Zambia Trip Video

Tonight I am getting together with the gang of folks that I traveled with to Zambia this past May. I can't wait to laugh at funny trip moments, talk about how are lives are different because of our time in Africa, and pray fervently together for our Night of Nights events next week that we have created on campus to provide bed nets for those impacted by malaria. I will even give them the book WRECKED to read as we continue to think about our next steps as people who long to be Advocates for the needs we have seen and share the ways God is at work in a place we have fallen in love with on the other side of the world. And here's a video one of our team members made to summarize our trip and share our story. Enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm_0_sBGNEQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Maybe We Should Try Something Different by TIM ELMORE

Tim Elmore recently wrote about some interactions he had with faculty members at colleges and high schools and the students they were teaching and leading where they expressed some significant concerns about how they communicated and perceived each other...this list below hits on the topic he terms "Turn Artificial Maturity into Authentic Maturity".  I found this list helpful as I continue to seek to educate, engage, and transform the lives of this incredible generation...here's his thoughts:

1.  Face-to-Face Relationships

To complement their time in front of a screen (interacting in virtual contexts), I suggest caring adults establish environments where students interact in face-to-face relationships. For instance, my wife and I have planned parties and asked our kids to help host the guests who came. Early on, they learned to connect with adults, take their coats, ask if they wanted something to drink and make introductions to other guests. While this may sound basic, it was a relationship boot camp for our children.

2.  Genuine (as Opposed to Virtual) Projects and Experiences

To balance all the data and virtual games they experience, I suggest caring adults furnish opportunities for kids to get involved with real, honest to goodness projects in the community. For instance, sit down and choose together a work project like painting mailboxes in the neighborhood, or raking leaves in friends’ yards, or even planning a fund raiser and going door to door to receive donations from neighbors. The project simply needs to be something that represents good, hard work.

3.  Multi-Generational Exposure

One primary cause of artificial maturity today is that so many kids, especially teens, live in a “social silo.” Adolescents spend about sixteen hours a week interacting with adults and about sixty hours a week interacting with their peers. What’s shocking, however, is to discover that not that long ago—and for most of human history—these numbers were almost exactly reversed. Adults were the primary socializing force, but they’ve been replaced by other teens. By creating places for kids to interact with people far older and younger than they are, it pushes them out of their comfort zones and self-absorption.

4. Saving Money Toward a Goal

This idea can serve many purposes. Together with a student, choose a goal they want to achieve that requires a significant sum of money to reach it. It could be a big trip they hope to take, or something they want to buy at a store or even a party they are planning. The catch is—they must come up with the funds to pull it off. Help them create a budget. Then encourage them to save, raise or earn the money it will take to reach the objective. Work with them to set incremental goals (if this is appropriate), to pace their spending and plan toward each step along the way.

5.  Cross-Cultural Travel

It’s been said that travel provides a greater educational experience than any classroom. The education kids get when they travel in a different culture is not simply about history or math or geography; it’s about life. When a young person travels, their perspective not only broadens, but their capacity to wait and endure differences in culture deepens as well. (Most other cultures are less time-driven than the U.S.) As my kids grew up, I took them on several trips to both industrialized countries as well as developing nations—and it accelerated their maturity.

6.  Participation on a Team

Far too frequently, our kids play on teams or serve on teams, but fail to gain as much as they should from the experience. I believe true teamwork is an art and very few get to enjoy the fruit of genuine camaraderie. Synergy is what happens when those serving together experience results that are bigger than the sum total of each individual. I wish every kid in the world had the chance to participate on a team that experienced a sense of destiny, a sense of family and a militant spirit about reaching their goal. Why not create environments conducive to this kind of experience?

