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Questions to Ask for Your Year End Review

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year end review

Many times we review our life at the end of the year, but I find it helpful to take stock of things throughout the year. Often, it can save us hitting a roadblock, making the wrong choice or simply wasting our time doing something we shouldn’t be doing. In The Catalyst Leader by Brad Lomenick and he has some great questions to help with that:

Year End Review Questions:

1. What are the 2-3 themes that personally define me?

2. What people, books, accomplishments, or special moments created highlights for me recently?

3. Give yourself a grade from 1-10 in the following areas of focus: vocationally, spiritually, family, relationally, emotionally, financially, physically, recreationally.

4. What am I working on that is BIG for the next year and beyond?

5. As I move into this next season or year, is a majority of my energy being spent on things that drain me or things that energize me?

6. How am I preparing for 10 years from now? 20 years from now?

7. What 2-3 things have I been putting off that I need to execute on before the end of the year?

8. Is my family closer than a year ago? Am I a better friend than a year ago? If not, what needs to change immediately?

If this is something that is a struggle for you, this book: The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months is a great place to start. 

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Necessary Endings

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bookEvery Saturday morning, I review a book that I read recently. If you missed any, you can read past reviews here. This week’s book is Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, & Relationships that all of us Have to Give up in Order to Move Forward (kindle version) by Henry Cloud.

As the title indicates, the book is about how to know when things have run their course. It looks at how life, business, church, relationships and organizations all have a life cycle. We all know this. We aren’t friends with everyone forever, we don’t have ministries that run forever (although it might feel that way at some churches), we don’t have products that last forever. Things end. People move on. Sometimes that ending is hurtful and sometimes productive. But they happen.

What Cloud does and it is something every leader needs to learn is how to know when that ending is happening (before it’s too late) and how to end it and move on in a healthy way.

For the longest time I’ve been terrible at this. I hold onto relationships too long. I let people who hurt me stay in my head for years. While I’ve grown in this area, I’m nowhere close to where I need to be, which is why I found this book so helpful.

Here are a few things I highlighted:

  • For there to be anything new, old things always have to end, and we have to let go of them.
  • Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth itself demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.
  • In many contexts, until we let go of what is not good, we will never find something that is good. The lesson: good cannot begin until bad ends.
  • Often, there are no good business reasons for waiting to do something that should be done now.
  • In the simple word pruning is the central theme of what a necessary ending is all about: Removing whatever it is in our business or life whose reach is unwanted or superfluous.
  • Make the endings a normal occurrence and a normal part of business and life, instead of seeing it as a problem.
  • One of the most important aspects to any high performance is the ability to separate one’s personhood from any particular result.
  • the great leaders make “life and death decisions,” which, as he pointed out, were usually about people. Those are the decisions that cause big directional changes in businesses, where the life or death of the vision depends on someone stepping up and acting.
  • What is not working is not going to magically begin working
  • If you comb the leadership literature, one theme runs throughout everyone’s descriptions of the best leaders. The great ones have either a natural ability, or an acquired one, as Collins says, to “confront the brutal facts.”
  • In the absence of real, objective reasons to think that more time is going to help, it is probably time for some type of necessary ending.
  • When truth presents itself, the wise person sees the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments.
  • People resist change that they feel no real need to make.
  • In my experience with businesses and individuals, not paying attention to sustainability is one of the most common reasons that they get into trouble, sometimes unrecoverable trouble.

As a leader, this is a book worth picking up. I think for many pastors, knowing when to end a ministry, a relationship or how to handle a leader who is not performing, this book can be extremely helpful.

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Eat Move Sleep

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bookEvery Tuesday morning, I review a book that I read recently. If you missed any, you can read past reviews here. This week’s book is Eat Move Sleep: Why Small Choices Make a Big Difference (kindle version) by Tom Rath. I actually read this book back in June, but it releases today, hence the review.

I’ve been fascinated by health and fitness for some time, ever since losing 130 pounds and keeping it off. So, Rath’s book was right up my alley.

