Posted on

My Favorite Things of 2014

by

book

As most bloggers do at the end of the year, they share their favorite lists of the year. Some of these will not make any sense if you don’t live in Tucson and for that I apologize, but if you don’t live here, this might give you a reason to visit. I thought I’d take a quick minute to share some of my favorite movies, albums, podcasts, blogs and places to eat and more from 2014.

Enjoy!

Movies

  1. Lone Survivor
  2. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
  3. Chef
  4. Edge of Tomorrow
  5. The Monuments Men

Albums

  1. Past Life | Lost in the Tress
  2. Islands | Bears Den
  3. After the Disco | Broken Bells
  4. No One Is Lost | Stars
  5. Evergreen | Broods

Date Night Spots

  1. Expensive: 47 Scott
  2. Less Expensive: Pasco Kitchen & Lounge
  3. Happy Hour Deals: Zinburger

Ministry/Leadership Blogs

  1. Carey Nieuwhof
  2. Unseminary
  3. Brian Howard
  4. Will Mancini

Sports Blogs

  1. ProFootballTalk
  2. Bleacher Report
  3. Grantland

Podcasts

  1. Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast
  2. Carey Nieuwhof

Coffee

  1. Black Dog from Macy’s Coffee
  2. Mocha at Cartel
  3. El Salvador from Savaya Coffee

TV Shows

  1. The Good Wife
  2. Brooklyn 99
  3. The Blacklist
  4. Parenthood
  5. PTI

Books (You can see my list of 14 favorite books of the year here)

  1. The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection | Richard Blass & James Cofield
  2. Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm | Mark Sayers
  3. People-Pleasing Pastors: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Approval-Motivated Leadership | Charles Stone

[Image]

Related articles
Posted on

How to Set Goals for 2015 You Will Reach

by

book

Every year around this time, people begin thinking about the New Year and make resolutions. Sadly, many of these resolutions will not be reached. There is a way, a practice of creating goals you will not only keep but reach.

Here is a simple process I use each year to make goals and reach them:

3 Ways to Set and Reach Your Goals in 2015

Click To Tweet

  1. Call them goals, not resolutions. I want you to think of this as a goal, not a resolution. A goal is something you are working towards, with a destination in mind. It creates all kinds of sports analogies that I think help us in our mind.
  2. Look back before you look forward. One mistake I see a lot of people make when it comes to their goals is they don’t look back and celebrate. Often, our year was not as bad as we think it was. What did God do in the last year? How has God worked, blessed, challenged and sharpened you in the past year? I think an important part of setting goals is celebrating what has already happened (and sometimes lamenting missed opportunities). But, then you get to move forward.
  3. What is the one thing you want to accomplish this year? The last thing is choose one thing, not 15 goals for 2015. Will you accomplish more than one goal this year? Probably, but one of the things many people do that sabotages them is they pick too many things to reach for. What is the one thing, if you accomplished it would make the biggest impact in your life? That’s the one thing you need to do. What if you accomplish this by April? Then set another goal. Two years ago my one goal was writing a book. Six years ago is was losing 100 pounds. Both of those goals took over one year to complete, so it rolled over, but they happened. Choose one thing and only one thing and work until it is done. Is it getting out of debt? Going back to school? Starting a business? Mending a relationship? Do that one thing and then move forward. 
    What’s the One Thing You’ll Change in 2015? Here’s how to know…

    Click To Tweet

[Image]

Related articles
Posted on

Two Things Church Planters & Networks Don’t Talk About Part 1

by

book

We planted Revolution Church 6 years ago. Leading up to that, I attended countless conferences, read tons of blogs and books and gathered up as much information as I possibly could. Then, we planted, joined Acts 29 (which I love), have continued to get more training and now I have the opportunity to train and coach church planters.

Sadly though, not every church planter who plants will finish. Not every couple who blazes the trail with excitement and passion with finish with excitement and passion.

Ironically, the reasons for failing, not finishing, falling out of ministry are usually the same.

The reason church planters give up (or fail) are because of things we don’t talk about

Click To Tweet

What is sad about these the reasons is that they are the two least talked about topics on church planting circles.

Most church planters and pastors do not quit or fail in ministry because of theological issues or leadership skills. While this happens and you can lose your job because a denomination changes its stance on something or you fail in your leadership skills, that rarely happens.

The first reason pastors and church planters fail (that is not talked about enough) has to do with leadership health. I am stunned at the number overweight pastors, run down and tired church planters. We get excited about the preaching ability of a pastor but don’t ask him if he is resting well and taking his sabbath. It matters more if a pastor can raise enough money than if he is sleeping and eating well.

