What do you do when you’re the leader and somebody on your team drops the ball? Or worse, in their zeal for your cause, they do more harm than good? Every leader would relish having people with the strength of a bull on their team. We just don’t want the bulls charging into china shops.
Leadership is forged during awkward times. During periods of public strain, pain, or frustration, our attention turns to those we presume to be in leadership. On a national scale, for example, people in the United States turn to the president to help make sense of their fearful or angry moments (and we’ve had our share of those lately).
They assume that leaders have something to say. They watch instead for what the leader actually does. They’re not looking for place holders. They’re looking for leaders who have a sense for how to please them as they lead them. And as leaders throughout time have discovered, there is no such thing as private or secret leadership. Heck, even the Secret Service isn’t that secret.
In between the stories of his giant killing and his adultery dodging, an obscure little verse in the Bible describes how people responded to its beloved King David. It’s every leader’s dream come true: [click to continue…]
The stress you feel is proportional to the amount of control you have over a situation.
That sounds very intuitive, but there’s a spiritual contradiction to that. More on that in a minute.
Here’s an example of how that idea works out in the natural. A month ago I go to the doctor and he says my lipid levels are high. I roll my eyes and say, “same old same old.” I don’t get stressed about it because there is something I can do to correct it. Anyway, I’ve been hearing that for 30 years.
When he sends me for another test and I find out my heart calcium score is high, almost in the danger zone, again, the first thing I do is look for something I can do about it, because I have a steadfast belief that I can do something about it. So I’m motivated, but not stressed.
Same thing goes, even when I’m told I’m a Type II diabetic because of my lifestyle choices in the past. Well, crud. But I can do something about that by making different choices (and by the way I am making different choices and seeing wonderful results).
But when the doctor says I have a narrowing in the arteries at the top of my heart and he “wants to take a look at it” with an angiogram, and oh, by the way, if there is a significant enough blockage he may put a stint in it, suddenly he has crossed the line of my control.
Hello stress. [click to continue…]
For all the ways you may have been blessed
Or tried to bless others,
And all the ways you have received
Or given value in this life,
After all the ways that people measure contributions
Or celebrate distinction,
The greatest legacy you could ever leave
Is that you were loved first, and loved in return.
That takes a lot of grace. And a little bit of faith. [click to continue…]
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
When I awake, I am still with You (Psalm 139:17-18).
Quantity and Quality. That’s how to measure God’s thoughts toward you. And in both distinctions, His thoughts toward you are immeasurable. [click to continue…]
Quick question: If you’re going 30 miles per hour and wanted to make a 180-degree turn, how fast could you do it and how much ground would you lose heading the other way?
Quick answer: It all depends on the vehicle.
And that matters more than you may realize.
If you’re on a motorcycle doing 30, a good rider can execute a 180 pretty quickly and only lose a few feet before he darts back in the opposite direction.
On the other hand, if you’re at the con of an aircraft carrier traveling 30 knots per hour, it would take about 72 seconds. And in the process, you’ve lost about half a nautical mile.
Changing direction takes time. And momentum isn’t always on your side. And because of that your resolve will be tested.
Changing Direction Takes Time
I’ve never seen a hummingbird or bumblebee make a U-turn. [click to continue…]
Ever take a spiritual gifts test? I certainly have, and many of the courses I teach for different universities use them. And while I’m quite sure that surveys designed to apply psychological testing procedures to operations of the Holy Spirit can help us sort some things out, I still get a little uneasy about them.
Why?
Most are written so that even an unbeliever could take them and point to a “spiritual gift.”
Every one starts with a philosophical or theological assumption you may or may not agree with.
Every one tries to systematize something that, in scripture, seems hardly systematic.
Sooner or later somebody says something like, “I took this a few years ago and my gift of faith was a lot stronger then.” What? Seriously?
So I thought maybe it was time for something radically different. Why don’t we go back to the source and see if there is actually a spiritual gifts “test” in the Bible?
Radical, I know, but stay with me. [click to continue…]
There’s a place where love feels like love,
Where all the affection in the universe seems gathered up
And pointed only, always to you…
That place – that beloved place – is under His mercy.
There’s a song where all the symphonies and sonnets,
Ballads and serenades seem to converge
And sing only, always over you…
That song – that harmonious song – is under His mercy.
Under His mercy the world is recreated,
Eden reimagined, and hope is born again.
Under His mercy we all are reinstated,
Those stains are washed away, and we’re adorned again.
We’ve traded ashes for His beauty…
And longing for His love…
Under His mercy.
[click to continue…]
Surrender to the lordship and authority of Christ isn’t the goal of the Christian life.
It’s the means to the goal.
And that’s the problem, because in many Evangelical circles we’ve made surrender the target. In our audience-spectator-based worship services, we sing songs, give money, enjoy some fellowship, and hear a passionate call, all around the same theme – Jesus is Lord, and wants to be Lord of your life. Then we appeal to non-believers to surrender in faith to His Lordship for salvation, and to believers to surrender to His Lordship for sanctification.
Okay. Now what? [click to continue…]
Raise your hand if you’ve ever stood in church and sung, “I surrender all.”
Raise your other hand if you were invited to “come to the altar and surrender all to Jesus.”
Both my hands are up. I’m typing with my toes.
Just two problems with that idea. First, surrender isn’t something you do in church. Second, surrender isn’t something you do at the end or the close of anything.
A few years ago I learned a new language – the language of surrender and freedom. Inspired by someone’s idea of absolute commitment to Jesus expressed as, “I don’t have to survive,” I began a mental and spiritual journey of surrender. What else can I let go of? How else can I be free? And I began to make the list…
I don’t have to be successful…
I don’t have to get angry…
I don’t have to feel rejected…
I don’t have to be right…
You get the point.
Lately I’ve been revisiting that idea, for an important reason. [click to continue…]
It was painful and ugly, Lisa told us. She had left town to attend a school, presumably to train people to be worship leaders. What she discovered instead was an unhealthy, “I’m always right” form of egotistical authority-wielding. If anybody in the so-called “school” suggested an idea that didn’t line up perfectly with the ego-polishing done “on the stage,” there was hell to pay. And the favorite punch(ing) line: “You need to buy into the vision.”
“We’ve been spending some time rethinking our organization’s vision,” John said.
“Why is that?”
“Because we need a better way of communicating to the public and to our people the essence of why we’re here.”
May I offer a polite suggestion? (If not, I’ll be happy to offer a rude one.)
Before you start planning or pontificating on what you, somebody else, or the organization “needs,” don’t you think it would be a good idea to have a clear definition of “need?”
And before you merge onto the leadership freeway, teeming with thousands of commuters headed, they say, in the direction of their “vision,” don’t you think you need to have a grasp on what a vision actually is? [click to continue…]
What do you do when you’re the leader and somebody on your team drops the ball? Or worse, in their zeal for your cause, they do more harm than good? Every leader would relish having people with the strength of a bull on their team. We just don’t want the bulls charging into china shops.
