learning to lead

This has been one of the most challenging years for me as a pastor.  Even as many of the things that I do have become more familiar and more natural than before, I’ve been confronted with the reminder that my leadership abilities need to adapt and grow.  I’ve learned more about leadership this year than in any year before.  Three books that have helped me most recently in growing as a leader are The Emotionally Healthy Church, In the Name of Jesus, and Good to Great. In The Emotionally Healthy Church, Peter Scazzero challenges church leaders to look beneath the surface to understand that there is always more than meets the eye.  He draws important links between emotional health, relational depth, and spiritual maturity, and how they are important principals that can lead churches to wholeness and maturity.  What I enjoyed most about this book was the degree of transparency Peter used from his own life and experiences to share what he has learned over the years.  He calls his leadership paradigm a change from the perfect, the powerful, and the big to the imperfect, the weak, and the small.

we need inspiration

Who doesn’t need a little inspiration from time to time?  I know, I know, inspiration can only take you so far.  It needs to be followed by determination, commitment and discipline.  But we still need to be inspired every now and then.  We all do.  Inspiration leads us to create beauty and magnificence.  It also helps us get out of bed in the morning too.  I came across this video that combines 40 inspirational speeches in 2 minutes.  I enjoyed it and I hope you do too!

“outlast” someone today

Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” We live in a convenience oriented world.  It is no wonder that we are self-serving and self-absorbed.  The disciples wanted spiritual power and authority to make a name for themselves, to prove to others that they were the ones that God had chosen.  But self-glorification and self-assertion were not what Christ had in mind.  Rather, I think he was looking for self-surrender and self-sacrifice.  I’m sure you’ve heard of the “pay it forward” principle.  It’s doing something good for someone else in hoping that they will continue doing good to others.  Eventually that random act of kindness comes back to you and has rippled throughout the world.  Well instead of paying it forward, what if we out-lasted someone today.  To do this, you would let people go ahead of you today, through doors, in traffic, at check out lines, in meal serving lines and so on.  Taking on the call to be a “servant to all” calls us to let others go first.  And make it an ongoing practice to put yourself last in situations without drawing attention to the fact that you are doing it.  We have far too many guests that seek to be served and not enough hosts who live to serve others.  Try to “outlast” someone today and be a servant to all.

my church shopping list

Fall is that time of year when many people go “church shopping.”  As new students and people with new jobs move to Boston, many of them will start visiting various churches to see which one “fits” them best.  While I know the term church shopping connotes a consumeristic mindset, I actually think it’s an important process.  Maybe a better word to call it would be “church dating.” As with any other important decision in life, the key is to gather as much information as you can and use wisdom and care to make the best choice.  After all, if your spiritual life matters to you, then the decision making process of finding the right church should matter too.

So here are a few tips I’d recommend for anyone who is church shopping this time of year…

what i learned in seminary…

Seminary is a divinity school that prepares students to become priests, ministers and rabbis.  Nowadays, you can also go to seminary to become a counselor, teacher, missionary or “super-christian”.  In Germany, young people who aspire to go into ministry have to attend seminary for 9 years while here in the States one only has to go for 2 or 3.  That discrepancy speaks quite a bit about our culture’s approach to ministry preparation.  To become a doctor, one has to attend 4 years of med school and then take on 4 years of residency afterwards.  Who wouldn’t want a well trained physician with plenty of head knowledge and hands-on experience giving them medical advice.  Yet, for pastors, most of us eek by on just a few years of theology, biblical studies and Christian thought courses.  The seminary I attended was Gordon-Conwell in S.Hamilton, MA.

Recently, as a few of my former high school and college students have entered seminary, I’ve been thinking back to what I actually learned when I was in their shoes.  In other words, what did/didn’t I know going in, and what did I learn coming out.  I think you’d be surprised.

spiritual guides

I recently had a chat with another brother at church about the lack of spiritual fathers in our lives.  We’re about the same age, he has two kids like me, and is also in a ministry that serves mostly people that are younger than us.  So our longing for an older person, someone who could speak into our lives and give us spiritual direction resonated strongly.  We laughed about how many “spiritual uncles” are around, but no true mothers or fathers.

Do you have someone older you can go to for spiritual direction, advice and wisdom?

