2. Mistakes Made For the Very First Time - After some time, if you've made the wrong decision over and over and paid the price, it fails to be a "mistake." Blind spot? Maybe. Leadership flaw? Perhaps. Mistake? No.

3. Mistakes You Make With Someone Else - Wise leaders seek counsel. There's no excuse for making a decision - specifically a major decision - without consulting trusted advisers. If collective wisdom leads to a mistake, so be it. Don't let foolishness or arrogance take you down that path.

4. Mistakes That Fail in the Right Direction - There is a way to fail that allows you to continue making progress even if you don't make the kind of progress you had hoped. Think about where you want to end up and make sure failure lands in that direction. It's one thing to overthrow first base; it's another thing to overthrow first base while you're aiming at Left Field.

5. Mistakes that Don't Leverage the Farm - It's one thing to take risks. It's another thing to risk too much. As a leader, the ultimate end of your organization (whatever that organization might be) is usually too important to risk. If you're betting the farm, you had better be going to lose the farm if you don't win the bet anyway.

What am I missing? I only listed five characteristics of the right mistakes. What would you add to my list?

Marriage and Compatability

This is the season of weddings. Weddings are some of my favorite things to do as a pastor, so every year I over-extend myself with premarital counseling and weddings.

Weddings are big business, if you hadn't noticed. There are thousands of new books, conferences, and online resources that promise to help you figure out whether or not you're compatible as a couple and to build a healthy marriage on that. Eharmony touts its success based on 29 "dimensions" of compatibility.

Although I know some great couples who have benefited from some of those resources, I really think the idea of compatibility in marriage is bunk.

I've never met a married or engaged couple who was compatible.

He's a guy, she's a girl = instant incompatibility. Compound that with different backgrounds, different gifts and talents, and a sinful selfish tendency inside every one of us, and you just don't ever have compatible couples. They don't exist.

The good news is, I believe that incompatibility, not compatibility, is what makes a good marriage. Living-out the selfless sacrificial love that's commanded in Ephesians 5 demands (by definition) people who aren't compatible. You can't sacrificially love someone who is "perfect for you." You can't be voluntarily selfless (submit) to someone who "completes you."

The point of the Gospel is that we were incompatible with God because of our sin and His holiness. Because of His love for us He chose to meet our need(s) anyway despite the cost to Himself. Scripture sets that up as the model for a successful marriage, and it demands two people who are not compatible.

Big News

If you're a part of the McKinney Family, this post is old news.

If you're not a part of McKinney, follow the link to see the answer to the question, "What's going on with you guys these days?"

The Lord has done great thinks for Kari and I... and we are filled with joy.

Five Commitments Toward Trust

One of our elders passed these along to me the other day from a Catalyst Message Andy Stanley did several years ago. I can't wait to share them with our staff team.

Five Commitments Toward Trust for Teams:

1. When there's a gap between what I expected and what I experienced, I will choose believe the best about you.

2. When other people assume the worst about you, I'm going to come to your defense.

3. If what I experience begins to erode my trust in you, I will come to you directly about it. You never have to fear the consequences of a conversation I have with someone else about you until I have first talked to you.

4. When I become convinced I will be unable to deliver on a promise, I will inform you ahead of time.

5. When you confront me about the gaps I have created I will tell you the truth.

Legislating Character

A couple of months ago I was visiting with a friend who is on staff of a large church in the Midwest. We were talking about personnel policies since we were in the middle of re-thinking ours. He sent me a copy of his church's personnel manual, which was roughly the size of the unabridged Encyclopedia Britannica.

Policies are important for every organization. They define the boundaries of the playing field and help ensure a relative amount of consistency across the organization to ensure everyone is playing the game with the same expectations. More than anything, they exist for the sake of clarity.

But policy manuals go wrong when we forget that it is impossible to legislate character.

If the sole purpose of your policy manual is to allow you to trust your employees, you've got the cart before the horse.

When an employee does something outside the pale of what is normally acceptable, the first instinct is often to create a new policy. This almost never solves the problem. Instead, it inevitably creates new problems: Malicious employees who need policies to stay in line will always find ways around policies no matter how many you write. Trustworthy employees will be frustrated by the lack of flexibility because of policies you created for someone else.

My experience says that policies ought to address patterns you experience with multiple trustworthy employees. Patterns with individual trustworthy employees need to be addressed in frank conversations. Employees who are not trustworthy, pattern or not, should be dismissed from your team as quickly as possible. Why? You can't legislate character.

What's the Problem? Leadership or Followership?

There are times in the life of every leader in which he turns around to realize the wrong people are following; or worse, that nobody is following at all. It's true on every level of leadership, from leading a small organization to leading a large country.

In those times, the leader has to ask himself (or herself) a pretty important question: Is this a problem with leadership or a problem with followership?

This is a really hard question to ask, because if we're any kind of leader at all we feel like we're leading in the right direction as clearly as we know how. As a result, the easiest reaction is to see the problem as a problem with followership - the people didn't listen, they don't value the direction we're going, they don't know what's good for them, they're stiff-necked and rebellious, etc...

Sometimes, this is a realistic reaction. Jesus faced a problem of followership (Matthew 12:39; Luke 19:28-40). Sometimes people don't follow good leadership for reasons that are entirely their fault.

My experience as a leader, however, is that the explanation most of the time for people not following my lead is not a problem of followership; it's a problem of leadership.

If you plan an event and the people you expected to show up don't show up, it could be a followership problem. More likely it is a leadership problem. They didn't think your event was worth the investment of their time. Either you failed to communicate the benefit of the event or you assumed people would value a "benefit" they didn't value.

If you are going in a certain direction and the people don't follow, it could be that they don't know what's good for them. It could be that they're stupid and didn't understand your directions. More likely, the problem is with you as a leader. You're either leading in the wrong direction and the people know it, or you're focusing on the wrong things.

Discerning whether failure-to-follow is a followership or leadership problem is the first step in moving ahead. If you accurately diagnose the problem, you'll never get back on track.

Three Pieces of Advice

Tom Peters is a prolific writer on organizational leadership and excellence. In one of his writings, he tells the story of his 74-year-old mother-in-law who received some advice from a 90-year-old friend on the secret of a vigorous life. The friend gave this advice:

"She said she had three 'secrets,'" Joan recalled. "First, surround yourself with good books on any and every topic. Second, spend time with people of all ages. And third, push yourself to say 'Yes.'"

Obviously, there are more components to the abundant life (John 10:10), but I really like this lady's list; especially the last piece of advice.

It's easy to say "no." It's easy to be too tired, too distracted, too busy, too lazy, too careful... It's hard to say yes.

We have to say no to certain things, particularly in the moral realm. That isn't the kind of opportunity we're talking about. We're talking about responding to invitations and opportunities with non-moral implications. Opportunities to take risks, engage life, or try something new.

It's easy to be the kind of person whose normal, automatic reflex is to say "no." But what a boring life!

This week, try it out just for the week. When given the opportunity, try everything in your power (outside of sin) to say "yes." See if the week doesn't turn into a pretty exciting adventure, no matter how old you are.

