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Links for Leaders 11/3/17

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It’s the weekend…finally. The perfect time to grab a cup of coffee and catch up on some reading. Below, you’ll find some articles I came across this week that I found helpful as a leader and parent and hope you do as well.

Before diving into those, in case you missed them this week. Here are the top 3 posts from my blog this week that I hope you find helpful:

Now, onto the articles I came across that I hope will help you:

Trevin Wax shares The Boy Scouts and the Disappearance of Paths as they’ve recently announced they will now allow girls to join the boy scouts. As my kids have gotten older, we’ve talked more and more about paths, passages, etc., which I think are crucial for kids and something that is lost in our culture.

Hiring is difficult for most pastors and leaders. Marty Duren has 15 questions to ask a potential hire at your church. Many of these are normal ones most churches ask, but there were a few that were new to me.

I’ve mentioned before that Katie and I have been spending a lot of time talking about technology and the role it plays in our family and with our kids. I’ve really appreciate the insights from Jon Acuff on this and he shares The first social media challenge your kids will face, that is incredibly insightful.

I’m reading Sam Storms new book Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life, which has been incredibly helpful. He wrote a post this week about the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit that is great and I think a very overlooked part of Christianity. 

I have a daughter and so dating is something I’ve been thinking about and how I prepare her for it. Most of what Christians, especially dad’s have to say on the topic is ridiculous and fear based. With good reason, but that’s why I appreciated this article from Jen Wilkin on On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors. I love how she champions raising a strong woman. We need more of that, not less.

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A Key to Healthy Relationships

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What if I told you one thing would make an enormous impact on every relationship you have?

I know that sounds like an oversimplification, but it isn’t.

All relationships that are healthy have many things in common. Truth, love, acceptance, boundaries.

But there is something of a lost art in relationships that I think can bridge the gap between people, especially in a divided culture like ours.

Hospitality.

Hospitality has the power to change relationships.

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Hospitality is the ability to welcome people, to be warm towards people you know and people you don’t.

Hospitality is also the opening of your heart and life towards other people.

It is being friendly and generous to those around you.

Simple?

Yes.

Easy?

Hardly.

The lost art of hospitality and why it matters in churches.

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I think it is a lost art in churches and among Christians, and I think that hospitality has the power to build a bridge for the gospel in our culture.

How?

Our culture is wary of Christians. In fact, where I live it is odd to be invited over to someone’s house for dinner. In other parts of the country it is normal, but our houses are now our fortresses, where we rest at the end of a long week.

But this and the rise of social media have left so many of us lonely and isolated.

That’s the power of opening up your home and sharing a meal with someone.

In fact, when we created our family mission statement, we put hospitable as one of the five things we wanted our kids to know when they left our house and one of the five things we wanted to be true about our family.

We think it is not only a Christian value but a bedrock of healthy families and relationships.

Don’t believe me?

Think about the people you love to be with? The houses you love to be in? The families you love to go to or went to as a kid or college student. My guess is they were hospitable.

So what does it look like practically to be hospitable?

The first is to decide you want to be and care to be.

This will mean opening up your home and life to people. Being willing to serve them and invite them in. If you’re an introvert, this might mean one or two people instead of a big group.

The second thing is to do it.

Don’t jump in and say you’ll go from never inviting someone over to three times a week. Start small.

If you have kids, talk with them about it. Pray for the people you are having over.

Our kids know that we have toys in our house for babies because we invite families over. We don’t need the baby toys, but they take up space in our house to serve those families we invite over.

That’s the third key, intentionality.

You have to plan it and think through what it will mean in your life and what it will look like.

Again, I think hospitality has the power to change the relationships we have. It is that powerful.

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Confidence & What Holds You Back

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Have you ever struggled to have confidence in life? In your relationship with God?

It might be around a decision, a relationship, a choice you’ve made, but now that assurance and confidence you had seems to be shaken.

Where does that come from?

The answer for many people might surprise you.

Idols.

Each person has a default idol of their heart, what pushes them to make the decisions they do, both good and bad. Tim Chester points out in his book You Can Change: God’s Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions that each of us has an idol that is either for power, control, comfort or approval. They overlap and we might have all four at different times, but these four things push us to sin, succeed and live our lives.

The hope we have is that they will bring us the fulfillment we long for.

For example, when a man works a ton of hours to provide for his family, he is doing a good thing to provide for them. But he might be doing it so that his family will approve of him or that he will have the comfort he longs for.

Or, when one tries to control a situation through organizing every detail, keeping things in order, they might say they are organized or a detailed person, which might be true. It might also mean that it comes from a place of insecurity where they need to control everything instead of trusting in God.

