Biggest Leadership Question On My Mind Right Now

"How will our church leverage technology, and the massive connectivity it brings, to change the way we reach people who are far from God?"

If your church is like ours, you have a website, Facebook & Twitter feeds and you live stream Sunday experiences. If this is your church, just like us, you have not even scratched the surface.  

The next decade will not require some tweaks. It will be a dramatic re-thinking and re-structuring to do church and measure wins in all new ways. 

What do you think? Leave a comment and start the conversation. 

Self-control, where were you?

I've made some good changes for my health recently.  Changes that, I believe, will be life-long.   The biggest has been changes in my eating.  Yesterday was going great until those pizzas showed up at my place during the fights.  Self-control, where were you?

This morning, I'm feeling a guilty about what I ate last night.  I'm also feeling bad, physically. But, the great thing about this morning is that I'm feeling like I might have learned a lesson. Normally, I would use a pizza binge as a green light to give up.  Quite the opposite now.  I think I'll be stronger and more disciplined the next time I'm faced with food temptation like that.

The victory in it all?  I did NOT eat any of the cupcakes that came with the pizza.  And I AM about to go get my butt on the treadmill.  Make this a great week!

For 2015 I have 2 goals

1.  Achieve and maintain a weight of 165 lbs.  My plan for this.  FitPastors.com My coaching goes for 12 weeks.  Hopefully, what I learn and the accountability I gain will create a changed life-style.

2.  Write the manuscript to the book I've wanted to write for a while.  My plan for this.  No idea.  If you've written a book, your coaching would be valuable to me.  Or if you know of a coaching resource for writers, let me know.  Thanks.

Four Financial Decisions I'm Intensely Proud Of

It's been a long road since we took that huge "leap of faith" and relocated our family from PA to OK to start a new church.  That road has not only been long, it's been painful.  Although our church planting journey ended more than two years ago, the fallout from that continues.  I'm regularly wrestling with God to understand what it really means to live by faith, as I'm convinced that my prior understanding of "just bet the farm on a noble cause and expect God to take care of all the details" could not have been correct.

It's tough when what you thought you knew to be true gets dumped on it's head and you have to try and re-learn what you thought you knew so well.  There were a few things I knew very well.  I knew I was a world-class leader.  I knew I would plant one of the fastest-growing churches the country had ever seen.  I knew that as long as I worked hard on building God'd church, my family's financial security would never be threatened.  It's a bummer when you're 0 for 3.

It's September, 2014 and this is a milestone month for our family.  This is the first month in nearly five years that our income sufficiently covers - and even exceeds - our expenses.  Well, exceeds is not really true.  We run our household on a zero-based budget, so no matter our income, we always have every dollar spent on paper before we ever see it hit our bank account.  But this has been the first month that we have had enough of those dollars to make the budget work.

Here are four decisions Sara and I made that I'm intensely proud of (proud, not prideful).  Over the last five years . . .