Retreat

Kari and I spent the first half of this week at a pastor/wives retreat with some of the other couples from our staff.

Our elders have always valued opportunities for our pastors and their wives to get away for a time of refreshment and prayer. We used to go to a really nice retreat center in Dallas but chose to go in a different direction a few years ago when the economy started going downhill. A generous family in our church has a ranch south of Fort Worth that allows us to have all the fun at a fraction of the cost.

We don't work on retreats. We have perfectly good conference rooms and offices in Fort Worth for working. Our primary goal on retreats is to connect with each other and pray.

It's time well spent. Every year since the economy tanked, we've asked the elders to cancel the retreat and save the money. Every year they've refused. And every year on the way home I make a few phone calls to tell them "thanks" for making the investment.

It's critical for our staff team to care about each other as people, not just colleagues. The only way to accomplish that is to know each other as people rather than just colleagues. If all we do together is work, our relationships would be awfully shallow. Our elders want better than that, so they make it a priority to invest in that direction. We're not a perfect staff, but I think we're closer than we were at this time last week.

Metrics

Last week I mentioned that the attendance metric hasn't been one of the metrics we have chosen to measure in the history of the church where I serve. Someday we will probably start measuring our numbers, but not for the purpose of gauging success.

Honestly, we haven't been great at measuring anything in the 50-year history of the church. And that's not always a good thing. People are always measuring something, even if not accurately.

Our church doesn't "officially" measure attendance, but it hasn't ever been rare to hear someone say "gosh, attendance was down this week," or "wow, it was a big Sunday." What's funny about that, is that it wasn't at all uncommon to hear both comments on the same Sunday in the same service. That hasn't ever been a huge deal because it isn't a benchmark for our success.

What is a benchmark for our success is movement toward spiritual development and external focus. So, on Sunday we did a church-wide survey during our service. Our hope is to set a benchmark this year and then measure our progress from year to year.

Whatever "success" is for your organization, it's important to measure and track. Otherwise, you'll never know how your organization is doing. You'll be relegated to gauging success at the whim of whomever skews the data to support their agenda.

Micromanaging and Playwriting

Last week I read an essay by Philip Slater, who was a sociology professor and leadership expert (cowriting a book with Warren Bennis) until leaving the corporate world to write plays and be involved in the theater. In his essay, he makes a great point about management:

"Inexperienced playwrights often want to direct their own plays so they can make sure everything conforms to their vision. The result is usually sterile and often disastrous... I tell playwriting students never to write stage directions that tell an actor how to do or say something, since it limits the actor's options and encourages phony gestures. A good actor, I tell them, will have a dozen ways of creating the effect you want - ways you haven't thought of - and will choose the one most natural and the one that most powerfully express that vision.

The head of an organization is in the same position as the playwright. If the leader's vision is clearly articulated it will be most effectively realized by others who share it, and bring their own creativity to it. Any attempt to control and direct their input will reduce its quality."

I think this is brilliant insight.

The most important roles of the manager are (1) finding the right people for the role, and (2) clearly communicating ends.

When those two roles are done well, the manager doesn't have to concern himself much with means at all.

Does God Have a Specific Plan for Your Life?

I wouldn't say I'm a Donald Miller fan. I've read most of his books, and didn't not like any of them. He takes the scenic route everywhere he goes as an author, and that drives me crazy. But, I never had a real beef with anything I read by Miller. I do, however, have a beef with his blog post last week titled "Does God Have a Specific Plan for Your Life? Probably Not."

I think he's trying to ask a question about knowing God's specific plan for your life, but that isn't the question Miller asks. Instead, he says "I don’t believe God has mapped out a plan for your every day, or even for your every year."

Here's the problem with Miller's logic: In order for God to be sovereign over anything, God must be sovereign over everything. You can't completely control one variable without having control over all the variables. If God has a plan, but it doesn't include your life, we can't have any confidence that God will be able to achieve His plan.

Miller argues that "God isn't a control freak." I agree with that because the word "freak" implies that God is malevolent or abusive with what He controls; or that He has to grab for control like a human control freak. He isn't, and doesn't.

In one of Martin Luther's writings to Erasmus, he charged "Your thoughts of God are too human." I'm afraid the same is true of Donald Miller, at least with regard to this topic.

You may not be able to know God's plan for your life. You shouldn't sit back and wait for God to reveal His specific plan outside His moral plan for your life; He rarely reveals those details. Run hard after God, make the wisest choices you can, and rest in a sovereign God who cares for you.

50-Percent Attendees

One of the things our church leadership is constantly chewing on is a relatively new trend with my generation and younger.

My parents and their generation would define "regular church attendance" as "Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, every week." My generation defines it as "Sunday morning, fifty percent of the time or more."

Busyness in life, accessibility of travel, dispersion of families to various geographical areas, joint-custody, a consumer mentality, and a host of other contributing factors make this a reality. But it is a reality.

We can all agree that it's not a positive trend. In the future, I might blog about some ideas I have for how to turn the tide. But for now I just want to raise the reality and its potential impact because if you don't think about the implications, you'll fall down a slippery slope.

It affects communications: If you make an announcement about anything on one Sunday, bank on the fact that less than 1/2 the people who consider your church "home" will hear it.

It affects planning: If you need leaders for something that happens every week, you had better be good at either team-building or handling disappointment.

If affects preaching: The vast majority of your congregation will hear less than half of your series. If your message builds completely on last week's, you probably just ought to preach last week's message.

It affects turnover: The tendency is to over-use the extremely faithful because they're around every week. The result: they start showing up every-other week.

What else? I know I'm missing some of the implications. Some of you live in this reality like I do. What are you noticing?

Tips for Your Ministry Resume - Part 2

A couple of years ago I posted some tips for writing a ministry resume. It's probably the most trafficked post I've written in the several years I've been blogging, with a few exceptions. I'm in the season of seeking to hire a couple of positions, so resumes are on my mind. Here are a couple of things to add to my previous list:

1. Slow Down. Smart employers probably aren't even going to begin looking at resumes until they have a pretty good pile to wade through. It is far better to wait a week after a job is posted and use that time to tweak your resume to the point that it fits the opening than it is to rush and send something that doesn't represent you as well as possible. Even more, on the day I post an opening I get 40 or 50 resumes. Over the next few days, that amount dramatically decreases. If you take your time, your resume may get a closer look.

2. Send it in PDF format. With new technology, a lot of potential employers will get their first look at your resume on their iPhone. If not, there's a strong chance they'll open it in a different version of Word than you used. Especially if you've done a lot of work formatting your resume, make sure you save it as a PDF rather than simply sending it as a resume. Even though it looked cool on your computer, if it looks like a jumbled mess on my phone or computer, you won't be getting a call.

3. If you list an "objective" on your resume, it really ought to have something to do with the job you're applying for. If your objective says you want "to serve Christ passionately as a pastor to students," but you're applying for an Executive Pastor role, you betray the fact that you're applying for every job that appears on churchstaffing.com rather than something that you feel might really be a fit for you. It's okay to do that; just do a better job of hiding it.