Here are some questions we worked through tonight to discern what the idols of your heart are:

  1.   What do I worry about?
  2.   What do I use to comfort myself when life gets tough or things don’t go my way?
  3.   What, if I lost it, would make me think life wasn’t worth living?
  4.   What do I daydream about?
  5.   What makes me feel the most self-worth?
  6.   What do I lead with in conversations?
  7.   Early on, what do I want to make sure people know about me?
  8.   What prayer, unanswered, would seriously make me consider walking away from God?
  9.   What do I really want and expect out of life?
  10.   What is my hope for the future? What will complete me?

Often our lack of confidence and trust in God stems from an idol, and it keeps us from trusting, risking and experiencing all that God has for us.

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Thursday Mind Dump…

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  • Had my leadership group this morning.
  • This is one of my favorite meetings of the week.
  • Every year, I lead a group of 10-15 guys through some leadership books and talks with the goal of growing as a leader at home, work and in their life.
  • The first part is focused on self-leadership, understanding how you are wired and how your upbringing shapes you as a man and a leader.
  • Too many people overlook this because it is hard work (and often painful) and isn’t as much fun as vision and team building but the best leaders are self aware.
  • The last month we’ve spent reading The Making of a Leader: Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development.
  • One of the best and least read books on leadership.
  • Seriously.
  • I’m often asked what I’m learning personally from reading or other things.
  • Our next series at Revolution is a short answer to that.
  • It’s called Let Us…
  • The big idea is seeing the Christian life as an invitation more than a list of things to do or accomplish.
  • I wish I would’ve learned this sooner.
  • Got to have some silence this week on Mt. Lemmon which is always helpful.
  • I’m learning more and more about how God uses place in our lives, when it comes to purpose, calling, His voice and rest.
  • Place matters.
  • More than we think it does.
  • I was asked by someone what I do on a retreat day.
  • I listen to worship music, pray and walk.
  • I know some people like to sit but I need to move.
  • I think clearer, hear God more and am able to unload my burdens when I move.
  • Took me years to figure out what works for me.
  • If you sit still, take a nap and rest, awesome.
  • We had our first membership class this past Sunday at Revolution.
  • Loved it.
  • I love how many people want to belong at Revolution and be a part of the vision God has for our church.
  • Speaking of vision, we finalized our plans for Christmas Eve, our Christmas series, etc.
  • Can’t wait!
  • Details are coming soon so be on the lookout.
  • Had an awesome conversation with one of our younger leaders this morning about race, the gospel, the national anthem, parenting a black child, white privilege.
  • I love that more and more white Christians are wrestling with this, asking questions and listening. 
  • Honestly, that is the key on this topic.
  • Asking questions and then shutting your mouth.
  • Our kids picked The Emoji Movie the other night for family movie night.
  • Parents and pastors, if you want to know the cultural narrative of our time, watch a kids movie.
  • So many opportunities to bring the gospel into your parenting.
  • Time to get back it…
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The One Thing You’d Change if You Could

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What is one thing that, if it was different, would make your life better?

Better is a hard word to define, because we often compare our life to someone else’s life, what we imagine someone else’s life is like or even what we wish our life would be like.

Better isn’t always better, but what if, in this case, better would be freer? More life. The life Jesus promised He came to give us in John 10:10.

Overflowing.

Abundant.

Uncontainable.

For most of us that’s more of a mirage than reality.

But as a follower of Jesus, that is what we have in Jesus.

So how does that happen?

How do you change that habit? That sin or negative emotion? How do you forgive that person you can’t seem to let go of?

One word.

Overcome.

In 1 John 5 it says:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him. This is how we know that we love God’s children: when we love God and obey his commands. For this is what love for God is: to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden, because everyone who has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith.

John adds a great word to the descriptions of Christians: overcomers. Victors.

But how?

Victory is found through love and obedience.

Victory is found through love and obedience.

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The first is love for God and the things of God. We know we are children of God because we love God. We love God because God loved us first. We didn’t do anything to gain God’s love, we didn’t go looking for it. God found us and rescued us.

This is important when it comes to change because we often think of change as a rock we’re pushing up the hill, but in reality we’re really trying to keep up to what God is doing.

When we see this, we start to see obedience to God’s commands as freedom.

When we think of commands, we often think of a strict parent keeping us from fun.

Think about it like this: Have you ever found yourself stressed because of a sin in your life? You have because you tense up every time you are on the highway and a cop shows up behind you with their lights on. Which brings freedom in this situation? Follow the traffic signs or speeding?

The answer is easy, but how often do we think we know better?

How often are you worried that someone will find out about a secret sin? “If they only knew,” we think. That isn’t freedom, and yet we keep doing it because we know better than God.

