Occupational Hazard of Over-Statement

During my class last week we had a great conversation around the topic of "over-statements" leaders tend to make. You know the over-statements: pastors over-state how effective their programs are, or how many people come to their church. Other organizations over-state how many people they reach or how many products they sold last year. Over-statements are dishonest, but awfully typical. And there aren't many leaders other than Jesus who are innocent of falling to this temptation.

Why is it that even leaders with extraordinary character have a tendency to over-state information, even when it doesn't need to be over-stated in the first place?

One of the guys in our discussion suggested that as organizations grow, leaders develop groupies who reward them for over-statement. Those groupies thrive on their connection to the leader; the more successful he (or she) is, the more a groupie thrives on the connection. So, the leader gets lots of opportunities to practice over-statements to the point that he begins to believe they are true. The more often the tape of a lie plays itself across our lips, the more likely we are to begin to believe the lie, and the more likely we are to tell the lie again. It becomes comfortable, and we begin to believe it.

It's a vicious cycle.

I tend to think my friend's logic is true. If so, it's just another reminder: you lie to yourself long before you lie to anyone else. And sometimes, if you aren't careful, those you'll get good enough that you even fool yourself.

The Good News We Almost Forgot - Review

I recently heard someone predict that in the future, theology will become even more important but will need to be less complex. The theologians of the future will be those who are able to master the art of putting complex truth in a simple, accessible way. Kevin DeYoung is one of those theologians.

The subtitle of DeYoung's Book "The Good News We Almost Forgot" is "Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism." The subtitle is deceptive to a reader who doesn't give a flip what happened in the 16th century or have the foggiest idea what a "catechism" is, because DeYoung's book is both contemporary and accessible.

DeYoung looks back at the Heidelberg Catechism (catechisms are distilled theological Truth presented in the form of questions and answers) and demonstrates its usefulness to people wanting to think deeply and simply at the same time.

The Catechism was written in 52 sections so that a pastor could preach on each section each year. It is essentially a commentary on the Apostle's Creed, Ten Commandments, and Lord's Prayer. DeYoung writes a contemporary commentary on the commentary.

This book is an easy read that you'll want to read a couple of times. In fact, I'm considering making it a part of my discipline next year: a chapter a week.

I certainly don't agree with everything DeYoung says in this book, particularly with regard to baptism. But that shouldn't be a distraction for the reader. DeYoung writes with an approachable spirit and gracious demeanor that allows the reader to deal with differences the same way.

If you're interested in theology but have a tendency to get lost in the weeds, DeYoung's book will be a helpful resource.

Whew

Well, blog plans for the week came to a screeching halt at 1:45am on Monday morning.

We're doing great, but are juggling a sick 2-year-old, normal 2-day-old, and some classes in Dallas that I can't miss, it would be comical to try to write anything of substance. Then again, why start now?

Lord willing, I'll be back on Monday, August 2.

Sick Singers and Saturday Sermons

Those of you who know me know that a big part of my life has involved music, specifically singing. I did a lot of musical theater in a previous life, and spent some time as a worship leader. When you work primarily with vocal musicians, you notice something really quickly: You will never meet a physically healthy singer.

Try it next time you're around one. Next time you're at church on a Sunday morning and see the person who will be singing special music, tell them you're looking forward to hearing them sing. Ten bucks says they'll say, "Well, thanks... I've been struggling with a cold so be praying for me. I'm not in very good voice today."

Why are singers always sick? So that they have something to blame if they bomb. Singing is such an intensely personal gift that if you stink it up, you feel like it reflects poorly on you as a person.

I heard a fascinating study presented last week that said a staggering number of pastors don't write their sermons until Saturday night. I think it's probably for the same reason. Preaching is a terribly personal art. In order to protect their egos, pastors wait until Saturday to prepare. That way if the sermon bombs, they can justify it to themselves.

My suspicion is that the tendency isn't limited to only pastors and singers. I know businessmen who procrastinate business deals, salesmen who slow-play customers, and teachers who wait to prepare lesson plans.

All of us are insecure. The earlier we recognize it and make the decision to find our sufficiency in Christ, the earlier we're able to actually be used in His hands.

Wednesday Rundown on Thursday

- "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think and act anew. " - Abraham Lincoln.