4. I said this on my previous post, but it's really important: your resume needs to include a professional-looking photograph so a relational prospective employer can picture your face when he's interviewing you. But please, please, please don't just snap a picture with your webcam. Spend the money to have someone take a professional picture of your family and include it. I got one resume from a guy who just scanned his passport and sent it along because I asked for a photo in the job posting. I would have called the guy, but his passport photo made him look like the Unabomber and I wouldn't have been able to stop laughing during the interview.

5. Read the instructions. We start interviewing candidates before we even receive their resume. Near the end of every job posting we give two or three specific instructions for how to submit resumes. Honestly, that weeds out 50 percent of the potential candidates right off the bat because 50 percent of applicants don't include what we have asked them to include. If you can't follow instructions when a job is literally on the line, when can you follow them?

6. Make sure an employer knows why you would be the best fit for the opening they are trying to hire on your front page. Your prospective employer will get scores of resumes. Try to think about what sets you apart from the other 184 applicants and make sure he/she sees that first. He'll see a bunch of seminary degrees and previous positions. Why should he/she hire you?

With a little bit of attention to detail, and a little homework, you can radically raise your chances of getting an interview, which is all your resume is really designed to do. Get in a hurry or forget to pay attention, and the job-search process will be extraordinarily difficult no matter how qualified you are.

Credibility

If you weren't at McKinney Church on Sunday, you missed hearing a guy who might just be the best preacher you've never heard of. Steve Bateman is the pastor of First Bible Church in Decatur, Alabama. He was the Singles Pastor at McKinney back in the early 90s and was back in town to do our men's conference.

For the entire weekend, he talked about "credibility" from 2 Timothy. This morning he wrapped up by talking about credibility from 2 Corinthians. If you download sermons or podcasts from time to time, it would be a good one to download or watch online. Powerful stuff.

In short here was Steve's thesis for the weekend:

Character + Competency = Credibility.

If you want to have credibility with anyone about anything, you have to know what you're talking about and show what you're talking about.

If you want to be really credible, you get that over time:

Character + Competency + Time = Strong Credibility.

But if you want to be enormously credible; the kind of person everyone turns to, you need to allow God to add something else to the mix:

Character + Competency + Time + Trouble = Enormous Credibility

None of us likes it, none of us wants it, none of us understands it, but when we come out on the other side God will always use trouble in conjunction with Character, Competency, and Time to establish the credibility of people who point to Him.

Thanks to Steve Bateman for a really great challenge this Sunday. I can't wait to read his book.

Sticky Teams - Review

Larry Osborne is the pastor of North Coast Church in San Diego. Several years ago I read his book "Unity Factor" about board leadership at a pretty strategic time in my ministry. I picked up his book "Contrarians Guide to Knowing God" at a pretty strategic time in my life. His newest book "Sticky Teams" showed up in my mailbox last week, so I'm excited to see what's in store.

With typical clarity and an easy style, "Sticky Teams" is a lot like Osborne's other books. He is a natural strategist with a depth that surprises you with such simple books. This book is written primarily for lead pastors to help them develop teams around them that pull together and accomplish great things without falling prey to the things that can kill a team's effectiveness.

Osborne has a unique writing style. If you read "Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God," you know that he is not the typical Type-A pastor. Really, all his books reveal that, and "Sticky Teams" is no different.

"Sticky Teams will help you think through clarity of roles, transition to younger leaders, identification and elevation of leaders, and also several counterintuitive axioms that Osborne says "every leader should know." Then Osborne takes on team alignment - ensuring everyone is pulling together in the same direction, beginning with the leader. Finally, Osborne tackles communication issues that often get leaders off track.

The challenge with "Sticky Teams" is that it was written for team leaders who work with a board and a staff team. Osborne's point (though he doesn't say it) is that both those teams operate on the same principles. However, the leader's place looks very different in each of those groups. Therefore, accomplishing the "ends" Osborne suggests may look different depending on which team the leader is relating to. Sometimes Osborne describes those differences; sometimes he doesn't.

At times, this reality can make the book sound a bit like a book of sound-bytes rather than a flowing argument. Chalk that up to Osborne's style, read the book with that in mind, and you won't be disappointed.

If you lead a team or report to a board (or think you might someday), this book will be extremely helpful to you. Osborne is no fly-by-night whippersnapper with a book deal to speak about leadership. The principles he presents in "Sticky Teams" have been time tested in Larry Osborne's ministry for the past thirty years. That kind of wisdom is worth at least the $12 the book will set you back.

Exposure and Understanding

In the past, as a leader I've made the mistake of thinking that exposure equaled understanding - that once my team had heard goals, vision, direction, instruction, or some other kind of communication from me, they would understand where we're going.

I've resisted the urge to re-communicate things to my team for fear that they would think I was micromanaging them. But I'm learning that the failure to move the team toward understanding is an abdication of leadership.

It isn't enough to expose the team to where you're going. It isn't even enough to immerse them in the concepts. As a leader, you have to move the team to a place where they understand a concept well enough to speak about it for you; where they can instruct themselves and others. Until that point, they can't own it; they're simply exposed to a concept without really understanding it.

Obviously, no leader has the time to do this for every goal, vision, direction, instruction, or other kind of communication. So, he/she has to figure out the top two or three pieces that govern all the rest and make completely sure his team truly understands those. If he chooses the right pieces and the team understands them well enough to be able to speak accurately about them on his behalf, the rest will take care of itself.

Numbers

At one point in my life, I was a part of a church with a pastor who was obsessive-compulsive about how many people showed up to church on Sunday morning. He would stand in the back of the auditorium until right before he preached for the sole purpose of counting heads.

The problem is, he was never a very good counter. I checked his math a couple of times, and he was almost always good for a 20-percent increase in whatever number I came up with.

A reaction against pastors like that is the reason a lot of people really shy away from tracking any kind of numbers in church.

I think that's a shame. I'm all about numbers - so long as they're the right numbers for measuring what you're trying to measure.

If you're trying to measure spiritual growth, nickels and noses may not be the best data-points to track. But if you're trying to gauge the overall level of generosity at your church, those numbers might be helpful.

The potential for abuse is not an appropriate reason for neglecting something altogether.

If you don't have some way of tracking progress toward your goals (whatever they are), the only thing you ensure is that you will never know when (or if) you reach them.

Furthermore, the fact that you don't measure something officially does not guarantee that it won't be measured unofficially. For example, the church where I currently serve does not officially count noses on Sunday morning. Up to this point, we haven't felt like that metric helps us measure what we want to measure, so no one on our leadership team has ever counted heads on Sundays. But all of them could tell you that we saw a downward attendance trend 5 years ago which has been trending back upwards with primarily young families for the past couple of years.

How do they know? Because everyone is keeping track; they're just not doing it officially.

Sometimes (like in the above case) that's okay; we've intentionally decided that attendance is not going to be a primary criteria for our decision-making. Sometimes, though, it can lead to faulty assumptions based on visceral data rather than the facts.

