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2019 Leadership Summit – 7 Quotes from Danielle Strickland on Transformation

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Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Danielle Strickland:

  • If you want to change things, you have to change the right things.
  • To find what needs to be changed, you must dig underneath the surface, to the roots.
  • Disruption is not a threat, but an invitation.
  • There is no changing the future without disturbing the present. -Catherine Booth
  • Leaders leave behind everything that is normal and everything that is comfortable to find the new normal.
  • Leaders know that changing things doesn’t matter as much as changing the right things.
  • One encounter can change everything.
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2019 Leadership Summit – 25 Quotes from Jason Dorsey on Understanding Generational Differences

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Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Jason Dorsey on understanding generational differences:

  • The #1 trend that shapes generations is parenting. 
  • Parents shape their kids more than any other group.
  • Entitlement is a learned behavior.
  • Generations are driven by clues.
  • The #2 trend has a natural relationship with technology that is driven by our age. 
  • Our beliefs about technology shape if we think something works.
  • Technology is only new if you remember what is was before, otherwise it what you have always known.
  • You will see the difference in generations across location and geography. 

What do you need to know about millennials?

  • The largest generation in the workforce.
  • Millennials hit markers later than boomers and it changes how they look at stability, benefits, work/life balance.
  • The millennial generations are splitting into two generations.
  • At age 30, you split and don’t relate to your generation.
  • Millennials aren’t tech-savvy, we are tech-dependent and it changes everything we do.

What do you need to know about Gen X?

  • Gen X is taking care of their parents and their kids.
  • Gen X is naturally skeptical.
  • Gen X is the glue in the organization.

What do you need to know about baby boomers?

  • Baby boomers measure work ethic in hours per week.
  • If they can’t see you, you aren’t working.
  • There are no shortcuts to success. You must pay your dues. They believe in policies and protocol.

What do you need to know about Gen Z?

  • Gen Z’s parents are older millennials or Gen X.
  • Gen Z saw their parents struggle through the recession, so they are very wise about their money.
  • Some of Gen Z will leapfrog some millennials in the workforce.

What to do as a leader?

  • Provide specific examples of the performance you expect.
  • Most leaders message in a linear format. Millennials and Gen Z do not think linear, they are outcome-driven. Show them the end first.
  • You have to provide quick hit feedback.
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2019 Leadership Summit – 15 Quotes from Ben Sherwood on How to Lead in Times of Change

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Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Ben Sherwood on how to lead in a time of change and disruption:

  • To be a great leader in a crisis, you must be able to see things differently.
  • To win in crisis and disruption, you must fight the unorthodox way. You must lead like you have nothing to lose.
  • The best ideas and most ideas win in change and disruption. 
  • A leader must constantly be looking for ideas.
  • Leaders who make change believe in the power of magic, the impossible. 
  • The way to move forward is to quit talking and start doing. 
  • Theory 10-80-10: in an emergency 10% of the people in the emergency emerge as leaders (they know what to do, where to go, they lead others to safety), 80% of the people in an emergency do nothing (they freeze and wait for someone to tell them what to do), 10% engage in counter-productive or negative behavior.
  • 10% of leaders are ones who emerge at the moment that leadership is needed.
  • In a crisis, maintain your point of reference. Know which way is up, which way is the way out. Where you are. 
  • If you lose your point of reference as a leader, you get off course and get lost.
  • In a crisis, wait for things to stop, to slow down.
  • In a crisis, practice realistic optimism. 
  • Realistic optimists are someone who has an unflinching sense of their surroundings. ruthlessly honest about the situations they face.
  • Faith is the most powerful survival tool and leadership tool we have.
  • If you want to increase your influence…connect.
15 Favorites Quotes from Ben Sherwood at the Leadership Summit on How to Lead in Times of Change & Disruption.

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2019 Leadership Summit – 19 Quotes from Craig Groeschel

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Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit and it is always refreshing, challenging and recharging for me. Easily the best leadership material in a conference that is out there. I try to share some of the highlights I took from each session.