1. We took on zero debt.  We never borrowed money.  We never swiped a credit card because we "needed it". We cut back when we needed to.  When God provided some unexpected income or gifts, we set them aside for times we knew we would be short. We drove old cars that had problems.  We still do. We did not force our income to adjust to our life-style.  We forced our life-style to adjust to our income.  That required discipline and was painful.  It is also something I'm intensely proud of.
2. We temporarily worked jobs that we didn't love.  In some cases, we hated them and they caused us great physical and emotional pain.  My wife worked as a lunch-duty assistant and a pre-K aid in our kids' school.  I worked as a patient transporter in a hospital and on a landscaping crew.  We didn't love those jobs and they didn't pay all that much.  They wore us out and took a toll on us.  But, we didn't work them forever.  We did what we needed to do to get by, all the while, taking steps toward better jobs that were a better fit for our giftings and offered more income.
3. We never skipped tithing and giving.  Never.  Not once.  We skipped family vacations.  We skipped eating out.  We skipped new cars.  But we never skipped giving.  And guess what, our budget that was short, on paper, for five years always worked.  Whether it was a family member or friend being generous, a larger-than-expected tax return or some other miracle (yes, I very much believe God does and did do miracles on our behalf), we always made it.
4. Although we felt poor, our children did not feel it.  They simply knew that we budgeted money for certain things.  Did we say "no" to certain requests our kids made?  Yes.  We said no to many requests.  But, we were careful to not tell our kids "we can't afford it".  Instead, we chose to tell them, "we budget money for certain things and what you're asking for is something we've decided not to budget for yet."  We were careful to tell your kids that we decided where our money went and saying no to their requests was not a desperate reaction to our low income, but a decision made ahead of time.  This is big because I see many people suffer from a "poverty mentality".  The problem with a poverty mentality is that it does not go away with increased income.  If you believe you're poor making $30K per year, you'll believe you're poor making $100K.  I believe that mentality is taught to kids by their parents.  I'm proud that we took our income challenges and taught our kids about budgeting rather than poverty.

This month, we begin working the 7 baby steps again.  We'll blow through step 1 quickly and we get to skip step 2!  I can't even express how grateful I am to God for all He has blessed us with and all He's allowed us to learn along the way.

The Art of Inviting Feedback

Can you imagine how your team and even your organization would change if you asked one simple question on a regular basis?  "If you were me, what would you do differently?"

The Art of Inviting Feedback

Yesterday I listened to the November and December episodes of The Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.  It's always good.  This two-part discussion about inviting feedback is exceptional.  If you are a leader, I strongly urge you to go and download and listen to these two episodes today.  Once you listen, share them.  Once you share them, put the simple principles into practice.  I have a real feeling this will be a game-changer.

Once you've done this, leave a comment and let me know how this is changing you as a leader and maybe even the culture of your church or organization.

What will 2014 look like?

For me, the recent history looks like this . . .

• 2011 – A year of pain
• 2012 – A year of discovery
• 2013 – A year of recovery

So, what will 2014 be?  I’m calling it a year of building.  Building in the three core areas of my life: personal, professional and spiritual.  Without going into detail, some of my goals include:

• Increasing my family’s base income
• Losing a significant amount of weight and maintaining that
• Building some new friendships, personally and for Sara and I, as a couple.
• Develop a platform and begin doing life coaching for church leaders and Kingdom-minded business people.
• Begin a new spiritual journey routine that will bring deep growth to my soul.

Of course there are much more specific versions of these with 90-day action plans attached.  But, the point is, I won’t look back twelve months from now and see a year of building in the rear-view mirror if I’m not setting goals attached to a plan right now.  Neither will you.

So, what are some of your goals and plans for 2014?  Don’t believe the lie that you’ve missed your chance because the New Year has already started.  You can do it!  I’d love to hear what you dream of in 2014.

Do you love your job?

Do you love your job?  Are you working in the areas of your greatest strengths?

Most people work a job that "pays the bills".  That's unfortunate for two reasons:

1.  If you work a job like this, it will suck the life from you.  Especially as time goes by.

2.  If you work primarily in your greatest strengths, you'll make more money.  

Think about it.  Will you perform better, over time, in something that you love or something that you can adequately complete on time?

Your strengths are not necessarily the things you can competently complete.  Your strengths are the things that add energy and vitality to you on a deep-down level.  

Example:  I was the pastor of a church for about two years.  I preached almost every Sunday.  People gave me regular feedback that I was a good communicator and they were seeing positive life change from what I was saying.  One problem.  Consistently preparing and delivering messages to church was one of the most draining and demoralizing things I've ever done.  One more problem.  All that time and energy I spent doing that kept me from doing what is one of my true strengths.  That is spending time with individuals and small groups to help them discover how they are wired and help them set goals to take new paths and reach new levels in life.

So, do you love your job?  Are you working in the areas of your greatest strengths?  Do you know what your strengths are?