Near and Far Faith

Among the things that I just don't get about how God works is the fact that you can lead, period, let alone a church, without humility. Pride in one's own abilities and ambitions is an epidemic in ministry and clogs the arteries of popular culture.

Why? Because pride is sneaky? No. Because pride feels good. I have a new polo shirt. It's lavender. I got a lot of compliments the first time I wore it. The other day a student asked me why I wore it to an event and I said "Because it makes me feel good about myself." It's true across the board. We all have lists of things that we have done that have been successful or have gotten praise that make us feel good. Note here that they don't go together. Honest people are hard to find today and people will praise you for their own recognition more than for yours. Kinda takes the wind out of the sails, but that's the point.

I"m studying through Matthew and in chapter 4 Jesus is tempted by the Devil, John's imprisoned, and He calls his first four disciples. One of the things that struck me that should be in all of us is a back-seat willingness. In verse 17 we see that He didn't start preaching 'til John stopped, due to imprisonment. How often in our ministries do we push ourselves to the front, take the spotlight, or start our own initiative? We must approach life and ministry with this thought: I am who I am only because Jesus loves on me. And oh, can we twist things out of that to make our pride look like humility. Here's  simple key that I see many people miss (myself included): when you brag about your humility, you've missed the boat.

Work on it today. If we can instill this rare quality we can be more useful to God.

I'm making a few exceptions to my healthy effort. 1) Sweet tea - the love is too strong to sever the relationship. 2) While we will try to choose healthier dinners, I'll eat what's served - I'm not going out of my way too much with the food choice, more food portion.

I've learned this about myself: if I don't make exceptions on endeavors I'll miss the journey and one of two things will happen: either I'll miss the journey of life and end up lonely, or I'll abandon the quest for fear of missing life. So, although it's against many instincts, I build in exceptions to things now. Case and point -today's event. We had a great block party today to get people involved in Power Lab (our summer, week-long, children's program) that took all day to pull off. I spent the day riding around with some of the students that would make it a success and got into a short conversation with Devin, one of our student leaders, about this point. Explaining to her my past mistakes of missing the fun for the sake of a successful event reminded me to enjoy it - really have fun. One of the exceptions I made today was I took Rory (my three-year-old) with me everywhere. It took some more effort, but I saw her more than I would have otherwise. It was worth it.

I even managed to carve out a few minutes among the chaos to read a blog or two and  Steven Furtick's post reinforced the point.

So make some exceptions, but get to the goal. Back up at 6:30 to run tomorrow.

So It's been a long day. It was almost 11 when I got home from Ignite. Since the day included a good 2 miles or so of walking and tomorrow is the Tatamy block party, I'm not running in the morning. Not coping out in the morning when the alarm goes off (someone reading this had to do that this morning), making a wise decision now. Then Thursday, back to the run.

So when you do a blitz week, just in case you were wondering "What's a marketing blitz week for a church event like?", you don't have time for anything else.

Family first. Middle school "better than" stories second. Blog 3rd.

I've barely had time to breath today and it's family time now. But a quick note - i've decided it's time to get healthy and if I don't make it public, I might get lazy. Starting today, I'm eating better (and less).  Meaning less sugar and grease. And I'm running everyday for about 10-15 minutes. Here are my 2 motivations:

First, I simply want to be around for their lives and the lives of their  kids as long as I can.

Second, I'd like to lose this...

It's gotten worse since I started my "twin diet" and let's face it, it's ugly. Yes, your metabolism will slow down and this will happen to you.

And so I embark on a new season. Started reading the New Testament from start to finish today to commemorate the event. Stay tuned for updates.

Ok - no deep spiritual philosophy. Just simplifying life. We had one of these when I was a kid and I snatched one up at a yard sale a few months ago thinking of the kids and how I hate to peel Tate's apples (if I don't he spits the chunks of the peel everywhere). But then I discovered something remarkable: you could put a potato on this thing and it will peel it and cut it up - skipping a whole step! You miss a few spots of the skin, but it peels enough to just run it through the device and toss it in the pot.

We've been eating a lot of mashed potatoes lately.

Rule 4: Focus on as little as possible. A few weeks ago I had to have two hard conversations with two different people that I know love me - because they had the conversations with me. I preach focus like it's my job - and it is - but these brothers both had to tell me to scoop some stuff off my plate and regain mine.

This rule isn't real in depth, but again, hard to practice. Many of us leaders are fixers - we want to see success and we succumb to the lie that if we do it, it will be successful, but if anyone else does it, it' might fail. This leads to the gravy sloshing off one side of our plates while the greens beans are rolling off the other. Our plates are full of stuff to do and that violates rule 1. But the bottom line is this: the less you focus on, the better it will be.

The key here is that scary word many leaders shy away from... no. It means that things go undone and people get upset. But think about this, if we would build a culture around us that says "I don't do everything because I'm not good at everything and I refuse to sacrifice quality", would people get as upset?

Get started now - just pick something to say no to that you would really like to see done well... and see what happens. I've found that the outcomes are limited to 2 categories: either it's not getting done and nobody cares - so drop it, or it's not getting done and now the need is finally clear to to the masses. Unfortunetely, most of the things I've dropped, no one cares about, which hurts at first and you'll try to come up with excuses like "well... they'll only notice after it's too late!" But once you accept your responsibility alone and drop them, it's very freeing.

Whether you're a CEO or a high school student, these rules apply.

Thanks for listening to my short list of the things that are changing me. I hope God uses it to change you.