Monthly Archives: August 2016

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Wednesday Mind Dump…

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mind dump

  • I feel like I’m still playing catch up from 2 weeks ago.
  • Katie, me and our 5 kids flew to Boston to see my cousin get married on Cape Cod.
  • It was beautiful, breezy, sunny.
  • It was awesome seeing family and horrible flying through 3 time zones.
  • Last week, the Acts 29 Arizona pastors and their staffs got to spend time on a zoom call with Larry Osborne and talk about leadership development, small groups, discipleship and breaking growth barriers.
  • So enlightening.
  • Sunday was one of those days that pastors know well.
  • We’ve been going through Romans this year at Revolution and Sunday we got to Romans 9.
  • I love theology, but trying to explain Romans 9 in a relevant way to someone who has know idea about calvinism, free will or predestination.
  • I ended up preaching 2 different sermons between our 2 services.
  • Not really a good thing but it happened.
  • Here’s what pastors know well: your feelings on how church went rarely line up with how church went. 
  • Some of the books I’ve enjoyed in prepping for Romans 9 have been Chosen for Life: The Case for Divine Election, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace and for the theological beatniks, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23.
  • I’m reminded that your church really likes it when you tackle hard topics.
  • Unchurched people especially because they have no idea this is in the Bible.
  • So ready for football to start this weekend.
  • I let my 2 oldest boys create a fantasy team this year.
  • They couldn’t believe how excited they were about drafting their team.
  • According to Yahoo, I won the draft and got the highest grade (even though I didn’t draft a defense).
  • So you know I’ll go 2-14 this year.
  • People often ask what books me and our leaders are reading.
  • Here’s one we’re about to start: The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals.
  • Really excited about it.
  • Our entire team loved his talk at the leadership summit.
  • I have my pastors covenant group meeting today.
  • Honestly, at first I was skeptical about joining, but it has been a huge blessing to me.
  • I meet once a month with 4 older pastors, I think I’m 20 – 25 years younger than all of them.
  • Pastors need other pastors to confide in, pray with and share ministry with.
  • Got to celebrate my Mom’s 60th birthday last night.
  • She’ll be embarrassed when she reads this that I told you, but we’ll keep it between us.
  • I love being able to watch my kids interact with and laugh with my parents.
  • Time to get back at it…
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4 Ways to Survive when Life Gets Hard

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life

The reality of evil and suffering is one that a lot of people have argued about and questioned God on, and it is one of the main roadblocks to trusting God and following Him.

In my years as a pastor, I’ve sat with couples who have buried a child, adults burying their parents, I’ve wept with people who just found out they had cancer and a short time to live, listened to the brokenhearted stories about the end of a marriage, a child who wants nothing to do with the family or God, the loss of jobs, financial difficulties, addictions that can’t be beat.

It’s heartbreaking, and those are just the ones I’ve been party to. This doesn’t even count national and international tragedies and natural disasters we see on the news.

What to do when the storms of life beat you down.

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Personally, I’ve walked through the loss of friends, difficulty in family and work relationships, loss of jobs, setbacks in life, difficulties in starting our church. I’ve looked at mountains in my own life that seemed impossible to get past, hurt that felt so painful I thought I could never recover, betrayal that ran deep.

And then sits Romans 8:28 – 30. One of the most quoted verses in the Bible, it’s been used for encouragement over and over in the lives of thousands since Paul wrote it.

It says: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Right now you might be in the midst of a storm in life. You might not be. If you aren’t, the reality is your storm is coming at some point.

Here are a few questions to help you see where you are, where God is in the storm you are and how to have the faith to walk through what you are in and what is ahead:

4 questions to help you trust God when life feels out of your control.

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1. What storm are you facing? It is important to identify the storm you are facing. Often we don’t know what it is. We simply feel down or something feels off from what used to be or what we hope. Often it isn’t a storm we’re in the middle of; we’re simply tired or burned out. Other times we are in the dark place of the storm, and the waves are crashing around us. Also, without identifying our storm, we will struggle to see anything that God is doing because we’ll simply go into survival mode or become jaded.

Identifying a storm is a key to getting through the storm.

