• 5 Ways to Fight Loneliness in Leadership

    It’s lonely at the top.

    For those who work in the church, we all know it. Those who make it for the long haul either succumb to a lifetime of loneliness and don’t have any real friends or we learn to adapt and find deep connection outside the walls of the church.

    But loneliness doesn’t have to be a part of the job. You really can have deep friendships and be in full-time ministry.

    Acquaintance vs. Friendship

    The first few years I worked at churches I confused church members hospitality with true friendship. Sure, I really enjoyed being close with people in the church… but at the end of the day (and certainly in retrospect when you step away from a church) a lot of those people I thought were my friends turned out to be just positional acquaintances. As soon as I stopped being their Pastor Adam they stopped wanting to hang out. Once I stopped investing in their kids there were no more invitations to dinner, golf, and BBQs.

    Of course, we have been able to transition a few of those church acquaintances into true lifelong friendship. (For which we’re totally thankful!) But I think getting there took some time and wisdom.

    A spouse helps but doesn’t really count

    Kristen is my best friend. That goes without saying. But Kristen could never fill the void I needed in ministry as a friend and confidant. When I meet with people young in ministry, I often see them putting their spouse in the friend category. Of course, your spouse will help you curb loneliness! But don’t forget your spouse needs to find true friendship outside of you, as well.

    So, what works?

    Here are five things that helped me get past loneliness and find some healthy friendship while in church leadership.

    1. Find a ministry network locally. Believe it or not, there are people just like you in your own community! Joining a network is a great way to meet people. Go a couple of times, see who you connect with, then take the first step and take that one person out to lunch.
    2. Join a sports club or league. I don’t mean a church league either. Join a league and get outside of your church social circle. Get to know contractors and realtors and other normal people.
    3. Connect with long-time friends intentionally. Some of my best friends in ministry, I only see once or twice per year. The few days we spend together per year are awesome and fill up our tanks. Going to the same conference really helps. But even meeting up for a weekend somewhere goes a long way.
    4. Ignore other leaders who live unhealthy lives. For whatever reason, church ministry attracts workaholics. Looking through job postings at YS I can’t believe how many of them will admit that they want someone to work more than 40 hours per week. Don’t work at those ministries. Go home on time. Make wise use of your ministry time and you’ll have tons of time for real friendship. Never forget that its Jesus’ job to grow the church.
    5. Take the first step! I think I spent over a year completely lonely and out of my mind crazy because I was waiting for fellow ministry people in my community to come find me. It’s not going to happen. The assumption is always going to be that you are busy and your life is full of relationships until you step out first.

  • Summer update

    Summer officially began on Memorial Day, 5 weeks ago.

    A whole hodgepodge of things have happened.