If you're going to use a criteria to make your decisions, numbers are important. You need to make sure you have an accurate picture of what the data for that criteria looks like. If you're not, it doesn't matter whether you have accurate numbers at all.

Expenses or Investments?

We're currently entering the season of budget preparation for our upcoming year. Being a compulsive goal-setter, I love this time of year even if it does force me to do a little math (I majored in music specifically to avoid math classes). Budgets help you set priorities and goals for the upcoming year.

Whether you're thinking in terms of a personal budget or a ministry budget, perspective is everything. And the most important perspective to have straight is your reason for having a budget to begin with.

Does your budget exist to track expenses or investments? Your answer to that question tells a lot about your perspective going into the budgeting process.

If you budget for expenses, you set the expectations awfully low. Expenses allow you to tread water, but never move forward. Investments expect a return.

In our ministry budget (and my personal budget), I am always on the lookout for expenses - the things that simply cost us money. I'm on the lookout for them because I want to cut them or eliminate them altogether. My stewardship over resources is far too important to set the bar low.

Our staff, programs, resources, and building are investments. We're expecting a return and want to position our financial portfolio in such a way that we're set up for long-term dividends, never short-term expenses.

Complexity and Depth

Every once in a while I hear people griping about other churches they're aware of, saying "they're just not very deep."

Sometimes they're right. More often what they really mean is "I don't like the music."

Fairly often, I think Christians have a tendency to confuse complexity with depth. If a church (particularly a pastor) has a tendency toward complexity, we talk about them being "deep." If a church (particularly a pastor) has a tendency toward simplicity, we talk about them "not being deep enough."

Make no mistake, many churches out there are not deep enough. But unfortunately, we often use the wrong criteria to discern between the two.

I've had friends brag about their pastor's "depth." When I go to their church, what they really have is a pastor who loves to preach messages so complex even a person with a masters degree in theology couldn't begin to follow him. The irony is, those churches are no less shallow than some of the Christianity-Lite churches I could mention. If nobody can understand or apply the message, the message might as well not be present to begin with.

Similarly, several times a pastor's reputation for "shallow" sermons have preceded him in my mind. But when I finally get around to hearing a sermon, I find depth I didn't expect to find.

If it's just complex, it isn't deep. If it's just simple, it isn't necessarily shallow. We have to be careful not to judge depth on the wrong criteria. Otherwise, we'll lean toward spiritual arrogance and shallowness, all the while thinking we're deep.

Answers and Questions

Some leaders are great because they know how to provide answers. A lot of the entrepreneurial millionaires I know of figured out a way to answer a problem that nobody else had been able to answer. One guy got frustrated waiting on a flight while the ground crew shuffled luggage around on the plane to get the weight and balance correct. By the time his flight landed, he had used the broken calculator in his bag to come up with a completely new solution that every airline uses today. Some leaders are great at providing answers like that.

There's a huge value to being a leader with answers, but I think there's an equally huge value to being a leader who simply knows how to ask the right questions. I hope there's value in that, because that's the way I am wired as a leader.

I can't usually come up with creative answers on my own, but I usually know the guy who can. I can't usually come up with a solution to a problem by myself, but I tend to be pretty good at looking at the solutions others have come up with to similar problems and synthesizing something that is workable.

Some leaders are great at coming up with answers. I want those guys on my team. But some of the best point-leaders I know don't have the answers at all - they just know how (and who) to ask the right questions.

Fish

Sunday, I got to preach out of John 21. I mentioned it in the sermon, but for those of you who don't attend McKinney (or slept through the sermon), I'll spare you having to go back and watch it online.

If you remember the story, it takes place about a week after Jesus rose from the dead. Several of the disciples head back to Galilee and decide to go fishing (they were fishermen before Jesus called them). They had fished all night and hadn't caught anything. Jesus shows up on the shore about 100 yards away and asks them if they had caught anything. "No," they reply. So, He tells them to cast their net on the other side and they haul in so many fish they can't get the nets back in the boat.

The whole chapter is absolutely rich - we didn't even scratch the surface Sunday - but my favorite part happens in verses 9 and 10.

Jesus calls the guys to shore and invites them to breakfast. He already has fish grilling over a charcoal fire for breakfast (v. 9) but invites them to bring the fish they've caught (v. 10).

Jesus didn't need their fish. He already had fish on the grill, and had shown in Mark 6 that he didn't need many fish to feed a whole lot of people.

He didn't need their fish, but chose to use them anyway.

I think a lot of times Christians treat our obedience/service to Christ as if God needs what we have to offer. But if we don't show up, it isn't as if God will be wringing His hands wondering what to do. He doesn't need what we bring to the table - but often He chooses to use it. Even when He provided it in the first place.

Lone Ranger Leaders

About a year ago I posted about the leader as trailblazer. It is often the job of the leader to take people to a place they never thought of going on their own. As a result, leadership can be a lonely place. That leadership, however, should never be self-imposed. I love this quote by Ron Heifetz in "Leadership Without Easy Answers."

"The myth of leadership is the myth of lone warrior: the solitary individual whose heroism and brilliance enable him to lead the way... Even if the weight of carrying people's hopes and pains falls mainly, for a time, on one person's shoulders, leadership cannot be exercised alone. The lone warrior model of leadership is heroic suicide."

You can't go it alone. You have to have people alongside you both inside and outside your organization who can help you shoulder the weight of your responsibility. Leadership can be lonely; don't do it by yourself.

Books in my Queue

It's Thursday after a long week and I'm fried without much to say. So, here is a look at some of the books in my stack to read in the near future. I'm reading a lot for classes these days; that's the reason for the trends. In no particular order:

The Good News we Almost Forgot - DeYoung

The Future of Leadership - Bennis, Spreitzer, and Cummings

The Leader of the Future - Hesselbein and Goldsmith

The Leader of the Future 2 - Hesselbein and Goldsmith

Next Generation Leader - Stanley

The Missional Leader - Roxburgh

Joy at Work - Bakke

The World is Flat - Friedman

Brothers We are Not Professionals - Piper

Shift - Haynes

Worship Community and the Triune God of Grace - Torrance

Christ-Centered Preaching - Chapell

reSymbol - Dees

What We Can't Not Know - Budziszewski

Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow - Guthrie

Any of those I should put at the front of the line?

Walk Slowly

Last year I got some helpful feedback from a friend I trust who told me I was in too big a hurry at important times.

Now... It's no secret that I'm the embodiment of a "Purpose-Driven" pastor. I tend to study with purpose, preach with purpose, rest with purpose, and walk with purpose. I haven't ever been confused about that.

But the dark underbelly of whatever your personality is, is that people can't ever see the heart behind that personality. And we have a bad habit of assigning motives to others based on our own perceptions and biases without ever stopping to think if the stories we're telling ourselves about others are accurate.

I can't take responsibility for every false motive someone might assign to me, but I can take responsibility for making it hard for people to believe anything but the best about me.

