Leadership Lessons from Chuck Swindoll

The folks at Out of Ur picked up some key lessons at Catalyst from Chuck Swindoll:

1) It’s lonely to lead. Leadership involves tough decisions. The tougher the decision, the lonelier it is.

2) It’s dangerous to succeed. I’m most concerned for those who aren’t even 30 and are very gifted and successful. Sometimes God uses someone right out of youth, but usually he uses leaders who have been crushed

3) It’s hardest at home. No one ever told me this in Seminary.

4) It’s essential to be real. If there’s one realm where phoniness is common, it’s among leaders. Stay real.

5) It’s painful to obey. The Lord will direct you to do some things that won’t be your choice. Invariably you will give up what you want to do for the cross.

6) Brokenness and failure are necessary.

7) Attititude is more important than actions. Your family may not have told you: some of you are hard to be around. A bad attitude overshadows good actions.

8) Integrity eclipse image. Today we highlight image. But it’s what you’re doing behind the scenes.

9) God’s way is better than my way.

10) Christlikeness begins and ends with humility.

Chuck also added the following:

1) Whatever you do, do more with others and less alone

2) Whenever you do it, emphasize quality not quantity.

3) Wherever you go, do it the same as if you were among those who know you best.

4) Whoever may respond, keep a level head.

5) However long you lead, keep on dripping with gratitude and grace

Rob Bell defines evangelical … really

Rob Bell sat down with Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe as part of his Drop Like Stars tour. Here is the definition of “evangelical” the Boston Globe quoted: “I embrace the term evangelical, if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That’s a beautiful sort of thing.” You may want to follow the conversation at Out of Ur.

Here are Rob’s tweets in response:

* Ever done an interview and then read it and realized they left out most of what you said? Maddening.
* A bit of history: the word evangelical comes from the Roman Empire propaganda machine- it was an announcement proclaiming Caesar is Lord…
* The first Christians took the phrase and tweaked it, saying “Jesus is Lord.” That, of course, could get you killed. No one challenges Caesar
* To confess Jesus is Lord was to insist that peace does not come to earth through coercive violence but through sacrificial love…
* That is still the question, is it not? Whose way? Jesus or Caesar? Power and might and domination – or bloody, thirsty, hanging on a cross?

You too can forecast the future

Jamais Cascio, teacher and lecturer, blogs at www.openthefuture.com and helps people think about how to anticipate the future. His post on Futures Thinking: The Basics over at Fast Company suggests that anyone can learn the basics of a structured future thinking process. Consider the following broad outline:

Futures Thinking – A Process Overview

Asking the Question:

Scanning the World:

Mapping the Possibilities:
Consider the following scenarios:
1. The future is what I expect.
2. The future is better than I expect.
3. The future is worse than I expect.
4. The future is weirder than I expect.

Asking the Next Question:

Thinking it Through:

Philip Clayton on the intersection of faith and science

Philip Clayton, philosopher and theologian at Claremont School of Theology, joins ThinkFwd host, Spencer Burke, at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens north of Los Angeles where they talk about faith, science, and the parallels between ecosystems and the Church. Clayton describes how the scientific community had the idea that when they figured out the human genome, everything else would be deduced outward from that starting point. What scientists found instead is that life is unpredictable, and dependent on the individual’s environment. A variety of top-down influences determine what we become, and so life unfolds in an unpredictable, unimaginable way.

View Philip Clayton on emergence taking on a life of it’s own

Consider reflecting on the following questions:

Personal Reflections:
1. How has nature, life, death and rhythms enhanced your understanding of God?
2. How do you see God with, in and through us as co-creators of life?

Small Group or Staff Questions:
1. The top-down approach to management has served us in the past. But now we have networks of networks growing in unpredictable ways. How can we use this new metaphor for growing our faith?
2. If Kingdom-building is going to be more unpredictable, vulnerable, and collaborative, how can we embrace that interconnectedness—the flowing together and even the breaking apart into more parts than before?

Seth Godin asks about our priority list … where did I put it?

Seth always asks the right question! First he asks about our priorities and “what should you do next?” and he provides the answer. Most of us do not know! He adds that we are not alone:

Is it better to email an existing customer, send a brochure to a prospect or improve your product a bit? Should you tweet or post a new blog post? Should you have a meeting to coordinate your team or spend ten minutes returning phone calls instead? This is an unheralded skill, something successful people do really well and others struggle with.

Then he lets us off the hook while he wanders into our lack of priorities on being green:

One of the challenges we have in reducing carbon emissions is that (as far as I know) there’s no priority list. Which is worse: leaving your computer on all night or not having the windows weatherstripped? Which is worse: driving a car to Boston or going by plane with 200 other people? Is it worth driving across town to buy a pint of organic strawberries or should I get the ones from the nearby store that came from California? If you have a thousand dollars to invest in making a reduction in greenhouse gasses, should you buy new tires, switch to local foods or perhaps send $900 to help a factory in China switch away from coal and then use the other hundred to have a massage? Without a list, you can see how making intelligent decisions is impossible, so we resort to confusing activity with productivity.