    • Lisa has been here for just over a month. So far that has pretty well. She does fit into the flow of our house… so it really hasn’t been hard at all. Finding volunteer work for her for the first 6 weeks just didn’t pan out. She did a few things for a charter school that is opening in City Heights and she did a few things for a non-profit I’m exploring starting in City Heights. But most of our other leads never materialized. Several organizations were super interested, but when it came time to do something they bowed out. Who would have thought it’d be so hard to volunteer 6 weeks of labor? Not me. It’s been great to have her here for the convenience factor. Kristen and I have love being able to go for walks, go to the store, or whatever we want without necessarily having the kids in tow. That said, I think Lisa is a bit weirded out by how many people asked if she is my wife!
    • The kids get out of school this Thursday. We like the year-round school concept. But it does feel weird to tell them to get ready for school in July! It’s hard to believe that we’re just a week away from having a 4th grader and a 2nd grader. They’ve got an easy week ahead. There are parties every day and field day on Thursday. Both of them are something like 2 grade levels ahead academically… so moving up is a very good thing.
    • I connected with the YouthWorks San Diego team twice this week. (Gold star employee that I am) I went over and met them on Monday at their ministry location. And then when I realized it was just 10 minutes from my house, we invited them over for a BBQ last night. They are four very impressive college students running missions projects for 10 weeks with 50+ students per week from all over the U.S. and Canada. The guys inhaled all the protein, no surprise.
    • Kristen and I leave for Haiti in just 5 days. We are flying to Fort Lauderdale this coming Saturday night. We’ll have all day Sunday and Monday morning to just kind of relax and get used to the tropical humidity before flying over to Port-au-Prince Monday afternoon. (There may or may not be a beach and tropical beverage as part of this preparation.) We still have some pre-trip shopping to do. We need a tent, sleeping pads, and duffle bags. Outside of that we are set. I’ve got a lot of pre-trip thoughts for this trip. But I’ll save them for their own post.
    • Work stuff is going great. When I compare what we we felt like last year at this time to this year… man, we are in a much better space!
    • Speaking of work. I was afraid when the shake-up occurred that I’d somehow lose all of those friendships with now former co-workers. It’s been fun this summer to connect repeatedly with people who used to work for YS. Bit by bit everyone is landing on their feet. While I don’t see them nearly as often as I did when we worked together… it looks like those friendships are going to make the transition. And for that I’m stoked.
    • I’m evaluating a whole menu of personal projects. (Web design, app development, writing projects, stuff like that) It’s cool to have so many opportunities to evaluate. At the same time its a bit overwhelming.
    • It hardly feels like summer in San Diego. We’ve gotten a heavy dose of June Gloom that has carried over into July. This has been great for the garden, but not great for a nice warm summer. I’m thinking there will be a time later this summer when we’ll remember the coolness fondly. But for right now it’d be nice to get into the 70s.
    • The World Cup has been fun to watch. The games certainly were a fun part of our vacation! Yet I’m glad it’s only every four years because I don’t really like soccer that much to watch it all the time. When I watch sports that are a bit boring on TV I always come up with fun ways to make it more interesting. What do you think of this one? When a team scores a goal they have to chose a player to take out of the game. So if they go up by 2 goals they are 2 players down, etc. It seems like that would result in higher scores and make it more interesting. And they should get rid of the shoot out. Once they get to the 3rd overtime they just need to add a couple more balls. Split screen because there would be shots coming from everywhere!

  • What’s growing in the garden?

    Our backyard organic garden experiment started about 6 months ago. Way back in January we had no idea that by July we would have a wide variety of vegetables. But the picture above shows what our normal biweekly harvest now looks like. On top of that,  herbs, summer squash, eggplant, jalapeño, and the occasional strawberry.

    Our 2010 goal is to allocate 20% of our food to come from local sources. I don’t know exactly how we are going to measure that! But between what we are growing in our yard and our CSA box from J.R. Organics we have pretty much eliminated the produce area of the grocery store. (Things like bananas and potatoes seem to be the hardest to replace locally.)

    Lots of success, some failures

    We’ve done pretty good for first year gardeners. But we have had some failures too. We planted the summer squash, acorn squash, and cucumbers way too close together. This caused the acorn squash to never fully develop and we had to pull that out last week. Our sweet corn was doing very well but suddenly stopped growing and produced only a few kernels on each ear. We planted garlic at the wrong time of year. So it’s still green but hasn’t done anything. We have one tomato plant which has taken over the tomato and strawberry area. It’s been fun to see the plant grow about 15 feet tall… but it’s also kept two other varieties of tomatoes from developing fully.

    Watering schedules and bugs are still ever-present issues. And our worm composting… still just going so-so. Weeds and snails were a problem in the Spring, but with the drying out of the climate both have stopped.

    Out with the old

    With Kristen and I leaving the country in 7 days, we’re going to do a little garden maintenance this weekend. We’ll pull out the sweet corn, trim the summer squash way back, and eliminate a couple herbs which aren’t doing so well. I’ll also spread some organic fertilizer. (Very expensive fish poop!)

    The cool thing about San Diego is that our growing season essentially never stops. So we’ll pull out some of those things and head over to the nursery to scout out what will take its place. We’re hoping to get one more summer harvest in before we have to think about fall plantings.

    We are encouraged. Heading into this I wasn’t sure that we could do it. And I really wasn’t sure we’d enjoy it. This year has proven that we really can do this and we really can have a good time doing it.

    Children’s Garden

    Megan and Paul have been involved since day 1. Each day, Megan and I take a garden tour where we carefully inspect the progress of every plant. As the months have passed we’ve started to talk about the kids taking ownership of an area of the garden. So we are trying to figure out how to make that happen.