- Sometimes improving skills in spiritual communication actually gets in the way of improving the spiritual life because people get more enamored by communication than transformation.

- Hire Staff who create their own momentum.

- Don't just delegate responsibility - delegate authority. There are a lot of people in the senior pastor role that don't need to be senior pastors. They're there because it's the only place on the org chart where someone would finally give them the responsibility and authority to do what God called them to do.

- Leaders who refuse to listen will eventually be surrounded by people with nothing important to say.

- As yourself: Is what you're experiencing on staff worth exporting to your community?

- If there's a proper teaching about the church gathered/scattered, the term "missional church" is redundant.

Tuesday Run-Down on Wednesday

- It's time to stop thinking and strategizing about the Church. It's not about the Church; it's about Jesus.

- If your strategy for fulfilling the Great Commission is limited to pastors and missionaries, the last two hundred years have shown that you're doomed to failure. Are we about sending missionaries or about fulfilling the great commission? The distinction is crucial. If we're just about sending missionaries, all we'll do is build the institution so we can send a select few. There's nothing wrong with sending missionaries; it's just insufficient.

- In the Bill of Rights, the founders set up a system in America where the minority will always have a voice. That, coupled with a society in which financial affluence and education is available, and we have the greatest opportunity in history to have a worldwide impact without ever leaving the country, simply by developing Christ-centered relationships. We shouldn't be scared of the Muslims building a mosque in the heart of our cities; we should be grateful for the opportunity.

- Acts 1:8 was not intended to be sequential; it was intended to be comprehensive.

- This is an amazing time in the history of United States where if you are a man who has held your marriage and family together you have enormous credibility to speak into the lives of others.

- Serve not to convert, but because you've been converted. God's responsibility is to do the converting. Our responsibility is to be an ambassador in every aspect of our life. The end goal of our service as ambassadors is that God would be glorified. It should be our desire that every person we meet would trust Christ; but in the end, we should serve them even if they don't ever trust Christ.

Committees

I'm in classes every day for the next 2 weeks at DTS. I fully intended to have blog entries queued up and ready to go for the week, but didn't get them done. So, I decided that I'd post a couple of gleanings/learnings/questions from my classes every night in random form. (I may interact with them and may just post them as they are to let you interact). We'll see how it goes.

Today, most of the day was an introduction to the class. But one statement caught my attention.

This statement was made today: "If you have more than 10 people on a committee, you ensure that major decisions will always be made outside the committee."

The statement in its context applied to boards, sub-committees, staff teams, and any other place committees are found.

On its face, I'm inclined to agree with the statement. I've been a part of several elder boards and committees in my life. When they get bigger than 10ish, the real decisions usually get made either (1) during the pre-meeting in which the agenda is established, or (2) during the meeting after the meeting that takes place in the parking lot where alliances are formed.

Some pastors opt for really big elder/deacon boards for this very reason: they give the pastor more power. The bigger the team, the more the confusion. The more confusion, the more freedom the pastor has to simply get things done.

There's at least one down side though: when the group is small, every person wields quite a bit of power. One "bad apple" can stall progress, lead the group astray, or distract the group from something that is really important. The smaller the group, the more emphasis has to be placed on selecting and training the right people.

So, what do you think? Do you agree with the original statement? If so, or if not, what's the optimum size of a decision-making group?

Ministry Idolatry and Fruit Bearing

Tim Keel wrote a book called "Intuitive Leadership, Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos." I'm not able to recommend the book for the same reason I'm not able to recommend much from the guys who call themselves "Emergent Village." I feel like they're asking the right questions, but are willing to abandon Truth in search of the answers.

Even still, because they're asking a lot of the right questions, sections of their books are extremely helpful. An example is this quote from "Intuitive Leadership" talking about the tendency for churches to fall into patterns of Ministry Idolatry:

"I believe the most acceptable and common form of idolatry in churches today is ministry. I believe many leaders and many churches worship ministry - that is, what we are trying to do for God... We often do not pursue God but instead pursue the fruitfulness that we are told accompanies God's presence in a person or community's life. Let me rephrase that statement: we rarely pursue God directly but instead pursue external expressions called "ministry" as a sign of God. But when we make ministry our pursuit, we make it impossible to realize the very thing we seek. Ministry is always the by-product of something else. What? The pursuit of God."