Don’t worry, Seth still knows how to ask the right question.

Back to your office: do you have a list? Have you figured out which metric you’re trying to improve? Can you measure the impact of the choices you make all day? I see this mistake in business development all the time. Assume for a moment that the goal of someone in this department is to maximize profit. Why then would this group spend most of its time tweaking existing deals (looking for a 3% improvement in yield) instead of spending the same time and effort doing new, game-changing deals?

So many times in my life people want me to spend time doing the 3% thing when a bigger task looms. What will you do when the overwhelming inertia of the trivial blinds you to what you are being called to do for the greater good? I am praying for you to know how to do the right and first thing.

Gabe Lyons talks about learning from those unlike you

The skill of listening needs to be regained, says Gabe Lyons, co-author of UnChristian and guest of this week’s ThinkFwd interview hosted by Spencer Burke. Lyons believes this generation is ready—open to learning from each other at a heart-level without expectations of immediate results, and without needing to control the direction of the conversation.

View Gabe Lyons on learning from those unlike you.

You may want to reflect on the questions below and consider purchasing Lyon’s book UnChristian.

Personal Reflections:
1. If you could invite four people who wouldn’t agree on everything to the table—who would you invite and why?
2. How can I add real value to a present project, group or learning experience I’m involved in?

Small Group or Staff Questions:
1. Share a new experience or resource that has opened your mind to new ideas. What did you learn about humility, awareness, or different opinions?
2. What would it take for our community to be known more for what we support, are open to, and encourage rather than what we disagree with or exclude?

Matt Soerens talks about immigration and Christian hospitality

Spencer Burke at TheOOZE has a great series of interviews with folks around the world about how they are living our their Christian faith in the emerging post-modern world. This week he talks about immigration with Matt Soerens.

“Immigrants are more than what they can contribute to our affluence,” says Matt Soerens. Made in the image of God, they are people like you and I who demonstrate the beautiful diversity of God’s creation of humanity. ThinkFwd host, Spencer Burke, talks with Soerens in the Chicago suburb where he lives. His neighbors are a diverse population including immigrants from Mexico, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

View Matt Soerens on Immigration and the Stranger

Soerens has co-authored a book about the church and immigration called “Welcoming the Stranger.” He says his goal with the book was not to convince anyone of a particular immigration policy but rather to look at the issue Biblically and ask—as Christians—what do we do with this complicated topic of immigrants and immigration?

Personal Reflections:
1. Take a moment to role play—what would you be feeling if you were in a foreign country, didn’t know the language, didn’t know the customs, you saw law-enforcement as an enemy and it was criminal to work, yet the conditions in your country were worse?
2. Moving beyond policy to personal, what has been your first-hand interaction with immigrants?

Small Group or Staff Questions:
1. Throughout history we’ve used language to de-humanize people we don’t want to deal with. How have terms like “alien” influenced you?
2. As a Christian, how do you feel about evaluating people solely on their economic impact to our organization, city, or country?

Kinston named an All-America City

It’s hard to see things decline around you and not enter the cycle of doom with everyone else. Just as destructive can be our tendency to bury our heads in the sand and pretend everything is going okay. Well folks, the bishop asked me to come to Kinston and stand alongside the saints and sinners of Queen Street United Methodist Church as they transitioned to another century of ministry. Now Kinston is a city that is facing serious issues. Fifty years ago Queen Street, the main street, was known as “the Magic Mile” and for many in eastern North Carolina we were the center of the universe. Times have changed … tobacco is no longer king (hardly even a pawn) and the other cities around us have landed economic engines that mean that folks have no need for a “Magic Mile” somewhere else. As ministry unfolded I turned to the following passage from Jeremiah for continued hope and inspiration:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29:4-7).

We feel like exiles in the city because it no longer looks like it used to look. But the LORD says to us live here, eat here, find husband for daughters and wives for sons, and multiply and do not decrease. We can understand that impulse and hope that it might work, but for many of us our sons and daughters have married and moved elsewhere to live, eat, and multiply. The LORD is not leaving us hanging … the LORD adds “seek the welfare of the city” and pray on its behalf for “in its welfare you will find your welfare” … the LORD says your future is tied together with the broader welfare and prosperity of the whole community. Do not settle for less than everyone’s welfare and your welfare will never be in doubt. That is the lesson God has been teaching me these days.

On Sunday afternoon, the folks of Kinston will gather in Grainger Stadium to celebrate our being named one of ten All-America Cities this past year. The following are the words that I will offer as an invocation to that celebration:

O God, our help in ages past when names like Caswell, Gordon, Bright, McLewean, Shrine, Dobbs, Herritage came to the intersection of King and Queen in 1762 to form a city; Who knew then the plans that you laid out for them as they moved out to the north, south, and east with the Neuse at their backs to the west? You gave our fathers and mothers wisdom to know that a city for a king depended only on you for its greatness and its citizens for its support when they changed our name from Kingston to Kinston. You saw us through years of growth and periods of decline, times of war and times of peace, moments of laughter and seasons of mourning, gathered us in Granger Stadium and Grand Theater, churches and synagogues, and even drew us to the Magic Mile.