  • Wishlist item: Mega Skateboard

    Cool accident and all. But man, where can I get one of those? Here’s the apparent owner.

  • C.S. Lewis is to Christians What…

    C.S. Lewis, famous dead man

    C.S. Lewis is to Christians what McDonalds is to American children. C.S. Lewis is to Christians what beer pong is to college students. C.S. Lewis is to Christians what Dave Ramsey is to those who suck with money.

    I first heard of C.S. Lewis in 6th grade. Lori, the girl who sat behind me and I had a crush on, read the Chronicles of Narnia. Every day during our free time she ignored me so she could read these books. I was trying to impress this girl with my witty humor and dashing 6th grade looks and these silly books were getting in the way.

    From there, I never heard him referred to until college. He was never referred to in an English or literature class. As a freshmen at Moody Bible Institute I got exposed to the cult of Lewis. My roommate had the full set of weathered and dog-eared Narnia books. He claimed he re-read them every year. In classes, people referenced him in nearly every speech and practice sermon. I took a literature class where a professor read from a Lewis book with a quivering voice before reverently closing the book and clearing her throat. I heard story after story from people who had profound experiences with Mere Christianity or the Screwtape Letters.

    On and on it went. Through college it just seemed to get more intense. After college the child-like fascination I saw as a student mushroomed into something more bizarre as I stepped into church leadership.

    Here’s what I’ve learned from being in the church 18 years…

    • American Christians have a love affair with C.S. Lewis.
    • We quote him like he’s a 4th member of the trinity. Lewis is that authoritative in most Christian circles.
    • A C.S. Lewis quote book might as well be the 67 book of the Bible in most preachers hands. Not sure how to move a point? Quote Lewis!
    • I’d be willing to bet that on any given Sunday in America there are more references to C.S. Lewis in sermons than there are references to the Old Testament. Do a study… my money is on Lewis.

    As you can tell, I’m a little tired of Clives. (OK, a lot) I’m happy for those who have had profound experiences through his words. It is really cool to me that his books have meaning to so many people. I’m not a hater. I don’t hate Lewis. I’ve read Lewis’ stuff. (How do you think I graduated from Moody?) I just don’t revere his work as magical. I think he’s OK, but mediocre compared to authors of his era.

    But lets keep Lewis in perspective. He is not God. His words are not to be more revered than Scripture. His words shouldn’t be quoted as if they are Scripture. I think he’d probably be ashamed of how highly he is revered in some Christian circles. Let’s call it what it is… idolatry.

    A dose of reality for fans

    C.S. Lewis is not the great literary genius Christians claim him to be. Comparing him to his contemporaries reveals it. Is he of greater literary significance than any of these?

    I could go on. I went through some lists of the top authors/books of the 20th century… you won’t find Lewis in any top 20 list. Random House doesn’t even have a Lewis book in the top 100 of either their editors or readers selections.

    But the point is simple: There’s a lot of hero worship of C.S. Lewis going on.

    Knock it off.

  • 3 Reasons I’m Going Back to Haiti

    On July 19th I will return to Port-au-Prince.

    In some ways I can’t wait to go back and see how things are progressing. And in other ways I am scared to go back because I think things are a lot worse.

    I’ve heard mixed reports.

    I’m not going alone.

    As our team van lumbered out of Port-au-Prince last February I challenged myself to return in 2010… and to bring others who might catch a vision for how to help the church in Haiti rebuild both spiritually and physically a collapsed nation.

    Thankfully, 19 others said yes to my appeal to go with me. It’s a full trip. I was completely shocked and amazed to see who joined the team. It’s an amazing hodgepodge of people from my life. And I cannot wait to see how God uses their service to be both blessed and do some form of blessing.

    Without overloading you with information, I want to give you 3 quick reasons I’m returning to Haiti.