Two things that are obvious about this book from the title:

  1. Every choice we make matters. They all impact every part of our life. 
  2. Tom Rath looks at how to eat, move and sleep so that those choices make the most positive impact in our lives.

As Rath states,

What seem like small or inconsequential moments accumulate rapidly. When your good daily decisions outweigh your poor ones, you boost your chances of growing old in better health.

Now, if you’ve lived a relatively healthy life, watch what you eat, exercise and sleep well, most of what Rath says will simply be a reminder. While I’ve read a lot about weight loss and health, I still found good tidbits I have never heard before and was reminded of some things that are easy to forget.

Here are a few things that stuck out to me as helpful:

  • The types of foods you consume influence your health more than your total caloric intake.
  • The best performers sleep at least 8.6 hours a day, almost a full hour more than the national average.
  • The top performers in every field typically work/practice in focused sessions lasting no longer than 90 minutes.
  • Losing 90 minutes of sleep reduces daytime alertness by nearly one-third. If you consider all the things that demand your attention in a day, reducing alertness by one-third is consequential.
  • A study of over 80,000 people suggests total intake of fruits and vegetables is a robust predictor of overall happiness.
  • When food is served “family style” from large plates, bowls or platters placed in arms’ reach, people simply eat more.
  • Anytime someone is hungry and in a hurry, it results in a bad choice.
  • The first to order food at a restaurant is an anchor for the rest of the table and sets the tone for what others order.
  • We eat based on the size of our plates.
  • We are more likely to make a bad food choice when a healthy option is available compared with when no healthy options are available.
  • Couples in which one partner has a commute longer than 45 minutes are a whopping 40% more likely to get divorced. 
  • The dish you start with serves as an anchor food for your entire meal. Experiments show that people eat nearly 50% greater quantity of the food they eat first.
  • People consume 167 additional calories per hour while watching TV.

An overall helpful, quick read.

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24 Ways to have Charisma

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book

  1. Charismatic people impact the world, whether they’re starting new projects, new companies, or new empires.
  2. Research shows that those following charismatic leaders perform better, experience their work as more meaningful, and have more trust in their leaders than those following effective but non-charismatic leaders.
  3. Charismatic leaders “cause followers to become highly committed to the leader’s mission, to make significant personal sacrifices, and to perform above and beyond the call of duty.”
  4. When you meet a charismatic person, you get the impression that they have a lot of power and they like you a lot. Charismatic individuals choose specific behaviors that make other people feel a certain way.
  5. Three quick tips to gain an instant charisma boost in conversation: Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of your sentences. Reduce how quickly and how often you nod. Pause for two full seconds before you speak.
  6. Charismatic behavior can be broken down into three core elements: presence, power, and warmth.
  7. Being seen as powerful means being perceived as able to affect the world around us, whether through influence on or authority over others, large amounts of money, expertise, intelligence, sheer physical strength, or high social status.
  8. People will tend to accept whatever you project.
  9. For charisma, your body language matters far more than your words do.
  10. Because what’s in your mind shows up in your body and because people will catch even the briefest microexpression, to be effective, charismatic behaviors must originate in your mind.
  11. Anxiety is a serious drawback to charisma.
  12. The ability to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity turns out to be one of the strongest predictors of success in business.
  13. You can display nearly any body language just by picking the right visualization.
  14. Focus charisma is primarily based on a perception of presence. It gives people the feeling that you are fully present with them, listening to them and absorbing what they say. Focus charisma makes people feel heard, listened to, and understood.
  15. Once we’ve made a judgment about someone, we spend the rest of our acquaintanceship seeking to prove ourselves correct. Everything we see and hear gets filtered through this initial impression.
  16. So how can you make a fantastic first impression? Our default setting here is actually quite simple: people like people who are like them.
  17. People will associate you with whatever feelings your conversation generates.
  18. Good listeners know never, ever to interrupt.
  19. To be charismatic, you need to create strong positive associations and avoid creating negative ones.
  20. Don’t try to impress people. Let them impress you, and they will love you for it. Believe it or not, you don’t need to sound smart. You just need to make them feel smart.
  21. As a leader, the emotions conveyed by your body language, even during brief, casual encounters, can have a ripple effect through your team or even your entire company.
  22. People simply accept what you project.
  23. Presentations are about convincing people of something.
  24. Charisma’s greatest danger is that it gives you the power to convince people even when you’re completely wrong.