O God, our hope for years to come we come at a time of great celebration and come praying and seeking for the welfare and prosperity of the city where we live. Give Kinston not only the pure water of the artesian well, but the purity of drink derived from our human efforts; give Kinston not only the little by little efforts for our children we make, but the greater by greater dreams you have for each one of them; give Kinston not only the rejection of the gang life, but the acceptance of a citizen’s life seeking your broader good.

O God, be thou our guide while life shall last we come anticipating a day when the young shall see visions and the old shall dream dreams. We come seeking the wisdom of the one who created us in your self-image so that we might live as your sons and daughters, as sisters and brothers in your soon-coming kingdom. Teach us your wisdom and guard our paths so that we might come to follow in the Way, the Truth, and the Life that you hold before each of us.

O God, our eternal home; In moments like these we give thanks that you put lifetime-sized dreams before us knowing that those things worth accomplishing might or might not be completed in our time, but in your time all things are possible O LORD of HOPE. In moments like these we give thanks for the true, the beautiful, and the good to which you have called us, O LORD of FAITH. In moments like these we give thanks that we cannot accomplish virtuous tasks alone and we need each other and especially you, O LORD of LOVE. In moments like these we remember that we are not all that, we are not always leaning in the right direction, we are not always pointed to your preferred future for us, we are not always aligned as friends, we far too often see one another as foes and for that we come now seeking forgiveness and trusting in the faith, hope, and love of our mothers and fathers, O LORD of FORGIVENESS.

O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come;
be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.

Now hear our prayer lifted in the Name of the One Who Is, the One Who Was, and the One Who Is to Come! Amen.

For the very discerning you will hear in the above invocation the following words that have traveled the globe with me and sustain the core of my prayer life with the Living God of our mothers and fathers.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;
therefore we must be saved by HOPE.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
therefore we must be saved by FAITH.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
therefore we are saved by LOVE.

No virtuous act is as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint.
Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love which is FORGIVENESS.
–Reinhold Niebuhr

“Really!?! with Seth and Amy” on Keeping Your Tongue

We have been paying attention to “A Brother’s Wisdom” as we have been reading through the book of James at Queen Street Church these past few weeks. Meanwhile around the nation we see folks violating James simple rule to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). Why? Because “your anger does not produce God’s righteousness” (James 1:20). So I caught Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers of Saturday Night Live, and now Weekend Update Thursday, in a segment called Really!?! The pair devoted the segment to the recent outbursts of Congressman Joe Wilson, Serena Williams and Kanye West concluding: “No one is impressed when you take your stands against 19-year-old girls, tiny Asian ladies or the first black president. Really? Who are you gonna go after next koalas? Really!?!” Watch it for yourselves.

Really?!? with Seth and Amy on September 17, 2009

George Bullard on a Congregation’s Future

Sometimes my mentor and friend George Bullard comes up with cumbersome names for important topics. For instance, I learned more about how congregations live, thrive, survive, and often die from George’s book Pursuing the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Congregation than I have from several other training events on congregational development. His book fleshes out the Spiritual Strategic Journey model that marks his long work as a coach, consultant, and judicatory official. The book is tremendous, the process is spirit-filled and leads to proactive movement – we just have to help rename the process.

My prelude is offered to lead you to another one of George’s lists. This list results from a series of posts at his blog Bullard Journal. Depending on your needs, George is making these posts available in a personal edition or presentation edition along with an opportunity to participate in a coaching conversation with him and your peers. Pray through your situation.

Your congregation is likely to exist 10 years from now if:
01: It has High Expectations of its Members
02: It has an Empowering Vision
03: It has a Shared Vision
04: It has Clear Core Values
05: It Is Intentional
06: It Is Kingdom Focused
07: It Is Contextually Relevant
08: Its Attendance Is Growing
09: Four Involvement Factors Are Present
10: It Is Experiencing Conversion, Biological, and Transfer Growth
11: Its Relationships Are About True Friendships
12: Its Worship Is a True Encounter with God
13: Its Worship Attendance Is Over 135
14: Its in the childhood to just retiring stage in the Life Cycle
15: The average age of the active congregation is less than 50
16: The average tenure of the active congregation is less than 15 years
17: At least 20 percent of your active adults members are tithers
18: More than 30 percent of your budget is focused on programs and missions
19: It has sufficient conflict capacity (i.e. it knows how to disagree in healthy ways)
20: It has empowering and shared leadership
21: It has empowering management
22: It has no significant debt
23: It has no dependence on endowments
24: Its facilities are in good shape
25: It is obviously Christ-centered

What else would you add to George’s list, and better yet, what new title would you give it?