Let Hope Rise

This morning I had the privilege of sharing a devotion with our middle and upper school faculty.  It was a weighty challenge for me to consider and I hope it will be an encouragement to you!

Over the course of the last several weeks, God has really been speaking to my heart a powerful message of HOPE.  It seems to be the theme of everything I read, things I see, and conversations that I have.

I just finished reading the book The Noticer by Andy Andrews. (Check out my review here)  The whole premise of the book is understanding that you were created by God to do something great.  Sometimes all it takes is someone to remind you of that every once in a while.  How many times have you noticed someone around you that needs some encouragement?  How many times have you acted on that?  The Noticer is about being the catalyst that can activate the hopes and dreams that get locked up in a person due to feelings of inadequacy and failure.

Last Thursday night, NCCS hosted Dave Ramsey’s Town Hall for Hope.  (Check out my review here)  He spent time talking about the economy and what God’s Word has to say about our finances.  He challenged the listeners to avoid “the loser talk”.  It is so easy for us to get caught up in the negative things about the economy and our world right now.

God really convicted me about how easy it is to get caught up in the loser talk.  It is so much easier to commiserate with all that is going wrong than it is to celebrate the things that are going great.

As we consider our own school, it is easy to look at next year’s enrollment and be discouraged that it is lower than we anticipated.  But…instead shouldn’t we be excited that close to 700 kids are already reenrolled for next year?  In this economy where everyone is watching every dollar…we have that many families that are investing in eternity by choosing Christian education for their child!

Is it easy to complain that the master site plan isn’t blazing along as fast as we hoped?  Sure, but how many of us have come from other schools or visited other schools that would be over the moon to have the facilities we currently have?  How often are we thankful for the nice buildings that we already have?  Spend some time talking to the people who were here 25 years ago when our school started and hear the excitement in their voices as they talk about when they moved in to the buildings we currently have.

Do I realize that we are surrounded by people who are looking for jobs?  People that we currently work with are looking for jobs.  Am I grieved by that?  Definitely!  I love these folks, but I pray that they find hope in the fact that God loves them way more than any of us ever could.  He desires for them to be fulfilled and for their families to be provided for.  I’d much rather place my hope in Him than in a job or an organization.  God has a plan for all of us!

God drew my attention the other day to I Peter chapter 1 starting in verse 13…

Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.

I love the part where this passage talks about the empty way of life that was handed down to us by our forefathers and the fact that Jesus was chosen before the creation of the world to redeem us so that through His resurrection and victory over death, our faith and hope are in God!  If that doesn’t get you fired up, I don’t know what will!

God has used these verses and several powerful messages of hope to challenge me to focus on Him and not allow Satan to distract me from what God is doing in and around me at all times.

I closed out our time of devotion by playing a song “With Everything” on my guitar.  It is written by Hillsong and it talks about seeing with the eyes of God and laying down ourselves and our pride in favor of His glory.  The chorus says, “Let hope rise and darkness tremble in your Holy light, And every eye will see, Jesus, our God, great and mighty to be praised.”  Let’s partner together to let hope rise so that the darkness will tremble in the light of Christ.

I am going to leave you with the words of this song.  May our hearts cry out in victory today over the fact that Jesus is alive, He isn’t lessened by the state of our economy or our own worries.  He has triumphed over sin, death, hell, and the grave and He wants us to let hope rise.  It is an honor to serve alongside each of you and I truly believe that greater things are yet to come here!

WITH EVERYTHING
Hillsong

Open our eyes,
To see the things
That make Your heart cry,
To be the church
That You would desire.
Light to be seen.

Break down our pride,
And all the walls
We’ve built up inside,
Our earthly crowns
And all our desires,
We lay at Your feet.

So let hope rise,
And darkness tremble
In Your holy light,
And every eye will see
Jesus, our God,
Great and mighty to be praised.

God of all days,
Glorious in all of Your ways.
Your majesty, the wonder and grace,
In the light of Your name.

With everything,
With everything,
We will shout for your glory.

With everything,
With everything,
We will shout forth your praise.

Our hearts will cry
Be glorified,
Be lifted high,
Above all names.
For You our King,
With everything,
We will shout forth your praise.