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2. Are there any sins that need to be confronted? By this I mean, have you sinned to get you into the place you are in or has someone else? Take finances for an example. This can cause an incredibly stressful storm, but many of our financial issues are out of our control (housing market, retirement, etc.). Other financial storms are in our control (debt, spending, saving, giving, etc.). Or relational storms: did you hurt someone, are you holding onto something you need to let go of, is there someone you need to confront or forgive and let go?

3. Look back at a storm, hurt or pain from your past. With some distance from that situation, are you able to see God’s hand? I know in my life, the further I am from a situation, the more clarity I have. I will often see my pride and sin more clearly, but I also see God’s hand more clearly. Now the reality is, this side of heaven, we will not have answers for everything that happens to us. We aren’t promised that. We are promised that God will never leave us or forsake us, that all things do serve a purpose in God’s plan and that all things will bring about God’s glory and our good, if we are called by Him and love him. (Romans 8:28 – 30).

Sometimes you must look back to go forward.

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4. What does looking at your past help you to see about God with what you are facing? What is He trying to do right now? The reason I like to look back in my life is that it often helps me to move forward. This is why God had the nation of Israel do things to remember how He moved in the past. This is why as followers of Jesus we do things like communion and baptism, to remember how God worked in the past, because that has an enormous impact on our faith into the future.

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6 Reasons Why Being on Time Matters

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time

Have you ever met someone for coffee, only to have them show up late? Or gone to a meeting that was supposed to start at 6pm but started closer to 6:20? Or gone to a church service that was supposed to start at 9am but started closer to 9:13.

It’s frustrating. It’s also disrespectful and I think it hinders your influence in life.

Here are three things that being on time shows:

3 reasons you should never be late.

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Your Leadership, Influence and Time

1. It shows respect to the person you are meeting with (and their time). When you’re late you communicate, “I’m more important than you.” Now you would never say this, but being late can be an attempted power play. It shows a lack of care for the other person because it says, “Your time isn’t as valuable as my time, and what you have after this isn’t as important as this is.” You can’t make that decision.

2. It shows you are self disciplined. When you are late (even though it will happen sometimes), it often shows you aren’t disciplined. Maybe your previous appointment went long, which means you should let the person know you will be late. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for someone who is late and not knowing when they will be there. So let the person know.

But being on time means you have planned your day, you know how long a drive will take or how long a meeting will take. It also means you keep meetings on track and don’t allow a 30 minute meeting to become a 90 minute meeting.

3. It shows you have your priorities in line. As a leader or a person who wants to have influence, your priority is people. Wasting their time by being late shows your priorities are out of line. It also shows you think higher of yourself than the other person.

3 reasons being late hinders your influence.

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Church and Time

Now let’s apply all of these to a church.

3 reasons you lose influence as a church when you start a service late.

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Why? So many churches and church plants don’t start on time. I remember when we first started Revolution and it was 10am, and the only people in the auditorium were myself, the band and the tech team. Our worship leader looked at me and said, “Do we start?” I thought for a minute and said, “Yep, we start on time.”

1. It shows respect to the people who came (and their time). Time is important in our culture, and we don’t like it when someone else wastes our time. For a church, you want to communicate to guests (and they are usually on time) that you will respect their time. This communicates, we will respect you. It communicates care and respect to the kids’ workers, because churches that start late often go late, and that is a fast way to lose kids’ workers. (They often have enough stuff planned for the allotted time, so if you go over, the Holy Spirit better be sending revival!)

Pastors often think, “We are supposed to start at 10, but most people don’t show up until 10:10, so we’ll start at 10:12.” Here’s what you just told everyone in your church: “We start at 10:12 so come then.” Which means they’ll show up at 10:20.

2. It shows you are disciplined. A lot happens on a Sunday morning, and it is easy to fall behind schedule or start late, especially if you are a portable church. This means to start on time you need systems to make sure things get done in a timely manner and aren’t stressful. Are some mornings stressful? Yes. Do things break and fall apart? Yes. But that shouldn’t be the norm.