If you want a healthy church, have a healthy pastor.

For churches to be healthy, they must be led by healthy leaders

Click To Tweet

This means a pastor is eating well, sleeping well, taking his vacation days, not preaching 50 Sunday’s a year.

This becomes the responsibility of the pastor as much as the church.

Leadership health, rest and eating well need to be a higher priority for churches

Click To Tweet

Here are a few things you can do as a leader:

  1. Put into your calendar your day off, preaching break and vacation. Nothing happens if it is not on your calendar. I plan the Sundays I won’t preach over a year in advance so I can work series around them, plan my vacation and so Katie and I can make our schedule work for us instead of the other way around. It is almost Christmas, you should have your summer vacation planned (even if it is a stay-cation). Figure out what Sundays are low attended Sundays and allow people to preach.
  2. Educate your church and elders about leadership health and longevity. Your elders may not understand how important leadership health is. They may also not understand how draining ministry can be. I love being a pastor, but it is a job that never ends and can be relationally, physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally draining. By simply adding the spiritual aspect of ministry, you make this job different from others and that needs to be accounted for. Explain this, tell them your plan for health and longevity, explain what you will do when you aren’t preaching and how this benefits you and the church.
  3. Train people to do what you do. When we planted Revolution, I preached 50 times the first year and 49 the second. It was a disaster. Some of that had to do with my pride but also because I had no one else. So, train other preachers. If you don’t have any, use video sermons from another pastor. Will someone get mad about this? Maybe, but that doesn’t matter.
  4. Crush the idols that keep you from healthy leadership. Pride is a reason many pastors are unhealthy and don’t rest well or eat well. Ask for help. Do some research. Admit to someone that you aren’t sleeping well, that you are using alcohol to help you sleep or taking sleeping pills and now you are addicted. Don’t hide in the shadows because eventually you will run out of steam and quit.
  5. Create a healthy culture in your staff. I get an email almost every week from a lead pastor or staff pastor asking, “How do I rest well? How do I eat well? What do I do when my lead pastor or elders want me to be available 24/7?” The culture in many churches works against healthy leadership, but also biblical principles. Jesus had no problem walking away from everything to rest and recharge. He did it at the worst and most inopportune moments as well. He was also available when people needed him. He balanced that well. If you want to be healthy, you will probably have to train your staff as well. They won’t learn it at any leadership conference or church planting boot camp sadly.

As I said at the start, there are two things that keep pastors and church planters from finishing and those two things are two of (I believe) the least talked about things in church planting circles. Leadership health is the first one, come back next week for the second one.

[Image]

Related articles
Posted on

Surrounding Yourself with the Right People

by

book

If you are a parent, you have told your child that it matters who they spend time with. You’ve said, “Pick the right crowd because you become like the people you spend time with.” We instinctively know that we become who we are with and who we listen to. We become like the blogs we read, the podcasts we listen to and the shows we watch. We know in leadership and work that those around us will determine our success.

Yet, as we grow older we either stop believing this, stop thinking about it or think we are above it.

Here’s a quick test: would you describe yourself as miserable or joy-filled? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Do you complain about your spouse? Now, ask yourself, how many people that you spend time with (or connecting with on social media) are the same as you.

We know this to be true, but find it difficult to apply.

Here are some ways:

  1. Listen to people. You want people to listen to you when you throw up the red flag about someone in their life, but we don’t do the same. When someone says, “I don’t like the person you are or become after spending with ____.” Listen to them.
  2. Know who you want to become. One of the reasons we are blind in relationships and blind to who influences us is because we are unsure of the kind of person we want to become. We have ideas about it, but if you boil it down, few people actually know. We often know more of what we don’t want to be like, which is not as helpful as knowing where you are headed. Knowing where you don’t want to be leaves you aimless and can lead you almost anywhere.
  3. Find people older than you to share their wisdom. The older I get, the more I want to be around older people so I can gain their wisdom and learn from their mistakes. Yes, I have friends my age and younger, but they know as little as I do. You should always have someone older speaking into your life and influencing you.

[Image]

 

Related articles
Posted on

How to Ace a Video Interview

by

book

It used to be that if you were interviewing, you just had to be good on the phone or in a face to face interview. Now, the game has changed. Whether you are interviewing for a job or being interviewed for a show, you might find yourself on a video chat and when that happens, many of the rules change.

