The Spiritual Connection with Setting Goals

August 11, 2009 in baptisms,goal setting,goals with 0 Comments

I know that we’ve all been there. The unmet goal. You tried, but you didn’t make it. These can be moments of painful deflation and reflection. I know cause I’ve been there. And often when we don’t reach a goal, we are tempted to just banish this whole concept of goal-setting and call it a day.
But I’d like to share a theological reason for setting goals.
I believe that a goal is a statement of faith. Jesus said, “according to your faith, let it be done unto you” (Matthew 9:29). Because of that, I believe that our goals are an expression of the kind of faith we have towards God. They’re an expression of how powerful you believe God to be.
Here’s an example.
At Carrollwood Church last year we baptized 19 people. We’re a pretty small church (about 85 average attending), so I was thrilled to see this many make a decision to be baptized. As the leaders of our church got together towards the end of the year, we began discussing setting a baptismal goal for 2009. Guess what number we came up with? 40. Yup.
I don’t think that church has ever had 40 baptisms in one year in its 25 year history. So is this a somewhat scary number? Yes. Am I able to make this happen? Nope. Can God make it happen? Absolutely! And that’s my point. Sometimes we set small goals that we can manage. Then when we reach our goals it’s pretty simple for us to say, “I, or if you’re feeling generous, we did it!” It’s easy to take the credit. But when you pull out a God-sized number, and you actually make it, you know that only God can take the credit for it.
  • Could David have defeated Goliath if God hadn’t guided the stones?
  • Could trumpets and screaming have brought down the walls of Jericho if God hadn’t been in it?
  • Could Moses have parted the red sea with just a simple staff?
The answer to all these is no.
So where are we at Carrollwood Church with our goal of 40 baptisms for the year? So far in the year we’ve baptized 7 people. Do we have a long while to go? Absolutely. But do I believe God can still bless us with the 40? Completely. And because we’ve set that goal, we’re spiritually focused towards doing the necessary to prepare for God’s blessing: we’re making the appeals, we’re making sure systems are in place, we’re inviting people to attend. In essence we’re just doing what God has asked us to do anyways, but since we have a numeric goal in mind, we’re doing it with more excitement.
So set goals and make them big. Don’t embarrass God with some tiny number that you can easily accomplish.

What about you? What are some goals that you’ve made and how are you preparing for the fruition of the goal? For a discussion on the mechanics of setting goals, here’s a good blog post.
[image by joleenieweenie]
*by the way. The image are not my personal goals in case you couldn’t tell.

Embracing A Posture of Readiness

August 9, 2009 in moleskin,personal productivity,productivity,readiness with 0 Comments

I used to be caught off guard by some information.

You know how it works. You’re in some kind of meeting, whether large or one-on-one, and all of a sudden some important information is shared. Whether it is a date, something that you need to take action on, or just a good quote that you would want to remember, much of this stuff often passes us by. And by us I mean me. Or more often than not I would try to scribble it down on the nearest piece of paper, or on the meeting agenda.

Here’s what would happen, though.

Days later when I wanted that particular date or quote, I would shuffle through the papers where I thought the info was. Sometimes I’d find the info and sometimes I wouldn’t.

Has that ever happened to you before? It’s surely happened to me more often than I’d like to admit. So I started being disciplined about not leaving the house without my moleskin notebook. This has helped me embrace a posture of readiness.

It’s funny because when I was younger I noticed that my dad would always carry around this green canvas notebook. Now I know why.
I know I wrote a little about it in this post, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s been a huge blessing for me, and I wanted to share it again with you. Now there is one central notebook that is the repository for any information when I’m away from my laptop. And here again is the little hack I use to carry a pen with my moleskin.

It’s working for me anyway. What’s working for you?

The Myth of the Perfect Leader on Planet Perfect

August 6, 2009 in leadership,perfect leaders,planet perfect with 2 Comments

Welcome to Planet Perfect!

You haven’t been there before? Well it’s a great place, let me tell you. The temperature is always a soothing 77 degrees. The beaches have no jelly-fish. The water is always crisp and clear. The people are always beautiful and smiling. If you listen closely when you walk by them you can hear the “bling” sound from their smiling teeth.

The clothes that people wear is always pressed and perfectly clean. It makes you wonder how they always get those wrinkles out, especially around the arms of the shirts, which can sometimes be tricky.

But what you’d really be impressed with are the people themselves. They always say stuff like “hallelujah,” and “praise the Lord.” I mean all the time. Even when things are going really rough in their lives. They never utter anything else. Like robots. Kind of makes you want to look for the outline of wires and screws in the parts of their hair. Just suspiciously mechanical.