Keel goes on to point out John 15:4-5 and remind us that the command in John 15 is to "Abide," not to "bear fruit." Fruit-bearing comes from abiding. It isn't contrived, it isn't commanded, it isn't compelled. It's the natural product of a branch that abides. Rather than trying to talk our people into bearing fruit, we ought to teach them how to abide and let the fruit take care of itself.

Novelty and Sentimentality

Last Sunday I preached from 2 Kings 18-19 talking about the first part of Hezekiah's legacy as a king of Judah. It's a great story about a young king who started extremely well.

Early in his leadership, 2 Kings 18 says Hezekiah removed all the high places, stone altars, and Asherah poles that had been built in the 150 years or so since David. As the generations since David tried to find new ways to worship they drifted into full-fledged idolatry, opting to worship like the rest of the world rather than to stand apart.

But newfangled worship wasn't the only form of idolatry Hezekiah took on. He also broke up the bronze snake left over from Moses' ministry in Numbers 21. In the years since Moses, the snake had gone from being an object that pointed toward God to a sentimental reminder of old times, to an object of worship itself. I can only imagine the ire of the "churchladies" as Hezekiah smashed their tradition.

It strikes me that the idol of novelty and the idol of sentimentality are both ever-present in our own worship and are both equally dangerous. When we allow something designed to point our focus toward God to become the focus, whether for the sake of being cutting edge or hanging on to the past, we are in dangerous territory.

If a style of music, translation of Scripture, children's program, ministry philosophy, or any other thing gets to the point that we are unable to worship without it, it's probably time to learn a lesson from Hezekiah and start chopping down poles or breaking up snakes.

We have to move forward and we have to look backward, but never at the expense of looking upward.

Managing Distractions

One of the really helpful sections to me in "Making Ideas Happen," the book I revealed on Monday, is a section about managing distractions. I tend to be about as easily distracted as my two-year-old when it comes to getting stuff done at work.

Here's what Belsky says:

"When it comes to staying focused, you must be your own personal Madison Avenue advertising agency. The same techniques that draw your attention to billboards on the highway or commercials on television can help you become more (or less) engaged by a project. When you have a project that is tracked by a beautiful chart or an elegant sketchbook, you are more likely to focus on it. Use your workspace to induce attention where you need it most. You ultimately want to make yourself feel compelled to take action on the tasks pending, just as a marketer makes you feel compelled to buy something."

Environment really can be everything when it comes to being focused. I've learned to limit the things that are in the sight-line of my workspace. If I keep Post-it notes or unread books where I see them while I'm trying to work; or if I keep multiple windows open on my desktop, I'm guaranteed to accomplish nothing.

Belsky is right: focus has to be won. If I'm not intentional about my environment, the project is doomed before it begins.

Making Jesus Look Good

As a person with strong convictions and a penchant for sarcasm, it's hard for me to restrain myself sometimes. It's hard for me to avoid a good "discussion" (okay, argument), particularly when it comes to theology or people from other belief systems.

I think it's important to have strong convictions, and important to stand up for truth. But I constantly have to remember that my manner is always heard more loudly than my message.

We don't have to make other people or other ideas look bad to make Jesus look good. Just talk about Jesus; He can look good on His own.

Making Ideas Happen - Review

I've followed Behance for a while now. I experimented with their Action Method, and replaced my moleskine with an "Action Journal" several months ago. When I found out their founder and CEO was putting out a book about helping creative types get things done, I put it at the top of my stack.

If you're the kind of person who struggles because you have lots of great ideas but never seem to accomplish any of them, Making Ideas Happen is a book you need to read. Don't read it if you're expecting a massive paradigm shift; it won't provide that. However, Belsky's book is loaded with practical ideas that help creative people capture and act on good ideas.

The book starts slow. The first few chapters read like a commercial for Behance's "Action Method." Belsky almost assumes you've heard of the "Action Method" and doesn't spend a lot of time unpacking it although the reader will have a firm grasp of it by the time the book ends. That's a good trait of the book. If you haven't heard of "The Action Method," a working knowledge isn't a prerequisite to getting quite a bit out of this book. It's fairly intuitive, and after you read more about it you'll wonder what the big deal is.