3. It shows you have your priorities in line. Again, people are your priority, and if you as a church care about their time, whether they are a guest, a member or a volunteer, you communicate care to them. When you don’t prioritize time, you communicate you don’t care.

6 ways to grow your influence through how you use time.

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Motivational Tips From People At The Top & 7 Other Posts You Should Read This Weekend

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leader

Here are 8 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father. I hope they help you too:

  1. 5 Tell Tale Signs Your Church is Insider Focused by Carey Nieuwhof
  2. A Communications Tip From A Church Secret Shopper by Greg Atkinson
  3. Why People Volunteer At Some Churches But Not At Others by Paul Alexander
  4. The Senior Pastor as the Chief Clarity Officer by Brian Dodd & Michael Lukaszewski
  5. 4 Myths About Delegating by Art Rainer
  6. 6 Terrible Ways to Recruit Volunteers by Thom Rainer
  7. 4 Types of People a Leader Should Not Listen to by Eric Geiger
  8. Motivational Tips From People At The Top by William Vanderbloemen
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How to Recruit and keep the Best Volunteers

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volunteers

If you get a group of pastors or church leaders together and ask them about their biggest challenges, volunteers and leaders will come up. The idea of recruiting volunteers is overwhelming and difficult at times. There never seems to be enough people, and the ones who are serving are often tired and feel like they are the only ones serving.

In light of that, there are some crucial things to keep in mind as you invite people to use their gifts and talents at your church and keep them engaged in those roles. Note, the words you use are incredibly important.

5 ways to recruit and keep the best volunteers.

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1. Know who you are and what you need around you. Many times we are simply looking for a warm body, and no one wants to sign up for a role that anyone can do. When you are inviting people to use their gifts, you need to know if they fit who you are, the team you have in place and the role you are inviting them into. This means as a leader you need to know your personality, strengths and weaknesses so you can effectively build around you. You need to know the makeup of people already on your team, what kind of personalities they have and what is missing. You also need to know what kind of people you need on your team.

2. Don’t say no for anyone. This is easier to do than you would think. We have a need or opening, and we have in mind the perfect person. But they are busy, so we don’t ask. Yes they are busy, but that doesn’t matter. Don’t say no for anyone. Let them say no. Remember, if you don’t ask you rob them of an opportunity. Who knows, they might say yes.

3. The most high capacity and talented people are busy. This is a truth that took me awhile to figure out. The most talented and high capacity people in your church are probably busy, but that’s because they are high capacity and talented people. Notice, I didn’t say they were doing too much, I just said they were busy. They do a lot because they are talented and have a higher capacity than other people. Just like #2, these are the people you want but won’t say anything to. Don’t. Ask them.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask. Hopefully you are picking up on a theme of what it takes to get the right people on your team at your church. Ask.

Remember: People don’t sign up to volunteer because of a big announcement; they say yes because someone asked them.

People volunteer because someone asked them.

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We have this idea in churches that if we show enough videos, make enough pleas from the stage, guilt and shame, then maybe people will sign up. But you don’t want those people. They won’t stay, and then you’ll have people on your team that don’t fit and don’t want to be there because they signed up because they felt bad.

Now I’m not saying you don’t use announcements, but they aren’t as affective to building your team as you often think they are. They help make a need get on someone’s radar.

But the people you want are the people you need to ask.

I said this to a room full of volunteers at our church once and got some pushback. Then I asked everyone to raise their hand who served on their team because of a stage announcement and who served because they were asked by someone. Over 90% served because someone asked them.

5. Why you do something is more important than what you do. This is how you get people on your team and keep people on your team.

When most team leaders invite someone to join their team, they talk about what they’ll do, how they’ll do it, expectations, etc. Those are all well and good.

But people only serve and stay because of why you do something.

In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons volunteers burnout and quit; they don’t remember why they are doing something.

Volunteers burnout and quit when they don’t remember why they are doing something.

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One thing I do every week is pull every volunteer at our church together and remind them in just a few minutes why we are doing something. That it will be someone’s first day at church today, and we need to be ready for that. I also thank them for what they do and how hard they work.

One of the biggest reasons volunteers quit: No one has thanked them recently.

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When was the last time you did something nice for your team? When was the last time you said thanks to them?