Book Review: The Noticer

I had the privilege of reading The Noticer by Andy Andrews as a part of the blogging book review team at Thomas Nelson Publishing.

The description alone was pretty intriguing…

A moving story of common wisdom from the bestselling author of The Traveler’s Gift.

Orange Beach, Alabama is a simple town filled with simple people. But they all have their share of problems – marriages teetering on the brink of divorce, young adults giving up on life, business people on the verge of bankruptcy, and many of the other obstacles that life seems to dish out to the masses.

Fortunately, when things look the darkest – a mysterious old man named Jones has a miraculous way of showing up. Communicating what he calls “a little perspective,” Jones explains that he has been given a gift of noticing things that others miss. In his simple interactions, Jones speaks to that part in everyone that is yearning to understand why things happen and what they can do about it.

Based on a remarkable true story, The Noticer beautifully blends fiction, allegory, and inspiration.

This book is a quick read.  I found a sunny day and a comfy chair on my deck and easily read it in about an hour and a half.  As soon as I finished, I knew this was a book I had to pass along quickly.  In the midst  of what seems to be a hopeless situation with our economy, this book is all about harnessing hope through the lens of a new perspective.

The whole premise of the book is understanding that you were created by God to do something great.  Sometimes all it takes is someone to remind you of that every once in a while.  How many times have you noticed someone around you that needs some encouragement?  How many times have you acted on that?  The Noticer is about being the catalyst that can activate the hopes and dreams that can get locked up in a person due to feelings of inadequacy and failure.

As I was reading the book, I was challenged to think back about those people that noticed something in me and encouraged me to pursue the gifts and talents God had given me.  I was even more pressed to recognize the place of influence that I can have in peoples lives.  Throughout our lives, we will alternate between being the “noticer” and being the “noticed”.  What season are you in?  And what are you doing about it?

Book Review: Leading from the Second Chair

Finally finished reading Leading from the Second Chair by Mike Bonem and Roger Patterson. I actually started reading this back in January and just finished it today.  It’s not that it is a hard read, it’s just not one of those books that I wanted to sit down and read in one sitting.  I wanted to soak in this one.  I really felt like God was calling me to read this book.  Does that sound silly to you?  Sounded silly to me too, until I finished the book today.

Here, here, and here are my first three posts about why I wanted to read this book and some of my initial thoughts.  I took a break from reading this book for a while as I was thinking through this particular season in my leadership development.  I’m glad I came back to it!  These are some of my final takeaways.  Be sure to check out those original posts to see my other thoughts at the beginning of the book.

These notes are straight from the text of the book.  If you are in second chair leadership…this book is a must for you.

• If you are not prepared to be patient while trust grows, you are unlikely to reach your full potential as a second chair leader.
• You should have a clear idea of the first chair’s strengths and weaknesses, and how your abilities might compliment them.  (notice it says compliment and not compete with!)
• Hebrew 13:17 “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority…Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
• A first chair is not going to expand your duties if you underperform in your current role.
• God can use a time of prayerful waiting for great spiritual and professional development in your life.
• A second chair leader is someone with an organizationwide perspective and a passion to see the entire body perform at its very best.
• Ric Hodgin, of the A.D. Players, says that as a second chair leader you are “always walking the line of being 100 percent supportive of the one person above you, dealing with the needs of everyone below, and making these match.”
• Contentment is possible if you choose to understand that something more is always at work in your experiences, beyond your needs, expectations, and frustration.
• The opportunities for ministry are always greater than the time available, so we must prioritize our activities and pace ourselves for the long run.
• Leave your ego behind; it is God’s dream.
• Staying in place does not mean being stagnant.  God can grow you tremendously through seasoning and waiting.
• Any dream that is worth pursuing has a price.  When the pieces finally fit together, Joseph understood the price of a dream that was far beyond his original chair.  He realized God had been at work in a greater way than he could see, but the price was high.