Here are some thoughts from the session with Craig Groeschel:

  • Everyone has influence.
  • How you lead others matters more than you can possibly imagine.
  • The assumption leaders make is that better costs more. We assume that investing more will bring a better return. Investing more over time often brings a diminishing return.
  • More does not always mean better.
  • The key is to look for the greatest level of return based on time, money and resources invested.
  • GETMO stands for good enough to move on.
  • Perfection is often the enemy of progress.
  • Excellence will motivate you but also limit you if you aren’t careful.
  • If we spend more on something, we aren’t necessarily making it better, we are making a trade.
  • Better is a higher or equal return.
  • Leaders bend the curve (BTC).
  • Leaders think inside the box. 
  • Limited options, constraints drive creativity. Constraints eliminate options.
  • In your organization, where is there tension? Where do you have a rub that you need to let the constraints drive the ideas?
  • You have everything you need to do everything you are called to do.
  • If you have everything you wanted, you might miss what you really needed.
  • Leaders burn the ships.
  • You need to figure out what you need to do to step out of your doubts and into your calling.
  • You are one step away from what you are supposed to accomplish.
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The Prayer God Always Answers

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Now, before you email me, yes, God hears and answers all our prayers. That isn’t what this post is about. Although sometimes, if we’re honest, God doesn’t answer our prayers on our timeline or in the way we want.

There is a prayer that he always answers yes to.

The prayer God always answers.

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What is it?

It might surprise you.

It is the prayer for wisdom.

In James 1:5, we’re told that if we lack wisdom, we are to ask for it and God will give it. That he gives it generously and ungrudgingly to all.

Our view of God (generous or not) determines how we pray and what we ask for.

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Have you ever had a decision where you weren’t sure what to do?

Is now the time to get married? Do you marry this person? Are they the one?

Is now the time to have kids? How do you know if you are ready?

What college do you choose? What major? What happens if you get into and find out that you hate that major?

What jobs? How do you know which one is the best? 

We face decisions all the time. 

Amazingly, scientists believe that we make 35,000 decisions a day!

Some decisions you are aware of. You make a list, pro’s, con’s, trying to figure it out, talk to friends. 

Some decisions, we are entirely unaware that they are happening. 

But how do you decide?

Have you ever noticed that some people always know what to do? They have a calm about themselves. 

They not only know what to do and when to do it but once they make that decision, they stop worrying about it. They stop stressing over whether or not that was the right one.

What do they know that you and I don’t? Wisdom.

Wisdom is not based on feelings, but on knowing and trusting the power of God’s promises.

Wisdom is not based on feelings, but on knowing and trusting the power of God’s promises.

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For many of us, wisdom comes through life experiences, but there is a secret sauce to decision making and wisdom, and that is asking God.

Often in a crisis though, we ask God to take something away, to do this or that, we ask for an answer, but we rarely ask for wisdom. Do you know why? My hunch is asking for wisdom puts some responsibility on us. Asking God to take it away or do something puts the responsibility all on him.

So that if I don’t get the answer I want or it doesn’t go the way I thought, I can throw up my hands and blame God. Many times, the answer to our prayers will be connected to an action we take.

The answer to our prayers will be connected to an action we take.

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Prayer is all about trust. It’s why we struggle with it. Why we don’t pray as much as we should or as bold as we should.

But what if James is right? I believe he is. God loves to give us wisdom for what is next.

Another thing we do is we ask God to show us the whole puzzle of our lives and the situation we are facing. We want to know all the steps along the way, but wisdom is simply for the next thing. I had a mentor tell me that if God showed us all the steps it would take to get somewhere, most of us wouldn’t get out of bed. And that’s true. Some of the hardest parts of my life have been some of the most beneficial, but if I knew ahead of time what I was walking into, I’m not sure I would’ve signed up.

