Category: hmm… thoughts

I talk to a lot of people who are complaining that they are too busy. They have taken on so many things that they feel like they don’t get to enjoy any of it.

I look at it like this:

Stuff I do – What I get out of it = Margin of Joy

An interesting observation is that the people who are "crazy busy" are making the mistake of thinking that if they increase the "stuff I do" they can increase that margin of joy in their lives.

Here’s a solution:
Drop some of the stuff you do, increase the quality of what is left… and your margin of joy will increase. Guaranteed.

What do I drop?
Drop stuff that isn’t biblically commanded first and see how that goes. It’s amazing how much stuff you can cut. Further, it’s amazing how creative you will get and how much joy you will find in having a few extra hours per week.

It’s not what it sounds like. (Although North Point does it every year between Christmas and New Year’s.) But a church in California is not going to worship this Sunday in their building… instead they are going to be meeting at many locations and sites to doing work projects throughout their community.

The seats at North Coast Church in Vista will be empty the weekend
of April 29, but members won’t exactly have the day off. The church,
which attracts about 6,500 people on weekends, is planning the largest
community-service event in its history, with participants painting,
landscaping, washing and rolling up their sleeves for various jobs at
54 sites throughout North County on April 28 and 29…

                        

In all, congregants will tackle 92
major projects, including painting and landscaping Washington Middle
School in Vista and Claire Burgener Academy in Oceanside, with up to
200 people working at each site. Read the rest

What is so astonishing about this to me is that they will grow by doing it. I can here some people saying, "Yeah but Hebrews tells us to not give up meeting together." They aren’t. They are meeting in 92 locations to worship by doing stuff. Plus, today’s people are all about action and taking a stand to make their world better.

I love this on so many levels.

As a pastor at a small church I look at this and have two immediate reactions.

1. We couldn’t ever do that. We’re not big enough, plus… how would we get the money?
2. We could totally do that! We may be small but big miracles often come in small packages.

OK, back to Earth now. I’ll be watching this to see how it worked out.

I live in a house that was built in 1871. Over the last 136 years gravity has had it’s way with parts of our house. In fact, there probably is more in our house that isn’t perfectly level than there is that is perfectly level.

Recently I was putting in a new kitchen counter. The floor wasn’t level. The cabinets aren’t level. But after shimming up one side and thumping the hammer here and there I was able to make 2 unlevel things support a level counter top. Sometimes when a new visitor is in our house they’ll say something like "wow, I felt a little dip there" or "the porch seems like it may be a little crooked." They are right. It’s an old house and that happens over 136 years of settling and bowing under the weight.

Outside it only gets worse. Our garage probably needs to be leveled rather than trying to take care of the major structural issues it has. A lot of years after an exceedingly poor design has led to the roof "swaying" a little in the middle. The south wall is buckled by about a foot at the top and the whole structure somehow stands. The patio leans just a little one way.

I’m even noticing a couple of things about stuff that I’ve done that isn’t quite level. The kids new tire swing isn’t quite level. The play structure we had placed there last spring… it’s a little cockeyed.

I can defintiely say this about almost our entire house. "It’s about a half a bubble off."

That about says it all, doesn’t it?

Just like that it’s gone. Thursday evening. In a few minutes I have my small group and in the morning we leave for a two-day marketing retreat for the church.

This was one of those weeks where I had to focus a lot on just pounding stuff out. We got a great piece of marketing done for MainStreet and about 25 other million things too. Back when I worked for BSBSIL I longed for fast weeks like this because I just got my work done and went home. It was all about getting paid and the faster the week went the sooner we got paid. But ministry is about people and weeks like this… well… thank God for my small group!

I’m also looking forward to this little retreat. Marketing and church really do go together. Really, they do.

When it comes to innovation, there seems to be two types of church leaders and two types of church attenders.

• Play-it-safe types. These church leaders hide their creativity and struggle for the status quo. They worry more about making people mad or even losing people than they think about anything else. Appealing to their creative side scares them and they tend to reproduce what they know. You hear them say things like "Yes, but" a lot.  They probably were creative and innovative early in their careers but maybe a couple of failures and a stern warning from the boss scared them into playing it safe. They tend to warp  the gospel message into what makes them comfortable (what they know) instead of taking much of Jesus’ words literally. You wouldn’t want to start a revolution, would you? They read the Book of Acts and say "that couldn’t happen here." Interestingly, there are loads of people that are perfectly happy with Play-it-safe leaders. They like predictability and innovation isn’t important to them. They want to know what to expect and even if something isn’t working… they are perfectly content with what they know. When this person measures their own performance they are telling themselves… "I never fail."
• Risk-taking types. Let me first say, I think this exists in every leader. And I think that most first generation Christians love the risk-taking church leader because they know that someone took a risk on them. Most people end up in leadership because at some point they stepped out and took a risk, smashed the status quo and got pegged as a leader. These leaders tend to measure things by "is it working?" rather than "is this what my people expect?" Risk takers aren’t stupid… they just aren’t afraid to fail. They understand that failure is part of the innovation process. They read Jesus’ story and the Book of Acts and shudder at the possibilities. Interestingly, there aren’t loads of people who like to be lead by risk takers. Sure…. tons of people love "what’s new" and taking wild chances… but innovators tend to accidentally run people over.

John 6
Both types are broken and messed up. And God needs/uses both types of leaders to lead His church today. Just like God needs people to comfort the Play-it-safe crowd, God needs people who laugh at risk and innovate methods for His sake.