My purpose-driven walking through the foyer on Sunday made it easy for people to think I was cocky, arrogant, or uninterested in them. Nothing could be further from the truth - I think I probably just had to go to the bathroom. But, I can do better.

I've been working hard on physically slowing myself down during the most important times. I walk slowly through the foyer on Sunday. I make it a discipline to look as many people in the eye as possible. It's really hard for me - not natural at all. But, I'm committed to doing everything in my power to make it hard for others to believe anything bad about me.

As a leader, I don't want my manner to distract from my message, because if your manner distracts from your message, guess which one people are going to believe.

Fresh Eyes

On my way to the office every day I pass a small church that has been in existence for several decades. I don't know anyone who goes to the church or their pastor. I would love for that to change someday, but for now I only know the church from my commute.

The paint on the exterior of the church is peeling. The parking lot has almost as many weeds as the front lawn and one of the "emergency exit" front doors hasn't ever been painted to match the other.

My guess is, there are several people who love that church. My guess is, there's a pastor who loves the people in that church. My guess is, that church has been used by God to touch many lives in its history. But you wouldn't know it to look at the building.

How does that happen? It certainly didn't happen overnight. It happened gradually; day after day and year after year. And gradual decline is hard to spot.

As a leader, I pray almost every day that God will give me fresh eyes. Not just for the exterior facade of the church where I serve, but for the people I lead. I don't want to miss my chance to take action early. I don't want to miss a chance to stop a mess before it is so overwhelming we don't know where to start. I want to see things with fresh eyes. Do you?

Anxiety

Several months ago a pastor friend of mine turned me onto a set of three books about pastoral leadership by a man named Peter Steinke. They're exceptional books that have really changed the way I think about leadership in some critical ways.

Steinke writes a lot about leading through anxiety. I love his basic operating premise: one of the most fundamental roles of the leader is dealing with anxiety because anxiety always exists.

When the organization changes too quickly, the people become anxious. When the organization isn't changing, the people become anxious. Anxiety always exists.

Wise leaders don't avoid anxiety - they lean into it, find the cause, consider the implications of anxiety, set healthy boundaries, and move forward with a blend of steady caution and conviction.

Logos

I spent Monday and Tuesday at a software training program in Oklahoma City. From time to time people ask me if I use a Bible Study Software to study for my sermons.

Up until about 3 years ago, the answer was "no." I don't know why I was such a late adopter; I wasn't opposed to using them. I just didn't have the money for a good one, and wasn't noticing a huge gap between what I was doing and what I could do if I invested in a Bible Study software.

3 years ago I repented, and purchased Logos.

This isn't a commercial for Logos, but I did my research when I got ready to make the investment, and for a pastor or general Bible student, Logos is far and away the best investment.

At my fingertips, I have hundreds of searchable books. Want to know what John Calvin, or John Piper, or John MacArthur said about Ephesians 1:3? Just type "Ephesians 1:3" in your search box, direct it to your electronic books, and in .41 seconds I can have each of those books open to each place they mention the verse.

Wondering about the meaning of the Greek word for "sick" in James 5:14? You're one click away. Don't know Greek? It doesn't matter - the resource will explain the meaning for you.

Seriously, if I had invested in Logos 10 years ago, I could have graduated from seminary a year earlier. No exaggeration.

The only problem with Logos is that it is not necessarily very intuitive. That is, you can't pull it out of the box and figure out all its functions on your own. Enter Morris Proctor. This guy is a Logos Jedi, and a tremendous communicator. He conducts various levels of training seminars for Logos users and completely opens up the software for you whether you're a seminary professor or a small group leader with no formal Bible training. The first seminar I went to turned out to jump-start a complete paradigm shift in my Bible study.

The basic version of Logos and a MP Seminar will set you back a couple hundred dollars, but if your experience is anything like mine, it will be some of the best money you invest this year.

Great Quote

Found this great quote last night from an otherwise boring book, "Missional Church, A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America."

"Prayer is certainly personal, but it is never individual in the way that [some] comparisons would suggest. The language used in the Lord's Prayer is not "mine" and "me," but "our" and "us." In giving advice on prayer, Martin Luther counseled, "Remember that you are not kneeling or standing there alone... all devout Christians are standing there with you in one unanimous, united prayer which God cannot ignore." Whether we are in the presence of others or physically alone, when we pray we are united with all those who through faith in Jesus Christ have become the adopted children of God."

Monkeys

Last week blew up on me a bit and I didn't get a chance to queue up something for today and tomorrow. That would ordinarily be okay except that I'm out of the office for a software training today and tomorrow and my time is limited. So, today's blog comes from my father-in-law even though he doesn't know he's guest-posting.

We had a conversation on the ride in this morning (the software training is at his church) about monkeys and leadership.

There's an old story about a bunch of monkeys climbing the tree. When the leaders look down, all they see is a bunch of smiling faces. When the followers look up the tree, all they see is a bunch of... well... you know.

The point is: in an organization, perspective is everything.

From the bottom, it's easy to see everyone above you as a "you-know-what." From the top, it's easy to see a bunch of smiling faces. If you want perspective to change without your position changing, you have to bend over backwards.

Worship or Fear?

It's hard to really follow Jesus. Not to trust Jesus for eternal life; that's simple. It's hard to follow Jesus as a disciple.

Discipleship is not the path of least resistance, the path toward riches, or the path of convenience. It isn't usually popular or logical, and can bring times of temporary heartache and doubts. And when it does, we have a response.

In Mark 10, we read about a Rich Young Ruler who went away sorrowful because he was not as good as he thought and was unwilling to trust Jesus. That completely blew the disciples' paradigm - they thought riches were a sign of God's blessing and said "Who can be saved then?" (Mark 10:26). Jesus says, "With man, it is impossible; with God all things are possible" (Mark 10:27) reminding them that if they're going to have eternal life, God is going to have to do something. Mankind can't make things right on their own.

That reminder freaks Peter out. Unlike the Rich Young Ruler, the disciples had left everything behind to follow Jesus (Mark 10:28). Jesus lays out the paradigm for discipleship saying that's exactly the kind of commitment he's looking for: the people who are last in the world's eyes will be first in God's economy.

I love verse 32. "The disciples were now on the way up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. The disciples were filled with awe, and the people following behind were overwhelmed with fear."

It's hard to be a sold-out follower of Jesus, but you see two groups of people here. The people who were closest to Jesus were filled with awe; the people who were haphazardly going along were overwhelmed with fear.

The closer you get to Jesus, the more fear turns into worship.

Following Jesus is hard. When it gets difficult, will you be awestruck at the power of the One through whom "all things are possible" or will you start lagging behind, overwhelmed with fear?

Responding and Reacting

The most important job of the leader is to anticipate, because the second most important job of the leader is to deal with situations and circumstances that threaten the overall direction the leader (or organization, or family) is trying to lead the organization.

When dealing with these threats, large or small, the leader has two choices: he/she can choose to respond or react.

Both options are situational - that is, they are a potential way to deal with the given situation.

A response is measured and controlled. It reflects anticipation. Obviously, the leader can't anticipate every situation that might complicate his day. He has to anticipate that.