It seems that these people on Planet Perfect were convinced that good Christians can never express anything but praise. They can’t express frustration. They aren’t allowed to ever doubt, anything. They can’t say things like, “I wonder why this happened in my life?”

And when they log onto Facebook or Twitter they only put stuff like “at my desk.” Or “working.” Or “just finished visiting someone at the hospital.” And when you’re with them in person they’re always quoting Scripture and life is ever sunny. It’s really quite impressive, but rather disappointing.

You see, because outside of Planet Perfect there are real people. With flesh. With frustrations. With questions. And they share them. And they’re not afraid to let people in and see that they are humans, too.

I think people enjoy living on Planet Perfect because they think that if anyone knew anything deeper about their lives, they would write them off as a leader. They would stop following. And then they would cease to be a Perfect Leader.

Well guess what? It’s a myth.

I recently hung out with some leaders like this. That shared from their hearts about things in their lives. Some deep things. And guess what happened? Did I write them off? Nope. It made me respect them more. It made me love them more. It made me more willing to be a part of their lives. Some don’t understand that “transparency corresponds to trust.” Too much transparency just corresponds to weirdness, though, so be careful. Just saying.

I heard there’s a rocket that leaves everyday at 3pm, and shuttles people from Planet Perfect to Planet Earth. If you’ve never been to the big green planet, I encourage you to come over. The temperature fluctuates a little more than at Planet Perfect, but I think you’ll find that it’s a really special place.

And one more thing: bring your flip-flops.

[image by Blyzz]

I’m a Mechanic

August 4, 2009 in book review,books,mechanic with 9 Comments

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself in three and a half years of full time ministry it’s this: i’m not a theologian or a philosopher. I’m a mechanic.

Allow me to explain.
I really enjoy reading different kinds of books. Right now I’ve been reading some different books for a leadership coaching network I’m in. Some of the books seem quite practical. But some of the other books, and these are the ones I’m not really enjoying, are extremely philosophical and theological. It’s as if I can feel my eyes beginning to glaze over. It’s not that I don’t like to be challenged intellectually or anything, it’s just that if I can’t find a direct anchor point in something that’s practical and that I can apply, I lose focus in it and stop caring.
Here’s an example from the book “Surrender to Love.”
This is from one of the last chapters called “Becoming Love,” and a section called “Love and the Cross.”
“When I am confronted with my frequent failures in love, my first instinct has always been to try harder. I recognize the poverty of my love. I recall how love is the single most important criterion of my spiritual transformation. I feel regret and discouragement. I pray for help in becoming more loving. I try harder and nothing changes…The reason nothing changes is that the focus is still on me–my failures, my remorse, my discouragement, my effort. Love requires leaving all this behind–all my self-preoccupation and all my willful striving. Love cannot simply be a result of discipline and resolve. It must flow from the heart.”

Ok, here goes. This is not going to sound very pastoral-like…but reading stuff like that makes me want to vomit. I’m sorry. It just seems like meaningless psychological babble. It’s not even grounded in a clear Scripture or even good theology.
I’m always asking myself as I read something, “so what?” I want to be able to find some application for it. I want to see how and why things fit together. And if possible, I wouldn’t mind tweaking it so it works better.
So please don’t give me this weird abstract stuff. It doesn’t do anything good for me but annoy me and long to demand that psychologists quit dabbling in theology. It rarely works well.
I’m a mechanic. I prefer to dabble with things I can hold and feel.
On which end of the spectrum do you find yourself?
[image by afsliva]

Releasing an Army of Volunteers

August 3, 2009 in best buy,ministry teams,technology,volunteers with 2 Comments

Have you seen those BestBuy commerials? The one where a guy/girl is standing in the middle of a stadium, asks a question, and thousands of BestBuy employees are there, ready to help with answers?
All I could say is wow.
The concept of what they’re doing is really simple. They’re releasing many of their employees to be available on twitter to answer questions that you might have.
Why is this important?
Firstly, what a great way to leverage technology. This is way better than just going to one store and asking an employee for his opinion. In theory, you could have quite a few eyeballs on your question and quite a few responses.
Secondly, this must create an incredible sense of momentum and warm-fuzzy-vibes (couldn’t think of a more technical term) for the employees. They’re being released to help people. They’re making a contribution. And nobody is paying them extra for it. What a beautiful recipe for making a difference.
Not only that, but a company that is willing to make their people “available” like that to help is going to engender a greater amount of trust, loyalty, and good will from the customer.
This is the same exact principle that we try to do as churches. Releasing every single person to be missionaries and to minister. This is easier said than done, though.
I wonder how we could release our people in a similar way to serve and minister, all while leverage a similar use of technology?

[image by ShockandAwe]
In case you haven’t seen the commercial, here it is below.

