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Leadership Tips

I thought these were some great tips on leadership from Dan Cathy, President and COO of Chick-fil-a.

Brian Dye

I nice clip with some good words from my man Brian Dye.

Check in to Rehab

Check out Rehab which drops today!  Find out more here

Trip Lee "The Invasion (Hero)" music video feat. Jai (@rapzilla @triplee...

Incredibly creative video about the expected return of Christ by His church. Keep up the great work reach fam.

Dad life

What Part of the Gospel Is Optional?

Are we thinking Christian?

Multiplying Churches

"We want to lower the bar of how we do church so everyone can do it, and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple so that everyone will do it"
Neil Cole

What do you think of this statement?

Leadership

"The art of leadership is understanding what you can't compromise on."
Seth Godin

"We Can Be More"

A great new video highlighting the importance of marriage in relationships from my guy Sho Baraka. Check out his album releasing on March 30th.

A Leader's Prayer

"Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men!  Do not pray for tasks equal to your power; pray for powers equal to your tasks.  Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle".
Phillip Brooks - 19th century preacher

Do you pray for what you believe that you can accomplish or do you ask God to accomplish greater things than you could ever accomplish?

The character of a leader

I have been thinking about leadership a lot lately.  I am taking a class at Wheaton on leadership.  I am teaching a class at our church on leadership.  I have been asked advice about a local leadership program.  And the daily challenges of being a leader always has me considering leadership as well. 

I want to flesh out some of those thoughts in writing so I will make some attempt at that here.

One of the things that I am more and more convinced of is that character and integrity is a foundation to effective long term leadership.  In my experience, if you are a leader then it is inevitable that people will question your decisions.  As a result, they will begin to scrutinize your life and character.  Unknowingly, people often micro-analyze the life of leaders and over emphasize a persons flaws to destroy them in their mind. 

Not many people have a lot of grace with leaders.  Sad.

This is one of the reason that I think that the life of a leader must be impeccable.  He or she must be above reproach in every way.  Speech, conduct, life, purity.  Unfortunately, they are still human and so they will let people down.  But if their pattern of life is consistent, hopefully that will rise to the surface.

Because character is key, ongoing character development should be a central goal of any leader.  John Maxwell says "Unaddressed cracks in character only get deeper and more destructive with time". 

What are you doing today to continue to develop your character?

Generousity of Evangelical Christians

This morning I read an encouraging blog post by Atlanta pastor Shaun King.  He had observed how a large portion of the aid and volunteers in Haiti were evangelical Christians.  He then cites an article in the liberal NY Times that makes the same observation. 

It is encouraging to see such generousity from the church in the US especially when we are becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of society.  It seems that others are taking notice of our love for our neighbors. 

I encourage you to read the entire post here.

Do you think that evangelicals are leading the way in society towards compassion and generousity to those in need?

I'm a Christ Follower

Interesting little parody of the Mac vs. PC commercials.

What do you think?

Total Transformation

Last week I heard someone speaking about total conversion.  He suggested that we need a conversion of our mind, emotion, and our will.  I like that.

I think that it is easy to speak of being saved or born again as something that you believe in your mind.  This is true, but belief is not just a belief in the mind. Salvation is intellectional.  But it is also emotional and volitional. 

If we only have a intellectual conversion, then we may find ourself to be like the soil in the parable of the sower that sees the seed choked out when the cares of the world make life difficult.  We must allow our conversion to invade our mind, our emotion, and our will.  As Romans 12:1 says we must be living sacrifices.  Transformation must be all of us, not just a part.

Has your will been converted?  Do the emotions of your inmost being proclaim that Jesus is Lord?  How complete is your conversion?

Legacy Conference 2010

Hope to see you all at the Legacy Conference this summer.

Lecrae - Far Away (Haiti Relief)

This is Lecrae's song Far Away from the Hip Hop for Haiti concert last weekend. All proceeds from the concert and from purchasing the song are being sent to Churches Helping Churches to support work in Haiti.

Multi-racial churches on the rise

Micheal Emerson suggests that protestant churches are turning the corner on racially integrating churches.  In his article about it, he ends by saying "The Christian color wall, solidly in place at least since the Civil War, is cracking. And those cracks may eventually grow to the point that the wall crumbles. Time will tell".


What do you think?  Are we moving in America towards more racially diverse churches that better reflect the kingdom of God?  Or do you think this is just an isolated reality?