Reactions are reflexes. You can't possibly predict the outcome of a reaction before it happens; it just happens.

Think of a tennis game. Great leaders are like great tennis players. Great tennis players respond to the ball. You see them begin to move even before their opponent hits the ball. They're anticipating where the opponent will place the ball, or simply getting to a place where they could respond adequately to several different actions.

Great tennis players don't react. Great tennis balls react. They spend all their energy going wherever the most recent situation (racket) sends them. They're never in control, never able to make any progress. All they do is react.

Which kind of leader are you?

Consistency and Flexibility

I had a good conversation with a guy yesterday around the concept of leading people.

The very best leaders of people find a way to lead with both consistency and flexibility.

Consistency establishes the normal pattern. If you don't have consistency, the people you lead will never know what to expect from you. This will either cause them to hold back out of fear of you or take advantage of you until you finally draw a line in the sand. You need consistency of philosophy and vision so people know your expectations of them and are free to make decisions within that. They also need to know the boundaries on them and their peers so there is a mutual understanding and accountability for decisions they make.

Flexibility provides for exceptions to the normal pattern. If you are too rigid a leader on the consistency spectrum you'll be a horrible person to work with, much less for. You need the ability to see special situations and circumstances and to treat them as such. Organizations, just like interpersonal relationships, don't exist in black and white. Flexible leaders can see the grey as grey, but only when it's appropriate.

The guy I talked to yesterday said his preference in hiring senior level staff would always be to err toward consistency and try to train a consistent person to be flexible. I certainly see wisdom in that, but I'm not so sure it's that easy for me. What do you think?

Everyone Communicates, Few Connect - Book Review

John Maxwell is a nationally known leader of leaders. A former pastor, his books, seminars, teaching and other media have served as resources for scores of leaders throughout the past many years. I'm certainly an example of a leader who has benefited from Maxwell's ministry.

Maxwell's newest book, "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect" is an attempt to help others master the art of going to the heart of effective communication. The point of the book, as should be obvious from the title, is that all of us communicate hundreds of messages to different people throughout our day. But few people have truly mastered the art of connecting with other people. As a result, the message is misunderstood, misapplied, or even worse, un-applied.

As is true with most of Maxwell's books, "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect" is easy to read. Maxwell is a voracious collector of quotes and anecdotes. With a story, quote, joke, or illustration on every page, this book is simple to work through; hard to apply.

You will find little to dispute in this book. Maxwell lays out several principles and several practices of effective connectors that are irrefutable (I don't know why the publisher didn't go back to the "irrefutable" well that provided the title for Maxwell's other books; this one is a natural fit in that mold). Maxwell's advice for communicators will be helpful, no matter what you are trying to communicate or with whom you want to connect. This is really good material.

In the interest of full-disclosure, the one thing that irks me about this book is the same thing that bothers me about several of Maxwell's books: Maxwell is not lacking in confidence. I know, I know, "it ain't bragging if you done it," and John Maxwell has done it. But, I find that Maxwell is the hero of most of his personal anecdotes and the model for most of his ideas. Whenever another great leader is quoted or referenced, Mr. Maxwell makes sure the reader knows that the leader is "his friend," or that the quote took place in a private conversation at Maxwell's home. I hesitate to even mention that challenge because I don't know Mr. Maxwell and am sure he is a fine man, but the truth is: it provided a barrier that made it hard for me to "connect" with this book on connecting.

As a person currently serving in a leadership position, I have a high value on books that will strengthen my skills without wasting my time. If you're interested in reading a good book about connecting with a spouse or an audience, "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect" contains principles that will make you much more effective without wasting your time. It's worth picking up.

(FYI - I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers in exchange for my review. In compliance with the regulations of the ever-present Federal Trade Commission (16 CFR, Part 255), it is important for you to know that I was not required to write anything other than an honest review)

Thoughts on Social Justice - Part 3

• I'm interested in the fact that many of the most outspoken proponents of social justice are focused almost exclusively overseas. How many books are written about the Church doing justice in its own backyard?
• I'm impressed with how easy it is to talk about social justice, kingdom theory, and the "bifurcation of the Gospel," and how difficult it seems to actually do something about it. Many of the most recognized social justice promoters are not actually involved in social justice aside from simply throwing money at the problem. We've been throwing money at these problems for decades; it is time to start doing something different.
• I'm excited about the Church in America thinking through how to put feet on our faith. I'm terrified that the feet are going to get ahead of the faith, or leave the faith behind altogether.
• Spurgeon once said "A man's nose is a prominent feature on his face, but it is possible to make it so large that eyes and mouth and everything else are thrown into insignificance and the drawing is a caricature and not a portrait: so certain important doctrines of the gospel can be proclaimed in excess as to throw th rest of the truth into the shade and the preaching is no longer the gospel in its natural beauty but a caricature of the truth." When we de-emphasize the death and resurrection in order to emphasize the Christian's temporal responsibility, I am afraid we create a caricature of the gospel at best.
• Many of the accusations about the "blindness" of the American Church when it comes to social issues may be true, but such sweeping claims are probably highly exaggerated. American Christianity in the 20th century deserves much of the credit for the social justice we see in America. Chances are you can't name an organization currently dedicated to helping the homeless and destitute that doesn't have its roots in evangelical Christianity.
• It is easy to see the Church through exclusively Western eyes. I'm thankful to be a part of a church that partners with people who are doing effective ministry in other parts of the world rather than simply believing our Western solutions are the answer to third-world problems.
• The right thing done for the wrong reasons is the wrong thing. Loving your neighbor is the right thing. Loving your neighbor to help the church's image is doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
• The Church's perception problem in the world is primarily God's issue. My perception problem in my world is primarily my issue. If enough Christians were serious about being ambassadors for Christ in their unique sphere of influence, we wouldn't have a personal or global perception problem.

Thoughts on Social Justice - Part 2

• Even if we were grant that the modern church in America has been too focused on converting sinners to Christianity's message and not focused enough on living out Christianity's message, does it follow that there is no error in the opposite direction?
• Matthew 26:11 makes it abundantly clear that if it comes down to a decision between justice and the person of Jesus, Jesus wins.
• If social justice is a necessary part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as many contemporary authors suggest, why is there not a stronger emphasis in the New Testament commanding the church to take on Roman inequity, slavery, totalitarianism and injustice?
• I have a hard time believing that the church is the presence of the Millenial Kingdom in the world, and the Millenial Kingdom is a place where the leopard will lie down with the goat (Isaiah 11:6), when a large part of most pastors' week is spent dealing with conflict between church members.
• An entirely future kingdom is perfectly compatible with a heart for justice in the world today. The fact that things cannot be what they will be does not mean that they should not be what they should be.
• In most of the OT passages in which God judges the Jews for injustice, their active acts of doing injustice against the poor were in God's sights (defrauding and exploiting the poor) , not just the fact that the poor existed in their society (see Leviticus 19, Isaiah 1, Jeremiah 22, Amos 5:7-15; Micah 6:8-12) . God's problem wasn't that the poor existed in the same society as the Jews. His problem was when the Jewish people took advantage of the poor to make themselves rich.
• I have no problem affirming that the Church consists of "aliens and strangers" (1 Peter 2:11) in the world who are called to be "ambassadors" of a coming King and kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:20). The result is the same: we should reflect God's agenda and priorities to a watching world, including God's heart for true justice. But we don't have to monkey with hermeneutics about the Kingdom or the gospel to get to the same place.
• Whatever Jesus meant by being salt and light (Matthew 5:13); whatever Peter meant by "Be holy" (1 Peter 1:16); whatever Paul meant by "conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ" (Philippians 1:27), it had to be more than just actions or behavior. Well-behaving people killed Jesus, Peter, and Paul.
  