For a long time I’ve been fascinated by the story documented in John 6 about the disciples who quit following Jesus. Relatively early in Jesus’ 3 year ministry he attracted a large following. He was taking big risks and people loved following him. But one day, while Jesus was teaching he looked at this group of… let’s say 100… wanna-be disciples and told them plainly. "Look, following me isn’t all about a bed of roses. There won’t always be miracles and free food. At some point you may have to die because you’re following me. Unless you’re willing to eat my flesh and drink my blood you can’t really follow me anymore." John writes, "From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him." It was more risk than they could bear so they went home.

Out of those left… Jesus chose the twelve. It was this group of 12 to whom Jesus said, "On you I will build my church." Risk takers… status quo busters… innovators and inventors of "church."

Risk takers will always rub people the wrong way. They will always be called failures by the Play-it-safe types, and maybe they will be correct. And yet out of risk taking and innovation comes the best ideas that reach the most people.

I’ve long said that I want to work with people who are stupid enough to think they can make a difference in their community. Right now, I have that. It comes at a cost… but I’m just not a play it safe kind of guy. I love being on a staff of people willing to take "wise risks" for the Kingdom.

And about 15 years ago a wild and crazy young youth pastor took a chance on me by wasting a bunch of time and energy on a lonely and wounded dorky kid. If he had played it safe… where would I be?

I’ve got 2-3 minutes to spare and I finally got a decent connection thanks to the highway robbery of my 2nd favorite coffee chain…

The week in Chicago is going great. With 24 hours to go everyone is still getting along and we’re having a grand old time. Of course, like any trip there are loads and loads of memorable moments, including the usual amount of inside jokes. Let’s just say that having our devotions be in Exodus 19-24 this week added plenty of fun fodder.

This is the last day and we’re going to be helping take a whole gaggle of kids on a boat cruise on Lake Michigan in a few minutes. I am certain this will be an interesting experience to say the least.

I just checked my email for the first time since Tuesday night. A total of 190 messages were awaiting me between all of my accounts. Being disconnected is a good reminder of how connected you really are, eh?

Did I mention there were only 24 hours left? Better get back to that.

I first heard this phrase "Jesus is a bad product" from author/speaker Donald Miller at the National Youth Workers Convention. I thought he offered an interesting perspective in light of the multi-billion dollar Jesus industry and the fact that his books would constitute a "Jesus product." But I digress.

This recently appeared in a news story and makes it official, Jesus is a bad product.
Coca-Cola, the worlds most recognized name and reigning king of pop (soda for those outside of the midwest) thinks associating with Jesus is a bad idea.

Coca-Cola Co. is suing producers of an Italian film titled " 7 Km da Gerusalemme"
(Seven Kilometers From Jerusalem), that shows Jesus swigging Coke from
a can in the desert. Coke said the scene would probably give the soda a
bad image. A spokeswoman said, "We are not interested in this kind of
product placement."

First off, shame on Coke. I mean, who really cares? And by making a stink about it only means infinitely more bad publicity for them instead of allowing the small budget film to do it. But more importantly, it strikes me as odd that Coke would be perfectly fine with their product appearing in all sorts of films, with all sorts of product placement, and yet sue a filmmaker over this? I just don’t understand this issue.

This is just stupid on so many levels and proves the lengths that seperationist will go to remove religion from daily life. It makes you wonder, if corporate America is this interested in not associating with Jesus, what do they want to associate with?

HT to Sallyb

Last nights MainStreet went great. We had a great turnout, which always gets the performers all jazzed up, which lead to the best performance they’ve had to date.

As the un-official kick-off to a big Easter weekend, this was as good as we could have expected. All sorts of kids ministry goodness last night. From the virtue being taught clearly, to Bob’s message coming off super, the skits… let’s just say Professor Caesar (Richard C.) is a great sport for letting us cover him in a gallon of nacho cheese, to POPS doing a great job, to the worship team coming right along, and of course the game and snack time was a massive hit… I’m rambling to just say… Wow.

Deep thoughts for a Thursday morning.

It seems like my life is full of people who think they are experts but lack the education, experience, or resources to actually be an expert.

As a result they waste my time and energy as they pretend to be more resourceful than they really are. It’s frustrating beyond belief because I can see through them right away… but it’s really hard to tell an impostor "It’s OK, you don’t know." Instead endless streams of "blah" come out of their mouths. And it drives me insane.

Take the internet for instance. I’m no expert, even though I own and develop a lot of sites I would still call myself a novice in most areas of web development. So when someone asks me a question I use one of three options:

1. I know the answer and offer it.
2. I don’t know the answer and punt.
3. I want to know the answer and I tell the person "I don’t know, but I’m going to try to find out."

That’s a pretty honest answer. I expect the same thing from the people I interact with about things I’m seeking advice on. I’m teachable, inquisitive, and I have loads of problems I need solutions for.

Here are the options for an impostor responding to a question approached with:

1. I know the answer and offer it.
2. If I don’t know, but I’ll talk your ear off out of embarrassment of not knowing.
3. Even though I don’t know the answer, I will talk out of all the orifices of my body to convince you that I know.

I just wish I could come up with a polite way of telling impostors, "You are wasting my time right now. I’m going to talk to someone who is an expert now."

The cool thing about truly intelligent people in my life is that they are unafraid to punt. In fact, one sure fire way I can tell if someone is an expert on something or not is by mentally noting if they ever punt. If they don’t… I know they are an impostor.

Of course, the real problem with impostors is that they are persistent and ever-present.