So, to be a cover family of a thriving family, this must be what people are looking for…
Dear Lord, I hope your portrait of a thriving family is much broader. Its my prayer that Heaven is full of people who aren’t like me yet thrived in their life with Jesus. Amen.
p.s. In fairness, the rest of the magazine exhibits plenty of diversity of race. Single, no-children, working class, or non-American… not so much.
Why 13 years?
I think the conviction to host this party was born one day last fall as I was stumbling through the Old Testament. Over and over again I saw the phrase, “remember the things the Lord has done.” And as I read that it just kind of hit me… when was the last time I just celebrated something? Like… for no other reason than to celebrate extravagantly in what God has done?
Never. That’s when.
In kind, I gave this party to Kristen as a part of my Christmas gift. She never saw it coming. And since December 25th we had been talking about and planning for June 25th.
The party was a gift to us. The party was a gift for our friends. And the party was a gift for our kids.
It was definitely a gift given and a gift received. About 25 people gathered at our vacation rental for a BBQ. There were times when I would just look around and the only thing I could do was smile!
Thirteen years of marriage may not be a traditional year to celebrate a marriage. But thirteen years married to me? Kristen deserved some recognition.
Starting a new organization is an entirely different task than innovating to change an existing organization.
Both are hard. But changing and existing organization is way harder.
For most of my career I’ve been in turnaround roles. Kristen and I have a little joke… My entire adult work life has seemed like one roller coaster ride after another.
Click, click, click, click… up we climb.
Click, click, click, click. My heart races.
Wait for it. Wait for it… Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Arms up. Screaming bloody murder. Thinking of the Tom Petty song, Free Falling.
Down the big hill we go.
Over and over again I’m left to help try to innovate our way out of the mess.
And, so far, I’ve been pretty successful at it by most people’s judgement.
What are some ways you’ve learned to innovate within an existing ecosystem?
Photo by sroemerm via Flickr (Creative Commons)
One thing I’ve noticed happening in Christian-land these days is that there are a lot of voices saying quotable things about stuff they have no clue about.
The biggest one, something I’d label a pet peeve, is people who have successfully planted a megachurch trying to teach people in existing churches how to change their church culture.
It’s all a big misunderstanding.
Let’s face this one reality– A guy who planted a church and it grew to 10,000+ members cannot possibly help a 100 year old church of 300 who is struggling. Nor can they help a church plant that started in a house with 25 people and has grown to 200. Or a church that was once 1000 but is now 85.
Let’s face a second reality– If a person is a wonderful communicator of biblical truth they are not likely a prophet to your struggling ministry. They don’t know a single solitary thing about your situation. Nada, zip, zilch. If you had the chance to meet them they might tell you the same thing. They are probably impressed with what God does through their ministry, too. But that doesn’t mean squat to your church context.
Do take their words of encouragement personally. But let’s face it, they don’t know how to fix your church.
Of course! Just make sure, when you need advice, you listen to people who have actually done what you are trying to do.
Focus on transforming the people you have. The people in your church already have access to the people you want to reach. A popular speaker says, “You need to focus more on reaching than keeping.” That phrase shocks me. It sounds brilliant but is incredibly rude. Do you want to go to that church? I know I don’t. Rather than focusing on shedding people you don’t like why not focus on teaching in such a way that transforms those people’s hearts? Why not pray for those who are your enemies that they might become your allies? You don’t turn around a church by shedding all the people. You turn around a church by transforming people’s hearts around a common vision.
I’m a big fan of this video. I think it turned out great. And I think its a great compliment to the first one we released a couple weeks back.
The most loudest people in youth ministry tend to be the people who do it as a profession. But I think we’d all agree that the ones making the vast majority of the impact in youth ministry are volunteers. Hats off to them!
We did it!
It feels good just to say it. “We had a successful vacation.”
Last night, Kristen and I went for a walk in our neighborhood and this was really the summary statement of our week in Carlsbad.
It was nice to get away while only traveling about 40 minutes from our house. I don’t have any fascinating results to reveal… but here is a hodgepodge of things I’m thinking about last week.
I’ll be getting back to my normal blogging self by the end of the week.
Confession #1: I’ve gotten wrapped up in being called a leader. I fall into the mistake of thinking people want to know what I think. Instead, a true leader defers to the ultimate source of wisdom, thinking, and counsel. The most appropriate thing I can do as a leader is point someone to ultimate truth found in the Bible. And I recognize that sometimes I do that and sometimes I depend on my own talent, experiences, and personal preferences. I used to be so good at saying, “This is what the Bible says: _______. And this is what I would do if I were in your position: ______________.” It seems that the more people want to recognize me as a “leader” the more I want to emphasize the latter instead of the former. The result is that I’m not always the best leader I can be. Ironic, eh?