Thoughts on Social Justice - Part 1

• The term "social justice" is a bit like the term "fundamentalist." It can mean a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. So, before you can use the word you have to define your use of the word, which ultimately makes the word unhelpful.
• As a Christian, you can't use the word "justice" in the context of what we need to believe or do without understanding God's purpose for demanding and commanding justice in the first place. If what the Church is doing is disconnected from what God is ultimately up to in human history, the Church has a problem - even if the rest of the world responds positively to what the Church is doing.
• When it comes to "social justice," we have to define our expectations. If we expect Christians to show love to their neighbor, that's one thing. If we expect pagan nations and their unregenerate leaders to show justice to the people they have trampled to get their power apart from the Holy Spirit working in their lives, we are insane.
• The consistent purpose for Israel throughout the Old Testament (Leviticus 11:44) and the Church throughout the New Testament (1 Peter 1:15) is to different from the rest of the world because the God we serve is different from the gods of the rest of the world. Therefore, if what we do is not distinguishably, tangibly different from what the rest of the world does, we miss the point.
• The book of Romans is clear that ultimate, eternal justice is found only in the cross of Jesus Christ. If we engage in any "social justice" that does not have the cross in the near view, we have missed both the true definition of justice and the purpose for which we exist.

Thoughts on Social Justice

If you're at all up on current trends within American Christianity these days, you know there is a huge push in the area of "social justice." (If you're not up on current trends, but listen to Glenn Beck you might have some idea of the issues, though Beck himself seems to be a little fuzzy on exactly what "social justice" is). Some of the current trend toward "social justice" stems from theologies that see the church responsible for ushering in or manifesting the Kingdom of God on the earth. Some of it comes for more visceral reasons, one being an embarrassment that the church has been a latecomer to the scene on many contemporary issues of justice (I think a lot of this healthy discussion started with Bill Hybels and Rick Warren's conviction about the church's lack of response to the AIDS issue).

The other more visceral reason is connected - many trend-trackers show an increasing dissatisfaction with the relevance of the Church. Church leaders feel like the church needs to prove relevance in issues of social justice in order to fix a perception issue with the church.

I'm still thinking my way through all the issues. Certainly I believe the church should be involved in what's going on in the world. But, I've got some serious concerns about both "how" and "why" many contemporary leaders say that needs to happen.

For the rest of the week, I'm going to record some of my current disjointed, stream-of-consciousness thoughts on this - more because I need to get them down than because I think you care to read them. Even still, feel free to interact if you've got an opinion. Like I said, I'm still very much in process.

Whoops

Looks like I forgot to queue up a blog post for today. Oops.

If you're too disappointed, you could head over to my wife's blog for a big announcement.

See you Monday.

When to Risk

People who know me well laugh at my approach to risk-taking. I'm probably the riskiest risk-adverse guy I know. On some things, I'm ready to charge the hill with a butter-knife. On others (which seem to be really similar situations), I tend to be way behind the curve. That makes me a frustrating team member for someone who tends toward one edge of the spectrum: I can be pretty unpredictable.

In reality, I'm pretty calculating when it comes to risk. Everyone runs a quick risk/reward assessment when deciding whether or not to move forward. The difference between a good risk and a bad risk isn't a risk/reward calculation; it's a risk/reward calculation about the right things.

Here is my grid (as far as I can understand it right now).

1. What am I really trying to accomplish? (Purposeless risk is cavalier foolishness)
2. Are there moral issues involved? (If staying "above reproach" is the risk, no reward is worth it)
   
3. Is there a safer way that will achieve the same result? (Risk just for kicks is not in my play book. I played slot machines once and they took all my money. Lesson learned.)
4. Who will bear the consequences? (I am much more likely to favor risk-taking where the risk is only to me or my reputation as opposed to a risk that could affect, say, my entire church's reputation)
5. Can I/we execute this? (A poorly executed risk is a good way to look stupid and waste a great opportunity)
6. Does this fit "us?" (Organ transplants are always risky, but if the organ is not a "match" they are always deadly. If a risk doesn't "match" the DNA of the organization or person shouldering the risk, it will kill you or the organization)

I may be missing a thing or two. Anything you could add?

Firefighting

A large part of the job-description for any leader, whether or not it actually shows up in a written job description, involves the task of putting out fires. In any organization, small fires spring up all the time: unsatisfied customers, disgruntled employees, non-compliance issues, under-performing reports, miscommunication, and a host of other issues can dominate the leader's time if he/she isn't careful.

Most of the fires the leader is called to put out are inconsequential. Then again, so are most cigarettes, but just one left unattended can destroy an entire forest. So, firefighting is a necessary part of the leader's job.

What isn't a necessary part of the leader's job is fighting the same fire over and over. If you find yourself dealing with the issue over and over, you either (1) haven't really ever extinguished the fire or (2) missed the source of the fire altogether.

You'll save yourself a lot of time if you do some work on the front-end and back-end of firefighting making sure the presenting issue is really the issue that needs to be dealt with, and that the fire has been extinguished rather than simply minimized at the end.

Crucial Confrontations - Book Review

"Crucial Confrontations" is the partner book to a book I reviewed last year called "Crucial Conversations." As the subtitle suggests, the book is an attempt to offer "tools for talking about broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior."

I'll just cut to the chase: if you deal with people on a regular basis, are not omnipotent or omniscient, and choose not to read this book, you're making a huge mistake if not being altogether irresponsible.

There are only a few people on the planet who enjoy confrontation. Those people do not need to be doing it.

The rest of us normally hate confrontation because we are lousy at it. Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler have provided us with a resource to help all of us prepare for confronting virtually anyone, and develop a game plan for engaging in and managing high-stakes confrontations about any topic.

This book will be helpful for the parent who needs a healthy way to confront a child about her lack of piano practicing as well as for the Senior Vice President of a corporation who needs to confront his CEO about a serious character issue. The authors lay out a no-nonsense, simple road map for navigating difficult confrontations of any shape or size.

Crucial Confrontations will give you a strategy for your anger (mastering stories), the other person's emotions (protecting safety), articulating the problem (describing the gap), detours in the confrontation (focus and flexibility), and developing an action plan to end the conversation and move forward (move to action).