And this is what happens for many of us in decisions: we get paralyzed by them. And then we stand still and watch the parade of life go by, and we wonder, why that person over there sees God move like they do, that their life is the adventure that it is.

We get paralyzed because we ant all the steps, all the pieces of the puzzle, but wisdom will tell us what to do next.

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So, think of the one area of your life that you need an answer. A way forward.

What if instead of asking for an answer or for God to clear the way (you can still ask those things), you ask for wisdom.

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Walking with People Through Pain & Difficulty

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Sunday, I preached on how to hack pain and difficulty in life as part of our Life Hacks series. One of the things I wasn’t able to get to is how to walk with someone through pain, how do you let others walk with you.

This is often hard to do, from both perspectives.

When you are the one walking through the difficulty, we tend to keep it to ourselves. We don’t want to be a bother to other people; we think we should be able to handle it on our own or we struggle to wonder if people care about us.

When you are a friend watching someone walk through difficulty, it is hard to know where to start. How do you step in and help? What do they need? Especially if it is around sickness or death, it can sometimes be hard to know what to say or how to say it. Often then, we choose not to do anything, even though we’d like to.

Over the summer, I read a great book by Kate Bowler called Everything Happens for a Reason (and other lies I’ve loved). Kate was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, and at the end, she shares how to walk with people, because it is difficult, we want to do it well, but we often find ourselves fumbling it.

According to Bowler, here are some things to not say:

What not to say to someone walking through a difficult time.

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  • ‘Well, at least . . .’ Whoa. Hold up there. Were you about to make a comparison? At least it’s not . . . what? Stage V cancer? Don’t minimize.
  • ‘In my long life, I’ve learned that . . .’ Geez. Do you want a medal? I get it! You lived forever. Well, some people are worried that they won’t, or that things are so hard they won’t want to. So ease up on the life lessons. Life is a privilege, not a reward.
  • ‘It’s going to get better. I promise.’ Well, fairy godmother, that’s going to be a tough row to hoe when things go badly.
  • ‘God needed an angel.’ This one takes the cake because (a) it makes God look sadistic and needy and (b) angels are, according to Christian tradition, created from scratch. Not dead people looking for a cameo in Ghost. You see how confusing it is when we just pretend that the deceased return to help you find your car keys or make pottery?
  • ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ The only thing worse than saying this is pretending that you know the reason. I’ve had hundreds of people tell me the reason for my cancer. Because of my sin. Because of my unfaithfulness. Because God is fair. Because God is unfair. Because of my aversion to Brussels sprouts. I mean, no one is short of reasons. So if people tell you this, make sure you are there when they go through the cruelest moments of their lives, and start offering your own. When someone is drowning, the only thing worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is handing them a reason.
  • ‘I’ve done some research and…’ I thought I should listen to my oncologist and my nutritionist and my team of specialists, but it turns out that I should be listening to you. Yes, please, tell me more about the medical secrets that only one flaxseed provider in Orlando knows. Wait, let me get a pen.
  • ‘When my aunt had cancer…’ My darling dear, I know you are trying to relate to me. Now you see me and you are reminded that terrible things have happened in the world. But guess what? That is where I live, in the valley of the shadow of death. But now I’m on vacation because I’m not in the hospital or dealing with my mess. Do I have to take my sunglasses off and join you in the saddest journey down memory lane, or do you mind if I finish my mojito?
  • ‘So how are the treatments going? How are you really?’ This is the toughest one of all. I can hear you trying to understand my world and be on my side. But picture the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Got it?

Here are some things to say:

What to say to someone walking through a difficult time.