Here are 4 ways to help you succeed in a video interview:

1. Dress appropriately. Remember, this isn’t a phone interview so they can see you. Comb your hair, iron your shirt, look presentable. If you are doing a video interview, dress like you would if you were going to an office for an interview. I remember one video interview we did over the summer and I couldn’t see the person’s eyes. All I could think of was, we can’t hire him, he isn’t even looking us in the eyes.

2. Check your equipment. Your equipment will make or break a video iinterview This doesn’t mean you need a TV quality studio with an HD camera, but make sure you test your equipment. Do a practice run with someone, check the volume, make sure you can hear the people asking you questions. Look at what is in the camera and what they will see, because what we see on your end will tell us what you want us to know about you. One person we interviewed kept going in and out so we couldn’t hear them. Another one was poorly lit and looked like a criminal. Another person did the interview in their bedroom with an unmade bed in the background. Remember: everything communicates so make sure you are sending the right message.

3. Be overly excited. Because you are on a video, it is harder to hear the energy in your voice or see it on your face or feel the energy you will normally have in a face to face conversation. We can’t shake hands to make a connection so you have to do it otherwise. In addition, look at the camera. Nothing is worse than the feeling someone is looking at something else while talking to you. I know this will feel weird for you because it means you will be staring at yourself on a screen, but that is the way it goes.

4. Ask them questions. I say this in every post I’ve written about interviewing, but ask the people interviewing you questions, even if you know the answers. It shows you care and are interested in them and what they are doing, not just getting the job.

I’ll be honest, I think you lose something crucial in a video interview, but it is also unavoidable in the world we live in. Because of that, you need to become incredibly at video interviewing to get ahead.

[Image]

Related articles
Posted on

14 Favorite Books of 2014

by

books

It’s that time of year again, time to share my top lists of the year. If you are a regular on this blog, you know that I love to read. You can read my recent reviews of books here.

Each year, I post a list of my favorite books of the year. To see my list of favorite books from past year, simply click on the numbers: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. To me, I love this list because it shows what has influenced me in the past year, where I’m growing and what God is teaching me. If you are a leader, you should be a reader, there is no way around that.

To make this list, it does not have to be published in 2014, I only needed to read it in 2014. As always, this list was hard to narrow down, but here are the top 14 books of 2014:

14. What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done | Matthew Perman

What sets this book apart from others on productivity: Its emphasis on understanding how the gospel impacts productivity, How the gospel frees us to be productive, and it also brings together some of the best ideas from other books on productivity to show a better system that combines the strengths of different systems.

13. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know | Meg Meeker

To me, this is such an empowering book for fathers. We often feel unsure, at a loss of how to relate to our daughters, how to treat them differently than a son, or how to feel like we are moving forward in a relationship with them. This book is about what a daughter needs from a father that a mother cannot give. This book gave me such a clear understanding of how to interact with our daughter, how to build a relationship with her and prepare her for the life ahead of her. I can’t recommend this book highly enough to Dad’s of daughters.

12. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds | Carmine Gallo

Giving a presentation that truly moves people takes hard work. Let’s face it, many pastors are lazy. They become a pastor because it seems easier, they read a lot and most people don’t have a high expectation for a sermon to be great (sadly). They are simply hoping for short. Preaching is hard work. If you aren’t willing to put in the hard work, don’t preach. At the end of the day, someone pays a price for a sermon, the pastor or the church. This is the best preaching book of the year.

11 The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker | Brad Lomenick

One of the things I’ve been chewing on from this book all year has been, “To get to the top and to be successful at the top requires two different skill sets.” Such a helpful book for younger leaders.

10. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration | Ed Catmull

This book was so good and eye opening, it took me 3 posts to share all that I learned from it. You can read those posts here, here and here.

9. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less | Greg McKeown

Two things stood out to me in this book that have shaped a lot of my life: If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will and If it is not a definite yes, then it is no.

8. Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God | Timothy Keller

I debated between this book and Keller’s book on suffering for this list. Both were helpful and meaningful in different ways, but his book on prayer opened my eyes on how to pray to God as Father and how to meditate on Scripture in deeper ways. If prayer is a struggle for you, this book is well worth working through.

7. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers | Ben Horowitz

Even though this is not a church planting book, it is by far, the best church planting book of the year. So many insights from this small business guru that is relevant for churches and church plants.

6. Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church | Scot McKnight

This book challenged me in some ways I didn’t expect. How to read the Bible through the lens of Jesus was one and how to see how God worked through all of history instead of jumping from Genesis 3 to Matthew 1 when we read the Bible. The other was, seeing Jesus as King when I think about him. This may seem obvious depending on your church background, but I appreciate the emphasis that McKnight places on Jesus as King. My church background seems to focus on Jesus as Savior and Redeemer, which He is and leave the King part until the end of the world. Yet, Jesus is King, now and forever.

5. Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You | John Ortberg

If you love what Dallas Willard has to say but have a hard time understanding what he says, this is a great book. I found myself challenged, encouraged and challenged some more. It is a mix of how to care for your soul, how to rest and ultimately, how to connect with God at a deeper level.

4. Hacking Leadership: The 11 Gaps Every Business Needs to Close and the Secrets to Closing Them Quickly | Mike Myatt

This was the most relevant and helpful business leadership book that pastors should read this year. Myatt covers the gaps that exist in any business (church) and how to overcome them. This is a leadership book that I will re-read in years to come. I found it that helpful.

3. People-Pleasing Pastors: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Approval-Motivated Leadership | Charles Stone

This book is unlike any other I’ve read. First, it hits a topic that every pastor or leader (and probably most humans) struggle with: people pleasing. This is an enormous deal for pastors and churches. Second, it combines stories and real life examples with a ton of helpful research on how our brains work and what drives leaders to care what others think. Third, it ends with some incredibly helpful insights to fight people pleasing in your leadership.

2. Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm | Mark Sayers

The point of the book of the book is to show how leadership has changed, how culture has changed and what leadership looks like moving forward. I am thankful as Sayers points out, we are moving away from deconstruction in our leadership and culture and moving towards rebuilding. I’m hopeful Christians get this idea as many leaders seem to be behind the times and keep talking about deconstructing.

1. The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection | Richard Blass & James Cofield

I’ve read maybe 3-4 life altering books. This was one of them. The authors walk through why we fail at relationships so often and show how that begins the before we are even born, but then our inability to deal with what our lives have been like and how to move forward. Many people cannot work well with others, can’t engage in their family or marriage, struggle to make work connections and all because of something in their past that has not been deal with. This isn’t to say that it is easy, only that, to live in true freedom and be our “true self” as the authors put it, we must deal with those things.

Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm by Mark Sayers

I kept hearing about Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm by Mark Sayers on different blogs and at different conferences and then a leader I respect said it was the best leadership book he’d ever read. I decided at that point, it was time to pick it up.

I was not disappointed.

One thing you will notice quickly, it is unlike any other leadership book out there. It has history, stories, art and a lot of soul in it.

The point of the book of the book is to show how leadership has changed, how culture has changed and what leadership looks like moving forward. I am thankful as Sayers points out, we are moving away from deconstruction in our leadership and culture and moving towards rebuilding. I’m hopeful Christians get this idea as many leaders seem to be behind the times and keep talking about deconstructing.

Leadership now is about rebuilding, not deconstructing.

Click To Tweet

Here are a few things that jumped out:

  • Leaders are men and women who can influence a group of people toward a common goal. Their leverage comes from their ability to envision, communicate, and embody a better future. They see something wrong and want to change it. Yet for a group to be motivated they must come to some level of disillusionment with the status quo; they need motivation to change. The difficulty for those of us who are called into leadership in this era, in a society of the spectacle riddled with passive spectatorship and intermittent distraction, is made increasingly difficult.
  • Before we can lead others out of the culture of illusions, our illusions must die.
  • For leadership to be awoken, the modern myth that, like Nemo, we can hide away from the storms of life in comfort must be cast aside.
  • Our understanding of leadership is markedly shaped by the myth of the hero, the idea that through sheer effort and determination we can reshape reality. The myth of the hero tells us that dynamic, charismatic, and glorious individuals can heal cultures through their personal guile, skill, and glory.
  • The age of the image has created a whole industry that specializes in managing the public perceptions of leaders.
  • As leaders, influencers, and creatives, we all have dreams. Would we be satisfied if God made those dreams come true but we received no personal recognition?
  • Without realizing it, leaders can paint their own dysfunction over churches, ministries, and mission fields. All too easily, the effort to preach the gospel becomes about appeasing fears and insecurities, turning leadership into a tool used to primarily gain a sense of personal meaning. 
  • Emptiness seeks out thrills and excitement to escape the mundane. When this happens in Christian circles, churches recast mission, ministry, and leadership as adventures. 
  • Christian leadership is a strange beast. In its truest form it runs counter to almost everything the world has taught us: To create ourselves by accumulating riches, experiences, and relationships, and, most importantly, to broadcast them to the audience that will mirror back to us the messages we wish to hear. 
  • At its heart, biblical faith is a creed of the antihero. It is the story of men and women who come to the end of themselves and must discover God. 
  • Leaders do not avoid the storm when it comes, instead they step into the storm and discover the one who comes in the storm. 
  • Biblical leadership is so much more than just leading people. The biblical leader is a symbol who lives at the intersection of God’s breaking into history, into life. The leader can never be distant from God, His word, or the world. 
  • Those who avoid God’s holy storms fail to feel their pain, but they also fail to grow.
  • It is easier to reimagine church structure than it is to reimagine what it means to live a life fully devoted to God in modern culture.