7. Age-appropriate Mentors

In my book, Generation iY—Our Last Chance to Save Their Future, I share how both my kids spent time with mentors when they were thirteen years old. Bethany, our first born, chose six women who served as one-day mentors for her that year. Later, Jonathan and I spent a year together with five other dads and their sons, meeting with men who challenged and encouraged them as they matured. We met with an Army Colonel, a CEO, a football coach, a pilot, an athlete and a pastor. Both of my kids would say these relationships provided a model for their growth and vision.

http://blog.growingleaders.com/maybe-we-should-try-something-different/#more-5583

17 LEADERSHIP LAWS by Mark Batterson

Mark Batterson has become a huge favorite of mine and Coach Bell here at CU...we often have passed along his quotes to our players and each other over the past few years...

I actually just finished his book Praying Circles Around Your Children and highly recommend it!

Mark Bell just passed on this list to me and I love it as we think about leadership in a team setting and other places around CU and in our world...enjoy these thoughts:

 

1. Tough decisions only get tougher.

You are only one decision away from a totally different life. I believe that. One change in diet or exercise can radically change your health status. One change in spiritual disciplines can open up new dimensions of grace and power.  One change in a relationship can lead to intimacy.  What do you need to stop doing or start doing?  Your destiny isn’t a mystery. Your destiny is the cumulative decisions you make.  What tough decision do you need to make?  What are you waiting for?

2. Negativity is cancer.  Kill it or it will kill you.

I am wide open to rebuke.  Constructive criticism is the avenue to excellence. But I have zero tolerance for negativity.  How do you stop negativity? Positivity.  One of the ways we do that at NCC is sharing wins before every meeting. It reminds us that God is moving and we get to be part of it. Sharing wins creates positive energy.  And it’s positivity that gives us the energy we need to deal with negativity. Don’t let one staff member, one board member or one small group member hijack what God has called you to captain.

3. No Margin = No Vision.

If you try to be all things to all people you’ll become nothing to nobody.  I have focus days and meetings days. I meet with people on my meeting days. I meet with God on my focus days.  I need days where there is nothing on my agenda so I can read or write, dream or rest.  The lack of margin will kill your creativity.  If you don’t control your calendar your calendar will control you. It starts with establish boundaries.  Then you need to guard against the Messiah complex.  You can’t save everybody. In fact, you can’t save anybody.  You aren’t doing anybody any favors if you make yourself available to everybody all the time.  Take a break.  Take a day off. Take a vacation. Take a sabbatical.
4. If you listen to God people will listen to you.

People don’t need a word from me. They need a word from God.  I want my messages to have a prophetic edge to them and that happens when I get into the presence of God.  The presence of God is where problems are solved and dreams are conceived.  Get in the presence of God.  At the end of the day, I am nothing without God’s anointing. I need to keep an ear tuned to the people, but more importantly, I need to keep an ear tuned to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit.

5. Don’t let your budget determine your vision.

Too often we allow our budget to determine our vision instead of allowing vision to determine our budget.  That doesn’t mean you hire lots of staff you’ll need to fire. It doesn’t mean you let expenses get out of control. It does mean that you hold tenaciously to this simple truth: when God gives a vision He makes provision.  You need to budget in a way that gives God the room to do miracles.  And make doubly sure that you have vision beyond your resources.

6. Everything is an experiment

One of the greatest dangers we face as leaders is inattentional blindness. We stop noticing our environment.  When that happens we lose creativity, we lose excellence.  You’ve got to make some mistakes!  You’ve got to take some risks.  Over time there is a cognitive shift from right-brain to left-brain: we stop doing ministry out of imagination and start doing it out of memory.  Do something different.  After all, if you want God to do something new then you can’t keep doing the same old thing.

7. If your life is interesting your messages will be interesting.

The reason why many of our messages lack impact is because they aren’t interesting and they aren’t interesting because we’re not interesting.  Get a life!  You need a life outside of church.  Go on an adventure. Take up a hobby.  Learn something new. If your life is boring, chances are that your sermons will be too.

8. Don’t just dream big. Think long.

We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in 2 years, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years.  Zoom out.  Your mantra shouldn’t be “as soon as possible.” It should be “as long as it takes.”  Your vision isn’t just too small. It’s too short.