5 ways to recruit and keep the best volunteers.

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What to do When You Can’t Stop doing Something

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stop

We all have things about ourselves that we hate; things we do, things we think, things we feel and things in our past. We spend a lot of energy trying to change these things. We hope that something will be different tomorrow. Maybe we’ll magically stop looking at porn, stop being so desperate for love, stop feeling lonely, stop saying things at the wrong moment. Maybe that memory will finally go away.

So, we read our Bibles.

Struggling with sin is the normal Christian experience. Not because we don’t have power over sin, we do have power because of the work of Jesus on the cross in our place and rising from the dead. We have the power through the Holy Spirit to battle our sin and win, but we often lose.

What do you do when you keep doing what you hate?

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In Romans 7, we see this struggle in Paul. Tim Keller lays this out as to why this is the present Christian experience:

  • In the beginning of chapter 7, Paul is talking in the past tense, in verse 14 he changes to the present tense.
  • In  7 – 13, Paul talks about sin killing him, he’s dead, but in verse 14 Paul begins talking about an ongoing struggle with sin. He is fighting sin, struggling but refuses to surrender.
  • In  18 Paul says “I know that nothing good dwells in me.” Those who don’t know Jesus are unaware of being lost and sinful. Without Jesus, we think we can save ourselves or are good on our own.
  • In  22 Paul says, “I delight in God’s law.” If you don’t know Jesus, you can’t delight in God’s law.
  • Keller concludes, “Often we repent of past sin and think it’s done, but God wants to show us how to hate it when the seeds come up again.”

To move forward in freedom, it is important to name, to confess, those things you do that you hate. Those struggles you battle with. To admit what dwells in you. Often we have an inflated view of our goodness, but to experience grace we must understand the depths of our brokenness. Otherwise, what do we need God’s grace and forgiveness for?

I think the process Paul walks through in this passage is instructive for us as we hate our sin:

How to hate your sin and run from it.

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  1. Do you hate your sin?
  2. Are you willing to fight your sin? To put things into place to win the battle against sin? This might mean you stop going to places, get rid of something, stop spending time with that person.
  3. Do you know how lost you are apart from the grace of Jesus?
  4. Do you delight in the law of God?
4 questions to help you fight your sin.

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Longings, Desires & When I’m Letdown

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desires

Often times it is hard to know what our longings mean. They can be sinful and good. They can reveal things about us, past hurts, pain, things we hope and dream for the future. They can be hard to trust, and they can also reveal who we really are, who we wish to become, and sometimes the people we wish to leave behind.

Our longings, though, also reveal deep within us what God has in store for us.

Our longings can reveal deep within us what God has in store for us.

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Our longings are a reminder that God has something more, something different; that our bodies and our world are broken and not how God intended them to be.

G.K. Chesterton, who lived in the early 1900’s, is believed to have said, “A man knocking on the door of a brothel is knocking for God.”

Our lives reveal a longing.

This week let me give you a challenge as you think about your longings and what they reveal about you. Here are some questions to ask:

5 questions to ask about your desires and longings to see if they line up with God’s will.

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1. What do you most want out of life? Out of this week and month? Many of us do not spend enough time thinking about what we want out of life. These desires, as we’ll see in a minute, not only reveal a lot about us, but they can also be from God. He created desires in us, desires for relationships, for joy, for hobbies and for the place we live.

2. What would truly make you happy in life? This begins to get to the heart of our desires. Does it have to do with relationships, housing, a trip, hobbies, a career, your body? Again, right now don’t judge if it is sinful or not. Simply list out the desire you have.

3. Is that a sinful desire? This is the moment we begin to evaluate our desires and what they show us. Is that desire selfish, for my glory, about my wants? Is it destructive to others? Does it serve me or God? Is this desire all encompassing in my life right now? Does it drive me like an addiction?

Are all your desires and longings a sin?

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4. What do I do if it is a sin? Many of our desires are sins that we need to handle, confess and bring before God. Our desires also reveal our need for God and His grace in our lives. The desires you are convicted of, confess those to God. Confess those sins where you need to, and ask God to change your desires if need be. But don’t hold on to them; bring them to the cross.