Belsky begins his book by helping you see ideas as projects. Some ideas are projects that need attention immediately, and some are projects that will not be tackled for long periods of time. Either way, from the inception of an idea it needs to be put into a pipeline with any other idea. Much of the first section of the book is designated to helping you understand an idea from inception to completion. He has great ideas on staying focused and managing your priorities. If you struggle with Idea ADD, pages 58-104 are must-read pages.

The second section of the book involves working with a team. Since very few genuinely good ideas can be accomplished alone, working with a team is an important dynamic. Unfortunately, it's a dynamic most creatives are awful at. Belsky's advice will help.

The final section of "Making Ideas Happen" speak specifically to the person leading a creative team. He talks about how to handle naysayers, and how to keep creative teams from running with bone-headed ideas. He ends by talking about self-leadership and the self-perception of leaders of creative teams.

Rarely am I as excited about a book when I finish it as I was when I started it. Fifty pages into "Making Ideas Happen" I was worried I was headed for a letdown. But by the end of the book I was wishing for more to read.

If you are a creative "idea" person, or if you (like me) are a wannabe creative person who leads creative people, this book is a good one to put toward the top of your stack.

Seasons and Ruts

I talk a lot about "seasons." We all have seasons of busyness, seasons of rest, seasons of excitement, seasons of exhaustion, seasons of discouragement, and seasons of rejoicing. It's a fairly biblical concept (Ecclesiastes 3). However, if you find yourself in an abnormal stage of life, it's important to distinguish between seasons and ruts.

Seasons come and go. We can endure them and lean into them because we know they're fleeting. Ruts aren't so friendly.

If you "lean-in" to a rut, you'll only go deeper. They aren't self-correcting.

You can't get out of a rut on your own. Someone has to pull you out.

You're never stuck in a season; you're always stuck in a rut.

Is God an Actor?

For the last couple of weeks I've been teaching our women's ministry in a series called "Hope Floats."

One of the things we've been talking about is how so many of us compartmentalize our lives. We do "spiritual things" at "spiritual times;" "regular things" at "regular times" because somewhere along the line we believed a lie that says "religion" shouldn't mix with anything else.

The lie is a lie because it treats our lives as if God is simply an actor in our story rather than the writer, producer, director and starring actor. God's sovereignty demands a de-compartmentalization of our lives. He isn't just a character who plays in different scenes. His fingerprints are all over the whole thing.

Missional Moratorium?

Fad terms have a way of losing their meaning rather quickly. When a term gets to the point that virtually everyone claims it, the term is no longer useful and should be retired.

I think we're about to that point with the word "missional." So many people are throwing around the term that doesn't mean anything anymore.

The original intent of the word was to refer to churches and organizations that were more concerned with taking a message to a world than in attracting the world to the message. It doesn't mean that anymore. These days, it has come to be diluted to mean "our organization has a mission."

I want to be a part of a church whose mission is Jesus Christ and Him crucified: not social action; not intellectual arrogance; not institutionalism. The Gospel.

Anyone got language for that?

Patriotism and Worship

My struggle with Worship and Patriotic Holidays began several years ago when I attended a church service in which I was completely unable to tell the difference between worship and patriotism. The worship team on stage sang "America The Beautiful" and "Shout to the Lord" with the equal gusto and posture: eyes closed, hands raised.

Another year, at a different church, I stood behind an Asian foreign exchange student who struggled awkwardly through the words of "God Bless America" during our Sunday worship service.

The tension with how the church should handle patriotic holidays is extremely difficult for me because I am a deeply patriotic person. I love the country God has allowed me to grow up in. And it seems that the church is virtually the only place where patriotic sentiment and music are preserved.

However, the tendency to sing patriotic songs without a strong distinction from worship music teeters far too close to idolatry for me. In fact, it is precisely the kind of idolatry we herald Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego for avoiding (Daniel 3). Furthermore, shouldn't the Church be the one place where people from every nation feels at home?

At the church where I serve, we try to hold the tension delicately. We try to sing the stanzas of patriotic songs that explicitly worship the God of the Bible with gratitude for the freedom we enjoy to worship Him. We recognize veterans and thank them for their service; recognizing that on any given Sunday morning, millions of people are able to focus completely on worshiping freely and publicly rather than in fear and hiding. We pray for those who are in harm's way, as well as their families and the families of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice.