Quotes from The Charisma Myth By Olivia Fox Cabane

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Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture

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bookEvery Tuesday morning, I review a book that I read recently. If you missed any, you can read past reviews here. This week’s book is Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture (kindle version) by Aubrey Malphurs.

I can’t even begin to describe how good and helpful this book is. The appendixes alone are worth the price of the book as they essentially give you Malphurs consulting toolbox.

The struggle many pastors have when it comes to leadership, making changes, preaching, leading their staff, working with volunteers is that they don’t understand the culture they work in. They are simply trying to put ideas into place, move things forward or make a difference. Until you understand the culture you have as a leader, those you lead, the world around your church and the world inside your church, you won’t be able to move anything. This book is particularly helpful for pastors about to move to a new church as Malphurs has an entire checklist of questions to ask a church board who is interviewing you. I found that extremely helpful from the other angle as it gave me questions I need to know for Revolution and questions I would ask a leader to determine if they fit our culture.

The reality is that every church is different. Every church has a different history, different set of leaders. So what works in California doesn’t work the same way in New York. In the same way that what works in one part of a city doesn’t work in another part of a city.

But what is culture? According to Malphurs, “The church’s congregational culture as the unique expression of the interaction of the church’s shared beliefs and its values, which explain its behavior in general and display its unique identity in particular.” And, “a primary responsibility of today’s strategic church leaders is to create, implement, and re-implement an organizational culture that rewards and encourages movement toward the church’s mission and vision. Every pastor must understand that to a great degree his job is to lead and manage the congregational culture, but if he doesn’t understand that culture as well as his own, he won’t be able to do the job.”

Here are a few other things that jumped out:

  • The organization’s beliefs and values intermingle and are seen in the church’s behavior or outward expression of itself. This is the first layer that is represented by the apple’s skin. Churches express themselves through their behaviors and outward appearance.
  • The behaviors and outward expressions are what an observer, such as a visitor, would see, sense, and hear as he or she encounters a church’s culture. Some examples are the church’s physical presence (facilities), language (multi- or monolingual), clothing, symbols, rituals, ceremonies, ordinances, technology, and so forth.
  • Churches are behavior-expressed but values-driven. The inward values drive and explain the church’s outward behavior. These values explain why the church does what it does at the first behavioral level and why it doesn’t do what it should do. When a church culture acts on its beliefs, they become its actual values. Until then they are aspirational in nature and inconsistent with the church’s actual observed presence and expressed behavior.
  • Churches are behavior-expressed, values-driven, and beliefs-based.
  • These three elements of organizational culture—beliefs, values, and their expression—work together to display the church’s unique identity.
  • Congregational culture as a church’s unique expression of its shared beliefs and values.
  • “The most important single element of any corporate, congregational, or denominational culture . . . is the value system.”
  • A ministry based on clearly articulated core values drives a fixed stake in the ground that says to all, “This is what we stand for; this is what we are all about; this is who we are; this is what we can do for you.”
  • An organization’s core values signal its bottom line. They dictate what it stands for, what truly matters, what is worthwhile and desirous. They determine what is inviolate for it; they define what it believes is God’s heart for its ministry.
  • Core values are the constant, passionate shared core beliefs that drive and guide the culture.
  • The key to understanding what drives you or your ministry culture is not what you would like to value as much as what you do value.
  • To attempt change at the surface level is problematic and disruptive. People persist in their beliefs and resent the change because leaders haven’t addressed it at the beliefs level. Thus the leader or change agent must discover the basic beliefs and address them as the church works through the change process.
  • Every thriving, spiritually directed church is well fed and well led.
  • We cannot do anything we want, because God has designed us in a wonderful way to accomplish his ministry or what he wants. Only as we discover how he has wired us will we be able to understand what specifically he wants us to accomplish for him in this life, whether it’s through pastoring a church or some other important ministry.