5. What do I do if it isn’t a sin? Not all desires are bad. In fact, many of the greatest things people have done for God have been borne out of desire. Those are things that bring passion to our lives and joy that are from God. They are also God’s good gifts. It is good to enjoy a good meal with friends. It is destructive to make that an idol our lives revolve around.

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Leaders Anticipate What’s Next

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leaders

Good leaders never say, “I never saw that coming”, because leaders anticipate what is next.

Now leaders cannot see the future, they do not know how everything will work out when they make a decision, how things will go in the world or what will happen next. They aren’t fortune tellers. That would be nice, but it’s not true. But the point still exists.

This is one thing that separates leaders from followers. It is also what separates great leaders from simply good leaders.

But why do some people miss things?

They aren’t looking for what is next. Many leaders are simply trying to survive the week. Many pastors are just trying to get through Sunday. When this happens, you don’t look up. You have no vision, no plan, no dream, nothing that you are moving towards. So when what’s next comes down the pike, you are helpless to grab the opportunity.

Another reason is that what we see in front of us, what we know, is comfortable. Anticipating the future is difficult and pushes us into new arenas, new skills and possibly even changing something.

So if you want to be a leader, how do you anticipate the future?

3 things that help leaders anticipate what’s next.

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1. Stay current. One of the reasons pastors and churches find themselves out of date on things is that they don’t stay current on what is happening. I’m not talking about current events as much as I am thinking through how to reach the world around you. Many times pastors don’t know the questions people are asking, so they preach sermons that are irrelevant to their audience. Churches don’t ask who lives around them and how to best reach those people. They ignore them, and consequently the world around them ignores the church.

2. Be willing to ask hard questions. At least once a year (I’d say more than that, but at least once a year) ask some hard questions about your church. Are we reaching our goals? Are we healthy as a church? Are our leaders healthy? Are we seeing lives changed? Are things clear at our church? Do people know their next step, how they fit into our church?

If you never ask hard questions, you’ll continue on the same path, which is usually the easy path of least resistance. If you do this, what’s next will sneak by you.

Hard questions help you see what’s next for your church.

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3. Be willing to look at data you don’t like. Your hard questions will probably bring to the surface things you’d like to ignore about your church. You might see that you have some leaders who need more training, a leader who doesn’t fit in their role; you might see a staff member that isn’t able to keep up. You might even see some areas in your leadership that you need to grow in. This is painful but good. Don’t ignore data, even if it hurts. Data is your friend.

In church, data is your friend.

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Horst Schulze on “Creating an Organization of Excellence & Efficiency” from the Leadership Summit 2016

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leadership

I’m at the leadership summit with the team from Revolution Church. This is by far the best leadership conference of the year. This is my 13th summit and every year, God stretches me and challenges me. So much wisdom and inspiration wrapped up into two days. I always blog my notes, so if you can’t attend or missed something, I’ve got you covered.

Horst Schulze is the President of Ritz-Carlton, so he has a lot of wisdom that churches can learn from as it relates to guest services and be excellent.

Here are some takeaways:

  • It doesn’t matter what your business is, the guest wants to be happy, you want the guest to return.
  • You have to know what segment you are in so you know what that segment wants.
  • If you don’t know who your customer is and what they want, you will not be able to reach them and keep them.
  • To be successful, you must produce it better than the competition.
  • You have to be more efficient and sufficient than the competition.
  • No matter what our business is or what our market is, part of what you have to be excellent in is hospitality.
  • The guest wants 3 things: that the product is perfect, that you serve them timely and that you care (personal attention).
  • Personal attention drives customer satisfaction more than anything else.
Personal attention drives customer satisfaction more than anything else.

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  • Efficiency and sufficiency doesn’t come from management but from leadership.
  • Leadership involves people and implies going somewhere.
  • The first day is the most crucial day for a new volunteer or employee in your church.
The first day is the most crucial day for a new volunteer or employee in your church.

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  • Efficiency is not cost cutting. Cost cutting is killing your business and killing your brand.
  • Eliminate work that is wasted effort and doesn’t add value.