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  • “I’d love to bring you a meal this week. Can I email you about it?” Oh, thank goodness. I am starving, but mostly I can never figure out something to tell people that I need, even if I need it. But really, bring me anything. Chocolate. A potted plant. A set of weird erasers. I remember the first gift I got that wasn’t about cancer, and I was so happy I cried. Send me funny emails filled with YouTube clips to watch during chemotherapy. Do something that suits your talents. But most important, bring me presents! 
  • “You are a beautiful person.” Unless you are used to speaking in a creepy windowless-van kind of voice, comments like these go a long way. Tell your friend something about his or her life that you admire without making it feel like a eulogy.
  • “I am so grateful to hear about how you’re doing. Just know that I’m on your team.” You mean I don’t have to give you an update? You asked someone else for all the gory details? Whew. Great! Now, I get to feel like you are both informed and concerned. So, don’t gild the lily. What you have said is amazing, so don’t screw it up now by being a nosy Nellie. Ask a question about any other aspect of my life. 
  • “Can I give you a hug?” Some of my best moments with people have come with a hug or a hand on the arm. People who are suffering often—not always—feel isolated and want to be touched. Hospitals and big institutions, in general, tend to treat people like cyborgs or throwaways. So, ask whether your friend feels up for a hug and give her some sugar. 
  • “Oh, my friend, that sounds so hard.” Perhaps the weirdest thing about having something awful happen is the fact that no one wants to hear about it. People tend to want to hear the summary, but they don’t usually want to hear it from you. And that it was awful. So, simmer down and let your friend talk for a bit. Be willing to stare down the ugliness and sadness. Life is absurdly hard, and pretending it isn’t is exhausting.
  • *****Silence***** The truth is that no one knows what to say. It’s awkward. Pain is awkward. Tragedy is awkward. People’s weird, suffering bodies are awkward. But take the advice of one man who wrote to me with his policy: Show up and shut up. 
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9 Signs Your Marriage Needs More Attention than Your Career or Kids

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The longer you are married, the easier it is to let things come in between you and your spouse. When you first get married, you are ready to take on the world together. You make decisions together, you dream together, you are romantic with each other, continually pursuing each other. You can’t imagine anything coming between you and the most crucial person in your life.

But something happens.

Kids come along, and they have enormous needs that won’t go away.

Aging parents step in, and now you are taking care of them. Or parents who step into issues within your marriage. Or, if your spouse struggles to leave their family of origin and cling to this new family.

And your career starts to pick up. For many, the career catches them off guard because now they begin to feel affirmation, accomplishment, and people are noticing them in ways they didn’t have before.

Slowly, you stop pouring energy into your marriage because it feels more natural and comes easier to throw yourself into work and your kids.

But make no mistake, that path leads a ton of regret.

So, think of this post as a car dashboard telling you when to get your oil changed. Here are nine ways to know you need to spend more energy and time on your marriage than your job or your kids.

9 ways to know you need to spend more energy and time on your marriage than your job or your kids.

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You check your email and text messages during dinner. The dinner table needs to be the time of day when you turn your phone off. Whoever emails you or texts you during dinner can wait. If not, don’t eat dinner. It is easy, though to have your devices at the table.

Interestingly, parents complain about their kids bringing devices to the table, but guess who did it first? Parents.

At our house and on date nights, we have a no devices rule. If you need to bring out a device, ask the other person if that is okay.

You can’t remember the last date night you had. The older your kids get, the harder it is to get time together with your spouse. A lot happens, and a lot needs to happen.

But you need to schedule a time for you and your spouse to be together. To have time to talk, process, share what is going on, get feedback, pursue each other.

This needs to be one of the things that are blocked out on your calendar each week. It doesn’t have to be expensive or a major production, but it does need to be consistent.

A few rules for this time: plan it, no electronics, have the goal be a connection with each other.

You are quick to say “yes” to your kids, sleeping with you at night. This is not the same thing as feeding a baby at night, but many couples to be kind to their child or do not have to say no to their spouse about sex, allow kids to overrun the bedroom. If this is happening, something deeper is going on that needs to be addressed.

Every night we have a child who wants to sleep in our bed, on our floor for one reason or another. If they show up at 3 am, that’s different than 10:15 pm. But communicate that there are places where kids don’t get to be, they won’t end up in counseling because of this.