As I said, if you are a pastor, this is an incredibly helpful book to work through.

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Why my Book Reviews Tend to be Positive

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book reviews

I review a lot of books. When I was in seminary, I read 1 book every 5 days for 3 years and have continued that pace for the last 9 years. If you are a leader and you aren’t reading at least one book at a time, you are falling behind and short changing your church and those you lead.

I get asked a lot why my reviews always seem to end with “if you are a leader, you should read this book.” Or, “if you are a parent, or married, you should read this.” All my reviews tend to end with “you should read this book.”

Here is a principle that guides my reading and leads to write “positive” book reviews:

You don’t need to finish every book that you start.

Now, if you are a list person and love crossing things off your list, this will be difficult. But every book doesn’t need to be finished. Sure, someone took the time to write it and you took the time to buy it, but you don’t need to finish it.

For me, if a book has not grabbed me by page 40-50, I put it down. It isn’t worth finishing. If you can’t convince me to read it by then, it isn’t going to get any better.

So, I start a lot of books that I never finish, that never get reviewed. Doing this, helps me to read only the best books.

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Two Ideas that Should Change how We Think about our Bodies, Weight Loss & Food

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food

For many of us, when we think of addictions we think of things like drugs and alcohol. In our culture, depending on your background, you may now toss pornography or sex into those categories. Yet, in most churches and among Christians, these aren’t the only addictions that plague us. And no, I’m not talking about debt and money, although those certainly are addictions that plague many people.

What I’m talking about has to do with weight loss, body image and food.

My name is Josh…and I’m addicted to food.

If you are like me, you love food. You might be one of those people who just love to snack. You always seem to have a bowl of candy on your desk, grab a bag of chips mindlessly. Sitting in front of the TV you find yourself eating something. It isn’t anything big, it isn’t a meal, but you are just always eating.

Maybe for you it is dessert. You can’t go to bed without eating dessert. It is a comfort when life seems out of control. A long day is made better with a bowl of ice cream, a piece of pie, or some chocolate.

For me, I was never much of a snacker. When my wife Katie and I would take road trips, I never really wanted snacks. But I couldn’t resist the stops we could make for a hearty meal.

There is something else we might have in common. For you, it might not be food that is a problem; it is how you feel about yourself. The constant comparison to magazine covers or TV ads, the inferiority complex you have as you compare yourself to that guy in your office, the one who can eat whatever he wants and lose a pound, the woman who always looks put together. Your sibling who always seems confident, looks great, and feels great. Kind of like an annoying commercial.

Across the board in America, there is a problem when it comes to food addiction, weight loss, stress, health and body image. Today, there are more people overweight and obese than ever before. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 35.7% of adults are overweight or obese, and 17% of children (or 12.5 million) are overweight or obese. And consider this: 44% of U.S. women are on a diet, 29% of U.S. men are on a diet, 80% of U.S. women do not like how they look, and $109 million is spent in the U.S. every day on diet and weight loss products. Among those who lose weight while on a diet, 95% will regain all of the weight they lost within the first 5 years. And as far as stress, 43 percent of U.S. adults suffer adverse health effects from stress, according to an American Psychological Association (APA) study.

Is This It?

Maybe you have gotten to the place where you’ve asked, “Is this it? Is this really how life was meant to be lived?” Envying the bodies of someone else, envying the pecs, six pack abs, butt or hips of someone else?

My change began 6 years ago. There wasn’t a magic pill of any kind, I didn’t have a surgery, but things in m heart began to change, which led to things in my life changing.

I wasn’t always overweight. In fact, in college I played soccer all 4 years but when college ended, I continued to eat like I played soccer year round and then my metabolism came to a screeching halt and well, you can guess the rest. I ballooned up to almost 300 pounds. Someone looked at our wedding pictures recently and asked how much weight I lost. When I told them I lost 130 pounds, they said, “You lost a jr. higher.”