But, we almost never display enough patriotism to satisfy everyone. The fact that we don't devote an entire worship service to our country/veterans/soldiers is perceived as a slap in their face to some people. After every patriotic holiday, we receive emails and cards - some borderline hateful, which express the disappointment of some people who don't think we've honored our country enough.

Those cards and emails always really bother me, because they make it clear that the person writing them thinks we are not patriotic, not thankful for our veterans, and not grateful for the freedoms we enjoy. That could not be further from the truth. However, if we are forced to err on the side of either dishonoring our country or dishonoring our God, the choice is not difficult. Worship services are for worship, and worship is for God alone.

No Excuses

I have lots of excuses as to why my blogging has been sporadic. But, I won't publish any of them for you. The month of July will probably continue to be sporadic, and then I'll try to get into a rhythm again.

I've finally finished my required reading for my summer class, and can get back to the books I want to read. Here are some of the books in my queue that I am most looking forward to reading.

The Good News We Almost Forgot - Kevin DeYoung

Making Ideas Happen - Scott Belsky

Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream - David Pratt

By Grace Alone - How the Grace of God Amazes Me - Sinclair Ferguson

Brothers We Are Not Professionals - John Piper

Leadership is Important

Someone mentioned to me today that my blog entries have been awfully lopsided toward leadership recently. There are two reasons for that: (1) I'm taking a huge leadership step in the next several months and leadership is occupying a lot of my thinking. (2) I'm preparing for a class at Dallas Seminary at the end of July and all my required reading is in the area of organizational leadership.

Book reviews and a more balanced blog will return once I start reading other things and get a chance to catch my breath.

Even so, leadership is important. I would even argue that good leadership principles are more important for churches than corporations. John Gardner agrees (though he applies it to all nonprofits). He describes a poorly managed nonprofit organization as a "bad" organization

"[Bad] in the sense of pious continuance of not competent or creative work, which in a way is damaging. Damaging because it uses up well-meaning dollars, because it breeds discouragement in people who just feel 'We're working so hard and we're just not getting anywhere.' And I think there's a fair amount of that in the nonprofit world. And there's something about lofty ideals that are at odds with clean-cut self-evaluation. You know, "How can you criticize us when our ideals are so great?" That's why I like that cartoon of Peanuts on the pitcher's mound saying "How can we lose when we're so sincere?""

If we are ambassadors of Christ (and we are); cities on a hill (and we are); lights reflecting the Light of the world (and we are); shouldn't our organizations be led at an even higher level than organizations with a less lofty goal?

Followership

Do an Amazon search on books about "leadership" and you'll find hundreds; maybe thousands. Do a search on "followership" and you'll find next to nothing.

We've attached a scarlet letter to the idea of being a good follower, as if "following" is only for sheep and members of cults. As a result, there aren't a lot of kids in the world who grow up wanting to be followers.

That's a shame, because I'm convinced that if you're not a good follower, you won't make a good leader. That's important for leaders to realize, because they'll always be following someone.

The CEO follows the board or else he follows the person ahead of him in the unemployment line.

The board follows the shareholders, or the stock ticker.

The associate pastor follows the senior pastor. The senior pastor follows the elders (or congregation, or nominating committee...). The elders follow the Scriptures.

Everyone is accountable to someone, or something. If you don't pay as much attention to being a good follower as you do to leading those who follow you, the system will self-correct and you'll find yourself doing a lot more following than leading in a relatively short time.

John 5

Our small group has been studying the Gospel of John together. My favorite book of the Bible is generally whichever book I'm studying at the time. Even still, one of my favorite favorites is John's Gospel. It accomplishes what every evangelist hopes to accomplish: simple and profound at the same time.

A couple of weeks ago, we studied John 5. I can't stop thinking about John 5:1-8.

You know the story: Jesus goes to a pool near the Sheep Gate to Jerusalem. The superstition was that an angel would dip down and stir the water of the pool. When the water was stirred, the first person in the water would be healed.

Jesus meets a man who had been a quadriplegic for 38 years, and asks him what seems like a really dumb question: "Do you want to get well?"