Your bedroom has a TV in it. One of the best ways to kill your sex life in marriage is by putting a TV in your bedroom. Whenever I meet with a couple who is frustrated about their sex life, they often have a TV in their bedroom. If you have a TV in your room and a great sex life, great, but you are the exception.

A TV is a distraction (it also keeps you from getting great sleep).

A TV in your bedroom kills your sleep and your sex life.

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PDA. One of the most significant signs that your marriage needs to attention is a lack of public displays of affection. Affection is the barometer of your marriage.

Affection is the barometer of your marriage.

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The older you get, the easier it is for this to slip. You stop holding hands, kissing, hugging.

The moment you look up and realize that your PDA is low, you need to give your marriage some attention.

Your weekends and evenings are taken over by your kids. Life is busy with kids: projects, sports, scouts, schoolwork, and plays. But when you begin to realize that you don’t have friend time, hobbies, you are running from one thing to the next; it is time to pull back and reevaluate. You don’t have to be in everything or be at everything.

When you hear a wife refer to her husband as one of her kids. This is a big one.

When a wife does this, underneath is disdain and disrespect of her husband. I’m not saying he doesn’t act like one of her kids, because he might. But this is one that tells you a lot about where your relationship is.

You are more open with someone at work than you are with your spouse. You spend a lot of time with people at work, and often, they are easier to talk to than your spouse. Slowly, during break time, lunch, or working late, you begin to share things with this person that you don’t share with your spouse.

You begin to get emotionally connected in a way that is incredibly dangerous to your marriage.

You see your spouse as getting in the way of your dreams. This a touchy one but an important one.

When you start in marriage, you are your spouse’s biggest cheerleader, standing in their corner (or at least you should be). Over time though, you can find yourselves pursuing different dreams, different lives. Slowly, the people closest to you seem to be inhibiting you from your goals instead of helping you to get there.

If you find yourself nodding your head to any or all of these, it isn’t hopeless. It just means that your marriage needs more attention than you and your spouse are giving it.

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You Might be a Legalist If…

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One of the biggest struggles we have, regardless of our faith or belief in Christianity, is legalism; the temptation to look for a list of rules instead of freedom.

Whenever I talk to anyone about any struggle, the answer they are looking for often resides in a list of rules — trying to lose weight? Tell me what I can and cannot eat — trying to get out of debt? Give me the ten things I have to do.

I do this all the time in leadership. I’ll meet someone who is further ahead, and my mind goes to what are the 3-5 things they did that I need to do.

Now, this isn’t necessarily wrong. It gets at the motivation and what we hope will come from these steps.

The problem is when we look to our list of rules to make us whole, to redeem us, save us.

In Christian terms, it is when we look to rules and how we behave to make us right with God, more accepted by God or ultimately, more loved by God.

In human terms, legalism helps us to feel superior to other people.

Here’s one of the things I run into though, while we all struggle with this, many of us don’t think we do this as much as we do.

How do you know if you’re falling into legalism? 

4 ways to know you’re a legalist.

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1. Why do you feel guilty about something?

We all have guilt. We feel it for different reasons.

I remember when I first became a Christian, I would try to reach my bible and pray first thing in the morning. I was told, Jesus got up while it was dark to pray, so that’s what I was supposed to do. The problem was, I’m not a morning person, and so I would fall asleep. Then I would beat myself up about it because a good Christian didn’t fall asleep while praying.

Why did I feel guilty? I wasn’t good enough.

The reality is though; a good Christian can read their bible and pray any time of day. And, falling asleep while praying isn’t a sin. I can’t think of a better time to fall asleep.

Good guilt would’ve been feeling guilty that I am missing out on being with Jesus.

2. Do you feel more or less free after doing something?

This gets at how you handle when guilt happens in your life because we all have guilt and shame we carry.