9. Put your family first

At the end of the day, I want to be famous in my home.  God has not called me to sacrifice my family on the altar of ministry.  They deserve my best.  Don’t let work become home and home become work.  Success for me is my kids growing up to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Your youth pastor isn’t called to disciple your kids. You are.  You’ll make mistakes, but the secret to successful parenting is this: keep trying, keep forgiving, keep loving.

10. Who you’re becoming is more important than what you’re doing.

Don’t worry about church growth. Focus on personal growth and church growth will take care of itself.  Stay humble. Stay hungry. Make sure you’re doing ministry out of the overflow of what God is doing in your own heart, your own life.  Remember that who you are is more important than what you do.  People over programs. People over portfolios.

11. Work like it depends on you. Pray like it depends on God.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. So plan away. And loving God with all of your strength = a great work ethic.  So work hard.  But I believe in prayerstorming more than brainstorming.  Prayer is the difference between you fighting for God and God fighting for you.  If work is the engine of success, then prayer is the high-octane fuel.

12. If you have something to say, say it.

My greatest regret looking back over fifteen years of preaching?  Simple: I wish I had communicated the gospel more consistently and more clearly.  I should have said it and said it again and again and again.  You cannot over-communicate.  Say it. Then say it over and over again.  Say it in different ways. As a multi-site church we have a mantra: when in doubt, CC.  Another mantra is this: don’t internalize, verbalize.  I don’t want to hear about issues when they’ve become full-blown problems with collateral damage.  Internalizing issues only makes them worse.  And I don’t want to hear it from a third-party. If you have something to say, say it.

13. Be Yourself

Don’t try to be who you’re not.  I’m not trying to be a pastor anymore. I’m trying to be myself.  I’m certainly trying to grow in maturity and gifting, but I’m not worried about who I’m not.  Abraham Lincoln said, “You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all the people all of the time.” Uniformity isn’t the goal. Unity is.  That also doesn’t mean unanimous.  According to the categorization of adopters, 16% of the people you lead will be resisters. It doesn’t matter if you come down with stone tablets from Mount Sinai.  Even Jesus lost one of his disciples.

14. Don’t live for the applause of people.

My philosophy of ministry is Matthew 10:16: Be shrewd as a snake and innocent as a dove. You’ve got to beat the enemy at his own game and that takes creativity.  But you also need to do the right things for the right reasons and that takes integrity.  Don’t worry about being politically correct.  Be biblically correct. Most of my reward has been forfeited because I was more concerned about “my kingdom” than “thy kingdom.” I was living for the applause of people.  To get to the point where you genuinely care for people you have to get to the point where you don’t care how they feel about you.  Live for the applause of nail-scarred hands.

15. I’d rather have one God idea than a thousand good ideas.

Let me say it again: get in the presence of God. Those new ideas are discovered in the context of prayer and fasting and nowhere else. Good ideas are good, but God ideas change the course of history.  There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet.  Here’s a formula: change of pace + change of place = change of perspective. Sometimes you just need to get out of your routine.

16. You cannot break the law of sowing and reaping.

If you want to receive honor then you need to give honor. If you want a generous culture, then you’ve got to give sacrificially.  Set the example. Set the bar.  At the end of the day, the strengths and weaknesses of any organization mirror the strengths and weaknesses of the leadership.  Take responsibility for it. Then take action.  For better or for worse, you cannot break the law of sowing and reaping.

17. Enjoy the journey

 

If you are too focused on the future you’ll fall into the when/then syndrome. When we have “this many people” or “this much money” I’ll be able to enjoy leadership. No you won’t.  You need to enjoy every stage.  For the record, it will only get harder.  It will only get more complicated. Sin will complicate your life in negative ways.  Blessings will complicate your life in positive ways. When I got married it complicated my life. Praise God. We have three complications named Parker, Summer, and Josiah. I can’t imagine life without those complications.  So count the cost and keep on keeping on.