Seriously Jesus? This guy has been unable to do anything for himself for 38 years. He reveals he doesn't even have a hope of getting in the pool on his own. He can't do it and has no friends to help him. While he scoots and rolls and struggles to get in the pool, someone else always beats him to it.

You know the rest of the story too: Jesus speaks to the man and the man goes home well.

Here's what I love about this story: The lame man by the pool is every man or woman who has ever lived.

We can depend on superstition; we can depend on others; we can depend on ourselves. We can scoot, roll, flop and strain. We can show up in places where supernatural things are reported to happen, hoping against hope that they'll someday happen to us. But at the end of the day, there will always be someone faster, quicker, better than you, and you'll be left lying on your mat by the side of the pool.

If healing depends on you, you'll never find it. You need a Savior.

Jesus asked what seemed like the ultimate in stupid questions, but when we look at our lives, we realize it's a question that needs asking: Do you want to get well, or do you just want to sit by the pool and take your chances?

Horizontal Fast Track

I read an article the other day by Charles Handy that talked about the Japanese concept of promotion.

They call it the "horizontal fast-track."

Rather than taking a great young leader and shooting him through the ranks of leadership as quickly as possible, the Japanese take a great young leader and try to expose him to as many different areas of the organization as possible. They don't promote young leaders, they move them laterally as fast as they can over the first few years so that they can experience different responsibilities, different groups, and different processes.

They've made a decision: before giving a young leader power, he needs exposure so that he can leverage power sympathetically as he leads.

Makes a whole lot of sense...

Who is the Leader?

We tend to talk about "leadership" as if it is a trait that you either have, or don't have. If you "are a leader," we assume you are a leader in everything. If you aren't a leader in a particular area, we assume you will never be a leader in anything. You either have the gift or you don't.

This kind of logic is why we promote great salesmen to management positions where they don't sell anything. We take great engineers out of engineering and ask the great engineer to oversee a group of mediocre engineers. Then we're puzzled because the guy who was a leader in his field is a lousy leader.

I think this view of leadership is a mistake.

As in a lot of teams, different leaders lead in different scenarios. A person who is a dynamite leader in one arena might be a lousy leader, but dynamite follower in another arena.

With a football team, the quarterback is the undisputed leader when the offense is on the field, but an offensive lineman might be the undisputed team leader off the field. If we promoted the lineman to quarterback, we would waste his gifts and likely lose the game. If we asked the wrong quarterback to lead the team off the field, the results could be equally disastrous.

Great leaders aren't leaders all the time. Sometimes the very best leaders are the ones who willingly defer to the leadership of someone else.

Systems and Statements

Systems are stronger than mission statements.

If your organization has a strong mission statement but dysfunctional systems, you ensure your mission statement is cheap talk; it will never be accomplished.

If you believe that people should be developed and empowered, but set up systems that force them to check-in with headquarters before every decision, you ensure that people will never be developed or empowered.

If your church is trying to connect people into meaningful community where they can grow together but have systems in place that make the connection process muddy, you can talk about community all you want...

If you believe that an organization is about serving people, but your employee policy manual is 5 inches thick, you ensure that you will spend so much time serving the organization that you will never get around to serving people.

Systems are stronger than statements. Systems reflect what you're doing; statements reflect what you talk about doing.

If you really want to help your organization, pay close attention to the systems that are in place. Spend as much time talking about how you are actually doing what you are doing as you do talking about what you hope to accomplish.

What the Bible Says

I'm fairly sure I ran out of good blog topics somewhere around three years ago. So, I'm always really excited when I remember some smart advice I received in the past but had forgotten to blog about. That happened earlier in the week when I talked to my socialist... ahem "Canadian" friend Drew.

He and I were talking about one of the various theological issues people like to get themselves wrapped around and where we landed with respect to that position when I remembered some advice a professor of mine gave me one time: "It's almost never a good idea to define yourself using someone else's categories. It is far more helpful to begin your sentences with "I believe the Bible says..."

That's really great advice. Anyone who leads with "I'm a Calvinist" will have to spend the rest of the conversation trying to distinguish himself from the wackos who don't believe that it is important to talk about Jesus because "God's already predestined people anyway." Anyone who leads with "I'm an Arminian" will have to prove that they're not a part of a Pentecostal snake-handlers movement from the Appalachian mountains. A "dispensationalist" will instantly be lumped in with people who believe that the Left Behind series is an inerrant third testament of the Bible.