Here’s why this question lines up with legalism: what I’ve learned about rule-followers is we don’t know how to feel anything but guilt. Most of us don’t know what freedom feels like, and because of that, we don’t go for it.

3. Do you want people to know, or are you okay if it is anonymous?

This is a good one.

When you follow one of your rules, do something that makes you feel more spiritual or superior to someone; do you want people to know?

Do you want people to know how much you give? Serve? Can you read your bible without posting a verse on Instagram? Do you spend more time posting something good you did than actually doing something right?

The flip side, do you post things to get sympathy from people to tell you that you aren’t a failure? This is the “well that happened” post on Facebook. Parents do this all the time. We do this with our boss. So people will say, “I see you, and you are awesome.” But why does their opinion matter? Why does your kid’s opinion matter? Have you noticed, the view of someone else can crush us? Why?

Because we struggle to live free.

4. Do you feel more alive and closer to Christ or less?

Jesus said in John 10 that he came to give life. Be honest for a moment, if you’re a follower of Jesus, do you feel alive? Or do you feel exhausted? Do you feel like you are overflowing with life, you can’t handle how much life you have in Jesus?

Keeping rules is exhausting. Impossible for us. It is a burden we carry that we aren’t meant to carry.

There are two ways in Christian circles: through Jesus or legalism or ourselves.

Here’s the thing, as a follower of Jesus, you would say there is nothing you could do to earn salvation, life with God, but we live as if we could win his love. That what we do keeps us following Jesus or proves that we are following Jesus. What shows we are following Jesus is God’s love for us.

As we grow in our faith, to become more like Jesus, we think it rests entirely on us.

Many of us think our behavior determines whether our relationship with God is good or bad. But Christianity has never been about following rules; it has been about following Jesus.

Jesus is more interested in the person you become than the rules you keep.

Jesus is more interested in the person you become than the rules you keep.

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Summer Break!

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A little later than usual, but my summer break is here!

My elders are gracious each year to make sure my family and I get some time to rest and recharge. I’ll be posting many of our adventures on Instagram if you want to keep up. For me, it is five weeks away from preaching to work ahead on things for Revolution, rest, play, and recharge.

Be praying for our family and our church as we have some big things we are working on for the fall and 2020!

I often get asked what I’m reading over the summer, so here are a few of the books I’m most excited about (remember leaders, on your vacation, read books that benefit you personally):

No, I won’t read all of these, and I won’t feel bad about it!

Some of the books I’m reading this summer.

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In the meantime, here are some of the most recent top posts on my blog to keep you company until I get back:

Healthy Marriage (Katie and I wrote a lot about this topic this year because of doing a marriage series this year)

8 helpful posts on marriage and relationships.

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Healthy Church

5 ideas for a healthy church

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Healthy Leadership

4 ideas to help you be a healthy leader over the summer

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Healthy Faith

5 things to help your faith when it is hard to trust God.

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Being Satisfied Where You Are

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Our culture is one that likes new things.

I know I do.

Regularly I talk to people around the same topic: Wishing they were somewhere else.

Not necessarily physically (although sometimes that’s it), but wanting to be somewhere else in life.

I had a season where I was discontent with my life and where I was. I was frustrated at my lack of progress; I started to dislike where I lived, and a friend looked at me and said, “What if you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be? What if where you are right now, with how your life is, this is where God wants you?”

Honestly, I looked at him and said, “If that’s the case, then I don’t like God at the moment.”

But life and where we end up is a battle of contentment.

We often focus on other things, yet I find it interesting in Philippians, that Paul talks about contentment.

Usually, that gets attached to finances (which makes sense), but what if contentment is bigger than that?

What if it covers contentment with your career, house, your body (!), your kids?

What if you are precisely where God wants you to be?

Notice, I didn’t say you would stay there. Sometimes God needs to keep us in certain places and seasons for us to learn things for what is next, but also for others to be prepared for us in what is next.