On every page of this book, I saw specific ways that confrontations in my past could have gone differently. I wish I had read this book ten years ago.

Although I'm still not excited about engaging in confrontation and cannot guarantee that all my confrontations in the future will go well, I can guarantee that after reading this book I'll go into those hard conversations exponentially more equipped and confident of a good outcome than I have been able to be in the past.

Ridiculous

This is unbelievable: The precision, creativity, out-of-the-boxness.

When I waste time, I want to waste time like this.

Open-Handed Part 4 - Personal Ministry

This is my last post on this particular soap box. I don't know if it has been at all helpful to anyone besides me to think through these things, but that's the beauty of this being my blog!

The final major distinctive (there are many other minor features) of "open-handed" churches is an emphasis on personal ministry.

Open-handed churches are not anti-institutional, but they certainly de-emphasize the institution in favor of more organic forms of ministry. To put it more simply, and I've already said this, individuals don't feel the need to check-in with headquarters before they do great ministry.

To take it even further, an open-handed ministry can't by definition be a church with an attractional model of ministry. The emphasis of an open-handed church is getting the people in here out there to do the ministry, not getting all the people out there in here so that ministry can be done to them.

Here's what a commitment to personal ministry means:

1. You cannot have your people at church 4 nights a week and expect them to do personal ministry outside the walls of your church. Don't try.
2. There will often be highly effective servants of Christ who should not serve as a part of your "official" ministry. Teaching a Sunday School class or putting them on your board would be a distraction from their involvement somewhere else. You can't make a guy feel guilty for doing great ministry somewhere else and simply attending your church.
3. You have to be selective in the programs you institute. If the primary function of a program is to bring people in and minister to them, you'll waste time and energy. If the program is designed to develop people to do great personal ministry, you'll get a huge bang for your buck.
4. You have to be a champion for personal ministry. Most people grew up in churches that had a "you catch-em, we'll clean-em" mentality. You've got to help people see that ministry is their responsibility, not the institution's.

Celebrating personal ministry can be tough, and messy. But the dividend it pays over trying to micro-manage everything and hang onto ministry with a closed fist is well worth it.

Open-Handed Part 3 - Valuing Partnerships

A huge part of being "open-handed" means valuing partnerships. I already touched on this idea a little in my two previous posts this week, but it is important enough to deserve its own post.

When you think primarily in terms of Church as opposed to church, and are excited about giving ministry away, you don't care as much about which ministry gets the credit for what God is doing. The result of that is that you begin focusing on how you can partner with people doing great ministry rather than simply trying to co-opt good ministry ideas.

In Dallas, there are two crisis pregnancy centers less than a block from each other. One of them is a para-church ministry that has existed for more than twenty years. The other is the ministry of a mainline denomination who saw what the existing center was doing and wanted to replicate it so they could do it "their way." The result? Neither crisis pregnancy center is doing great ministry. The original ministry doesn't see as many clients since they're split between the two. Meanwhile, the denominational ministry doesn't have the knowledge, skill, or infrastructure to effectively operate a non-profit agency as well as the original center. But because they wanted the credit and focused on the church (with a small c), both ministries suffer.

When someone comes to our church leadership with an idea for a new ministry, our first question is "Who is already doing this effectively in our area?" If there is an answer, our second question is, "Is it possible for us to partner with them without compromising their ministry?"

Sometimes that means a public partnership, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes we end up helping behind the scenes. When a big church comes in and publicly "partners with" another ministry, it can often have an adverse effect because other churches feel like a need no longer exists.

This isn't just with para-church ministries. Open-handed churches are quick to point people with specific needs to other churches who are better equipped to handle it. For example, our church never got on the Celebrate Recovery bandwagon, but not because we were uninterested in that ministry. We think it's vital. But another solid church just a few miles away got in on the front-end and is doing CR really well. When someone in our church needs that kind of community, we send them to the other church.

Sometimes they come back; sometimes they don't. That's okay; we're not keeping score. We want to encourage the best possible ministry wherever it is happening, and don't see the need to re-invent an already existing ministry just so it has our name on it.

We'd rather partner with someone who is doing great ministry and be an encouragement for them than wade into an area that is not our area of expertise and try to make a go of it. There are plenty of people to go around. We want to focus on what we're good at and partner with people who are better at other things.

Open-Handed Part 2 - Giving Ministry Away

Yesterday I started talking about what it looks like to be an "open-handed church" by saying that open-handed churches think in terms of Church (with a big "C") before they think about their own individual church (with a small "c"). The local church is not the hope of the world; Jesus is.

One of the primary ways this kind of thinking shows up is in giving ministry away.

In a lot of churches you get the distinct feeling that the people in the pew exist to help the pastor (or staff) have a really great ministry. Open-handed churches feel like that's a backward philosophy. The pastor and staff (according to Ephesians 4:11-13) exist to help the people have great ministry wherever they are.

When a person trusts Christ or begins to grow spiritually, the question is "how could that person serve Christ?" before it is "how could that person serve our local church?". The difference is subtle, but extraordinarily profound.

Close-handed churches expect their people to check-in with the church staff before they begin a Bible study with their neighbors. Kids aren't encouraged to be a part of Young Life, or FCA, or something else at their school because it might take them away from a youth event. Pastors lead everything; volunteers set up and clean up. Close-handed churches see materials they have developed as an opportunity to promote their brand; not as a way to further ministry.

The open-handed church looks for ways to give ministry away. Their staffs exist to develop and empower others so that they are fully equipped to have great ministry whether that ministry contributes to the the little "c" church's nickels and noses or not.

Open-Handed Part 1 - Big or Small "C?"

One of the unique things I love about the church where I serve is its "open-handedness." It's one of our core values that we talk the most about, and also one of the things that makes McKinney a unique church.

This week, I want to unpack just a little of what it means to be an open-handed church. Hopefully it will be a reminder for those of you who attend McKinney, and a thought-provoker for those of you who found this blog somewhere else.

Perhaps the foundational thing that makes a church "open-handed" is a commitment to Church (with a big "C") above a commitment to church (with a little "c").

In a lot of churches, you get the feeling that if a particular ministry doesn't happen as a function of that church, it is as if it didn't happen at all. If college students don't choose to attend a particular church's college ministry over and above another campus ministry, they aren't seen as serious about their faith. If another church does a specific program, some churches either try to re-create it and re-brand it, or take pot-shots at it.

Open-handed churches want to be the first to recognize that they don't have the corner on the God market in their particular town. Rather than evangelize people to their church they evangelize people to their Savior. They are more serious about expanding the Church than their church.

I'm not talking about ecumenism, where we celebrate ministries that have abandoned essential doctrines of the faith. I am talking about looking for ways to value ministries that are preaching the same salvation in the name of the same Jesus from the same Bible whether or not those ministries were your idea or share your same budget.

Throughout the New Testament, the primary focus is on Christ building His Church, not us building our churches. I'll talk more about what open-handedness looks like throughout the week which may clarify this distinction even more, but I'm interested in your feedback today: Would you say your church is "open-handed" based on this part of the definition? Why or why not?