When you define yourself in a category, you will be instantaneously lumped-in with everyone who ever held that point of view, and normally caricatured alongside the most bizarre person someone can think of.

Rather than categorizing yourself, it's far more productive to answer a question, "I believe Scripture teaches..." and couch your theology in light of what the Bible teaches rather than which group we like the best.

Uncertainty

As a younger leader, I always had a misconception that things get clearer the higher you go in leadership. The higher I've gone in leadership, the more I've realized how wrong that assumption is.

The further in front you are, the more uncertainty you'll face. If the future was certain, we wouldn't need leaders.

If you want to be a good leader during uncertain times, you don't have to have certainty. You have to manage uncertainty with Truth and clarity.

By "Truth" I mean a theological grid that helps narrow the scope of the decisions you make (even if you're not leading a faith-based organization). In uncertain times I will not make decisions that are short-sighted, immoral, unethical, or a distraction from an eternal perspective because of Who I believe God is. Obviously, in my job a theological grid is even more helpful in thinking through specific decisions, knowing what is at stake. A firm grounding in Truth allows leaders to approach uncertain times knowing with one-hundred-percent certainty what cannot happen.

By "clarity" I mean just that. Many soldiers have followed Generals into battles in which the outcome was uncertain. Few soldiers have followed Generals into battle when orders are unclear. You don't have to be certain to be clear but you do have to be clear if people are going to follow you. That doesn't mean pretending to know something you don't - it means making sure that if you fail to reach your goal it won't be because the people didn't understand where you were leading them.

Gripes Go Up

The movie "Saving Private Ryan" has a great scene in which a squad of troops is engaged in the pursuit of an Private named James Ryan. The squad is tired of the mission, feels like their skills are being wasted, and that the pursuit they're on is a mis-allocation of resources in light of the war at hand. So they gripe.

After a while, they notice Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) isn't griping. One of the Privates, Private Reiben says "What about you Captain? I mean, you don't gripe at all?"

I love Captain Miller's response: "I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, so on, and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You should know that as a Ranger."

That's a good lesson for employees, wherever they are on the food chain. Wherever I am in an organization, if I hear people griping to me about someone above them, I instantly lose respect for them and make a silent note to myself that if I ever rise above them in an organization I'll be careful about how much I trust them.

Gripes should go to people who can do something about them, or they shouldn't be voiced at all.

The flip side of this is something Captains and Generals have to remember: if your employees gripe appropriately, their gripes deserve your attention. Don't write off gripes (or Privates) who are handling their issues the right way. Chalk it up as part of the responsibility that comes with your stripes.

Good Illustrations

I saw this video on a friend's blog.

Good illustrations are powerful. They tell the story but don't miss the point for the sake of the story.

Nobody will ever remember this story as "the one about the girl dressed like a fairy." They'll remember the image, but the image will be inseparable from the point.

When the illustration is over, the story is vivid, the intention is clear, and the point is unforgettable.

Myopic Leadership

One of the big stories connected with the BP Oil Spill is the recent comments of one of the victims' brothers to BP CEO Tony Hayward.

Gordon Jones' brother Chris was one of the 11 people killed on the oil rig that exploded, triggering the massive oil spill that is threatening life as we know it on the gulf coast. On Sunday Tony Hayward, CEO of BP stated that he would "like [his] life back." Gordon Jones responded early this week by addressing Mr. Hayward saying, "I'd like my brother's life back."

Now, the easy angle in this story is to vilify Hayward. After all, his comments were insensitive and near-sighted.

It's harder to be a little more introspective. The truth is, all leaders pull against the tendency to define reality through their own experience. We all struggle to identify with the things others are feeling, experiencing, and struggling through. We tend to think everyone processes life like us, and that everyone is experiencing the same things we are experiencing.

As leaders, it's important to consider perspective from several different realities. Otherwise, we'll always lack the perspective we need to move forward. And we'll betray the selfish, myopic, insecure introspective bias that creeps up if it isn't intentionally and ruthlessly mortified.

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.