On Leading Well

Year: 2010

  • Book Bite: I Once Was Lost

    Recently my friend Craig recommended the book “I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus.” Craig plants postmodern churches that are raised out of the surrounding culture. He helped envision and coach 12 plants in the past three years. Craig knows what he’s talking about. So I Kindled the book and sat down to read it today.

    The book provides an excellent overview of leading people to Jesus. Authors Doug Schaupp and Don Everts work with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. In the past 10 years they (and many friends) have seen more than 2,000 college students choose to follow Jesus Christ. I like their emphasis on the path being both mysterious and organic. This is in stark contrast to the traditional/modernistic approach of classical apologetics and truth-based certainty.

    They have debriefed many of these students to get inside their heads and find out what barriers they faced in coming to know Jesus. Five thresholds that postmoderns must cross include:

    • from distrust to trust. Somewhere along the line they learned to trust a Christian.
    • from complacent to curious.
    • from being closed to change to being open to change in their life. This usually proved to be the hardest.
    • from meandering to seeking. There is a big difference between the curious investigator and someone who actively, purposefully, even urgently seeks God.
    • and finally crossing the threshold of the kingdom itself. They needed to repent and believe and give their life to Jesus.

    We serve our friends by sticking with them through each stage and helping them identify where they are on their journey toward God. Though I don’t believe each stage is as clear-cut as the book suggests, the authors’ framework will help anyone who genuinely desires to nudge, guide and lead someone else to connect with Jesus.

  • 4 Great Links to Leading Relevant Change

    Howdy from Austin, Texas. This is God’s country. Last night I enjoyed some fantastic enchiladas at Trudy’s Texas Star Cafe with my old friend John Hand. Hard to believe we pledged a fraternity here 28 years ago. So much has changed as this classic college town has grown, no, exploded, from about 300,000 residents in 1980 to nearly 2 million today.

    Local t-shirts on sale everywhere capture the emotion of people locked in constant change: Keep Austin Weird.

    Each of us is living, loving and leading through constant change today. Here are four great links I came across in the past week that ignited my imagination and courage.

    1. Stand up (or sit down) for what’s right. Fifty years ago today four black college students changed their world by sitting down for lunch at an all-white lunch counter. Their action stoked a movement that still lives on today. USA Today story here.

    2. Relevant ministry is about meeting people’s real needs. Usually it begins by giving people what they are asking for now, not by continuing to offer them what worked for the last generation. The half-life of today’s student generation is about 9 months. Are we connecting? Read Russ Martin’s excellent blog post Student: I Want Video Clips.

    3. Thots on Change, the Sense of Urgency and the Long Haul of Cultural Transformation. Jay Lorenzen’s recent post distills wisdom from John Kotter (Harvard professor) and Michael Hyatt (CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers).

    The big idea: Urgency is an essential asset that must be created and re-created in the organization…. More often than not, small companies have a sense of urgency. Why? Because their very survival is at stake. If they don’t move quickly, they get squashed by larger, more established competitors.

    On the other hand, it is rare to find large companies that truly have a sense of urgency. Their circumstances rarely demand it. They can continue with business-as-usual and do pretty well. Nothing has to be done today or even this week. Nothing is really at stake—or so they think. Often, by the time they wake up, it’s too late.

    4. Are you a Linchpin for your organization? You don’t have to be the president or CEO to initiate, create opportunities for others and solve problems that aren’t necessarily in your job description. Here’ s a great interview with Seth Godin talking about his new book, Linchpin. I highly recommend listening to Part 1 of the interview (about 9 minutes). Big idea: Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations. And in today’s world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.

    Go for it!

  • Humility Stinks

    Humility stinks.

    Humility is one of those core virtues that we hate to learn but love to possess. That’s because learning humility is too often, well, humiliating.

    Last year provided many opportunities for me to grow in humility. A pointed quote from Mark Driscoll helped kick start the process: “When we preach the gospel, we must call sinners to repent of their sin and religious people to repent of their righteousness.”

    Here’s one way this plays out in my life. I’ve noticed that once I’ve been leading something for a while I develop a certain intuition or instinct about how things should be done and how people will respond in certain situations. That’s good. The bad part is that I can begin to look down on others who don’t possess that same sense of intuition, or don’t see the same problems I see, or those who aren’t moving at a fast enough pace, or… you get the idea.

    The Dead Giveaway

    When I begin looking down on others for whatever reason, I cluck. This cluck is something my mouth does involuntarily. It’s probably imperceptible to most people. But I know I’m doing it. It’s a disdainful smack that reeks of contempt. I hate to admit it. It’s not like I do it everyday, but it happens often enough that I realize it’s an issue of the heart. I’m telling you because this is a growth area for me. And it’s a bit humiliating.

    In the gospels Jesus spent a lot of time talking about people who clucked and looked down on others. He did not view them kindly. They were the Pharisees, the best leaders that organized religion had to offer. Jesus called them to repent of thinking their way was better than others. He called them to humility.

    The apostle Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees who experienced God’s amazing grace, offered this cure for clucking:

    “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” (Romans 12:3)

    Where are you growing in humility (or humiliation)?