I grew up in the church without ever having a pastor.  

don’t believe the hype

Ten years ago drugstore.com became one of the first online pharmacies. ( Remember the dot.com bubble?)  They decided to use the internet to reach a growing online customer base believing that new technology (i.e. the internet) would change everything.  With the pressure to compete with this new online competitor, Walgreens lost nearly $15 billion in market value.  If I was running Walgreens at that time, I probably would have panicked and jumped ship.  But what did Walgreens do instead?  They paused and reflected.  They decided to think!  Instead of over reacting, they used the crawl, walk, run progression in their approach to harnessing the internet.  To make a long story short, they figured out how to harness the momentum of the internet and bring it under their vision and values.  They eventually recovered and haven’t looked back since.  On the contrary, drugstore.com started to accumulate massive losses and as history shows, they burst with all the other dot.coms from the late-90’s.  Too often we buy into the illusion that image, hype and noise will make something great.  Make something sexy, and it will sell.  But the truth is, hype is just a passing fad.  Rarely is it ever sustained.  Understanding your vision and values and adapting to change is more likely to keep you in the race over the long haul.  This is why patience is such a virtue.  Psalm 27 says, “be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”  It takes strength to be patient, and we must all learn to crawl before we can walk, much less run.

positive reinforcement

Sometimes we all need a little positive reinforcement…

who takes care of you?

Someone had a deep thought once and asked the question, “If a tree in the forest falls and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?”  Maybe I don’t get the question, but my answer is “of course it does!”  I guess the deeper question behind that one is do things happen by ‘chance’  or do they happen as a result of something or someone else?  Providence is the understanding that sees God as having total knowledge and governance of all existence.  God is aware of every tree in every forest, every drop of rain that falls to the ground, every ant that carries its food back to the colony and every one of us as well.  Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable then they?”

favorite summer movies?

With the summer heat in full effect here in Boston, I’ve been feeling the need for a non-serious post.

What’s been your favorite summer blockbuster movie?

Esther and I usually go out to watch about 2 movies a month (thank you babysitters!).  But over the past summer we’ve been busy traveling and going to puppy obedience classes.  So it dawned on me that we haven’t been out to the movies all that much.  That last movie we saw was The Proposal, and though it was ok, it hardly qualifies as a blockbuster.  So next Monday we’re thinking of playing hooky from puppy classes and going to our favorite movie theater in Boston to watch a cool flick.  Any recommendations??

keep climbing…

Life is unfair, sometimes to our advantage and sometimes to our disadvantage.  We will all experience disappointments and crushing events somewhere along the way, setbacks for which there is no “reason,” no one to blame.  It could be sickness, injury, an accident, losing a loved one, you name it and someone’s dealt with it.  But what separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.  Jim Collins calls the Stockdale Paradox the ability to retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties AND AT THE SAME TIME confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.  In wrestling with life’s challenges, the ability to have faith in God’s goodness AND deal with life’s disappointments, is the key for coming back from difficulties not weakened, but stronger.  For when we are weak we are strong.

one day’s wages

The numbers are real:

• 1.4 billion people live on less than US$1.25;
• 1 billion do not have access to clean water;
• nearly 20,000 children die daily due to poverty.

This is absolutely unacceptable. Together, we can end extreme global poverty.  Extreme poverty means that if the people who are in it don’t get help, they die.  One Day’s Wages is a new international movement and organization dedicated to the fight to end extreme global poverty.  My friend Eugene Cho and his wife started this non-profit to further the cause of eliminating extreme global poverty.  And according to Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, our generation has to potential to see this happen.

ODW’s hope is to inspire millions of people to give their “one day’s wages” every year on their birthday to help the poorest of the poor.  The vision is to change global issues of injustice affecting millions of people, regardless of race, culture, sex, age, or religion. You can learn more about ODW through their website (www.onedayswages.0rg) or by visiting Eugene’s blog.  100% of your donations will go directly to fund grants, projects, and organizations that are doing amazing work amongst the poorest of the poor.  Donors give, choose who and where they want to invest, and help screen and fund thousands of organizations.  Their purpose is to promote greater awareness about global extreme poverty, invite simple financial giving, and to provide sustainable relief and empowerment through strategic collaborations. If you’ve been looking for an organization to support and give to, consider One Day’s Wages.