    1. While the cameras and celebrities (and the money they bring) have left Haiti, millions remain homeless. 2/3rd of the cities residents still sleep on the ground. Can you imagine “camping” for 6 months, sleeping on the bare dirt, trying to find food every day? The hard work of rebuilding has not begun. This is still very much a relief effort.
    2. The local church is still the primary instrument of relief. My entire adult life I’ve listened to pastors say, “We just need to move the church back to Acts 2.” Well, it is happening in Haiti! And I want to support them however I can. I don’t want to sound judgmental, but I openly wonder where those church leaders are who claim they want to see Acts 2 in their communities. If they were serious they would be in Haiti.
    3. The situation for the orphans and widows is dire. Last week the New York Times published a beautiful piece about a young girl named Daphne. You should read it. Its a story of hope and despair. As you read it ask yourself what I have been asking myself, “Why aren’t believers telling these stories to churches?” I hope to meet some Daphne’s and tell you their stories.

    “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

    Three ways you can get involved

    1. Pray. Commit to praying for our team. 20 people, most of whom have never met, will come together for a common purpose… to serve the Haitian church. Pray for our unity, our physical health, and that God would take our efforts and multiply their effectiveness supernaturally.
    2. Give. Kristen, Erin, and I have raised about $800 of the $2400 we need to fund our travel. We are thankful to those who have given already. Here’s how you can give to help our travel costs. Additionally, if you live locally and would like to contribute something for Kristen and I to take… we would like to fill our bags with this stuff to donate.
    3. Go. Just like last time– you will be able to follow my trip online as I post photos, videos, and blog posts. Will you commit to considering a trip to Haiti in the next 12 months? All I am asking is that you consider it.

    It would greatly encourage Kristen and I if you’d simply let us know which of those 3 things you can commit to. Leave us a comment. It can be as simple as your name and which of the three options you can commit to as a way to get involved.

  • Jobs and Millennials

    Scott Nicholson needs a job. Or so reports the New York Times in a recent article. The problem isn’t that Scott can’t get a job. It’s that Scott can’t get a job he wants. Here’s one situation that lead to a job offer he turned down.

    It was in pursuit of a solid job that Scott applied to Hanover International’s management training program. Turned down for that, he was called back to interview for the lesser position in the claims department.

    “I’m sitting with the manager, and he asked me how I had gotten interested in insurance. I mentioned Dave’s job [his older brother who makes $75k, this job offer was for $40k] in reinsurance, and the manager’s response was, ‘Oh, that is about 15 steps above the position you are interviewing for,’ ” Scott said, his eyes widening and his voice emotional.

    The article documents the lamentations of a self-described “hard worker” as he searches for his first real job, post-undergraduate education. It seems two realities are hitting him hard while avoiding the third.

    1. His expensive undergrad degree and good grades didn’t earn him squat.
    2. Even though his parents are connected, there’s no high paying job waiting for him post-graduation.
    3. He has no debt, his grandparents paid his way through school, and his parents are footing his kennel fees indefinitely. This is a blessing and a curse.

    What I find interesting is this desire to hold out for the right job. Scott would rather not work than work a job he doesn’t like.

    It’s not just Scott who does it. It’s kind of an upper-middle class phenomenon in America. College graduates hold out for a dream job that doesn’t really exist. Meanwhile, hungrier and harder working students trying to climb the socio-economic ladder continue to take more advantage of a system that rewards hard work… thereby disadvantaging lazier, idealistic, rich kids who are looking for a fast-forward.

    It’s a cultural disadvantage facing the suburbs right now. Somewhere, somehow, they have bought into a lie that pursuing the American Dream is easy. And a good job is their birthright.

    A trip into American history only reveals the opposite to actually be true.

    I wrote last May that there was bad news coming for the suburbs and Scott’s story only adds an illustration to the point. The problem isn’t that there aren’t jobs. It’s that there aren’t jobs that recent graduates are willing to do.

    That’s two separate problems.

    Don’t be a moron

    1. Life is not a made for TV movie. We’ve never lived in a country that grants recent college graduates wishes for easy street. If you want the American Dream you have to do it just like the next guy… you take it.
    2. You are not Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or one of these 20 year old billionaires. See, they didn’t just wake up billionaires. They worked their butt off and earned billions of dollars with their good ideas. But it also took time, they got lucky, and they are smarter than you.
    3. Starting at the bottom is not humiliating. It’s the only strategy that works. See, the economy depends on people starting at the bottom and working their way up. Likewise, how else will you learn? It’s not like college prepares you for the real world.
    4. There’s nothing wrong with chasing dreams. Heck, I’m still chasing the same dream I started pursuing as an 18 year old! I’ve come pretty far– but I’ve still got a ways to go! But understand that the chasing of dreams can take a lifetime of steps in the right direction while avoiding many pitfalls. If your life were a novel, it’d suck if you reached your goal in chapter 1.
    5. Desperation is the key ingredient to success. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told parents… the best thing you can do to your post-college graduate is to stop feeding them, stop paying their bills, and make them either pay a real rent or kick them out. The smelling salt of items 1-4 above will never be accepted until a person wakes up to the reality that they are the ones who have to make something happen. If they don’t hustle, they don’t eat.