Confession #2: I get wrapped up in being called a pastor. I’ve never been comfortable with that title. But as the year’s have gone by I’ve gotten much less diligent in blushing it off when people call me “Pastor Adam.” I don’t know if it’s that I’ve gotten comfortable with what God has done and others recognize that in me or if I just like being called a pastor? Now, it’s true. That is what/who I am. And I am not ashamed of the title. I am not ashamed of my position. And I am not ashamed of my church. It’s not about shame. I recognize that its a sign of respect for my position yet I’ve always been uncomfortable with being labeled any title. Since I entered full-time ministry I’ve always self-reflected and laughed at God’s slapping me… ME… with the title of pastor. Sure… since I was little… even before I was a Christian… I always knew I’d be in ministry. But I also know who I am. I am biblically qualified to be a pastor and yet I know who I am.
- Above reproach? As far as I know
- A one woman man? Heck yes!
- Temperate? I do my very best to not lose it
- Self-controlled? To the best of my knowledge
- Respectable? You tell me
- Hospitable? Check
- Able to teach? Check
- Not given to drunkenness? Been good on that one since early teens
- Not violent but gentle? By the grace of God
- Not quarrelsome? Not my thing
- Not a lover of money? How could I be?
- Manage his family well? Could always do better
- Not a recent convert? Check
- Good reputation? Let me know, OK?
Confession #3: I want to get more wrapped up in my identity as a daddy and husband than as “Pastor Adam.” Closing in on 6 years of working in churches full time and I know well why some denominations don’t let their pastors marry. The demands on the position are over-the-top hard to balance with a family. People think nothing of about calling me late at night or early in the morning to talk to me or ask me to do something. And I’m always tempted to work every day and most nights for youth group, small groups, meetings, and other stuff that lands on my schedule. I really don’t think this is biblical and I should be more disciplined about saying “Can we talk or do this tomorrow?” In the past 6 years we’ve had countless family meals interrupted, countless dates disrupted, dozens of movies put on pause, play time put on pause for other people so many times my kids hate it when I take a call, times with daddy missed for this and that. Spending quality time with other people’s kids while missing the same with my own. Honestly, I hardly ever noticed. But my wife and kids did. It’s tough being married with kids and being married with kids to a church. Only recently have I been doing some studying in the New Testament and I realized… “Wait a minute! These guys weren’t nearly as available as I am and God still thought they rocked as pastors and leaders.”
This is one of those blogs posts that has stuck with me. For the last two years I’ve been unwinding myself from being “Pastor Adam” to going back to being “just Adam.”
I’m thankful for my new life and friendships. And I’m thankful that most of those people know me as Adam and not Pastor Adam. I still don’t know/think that I’m done with being on church staff… but I do know that if there is a next time, I won’t let people call me Pastor Adam. You can have a title with your job. But you can’t ever allow yourself to be that title more than you are yourself.
Missionaries know it. Businesses know it. Documentarians film it. Marketers make money from it. But what is it? It is ethnography.
Ethnography ????? ethnos = people and ??????? graphein = writing) is the genre of writing that presents varying degrees of qualitative and quantitativefieldwork. Ethnography presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system’s properties cannot
necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other.It doesn’t matter if you are a youth pastor in a community. An insurance salesman. A high school math teacher. Or a physician. If you want to succeed in a community, you need to take the time to understand how the community works. Understanding ethnography helps you understand how the people think, how the politics of both elected and unelected people control things, and understand how cultural phenomenon dictate community behavior. (Holidays, local business practices, etc)
Here’s the thing. Most doctors, pastors, insurance salesmen, and high school math teachers that fail, do so for cultural reasons and not because they are bad doctors, pastors, salesmen, or teachers. They fail because they failed to grasp the culture they are working in. Yet they blame themselves, their training, or even the people they want to sell to, provide services for, or teach for their failure!
Success at Romeo depends not just on us teaching doctrine and working hard. It depends heavily on us adapting and developing methods to reach our community by first understanding how the community works. Stick with me. Read the rest
Looking through blog posts in 2007, I can see my blog taking a big turn. For years I just blogged about what was going on in my daily life. Occasionally, I tossed in a thought or a principle. But in 2007, posts like this one started to creep up as I found a more comfortable voice.
The biggest advice I have for anyone who wants to get started in blogging is… write, a lot!
One thing I don’t like about an old house is that it is very hard to keep it warm. It’s a combination of a lack of insulation and inadequate duct work. If I had to do this house over again I would have installed radiated heat… but instead we have a blended system of forced air and electric heat. The result is that some areas are warmish while other areas are constantly drafty.
It’s been a joke of visitors that our house is always cold. People say “We’re going to Adam’s house, we need to dress warm.” Or my personal favorite is a friend of mine who says “We McLane their house sometimes.” (Now we’re a verb?) Why? Um, pretty simple… we can’t afford to keep our old house at 72 degrees. Even at 65 during the day and 58 at night, we’re a little worried about energy costs this winter.
As much as we love San Diego, we still miss our house in Romeo. It’s a great place to live and I’m happy to hear that someone is finally living there again. I just hope they figure out a good way to heat it before winter!