Tag: honesty

  • The Strategy Gap

    Wanted: Christians willing to love neighbors.
    Pay: None.
    Experience required: None.
    Training: None.
    Location: Work from home.
    Starting date: Immediately.

  • Hit Me with God’s Hammer Today

    A few weeks back I wrote about something I call, the Pastor Man Up Movement. (PMUM) There’s something about PMUM that annoys me and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it is.

    • Is it that its mostly men and I have a strong desire to see women lead? Maybe a little.
    • Is it that its mostly racially homogenous? Maybe a little, but I’m a white male too. So what do I know?

    While both of those things annoy me a tad about PMUM speakers/writes I can’t say that its contributing to the distaste I get when I hear one of these people talk about leadership.

    I’ve been trying to search myself so I can articulate it. (And I want to be careful that I use words like “annoy” and “distaste” so people aren’t thinking I’m just some bizarre hater of well-known PMUM leaders.)

    But here is one thing that I know doesn’t resonate with me when I listen to them talk about leadership:

    Leadership isn’t about celebrating yourself.

    Leadership is about moving people to do something or go somewhere they couldn’t go on their own.

    Ultimately, one thing that bothers me so much is the celebration of self. You hear introductions that laud how much they’ve accomplished. How much money they raised. Where they went to school. How many people go to their church. That they are the founder of their congregation which is larger than yours. How often they meet other famous leaders. And why you should believe that every word flowing from their mouth is like little leftovers that the Holy Spirit forgot to include in the canon saved especially for you, as if it were milk and honey saved just for you… this one time.

    Want to know who I want to admire? I want to admire a person who leaks transparency. I want to hear from a person who doesn’t want the microphone. I want to admire a person who doesn’t know how many books he’s sold or how many people go to his church or how many staff members he has.

    I want to hear a speaker who stands up and tells the audience as her into, “Want to know why people follow me? Me too. I haven’t got a clue. God is doing it through me. I’m just a knucklehead. Know that I’m a sinner and it’s by grace that I’m standing here today. My husband and I argued about me making this appearance, but I guess we just need the money. And the message I’m about to deliver this morning– don’t get hung up on it. I have a staff who helped me and I have delivered it for 14 times. I call this my $22,000 sermon. After today, it’s my $22,500 sermon. Don’t be impressed with me today, be impressed with how God is using me to minister to you today.”

    I know that isn’t exactly inspiring to most. But its the kind of leader I like to follow. (And its the kind of leader I aspire to be.) I don’t know if people would spend $100 to listen to a series of speakers talk like that. But I do know it’s worth $100, for me at least, to hear the truth over and over again.

    Just hit me with the hammer God has gifted you to hit me with.

    Honesty preachers to me.

    Transparency preaches to me.

    Humility preaches to me.

    Checking what I assume against what is clear in Scripture preaches to me.

    Chest-bumping doesn’t.

  • They Can’t All be Winners

    Photo by canonsnapper via Flickr (Creative Commons)

    Golf has taught me a lot of life lessons.

    Probably most importantly is this one: Since you’ll never be perfect, success or failure is defined by how you respond in less-than-ideal circumstances.

    I’ve always been a recovery golfer. Even when I was playing my best golf– my playing partners always complimented me more on my ability to make a recovery shot than my ability to hit the ball a long way off the tee into the fairway or sink a 5 foot putt for par. As we drove home or hung out at the clubhouse it’s always the recovery shot stories that get told. “Adam hit his  tee shot into the next fairway, than pulled out an 8 iron and hit a sky ball over the tree line and into the middle of the green.”

    When I played on a golf league these stories annoyed me a little. I’d play 6-7 boring holes, playing from the middle of the fairway, hitting to the pin side of the green, and score a long series of pars. But these weren’t remarkable. I heard other golfers tell me I was a bad playing partner. “All he does is make pars.” What made the other men talk were my stories of recovery. Ending up behind a tree. Or missing the green badly with an approach shot. Scrambling for a decent score when most guys would go double bogey or worse is worth talking about. But being “good” isn’t.

    You should have seen when Adam hit it in the water on the par 5 and only made a bogey.

    He snaked his second shot from under some trees than over the pond and onto to the green.

    Never mind the fact that being in those positions qualified as horrible golf!

    I think this is why Christian make such horrible story tellers.

    We’re boring. While our struggle is the most interesting thing about us it is the thing we hide the most. We like to emphasize the boring parts of our story. Worse yet, we like to pretend like we don’t ever miss life’s green.

    We like to pretend like we magically stopped sinning when we became believers.

    Like it or not, Americans are intrigued by stories of imperfect winners.

    I guess that means that in order to be interesting we have to be more open about who we really are?

  • Activity vs. Impact

    Activity vs. Impact

    Most people’s default measurement tool for their effectiveness is how busy they are.

    The thought process goes like this:

    • If I have a full schedule of activity I feel invaluable to the organization
    • If I am doing a lot of stuff I must be doing some good
    • The result of all these meetings and all this planning is that people have lots to do and are motivated
    • Therefore, since everyone in the organization is busy and excited, we must be effective
    The activity-driven formula
    Impact (?) = activity + resources + more activity

    This is a horrible measurement of effectiveness. This is why billions of dollars are spent in America on the local church and we will impact about the same percentage of people in 2010 as we did in 2009.

    Let’s face it. We measure ourselves by how busy we are when we are trying to cover the fact that we have almost no impact. But there is a better way.

    The impact-driven formula
    Impact = activity – resources + results

    If the local church were a machine we’d call it broken. Lots of activity with no or negative results. That’s a zero or negative mechanical advantage! All of the energy of spinning the organization is dissipated out as fiction.

    If the local church were a corner grocery store, we’d file for bankruptcy. We paid the bills but the owners aren’t seeing growth, in fact they are net losing ground in the marketplace.

    If the local church were a school, the government would take over. We just keep spending more money but test results are not improving, in fact they are getting worse.

    If the local church were a politician, we’d vote ourselves a raise. Wait, that’s not a good example.

    In an impact-driven organization you measure success purely by impact.

    In your mind activity without impact is waste.

    Conversely, if you want to make a large impact you have to take the time and invest your energy in maximizing the impact while limiting your activity.

    If you are stupid busy but not experiencing results— are you frustrated and trying to figure out why?

    Your answer lies in your busyness.

  • Are you fake around your pastor?

    Check out this quote.

    Dear God,

    I was a pastor for 23 years. It killed me. I am not sure I was every called to it. As you know, the overwhelming numbness finally caved in all around me. Now, I am on the outside of the church looking in and I don’t like what I see. Why do we have to be fake to be a Christian or part of a church? How did we buy the lie that showing up occasionally was the same as a relationship with you? Now that I am not a pastor, people are honest with me. I had no idea how hard life was for so many people because when they came on my “turf” they pretended just as much as I did. I feel hope inside God. Now, without the job I feel like you let me go through everything to understand pain. I want to do what I can, but I feel like a failure every day. Can you still use me? link

    While I can’t identify with the feeling far from God or having felt fake with God while serving at a church, I can definitely tell that people are more honest with me about their lives now that I don’t work at a church full time. Why is that? Was there something in my title that made me someone you couldn’t speak openly with? Did you feel like I couldn’t help? Did you feel like I didn’t want to know? Were you trying to protect me? Do you think I’d judge you? Not love you? Tell others you were human? Were you looking for an escape when you were around me? Did I project myself as someone who couldn’t understand? Was I above your struggles? Was I intimidating? Was I uncaring? Was I too transparent? Not transparent enough?

    The thing is, I’m not done being a church leader… at least I hope not. I just want to know. 

    HT to Andy