Seeking God's heart

"Grant me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know; to love what I ought to love; to praise that which is most pleasing to Thee; to esteem that which appeareth to Thee valuable; to abhor that which is filthy in Thy sight.
Suffer me not to judge according to the hearing of the ears of ignorant men; but to determine upon matters, both visible and spiritual with true judgement and, above all things, ever to seek Thy good will and pleasure".
Thomas A' Kempis - The Imitation of Christ

Make this my prayer, oh God.  Make this the cry of my heart.

Imago Dei

"We stand in awe of the ocean, the thunderstorm, the sunset, the mountains, but we pass by a human being without notice even though the person is God's most magnificent creation".
Augustine

Each person is created in the image of God.  Oh, if we could learn to live this out in how we treat one another.

Prayer

"We take up our prayer with flighty thoughts, willy-nilly, and rush to get it over with, as if it were an incidental, though unavoidable, bother--- and not the center of our life, as it should be"
Theophan the Recluse

This is convicting and I must admit that I am often guilty as charged.

STOP!

Come away from rush and hurry

To the stillness of God's peace

From our vain ambition's worry

Come to Christ to find release

Come away from noise and clamor

Life's demands and frenzied pace

Come to join the people gathered

Here to seek and find God's face

This is the first verse to a hymn written by Marva J. Dawn.

We live in a fast paced time.  Our country is a nation that expects and demands busyness.  Working hard is a good thing and an important part of holistically living for God.

But for many, we have denied our need to rest.  We struggle to stop.

In the Old Testament, God instituted the Sabbath which comes from the root meaning "to cease".  Yet today we often act like there is no need to stop.  We wear terms like tired, exhausted, or drained as badges of honor to validate our worth or even our spiritual life.

Yet the fact that these terms exist should be reminders in themselves that we have limits and need to honor God by honoring those human limitations.

Could I suggest that stopping might be an honorable thing? Would it be stretching to propose that resting can be a spiritual act of service to God?  Am I being outrageous to say, that being too busy is actually a boast of pride against the sufficiency of God Himself?

Do you need to cease?  Have you taken time to stop lately?  When do you regularly rest?

Striving to live for God

Asceticism is "an austere, simple way of life in which persons renounce material pleasures and devote their energy to moral or religious purpose".  Many today think of giving things up that they enjoy as a bad thing.   Most don't have enough concern for personal spiritual growth to consider releasing some of their own pleasures.

Bradley Holt suggests that "a biblical asceticism leads to a healthy sense of being able to say no to a good thing for the sake of a better or higher one; it gives self-confidence while enabling people to serve others."


Is there anything that God is leading you to forsake for the purpose of knowing Him more?

Time to follow Jesus

Any human tragedy is hard.  For those who are poor, tragedy can be overwhelming. 

All of us our aware of the devastation that the earthquake in Haiti has caused.  As has been widely reported, this country is extremely poor.  This makes matters even worse.  Think of the slow response to a disaster like Katrina and that happened in America with our endless resources. 

It is time to follow Jesus.  The people of God need to be involved.  It is wrong to ignore such a tragedy.  We must start by caring.  Sometime it is hard to even have compassion with the 24/7 bombardment with crime, death, disaster, etc.  But this is huge and God's people will be known for our compassion for the poor. 

Everyone must do something.  Give if you can.  I give through World Relief, but there are many good options.  Pray.  Even if you feel that you cannot give you can prayer.  Go?  Maybe God is calling you to be a part of a group to go and serve the people of Haiti.

It is time to follow Jesus.

Forsaking our independence

Our country was founded partially because of a document called the Declaration of Independence.  I find it interesting that as Americans this could almost be our national motto now.

Americans are known for individualism and freedom.  We love it.  We are caught up in the idea of our own rights.  We love freedom.  We love opportunity.  We love independence and so we declare independence.

But God has called the people of God to be different.  We are citizens of the kingdom of God first and secondly to the USA.  As a result, we are to declare our dependence instead of our independence. 

We are dependent on God.  We are dependent on others.

God calls His people to forsake individualism and embrace community.  This is what makes the church distinct.  People living life together.  People making decisions together.  People care for the need of others together.  I could say: people spending their own  money to provide food or healthcare for others, but then you might think that I am getting political.

This is not about politics.  This is about the church putting a proper value on community.  We have bought into the lie of indivualism.  We have made our declaration of independence.   We need to repent and declare that we are dependent.

Are you caught up in the American value of independence?

Lecrae's testimony

Here is a link to Lecrae sharing his testimony on the 700 club.  I thank God for stories of God's grace in peoples lives.