But we don’t.

Victory. Freedom is found through love (of God and others) and obedience (to the commands of God).

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When You’re Uncomfortable in Relationships

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Have you ever felt uncomfortable in a relationship?

I’m not talking about being creeped out by someone (that’s a different topic).

Maybe you find yourself not wanting to open up to people; you find yourself wanting to avoid people or struggle to let people in. All of us have reasons for this. You might have been betrayed, hurt in the past or simply lied to and let down by someone who was supposed to care.

So you’re uncomfortable.

Here’s an example from my life.

Often when I’m reading or watching TV on the couch, one or several of my kids will snuggle in real close, sometimes sitting on top of me. For some reason this is really uncomfortable to me.

Usually I’ll ask them to slide down or move over, and they’ll move half an inch (still touching) and ask if that is good.

Recently I shared this with a counselor, and after a long pause he said, “Isn’t it interesting how little kids have a way of revealing things in us?”

So, here are my questions for you in relationships, because the answers will often reveal what is keeping you from experiencing great relationships:

2 questions to help you have great relationships.

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1   What relationships make you uncomfortable?

2   Where did that start?

Our discomfort in relationships does reveal something to us, and it is an invitation to us. That invitation is a step towards wholeness and life.

I’ve had to ask, “Why do I like my space so much, and why does it make me uncomfortable when people invade my space?” I’m not much of a physical touch person or very affectionate, but why is that and how is that hindering me in relationships?

It does and it often keeps me from being close to people.

Yes, some of that is personality, but when we’re honest, if we don’t deal with our discomfort, we will find ourselves lonely and missing out.

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When You Preach a Bad Sermon

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There are all kinds of reasons for a bad sermon.

It could be poor delivery, incorrect theology or making a passage say what you want it to say, not what it actually says. It could be that your sermon was bad because you went too long and had 2-3 sermons wrapped up into one.

Most of the time a bad sermon is preached because the pastor is unprepared.

This can happen because they didn’t give priority to sermon prep. They let their week get away from them, and they were scurrying around on Saturday trying to figure out what to say.

Many times a pastor is unprepared because he hasn’t edited his sermon and has too much information.

Every sermon you preach will leave things left unsaid. Why? Because people can’t handle a running commentary or an hour long sermon.

I remember a pastor saying once, “Tim Keller needs 32 minutes for his sermon, and you aren’t Tim Keller.”

Tim Keller needs 32 minutes for his sermon and you aren’t Tim Keller.

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There’s a lot of truth to that.

And honestly, most weeks I say too much. A few weeks ago in one of our services I circled the airport and refused to land the plane, went 10 minutes longer than I should have and said more than I needed to. (As a side note, if you do preach too long you should walk back to your kids’ ministry and apologize to the workers, as they feel it more than anyone else in your church).

When that happens, it is important for a pastor to evaluate why that happened.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

4 questions to ask yourself when you preach a bad sermon.

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Did I give adequate time to sermon prep this week? It is easy in the busyness of a week to crowd out sermon prep. Meetings, counseling, family responsibilities, budgets, all of it screams for your attention. As a result, any pastors find themselves waiting until the last minute (Saturday night) to work on their sermon. Your sermon must get priority in your weekly calendar and schedule. You need to do it when you are most alert (which for most people is the morning).

Was I focused when I stood in front of my church? This is difficult. You arrive at church and there is a lot happening. Not only at church with your volunteers, staff or technology issues, but you also have everything that happened that week in your church, your world and your family.

I think pastors need to think through a Sunday morning routine that helps them to prepare their hearts and minds. What music do you listen to on Saturday night and Sunday morning? What is your prayer routine like? When do you read through your notes? I lay out my weekly rhythm here and what my Sunday mornings look like.

Did I preach more than one sermon? This happens more often than I’d like to admit and is a lot harder if you don’t preach every week.

In any given passage you could preach 2-3 themes. Many times when covering a longer passage, there are a lot of themes. A pastor must edit down and determine what he will and will not zero in on. Sometimes this means that you not only don’t cover everything, but that you might need to take that chapter and make it four sermons instead of one. Your people will thank you because you will be clearer.

Do I believe God will still work if I don’t say everything that is in my notes? Recently in a sermon, the person doing the slides asked me after the first service if I was going to skip two pages in the second service. I asked what he meant, and he said, “You skipped almost half your notes.” When I got to that part of my notes, I knew I didn’t have time for it. This means a pastor must feel okay with what he did and did not say. You don’t have to share everything. If you missed something crucial, write a blog post or share a video on Facebook.

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Links for Leaders 10/6/17

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It’s the weekend…finally. The perfect time to grab a cup of coffee and catch up on some reading. Below, you’ll find some articles I came across this week that I found helpful as a leader and parent and hope you do as well.