But what do I love when I love you? Not the beauty of any body or the rhythm of time in its movement; not the radiance of light, so dear to our eyes; not the sweet melodies in the world of manifold sounds; not the perfume of flowers, ointments and spices; not manna and not honey; not the limbs so delightful to the body’s embrace: it is none of these things that I love when I love my God.

And yet when I love my God I do indeed love a light and a sound and a perfume and a food and an embrace—a light and sound and perfume and food and embrace in my inward self. There my soul is flooded with a radiance which no space can contain; there a music sounds which time never bears away; there I smell a perfume which no wind disperses; there I taste a food that no surfeit embitters; there is an embrace which no satiety severs. It is this that I love when I love my God.

Augustine
Confessions 10.6.8
Posted on

Why a Pastor Should Work Ahead (And How to do It)

by

Work Ahead

Most pastors, because of all that is on their plates have this revolving conversation in their head: It is Monday, they are tired and worn down and they don’t know what they are going to preach on this coming Sunday.

They start scouring the internet to see what their favorite megachurch pastor is preaching on or they read a book in hopes of finding some kind of inspiration or story to steal, or they read their Bible in hopes that God will speak to them and show them their sermon.

Not all pastors are like this, but sadly, many are.

There is another way: work ahead. 

Why a Pastor Should Work Ahead on a Sermon (And How to do It)

Click To Tweet

By working ahead, you are prepared for what is coming up, your sermons are not last minute. In fact, I just had two pastors tell me they spend 8 hours Saturday night working on their sermons. 8 hours! That’s crazy.

Every pastor wants to work ahead and when we hear pastors say that they have their next 3 sermons written, a part of seethes in anger.

While I don’t work like that, I write the sermon I’m going to preach on Sunday leading up to Sunday, I can tell you what I am planning to preach on for the next 12 months.

One of the biggest benefits to this is how it helps you to research. By knowing the topics I will cover over the coming year, when I read a blog or article that connects with that, I’m able to save it into Evernote.

But how do you work ahead? How do you know what you are going to preach on for the next 12 months? Here are some ways I’ve learned to do it:

  1. Write out books of the Bible or topics you’d like to cover. Don’t underestimate your passion for a topic or books of the Bible. Often, the next series you should do is one you are passionate about. What is God saying to you right now? How are you growing personally? Can you make that into a series? Is there a book of the Bible speaking to you right now?
  2. Ask your church, staff, and elders for suggestions. On a yearly basis, I ask for input. Granted some people give me input throughout the year and when they do, I add it to my growing list. A pastor should always have a running list of possible series or sermons they are thinking about. Often, the questions that come up in counseling or conversations lead to great sermon series as well.
  3. Get away for some solitude. When I finally decide what I’m going to preach on, I get away. I pray through the books that have been on my heart, topics that are bouncing around in my head and things others have said to me. I often do this in the summer time to lay out the following year. So, this past summer I was laying out 2015.
  4. Map out the series for 12 months. To effectively work ahead on prep, research, and creativity, I find a year a good standard to be working from. I am always amazed when I am reading a book that has nothing to do with a sermon topic and I find a great quote that I can use in 8 months. This saves so much time the week I work on the actual sermon. In fact, just this past week I landed on my big idea for a sermon I’ll preach in 9 months.
  5. Create Evernote folders. Evernote is something every pastor should know and use often. If you are unfamiliar with it, here are two resources I’d recommend: Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Guide for New Evernote Users and A Guide to Evernote for Pastors. I have a folder for different topics: leadership, gay marriage, marriage, dating, eating, health, divorce, parenting, schedule, pace, etc. I also have one for each book of the Bible, whether I am planning to preach through it soon or not. When I’m reading a blog or article online I simply use the Evernote shortcut for Chrome and send it to the correct folder.
Stop waiting til the last minute on your sermon

Click To Tweet

I can’t tell you the benefits of this. I am never wondering “what am I going to say this coming week” which drastically lowers my stress level and raises the quality of a sermon because whenever I preach, it has been in preparation for a year.

[Image]

Related articles