  • Little Guitar Hero

    Two thoughts.

    • It doesn’t surprise me that much that North Korea has television. But someone actually got something up on YouTube? That’s a miracle.
    • Maybe I’m just mean-spirited. But makes me think Michael Jackson would have asked this kid to visit the ranch.

  • Hit the 7 Iron

    Photo by capn madd matt via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    One of the things that golf has taught me about life is that you can turn a bad day into a solid day by being disciplined.

    In competitive golf, discipline and composure are the equalizers. When you are playing against someone who is either better than you or the same level as you, you are basically trying to keep up and hope that your competitor cracks under the pressure of your hanging around.

    I’ve played against and beaten much better golfers than myself. I’ve even beaten better golfers than myself when I wasn’t playing particularly well.

    If you’ve watched a major championship on television… you’ve seen this.

    This is usually why a young gun golfer will do well for the first three days but quickly fall off on Sunday morning. The more experienced and disciplined players just kind of hang around and one by one… the less disciplined players explode under the pressure around them. The commentators say, “The field is backing up.” That’s a nice way to say it.

    What do I do when things start to fall apart?

    I hit the 7 iron.

    For me, the 7 iron is the safest club in my bag. I know I can hit it straight every time and between 160-170 yards. So when I’m not playing well… I start to hit the 7 iron a lot. Am I pulling everything to the left or slicing everything into the trees? I just grab my 7 iron and go to work.

    One of the tricks I liked to teach my high school golfers was to take the length of the hole and just divide it in half. If a hole is 360 yards… you don’t have to hit the driver. You can very comfortably hit your favorite club twice and still be on the green with a putt for birdie. (To a 15 year old who just learned how to hit 300 yard drives… it’s talking to a wall.) A par 5, 510 yards? That’s just three 7 irons to the green.

    Sure, that’s not a sexy way to play golf. But it is an efficient one.

    One time I was playing in a match with a player much better than me. And on that day I wasn’t playing particularly well. After 9 holes I was down big. He had shot a 39 and I was at 46. And I had chipped in a birdie on the 9th hole to get to that.

    Making up 7 strokes over the last 9 holes seemed impossible. That’s too much. The match was essentially over.

    As my competitor drank a Gatorade and talked on the phone I switched strategies as I put the ball on the tee of the 10th hole. I looked at my driver, twisted it around in my hands a few times, then headed back to the bag. The driver had failed me for the last time that day. I love hitting the ball far. There are fewer things in life more exhilarating than hitting a golf ball 300+ yards. But the driver had dug me into a deep hole and I had to put it away.

    I pulled out the 7 iron. Taking a quick practice swing I just put the ball in play about 170 yards out. The guy I was playing with kind of laughed, hung up the phone, and pulled out his driver. Sure enough, he bombed the ball 150 yards over mine. We both parred the hole and moved to the 11th. Hole by hole, I just kind of worked my way through the course. A par here and a birdie there.

    My competitor, full of confidence, gave up a couple strokes here and there, but never thought about it.

    Standing on the 18th tee, a long par 5, the guy I was playing against finally did the math. He had played pretty poorly on the back 9 and I had hit this stupid 7 iron all over the golf course and played pretty well. He was 4 over on the back and I was 2 under.

    That left me just one shot back with one hole to play. And he was suddenly quite interested in the match once again!

    I hit my 7 iron to the top of the hill. He bombed his driver way, WAY to the bottom of the hill. He gave me a look as if to say, “Take that 7 iron boy.”

    When we got to the top of the hill we both started to look down the fairway… his ball wasn’t in the fairway. It was either in the tiny strip of rough or it had gone too far, into the pond. I hit my second shot short of the pond, just and easy 160 yards to the green left. I looked at him and said, “You might want to go back and hit a provisional, just in case you are in the water.”