Book Review: Getting Things Done

I am often a freak about productivity.  I cannot stand for things to pile up and often set aside large chunks of time dedicated just to “getting things done”.  I ready Getting Things Done by David Allen with the hopes of picking up some good ideas about how to streamline my to-do lists with my workspace and my tasks with my priorities.  Great read…not a ton of revolutionary ideas, just a practical guide for being more efficient with what you are doing.

Here are some of my takeaways straight from the book…

-It’s possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.

-Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does.

-Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time.  They get stuck because the doing of them has not been defined.

-No matter what the setting, there are five discrete stages that we go through as we deal with our work.  We (1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do.

-Have you envisioned wild success lately?

-In general, the reason things are on your mind is that the outcome and the action steps have not been appropriately defined, and/or reminders of them have not been put in places where you can be trusted to look for them appropriately.

-One of the best tricks for enhancing your personal productivity is having organizing tools that you love to use.

-Actions choices are based on the following four criteria, in order: context, time available, energy available, and priority.

If you are interested in specific tools to help you be more successful in “getting things done”, check out David Allen’s website here.

Recap: Town Hall for Hope

We were pumped to be able to host Dave Ramsey’s Town Hall for Hope at N Cobb Christian last week.  Even with some interesting situations caused by the weather (hail, high winds, torrential downpours, and tornado warnings), we still had over 40 people come to check it out.  I can honestly say I’m glad with did this.  All of us that gathered for this event definitely left with the hope we were wanting to find.  I appreciate Dave and his bold way of using God’s truths to teach people successful financial principles.  Here are some takeaways from the night.

-”serve” customers not milk them like a cow

- when we serve them well they give you profit

- profit is the applause from our customers

- love people enough to allow them to fail

- failure when chasing you will run you into excellence

- commision based and need more base salary? - your raise is effective when you are. No increase in base salary just need to increase your productivity.

- #1 quality in succesful people is perseverance

-We need to get back to personal responsibility.  You shot it Tarzan, you eat it!  Take responsiblity for your mess!

-We need to love people enough to let them fail.

- economy not like cake - I take a big piece = you get smaller piece. It is like candles - I light one and you get light but didn’t cost anyone else anything

- work like it all depends on us(you) but pray like it all depends on God
-For some Christians…prayer is code for “I don’t want to face reality.”  You can pray while you are working!
- now is best time to buy housing ONLY if you have $$

- Need 3-6 months emergency fund AND some extra in bank

- Need to think in the future not present. Get a degree wherever possible.

- Learn about investment from someone who has a teacher mentality

- Is $ safe in the bank? Do business with small banks and local credit unions.

- what do we do with our savings. Inflation is coming if congress doesn’t get under control. $ will become less valuable if govt keeps throwing it into economy

- invest in things that will go up in value (real estate, mutual funds - pay for it)

- gold? Don’t invest in it. From 1833 to 2001 avg 1.5% per year. From 2001 to now avg is 15%. Its very volatle and is currently at a 170 year high. Gold doesn’t become valuable in a wiped out economy, Bartering does. Look at New Orleans after Katrina. Nobody had a bag of gold, but you could trade water or gas for anything.

-Gold is the “Snuggie” of investments.  You buy it off the tv late at night and it makes you look stupid for buying it!

- Jobs are the symptom of a bad economy not the cause. Job creation doesn’t (by itself) fix the economy. What fixes the economy is the consumer buying goods and services again which in turn drives the mfr/provider to hire more workers

-The leader of the organization has got to be the one that is serving the most.

-We the people, could GIVE the government out of business.

- 3 perceptions to look at re: Hope

- TAKE ACTION! get up and do something. Even if it doesn’t make sense, the activity makes you feel better and inspires hope

- DON’T PARTICIPATE IN LOSER TALK. Stay positive and be around wining people. (Your income will be within 10% of your 10 closest friends - quote). Always be around wining people.

- LEARN TO GIVE AGAIN. We need to share/give more (not necessarily $ but our time/talent). This inspires us as we see/help those who maybe have less than us. The more we give the more hope we receive.
Only one can provide the Hope we need - Jesus Christ!

-Hope doesn’t come from Washington…it comes from the nail-scarred hands of Jesus.

(Thanks Sean for sharing some of these with me.  This is a combination of his notes and my tweets throughout the night.)