Before diving into those, in case you missed them this week. Here are the top 3 posts from my blog this week that I hope you find helpful:

Now, onto some more articles and podcasts to help you:

October is pastor appreciation month, which can be nice, but Thom Rainer shares 10 ways to bring joy to your pastor throughout the year. These are great.

Charles Stone shares 5 questions every church staff should ask themselves on a regular basis. These questions are incredibly telling and I think will create some great conversations.

Ever wonder why people aren’t coming to your church or aren’t staying? Carey Nieuwhof shares 12 reasons your church isn’t attracting new people (and many of them will surprise you).

Sometimes in ministry, your heart hardens and when that happens, your joy for ministry and people wains. Here are 10 signs your heart is hardening.

I’m always on the lookout on how to make a sermon series more interesting, attractional or relevant. Joe Hoagland shares 3 ideas from TV series that can be really helpful as you put together your next sermon series.

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Feelings as an Invitation

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Recently Katie and I were sitting in a conference with a group of pastors that was led by two counselors, and they were talking about the body and a theology of the body.

Fascinating.

During the time, though, they said something that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.

They said, “When you feel something, discomfort, anger, anxiety, worry, disgust, there is something going on, something you shouldn’t ignore. That something is an invitation from God for you to walk into.”

We all have those moments. Moments when we fly off the handle, sulk, pull away, lie awake in bed worrying about our marriage or finances.

What if those moments are invitations?

Most of the time, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you easily beat yourself up over those feelings. I shouldn’t feel that way. I shouldn’t think that. I shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.

Those feelings are revealing something.

Something is going on.

It might be revealing a dark heart, a sin you need to confess.

It might be revealing something from your past you are running from, pretending it didn’t happen.

Many times our feelings are reminders of things we’d like to forget.

Yet, those are also places God wants to enter and redeem. Those are places and stories that need redemption.

That’s the invitation.

Don’t run from it.

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How do I get my Spouse to Notice Me?

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When you were dating your spouse you couldn’t wait to see them.

I remember having conversations with Katie and falling asleep on the phone. When you get married you can’t wait to get home from work to spend the evening with your spouse.

Things are new, things are fun and your relationship is growing.

But then life happens.

Bills pile up. Kids enter the picture, and the spontaneous, last minute romance that happened now becomes less and less until it is nonexistent. Date nights that used to magically appear no longer make it onto the calendar.

Slowly, both spouses ask (for different reasons), “How do I get my spouse to notice me?”

For women, it often centers around romance, being pursued, having her husband care about her day, her dreams and longings.

For men, it centers around sex and the feeling that his wife desires him sexually, but also that she cares about his dreams.

As a couple enters the second decade of their marriage, another fear starts to enter the relationship, and noticing it is crucial in this.

The fear that they missed out on life. The fear that they aren’t enough.

For women, if they have kids, this will center on being a mom and if they are doing enough. According to the mom blogs they are probably failing. Their kids are in school now and they wonder if they are keeping up, if they are worthwhile as a mom.

For men, they wonder if they missed out on life. They expected their career to be at a certain point by the time they were 35 or 40, and it usually isn’t as far along as they expected. They are afraid to say something because saying something makes it real.

In this moment, a couple has enormous power to speak truth and grace into the heart of their spouse.

A couple has an opportunity to speak truth and grace into the heart of their spouse.

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But many don’t.

Most couples keep chugging on, alone.

Men escape into porn, fantasy sports leagues, real sports leagues or get lost in another hobby.

You can see the misery on their face, the longing for a deeper connection that isn’t there. They want to know that they didn’t fail as a man but are afraid to say so.

Women escape into the lives of their kids or a career when they are old enough.

Slowly, they take a step away from each other.

At first it isn’t noticeable, but then the chasm becomes so wide that it seems impossible to bridge.

Then someone asks, “How do I get my spouse to notice me?”

At this point the answer seems to be that you have to do something crazy.

Sometimes crazy with your spouse can be a good idea.

The reality is that everyday ways of noticing will do. It won’t feel like a lot, but day after day those steps add up.

In the same way that people lose weight and get out of debt over a period of time, your relationships are healed over a period of time.

Simple things.

Compliments.

Words of encouragement.

Praising your spouse in front of your kids or friends and family.

Pursuing them sexually.

Planning a date night.

Sending them a text in the middle of the day that says, “I’m praying for you” or, “I’m thinking about you. Hope your day is going well.”

Picking up after yourself.

Wearing that shirt or jeans they like.

Ironically, the way to get your spouse to notice you in marriage is almost identical to how you got them to notice you when you were dating.