My Two Simple Steps For Getting Things Done

July 29, 2009 in getting things done,moleskin,personal productivity,productivity,tasks with 0 Comments

I want to share how I usually attempt to get things done.

But first, let’s just admit that personal productivity is one of those phrases that’s been used and abused. We hear the word and immediately conjure up images of amazing multi-taskers: those people who drive while listening to audiobooks, eat while reading something, and even yes, figure out a way to get an extra project done while going to the loo.

This is not what I’ll share about.

To get to where I am (which is just a notch above no system) I’ve gone through a little journey. I attempted to read THE book on getting things done: Getting Things Done. However, I got lost in the quite involved process on how to prepare to get things done. Failure.

I also tried and tested several software programs and iphone apps such as Remember the Milk, and others, but I was never able to stick to them. Epic failure.

Most recently I’ve just been creating little “notes” on my mac mail program. Here’s what it looks like:
It’s really simple and it works. But I found some tools that work better.
So here’s my high tech solution for getting things done. A notebook.
But not just any notebook, a Moleskin notebook. They’re simple and indestructible. Plus, they look pretty cool, so that takes care of that. For a simple series with more info on how you might use one click here. I carry this with me everywhere. If I need to take notes on the fly, I write it down in here. Write a quick to do list while away from my mac. In it goes. In a board meeting and need to take notes. In it goes.

Here’s a pic of my notebook and a few things I jotted down today:
David Allen, of Gettings Things Done fame, talks about how many people remain really stressed out because there are lots of tasks floating around in their heads (he calls them “open loops”) that they have to do, but then they forget them without writing them down. The first step he talks about is dumping all the info into a “bucket.” This notebook is my bucket. If I hear a nice quote or get a blog post idea, I write it inside here. I think one of the reasons this notebook works so well is because, for me, it’s the central repository for info. No scraps of paper. No stickies. Just the one notebook.
By the way, here’s a great hack for how to carry a pen with your moleskin. It works!

So that’s step number one.

Step number two is just as easy: Google Tasks. The reason this works so great is because it’s super simple and you can open up a task window from inside your gmail. If you don’t use gmail, it’s time to stop being lame and begin. It’s the best email system out there period. Not hotmail. Or yahoo. It’s gmail. Ok, sorry….enough.

So what I’ve been doing is at the end of a day, I’ll open up a new task box that I will work on the next day. I spend a minute evaluating what didn’t get done, and then adding in what I have to work on for the next day. If I’m on the computer and think of something, I quickly go to the window and add it. And best of all, if I have to hit the road, the tasks come with me “virtually” on my iphone through the Google Task app. This is the same principle as just writing out a simple to do list in my notebook, but I type quicker than I write, so I prefer to do it there.

So that’s it. Nothing too special. But it’s a system that’s simple and has been working for me. The key is just about writing things down in a central location.

What about you? What’s been working for you? How do you get things done?

[image by fuchsphoto]

The Role of Humility In Leadership

July 27, 2009 in good to great,humility,leadership,leadership books with 2 Comments

I just started reading the book Good to Great, and was struck by an interesting finding.

The purpose of the book, of course, was to analyze companies that went from average or good, to great. The author and team researched thousands of companies, narrowed the case studies to eleven, and began to dig deep into each one, extrapolating from the research what made these companies go from good to great.
So what stood out about the leaders of these companies? Humility.
Here’s what Jim Collins says, “In contrast to the very I-centric style of the comparison leaders, we were struck by how the good-to-great leaders didn’t talk about themselves. During interviews with the good-to-great leaders, they’d talk about the company and the contributions of other executives as long as we’d like but would deflect discussion about their own contributions” (p. 27).
On the flip side, there were a different breed of executives who also showed exceptional aptitude, but that suffered with pride and huge egos. During their tenure as executives these companies generally did really well. The fall of the companies came after that particular executive left. It seems that because these executives were so self-absorbed, they didn’t care too much to prepare the next generation of leaders that would follow. (Somebody should have given them some John Maxwell books).
Again, here’s Collins: “In over two thirds of the comparison cases, we noted the presence of a gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company” (p. 29).
The reasons for the success of these leaders and companies can’t just be attributed to humility, of course, but this was a clear commonality that all of these leaders exhibited.
Reminds me of the Scripture in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
So what’s the lesson in all of this? It would be too simplistic, I think, to say, “ok, be humble, then, and your organization will do better.” Humility is not exactly a skill set, per se, like practicing your jump shot in basketball. For the Christian, humility is an expression of an inward change. It’s the fruit of a change at the root (Galatians 5:22-23).
So what can you do? I would work on following Jesus, and going where He tells you to go and doing what He tells you to do. The bumpy roads through which He sometimes leads us seems to be a good recipe for keeping that ego in check.
What would you suggest?
[image by Andy b]
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