Just Wanna Say

This is probably the most creative music video I’ve ever seen!

Israel Houghton “Just Wanna Say”

Emma: 5 months

Emma turned 5 months old today.  What a treasure she has been to Clint and I!  We are so thankful that God chose to bless us with such a precious little girl!

Freedom Church

We are on Spring Break this week and Clint, Emma, and I headed out to Memphis for a few days.  Since we were out of town, we missed Freedom Church this week.  We really MISSED Freedom Church this week.  We were talking about some of the things we love and this video really sums up most of it. This is the video that Ian made for the one year anniversary of Freedom Church back in January.

1 Year Anniversary Recap from Freedom Media on Vimeo.

Town Hall for Hope

I am pretty pumped that we are hosting this at North Cobb Christian School on Thursday, April 23 at 8pm.  Invite some folks to come with you and hear a message of Hope in the midst of uncertain times in our nation.

Book Review: The Power of Team Leadership

ABSTRACT

God did not create us to do life alone.  In his book, The Power of Team Leadership, George Barna lays out many of the benefits of working as a part of a team.  All throughout the Bible, there are many stories of God moving in a community or a fellowship of believers.  Pastors and leaders can avoid the pitfalls that are lurking for those that adopt a lone ranger leadership style.

George Barna is well known for surveys and statistics.  He spent the first part of the book identifying the problem that many churches face when the staff and the pastor attempt to go it alone.  The middle section of the book talks about all of the benefits of working as a team.  The final section of The Power of Team Leadership focuses on implementation of teams and shares some land mines to avoid in the process.

Many great ministry leaders burn out because they are hired based on their strengths, but often required to serve as leaders in areas that they are weak.  Barna asks if we are setting up pastors for failure by sticking to this solo leadership model rather than recognizing the talents and abilities sitting right there in the pew in front of the pastor week after week.  Even the most dynamic leaders have areas that they are weak in.  Our society is known for encouraging people to just suck it up and figure it out.

Barna points out, “A major advantage of being led by a team is that the results almost always transcend what any individual from that team could have produced without the assistance of the other leaders involved in that team. ”  No matter how charismatic or skilled your leader is, there will always be areas of their ministry that could be stronger.  That is where a leader must be willing to ask for help.

Many leaders feel like it is admitting defeat to ask someone to serve alongside them in order to carry out the vision of the church.  Barna was quick to point out the teams that allowed Moses, Nehemiah, Joshua, and others to be remembered as great leaders.

The middle of the book focuses on vision and the importance of focusing on the task at hand.  There are also some specifics about how teams should be made up and the different aptitudes of a leader.  It is important to realize that a poorly organized team can often be worse than no team at all.   It takes a good combination of talents and abilities in order to execute the vision of the organization.  Simply getting along is not a good enough standard for team building.

Barna points out three qualifications he looks for in building a team.  He said that you must look for people “who have been called by God to lead, who have godly character, and who possess the competencies to help people fulfill God’s vision for the group.  “  If any of those areas are missing, that person will not be able to help the team accomplish their goals.

The rest of the book is spent explaining the benefits of team leadership and things to consider when implementing teams in your ministry.  Barna doesn’t claim that the transformation to team leadership is an easy one, but he does prove that it is a necessary change to fulfill the vision of the ministry.

CONCRETE RESPONSE

This book did a great job unpacking all of the benefits of working as a part of a team.  I have grown up playing a variety of sports and have always enjoyed being a part of a team atmosphere.  I have all of the t-shirts that say, “There is no ‘I’ in Team” and “TEAM means Together Everyone Achieves More”.  Barna did a great job detailing all of the benefits of teamwork, but I am not sure that I heard anything new or revolutionary.

In my work as a Christian school administrator, it has been exciting to see how we have been able to integrate teams into our planning over the last few years.  Our school is accredited by a variety of associations and we have certain things that we must do to renew our accreditation each year.  One of these governing bodies puts out a list of standards and rubrics that schools will be graded on.  In order to be fully accredited, you must be compliant in every standard that applies to your particular school.

