building or stumbling block?

I must reach beyond the comfortable stages of leadership[1] and throw off old habits so that I can change.[2] Robert Quinn wrote a book titled, Building the Bridge as You Walk on It and argues that your ability to enter into a fundamental state of leadership is dependent on your ability to abandon a comfortable routine of organizational management.  What? Should you stop doing what you are best at in order to become better?

I know that I need to move beyond the management tasks of leadership[3] and focus on the visionary tasks of leadership.[4] The things that I do well may actually be the stumbling block of my leadership skills. I may focus on the comfortable things too much while neglecting the things I do not want to do. When I lose focus I run the risk of becoming a manager instead of a leader. The difference between the two could not be greater. No life can be breathed into an organization through simple management. Simple management strives to maintain the status quo. While the status quo is not always bad it can never become better. Visionary leadership requires me to do things I am not currently doing. I must be willing to focus myself in new and uncertain directions.

What about you? Is your status quo leadership style prohibiting you from growing? Have you become too dependent on those things which you are good at?

“We should get in the habit of continually seeking His council on everything, instead of making our own commonsense decisions and then asking Him to bless them.”

So what are you in the habit of doing? Following God or dragging Him along with you? You know how hard it is to make your own way? We sometimes feel that our entire life is spent blazing trails. You can spend your whole life wondering when you are ever going to make it. Have you ever felt lead by God to go somewhere or do something? It is a far different experience.

So following God’s path is easier? No. Its often harder. The fact is that you do not have to follow God alone. He wont leave your or ignore you, even when you are walking through dark valleys surrounded by death.  What are some charactoristics of God’s path? Well, it is often longer, it is far more narrow and requires more discipline and sacrifice.

I know what your thinking: when can I start? Start right now. Do the hard thing and ask God to lead you instead of asking God to bless things things you have already begun.

fight or flight

Is my church afraid of sin or inspired by it? In what way do we respond to the need of Christ in our community? People respond to a threat in one of two ways: fight or flight. When we chose to run away we gain security by avoidance. When we chose to combat the threat we risk victory over loss. Sin is the greatest threat to all of humanity. It is not the root of all evil, it is all evil. What does my church do in response to this peril? Are we motivated to gain security or rick victory? These two values typify many churches today. Their entire modus operandi consists of keeping sin out or taking sin head on. I want to be a part of a church that chooses the latter. Sin should inspire Christ’s church to make disciples of all types of people. Those who are most caught up in the charade of sin should be the most compelling but the church often views them as the most repulsive. A Jewish teacher once asked, “Do the healthy need a doctor or the sick?”[1] Clearly, the sick need a doctor; but why do the healthy often chose to horde his medicine? Roger Gill discusses various ways in which people are motivated and believes that, “treating threats, problems and failures as opportunities to learn can be a source of great inspiration.”[2] When sin rears its ugly head in our community do we run away clutching everything that is precious to us or do we run towards it with everything we have?

[2] Roger Gill, Theory and Practice of Leadership,(London: Sage Publications, 2006). p. 243.

The consumer is wholly moved by a creation. The creator who works with emotion is an artisan driven by skill and beauty. The creator who works without emotion is a simple drone. They have used half of themselves to make half of a thing. Feelings are not fleeting because they are always present. The pain of commitment is as powerful as the pain of love. You cannot kill your emotions without killing yourself. Use your whole self to create.

The artisan trusts emotion because it causes them to question. A maker who reflects upon their work will create something more meaningful than accurate. This process may be slow, conflicted and imprecise. However, precision is meaningless if pointing in the wrong direction. Don’t be accountable to the feelings of others but always remain aligned to the calling of your heart.

Stir up emotion before you work; it is the only thing that adds meaning to your labor. You can produce cogs for someone else’s machine most effectively when you do not feel. If this is your path, do not invest your whole self into the work; you will become a sniffling pre-teen swung by the emotions of others. You are meant to reflect your creator. Demonstrate His excellence with every swing of the hammer, every mixing of ingredients and every calculation of numbers. Create with skill and wonder in the same way He created you because you are wonderfully made.

Leave room for God as He decides.

What does it look like to leave space forGod? God is so dynamic. He can fill the greatest void or quietly speak into our deepest cracs. One hallmark of God’s presence must be that of change.

Whenever God shows up you must make a choice. He never presents Himself in idleness. Will you respond to His presence or allow you hear to remain unchanged.  As Oswald says,

Keep your life so constantly in touch with God that His surprising power can break through at any point. Live in a constant state of expectancy and leave room for God to come in as He decides.

It seems that kids usually end up where adults take them. Children go where people take them.

Do you remember the popular story of Children coming to Jesus? In Mark 10 we read how the disciples tried to shoo the children away but Jesus got mad and said,

“Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.”

We recently had an event at church where 140 kids came up to be prayed for. Thirty of those kids accepted Jesus into their hearts for the first time ever! It was amazing to see the Holy Spirit use a simple presentation of Jesus to stir the heart of a child.

Many kids came out that day. No kids drove themselves to our church that day. Someone had to bring them…

Having faith like a child is an important lesson for us adults to learn. But that is not what I want to highlight from this story. The naration begins with a subtle introduction,

“The people brought children to Jesus…”

You need to bring children to stand in front of Jesus. It is that simple! If we agree that kids shouldn’t drive cars then you must be their driver. We had a ton of kids at our event last week… but we had room for more. Help those who cannot yet help themselves: bring a child to Jesus.

Are you holding on to something that is good when you should be going for something that is better?

We waste a lot of time on things we assume are yes answers. God called Paul to pass over a good opportunity for something better. This is why you will never read Paul’s epistle to the Bithynians. Check out what happens in Acts 16.7-10:

When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

The Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to enter into Bithynia. Why not? Didn’t they need to hear the Gospel? Had they already rejected Jesus or something? We don’t know. It is safe to assume that the Bithynians had not yet heard the story of Jesus. However, the Holy Spirit had something else for Paul to do.

Just because something is good does not mean that it is right.

Think of all of the opportunities you have to do good. You could draw up an endless list! But how many of those things has God called you to do? Stop doing things simply because they are good because God has something better in mind.

Waiting for the right piece to solve our Tetris problems is hard. Waiting for the right piece to solve out life problems is harder. When things come our way that don’t fit we panic. We have lapse in judgement and make bad situations worse. Soon our problems become piled up to the right and to the left and we find ourselves waiting for God to plug all of the gaps in our life.
David knew what it was like to have to wait. We know him as God’s anointed, warrior king and giant slayer. But his life didn’t always stack up as planed. Much of David’s time was spent in exile, slogging through political coups and hiding in caves. Through it all he had learned to wait on the Lord. He writes in Psalms 27,

I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD.

It is always worth waiting for God. No mater how long it takes he always comes through. There is nothing as satisfying as getting that straight block to clear out four rows in your game of Tetris. It is so much more satisfying to get an answer from God after having waited it out.
Do it right. Be strong. Wait for it.

“I dont have enough time/money/people/experience.” Stop whining. Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.”

How often do I complain about not having enough stuff to be creative with? It is true that some of our greatest creations were made after we ran out of supplies. Everyone looks at a movie made by James Cameron and thinks, “sure… I could do that with his budget.” Making something from something is easy!

Making something from nothing is a totally different story. Fortunately for us, this is Jesus’ specialty. Think about what Paul says in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

When you have nothing you are in a good position to be used by God. He has the best creative mind anyways. Embracing your constraints means working with Him to make something happen. So ya, stop whining.

*REWORK by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

christmassong.mp3