    He was furious! He dropped his bag and grabbed a ball for the walk back to the tee.

    We both knew his ball had gone in the water.

    Sure enough, his provisional ball sailed into the trees and bounced around before settling in the rough with a tree between his ball and the green. He had completely lost his composure.

    With the lost ball and hitting from the rough, I was clearly at the advantage with my ball sitting pretty in the fairway. Faced with an impossible shot around a tree and up the hill to the green… he went for the green. He nearly pulled it off but came up short and landed in the bunker. He was going to have to hole out from the sand for a par, but it was an ugly situation. Meanwhile, I hit my 3rd shot safely into the middle of the green and needed only an easy 2-putt to secure a par.

    He went first. With the slope going away from him the ball came out of the bunker hot and slid all the way to the fringe… about 75 feet from the hole.

    He’d have that left for a chance to tie the match my imminent par. The pressure was getting to him. I think he was embarrassed by the whole situation. He had already bragged to people that he had easily beaten me. And now it looked like he was going to need a miracle just to tie. He couldn’t figure out how I had climbed back into the match and now… on the last hole… had a putt for birdie while he had to pray for a miracle just for a bogey to tie!

    He quickly lined up and sent his hail mary towards the cup. He came up about 5 feet short. Cuss words emitted from every pour of his body.

    With a victory secured, I lined up a 20 foot putt straight up the hill. I gave it a whack and… sure enough… it dropped in for a birdie. Hey, why not?

    My 7 iron strategy had salvaged a victory.

    The score card looked like this:

    Player 1: 39 + 42 = 81
    Adam: 46 + 33 = 79

    I guess the life lesson in this is pretty simple, isn’t it? You don’t have to be the best at what you do to succeed. But you do need to know what you are good at and have the discipline to execute that one thing over and over again.

    It doesn’t matter how many times you read the story of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise always wins.

  • Blogging Etiquette

    The last two years has brought a dramatic shift on the axis of the blogging community. With the wide adoption of social media consumption there are a lot fewer daily bloggers and a lot more micro-bloggers.

    The net result is a world full of newbies posting things online.

    With this huge shift comes a need to re-educate folks on etiquette.

    1. Observe the basic rules of the online world. Understand that there is no privacy. And anything you post can/will be used against you in the court of public opinion.
    2. Properly cite your sources. Provide a link to your source. If you are quoting a blogger, mention their name and link their name to the blog post your are quoting. (At the very least, link to their Facebook or Twitter account.) Make sure you spell their name correctly… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been quoted on a site with my name spelled incorrectly. How rude.
    3. Understand the relationship between blogger and reader is reciprocal. The blogger gives you something to read and think about. If you take the time to read it, the reader should either respond with a comment, “like” the post so your friends can see you like it, retweet it, bookmark it, or share it on your favorite RSS reader.
    4. Give credit where credit is due. Were you inspired to write something from another blogger? Than give a hat tip in your post. (You see this as HT to name. It’s also fine to say, “Adam McLane recently wrote about ____.”) Bloggers know what they’ve written about recently. Trust me, it’s rude to see people using your ideas without giving you credit.
    5. Be careful when using proper nouns. That may sound silly, but you have to be conscious that your online rant may impact someone’s online reputation. (Or business or organization) I’m not saying it’s rude to call someone out… just be careful about it.
    6. Don’t steal images. Just because you found something on Google images or Flickr doesn’t mean it is free for you to use!
    • Use your own images.
    • Create your own.
    • Use images published under a Creative Commons license, properly cited and linking back, from Flickr. (Share and share alike. If you use CC images, make sure to post some as well!) Just make sure to read the usage rights… typically using an image for commercial purposes is a no-no.
    • Buy stock photography from iStockphoto or something similar.

    Just like in a sport– there aren’t always dramatic consequences when you breach etiquette. But there are social ramifications! Trust me, people are watching what you do online. They are making judgements about your abilities and character. Just like you try to act polite and use proper etiquette in the physical world… you are responsible for your own actions online.

    Have an etiquette question? Leave a comment and I will add to the list as needed.