At our school, we have decided that rather than just being compliant, we would rather exceed compliance in each area.  We have a nine-member board of directors and a twelve-member administrative council.  We could take these groups and charge them with the task of assessing each area and putting a plan together to help our school reach excellence in each area.

However, we would be pretty foolish to think that those twenty-one people could express all the great ideas in the school.  Instead, we have decided to tap into the one hundred and twenty-five staff members we have and organize them into teams to accomplish this task. We have sixteen teams that will be focusing on areas such as governance, philosophy, crisis management, spiritual development, safety and school health, and personnel.

Administrative council members lead some of the school improvement teams and other staff members lead some.  There is a nice mix of people on each team.  Some of them are heavily involved in that particular area and some of them are completely new to the area they are working in.  We are only about seven weeks into our school improvement teams, but so far the process has been very interesting.  We have grown a lot more already than we every would have if we had just relied on those twenty-one people we started with.

REFLECTION

As an athlete, a coach, a youth minister, and now an administrator, I have been to tons of conferences and seminars on team building.  It seems that each month someone comes out with a new way of doing teams or a revolutionary way to achieve your desired results.  One of the major pitfalls I see for most organizations is a failure to follow through with the team approach.

Barna talked about the fact that many churches will head towards building teams only to get frustrated and revert back to the old style of solo leadership.  That does more damage than anything because you have convinced people that their input matters and then shut the door on them just when the team starts to gel.

I think the biggest pitfall for team-based ministry is the amount of noise out there right now focusing on teams.  Is it better to listen to George Barna, John Maxwell, Patrick Lencioni, or Seth Godin?  Should your team leader be equal to the rest of the team in the organizational chart or should they be in a higher authority role?

I appreciate the fact that Barna did address one of the largest landmines in team-based ministry.  A lot of organizations tend to find that one charismatic leader that everyone loves and run them into the group.  They are asked to be on multiple teams because people feel that they have so much to offer.  Barna encourages the church to only let people serve on one team at a time.  Otherwise, their passion will be divided and they won’t be very effective for any team.

Barna discussed the process of disbanding a team once their mission had been accomplished.  I would have like to have seem him spend some time talking about what to do in the case that a team just never worked.  Occasionally a team is not able to come together to carry out the vision it has been charged with.  One of the major downfalls in a lot of organizations is not knowing when to pull the plug on an ineffective team.

ACTION

The Power of Team Leadership was a great reminder for me of the benefits of working as a part of a team.  I was also reminded of some areas that I currently lead that would be better served by developing a team approach.

I am responsible for Student Life at our school. The Student Life Program is designed to connect students and to create environments for them to build relationships and grow in Christ. Our desire is to give our students an opportunity to develop a Biblical worldview. We do that through a variety of academic, athletic, arts programs. Our Student Life program comes alongside our students to encourage and equip them in their walk with Christ.

One of the major ministries that falls in this area is chapel.  We have chapel each week on Wednesday mornings for our middle and upper school students.  They chapels meet separately for about an hour each.  Throughout the year a variety of people participate in our chapel by leading worship, speaking, and otherwise helping communicate God’s truth to our students.  I get informal input throughout the year from our teachers, students, and families.  Occasionally a group of us will sit down to develop a particular chapel series or event.

I realize that it would be more effective to have a chapel team that met regularly throughout the year.  This group should be made up of six to eight people including both teachers and students.  If the group met once a month, we could spend half of our meeting fine-tuning the chapels that are coming in the next couple of weeks and the other half doing some long-range planning and dreaming.  This strategy would afford us the best opportunity to reach those that are far from God for His glory so that they could experience new life in Christ.  It would also allow us to have a more effective discipleship strategy for those students that are already Christ-followers.

In response to reading The Power of Team Leadership, I will take time to pray about who God would lead me to invite to participate in this chapel leadership team.  When we return from spring break in two weeks, I will organize a meeting of this team so that we can work together to make sure our last five chapels of this school year are the best that they can possibly be!

It is exciting to see how God is working in the lives of people around us.  I believe that God desires for us to harness the power of community and use our combined efforts to reach people for His glory.  God created us to live in community and to serve others in such a way that they too would be attracted to having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.