Maybe you are reading this and think, “I don’t have an eating problem. I’m not overweight, but I can’t stop looking at the bodies that others have. I starve myself to look a certain way, to feel beautiful.”

Maybe you are like a guy I had lunch with recently. He eats like he doesn’t know fruit or vegetables exist, but he doesn’t gain any weight. For him, weight is an issue others deal with, but he doesn’t view his body the way God does.

Our Bodies and the Gospel

Often, when it comes to our bodies, the only time we bring the gospel into the conversation is if we are talking about sex. This is too small. If the gospel changes everything, if the gospel one day restores all things, then our bodies, health, body image and weight loss should fit into the discussion.

Two ideas have changed how I think about food, weight loss, health, pace in life, body image and how I talk about them. The first is found in the first chapter of the Bible in Genesis 1 where it tells us that we as humans are made in the image of God. Most Christians do not believe this. How do I know? We envy other people’s images instead of celebrating our own.

The second idea is a verse that gets quoted to encourage Christians to not smoke or drink, at least, that is how the pastor of the church I grew up in used it. In 1 Corinthians 6:19 – 20 it says, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

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8 Ways to Know Your Reading is Too Limited

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reading

I love books. This isn’t a secret if you’ve been around my blog for a long time. You can see what I’ve read recently here and read my book reviews here. When I meet other leaders and pastors, at some point what they are reading comes up. I get some funny looks from some guys about what I read, as I don’t always read books written by Christians or books from my theological stream. Which made me think about how many leaders limit themselves in their reading, much to their detriment.

So, here are 8 ways to know if you are limiting your reading.

  1. Every book you read is from your camp. There are a lot of crazy theological ideas out there, so you need to be wise about what you read. But the reality is though, you don’t know everything and you certainly don’t have the bible and every theological idea all figured out. I don’t either. It is good to read authors who believe differently than you so that you can be challenged. I disagree on almost every theological point with Rob Bell and Brian McLaren, but their writings have forced me to ask good theological questions and made me stronger for it. Now a short note, if you are new in your faith, this isn’t a good idea as you don’t have the foundation to question yet. If that’s you, ask your pastor or a respected Christian for some book recommendations.
  2. Every book you read has bible verses in them. You should read some books by authors and leaders who don’t follow Jesus. There are great leadership and living ideas in books that have no bible verses in them. You should read health books by people who think we evolved from monkeys. One of the reasons is to learn how to communicate, but also to see what people who walk through the doors of your church believe.
  3. Every book you read confirms what you already believe. This is similar to the first one, but if you put a book down and are not challenged in your faith or leadership, you wasted your time.
  4. You finish every book you start. I get asked a lot why I don’t write negative book reviews. Every book you review you say that you like is what I’ve been told. The reason? If I don’t like a book by p. 40, I put it down. Life is too short to read a book you don’t like or aren’t being challenged by. If it’s poorly written or boring or not challenging, it’s off the list. Don’t feel the need to finish every book you start or to read every chapter of a book, they may not all be relevant.
  5. Books don’t challenge your heart. Similar to point 3, but you should be challenged. You should find ways to improve your preaching, leadership skills or your faith, being a spouse or parent. If not, put it down. If a book does not put the magnifying glass up to your heart and life, it isn’t worth the time.
  6. You never read a novel. I love novels. I love novels about spies or lawyers in particular. Throughout the year, I stop my reading list and pick up a novel. Some of my favorite authors are Dan Brown, Daniel Silva, John Grisham and David Baldacci. Baldacci’s Camel Club series is still one of my favorites. Every pastor should read at least 1 novel a year just to give their brain a break.
  7. Every book you read is for a sermon. You should read books that have no application in a sermon. It also sometimes happens that you are reading a book that you discover something that will work in a sermon, that’s great too. If you are doing a series on marriage, you should be reading a book on money or grace just to keep growing in other areas.
  8. Every book you read is by a pastor. You should read books by CEO’s, bankers, doctors, trainers, money managers, scientists, not just pastors or speakers.

What would you add to the list to know if your reading list is too narrow?

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