Life time Learner, Youth Pastor, Evangelist and Motivational Speaker.

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: True North Groups

« First Look: Leadership Books for December 2011 | Leading Blog Main Page | 3 Ways to Be a Positive Leader » 12.07.11 True North Groups You can’t do it alone. We often try to, imagining that we can see and know the things we need to know without the discerning eye of a outside point of view. Bill George and Doug Baker remind us in True North Groups that, “We need people around us to whom we can look for support and advice, who can help us develop as human beings. We need them to help us become better leaders in our work, our communities, and our families.” It’s easy to get off track. “Most of us know what our True North is, but we are constantly pressured from external sources to deviate from it. Or we are seduced by extrinsic rewards like money, power, and recognition that cause us to detour from our True North.” A True North Group is comprised of six to eight trusted peers who meet on a regular basis to discuss the important questions of their lives and to support each other during difficult times. At various times, each person in the group will serve as a mentor or coach to others. True North Groups are not just about having a place to go to help you with your challenges. Done well, a group will encourage you to make the necessary course corrections that will help you to avoid the avoidable problems we all can get ourselves into. Save us from ourselves so to speak. It’s also a place to share successes. At stake is our own vulnerability. Even if we are afraid of the idea, it’s not difficult to see the value in it. George and Baker have been doing this for decades and share the nuts and bolts of creating your own group. It begins with picking the right people and that may not include your close friends. It’s based on trust and a commitment to personal growth. The authors list the following characteristics of ideal group members: Curiosity about themselves, others and the world Willingness to challenge assumptions about life Comfort with self-reflection Commitment to continuing personal growth Respect for themselves and others Ability to listen without judgment Ability to hold confidences Willingness to be open and share their life stories Not self-absorbed Ability to commit time and energy to the group A sense of humor and a positive outlook on life is always helpful. Next steps include, Norming (establishing how the group functions), Storming (behaviors that may impede your group), Performing (maintaining and renewing your group) and Reforming (the need to restructure and start again). The appendix provides topics for discussion to get

via www.leadershipnow.com

I love Pastor Gene Appel Powerful Christian Message Service........I love this Church......Wowww.http://media.aspireone.com/mediaplayer/eastside/

7 Ways Satan Tries to Destroy a Church | Ron Edmondson

Here are 7 way Satan tries to destroy a church:

Church conflict – Satan loves business meetings that get out of hand or when two church members have disagreements outside of church. He loves when church members argue about trivial things, such as colors of the carpet or big things, such as whether to add another service. Doesn’t matter to him. Show him a good argument potential and he’s willing to stir the fire.

Burnout – Satan loves to burn out a church volunteer, staff member, or pastor. If he can make them feel they are no longer needed, their work is not appreciated, or that they no longer have anything to offer…he feels he’s winning part of the battle.

Rumors – Satan is the stirrer of dissension. He likes to plant little seeds of a juicy story, about someone in the church or community…sometimes even the pastor or staff…and watch them quickly spread through a church congregation or community. The version, of course, usually grows to a larger portion than reality. Satan likes that too.

Busyness – Satan loves to distract church goers with a plethora of activity that produces little results in Kingdom-building.

Lies – Satan attempts to interject what he calls a “half-truth”; just a hint of false doctrine and then watch it disrupt or divide a body. Of course, we all know that half-truth is really just a cleaned up version of a bold face lie, but Satan is clever enough to disguise a lie in a way where false teachers gain entry and do damage before being discovered.

Scandal – Satan loves a good, juicy, gossipy news headline in the local paper. If it will split, divide or destroy a church body…even better. If it will destroy someone’s Kingdom calling or work…he’ll take that too.

Marriage and family disruptions – Satan loves to destroy any relationship, but he also goes after key leader’s marriages; even the pastor’s marriage. He likes to encourage prodigal children. He wants to cause families to fight within the church and fight with the church. Satan knows if he can destroy a home, he has a better chance of destroying a church.

Thankfully, there is good news:

You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 1 John 4:4

via www.ronedmondson.com

Nation & World | Christmas attacks kill 39 in Nigeria | Seattle Times Newspaper

Elsewhere, a bomb exploded amid gunfire in the central Nigeria city of Jos and a suicide car bomber attacked the military in the nation's northeast as part of an apparently coordinated assault by the sect known as Boko Haram.

The Christmas Day violence, denounced by world leaders and the Vatican, shows the threat of the widening insurrection posed by Boko Haram against Nigeria's weak central government. Despite a recent paramilitary crackdown against the sect in the oil-rich nation, it appears that Africa's most populous nation remains unable to stop the threat.

The first explosion on Sunday struck St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla near Nigeria's capital just after 8 a.m. The attack killed 35 people and wounded 52 more, said Slaku Luguard, a coordinator with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

Though billions of dollars of oil money flow into the nation's budget yearly, Luguard's agency could only send text messages to journalists asking for their help in getting more ambulances.

via seattletimes.nwsource.com

"I'm a leader, not a manager!"http://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2011/12/im-a-leader-not-a-manager.html

Both leadership and management are crucial, and it doesn't help those responsible for the work of others to romanticize one and devalue the other. To survive and succeed, all groups and businesses must simultaneously change in some ways and remain the same in others. They must execute and innovate, stay the course and foster change. Yes, the guidance, group skills, and mindsets required for serious change and innovation differ from those needed for continuity and steady execution. But that only means those in charge must be able to act as both change agent and steward of continuity, manager and leader, as the situation requires. The challenge is to discern when one versus the other is needed. To idealize leadership and demean management only makes that challenge even harder.

To avoid all the positive and negative connotations around "leadership" and "management" today, we often use the term "boss." It's not a perfect title — no one likes to be "bossed around." To paraphrase Mary Parker Follett, a management writer in the early 1900s, the mark of a good boss is how little actual bossing he or she must do. Still, "boss" or its equivalent in other languages is widely used across generations and cultures to refer neutrally to the person in charge, the one responsible for the work of others, the one to whom each of us must answer at work.

If you're a boss, think of yourself as the one responsible for the work of others, the one who must manage and lead as necessary, without favoring one over the other. Focus on whatever is required of you to make your people productive. Most of all, take care not to conceive of yourself as the glorious leader always blazing new trails while leaving the gritty, mundane details of making it all work to lesser beings. Kent's friend may say, "I'm not a manager," but the survival of his business probably owes as much to his management skills as it does his leadership talents. 

via paper.lihttp://blogs.hbr.org/hill-lineback/2011/12/im-a-leader-not-a-manager.html

Jim Wallis: The Real War On Christmas... By Fox News

The war on Christmas is really about what brand of “civil religion” America should have. The particular (read: biblical) meaning of Christmas, for Christians, has almost nothing to do with the media war.

What a surprise.

What is Christmas? It is the celebration of the Incarnation, God’s becoming flesh — human — and entering into history in the form of a vulnerable baby born to a poor, teenage mother in a dirty animal stall. Simply amazing. That Mary was homeless at the time,a member of a people oppressed by the imperial power of an occupied country whose local political leader, Herod, was so threatened by the baby’s birth that he killed countless children in a vain attempt to destroy the Christ child, all adds compelling historical and political context to the Advent season.

The theological claim that sets Christianity apart from any other faith tradition is the Incarnation. God has come into the world to save us. God became like us to bring us back to God and show us what it means to be truly human.

That is the meaning of the Incarnation. That is the reason for the season.

In Jesus Christ, God hits the streets.

It is theologically and spiritually significant that the Incarnation came to our poorest streets. That Jesus was born poor, later announces his mission at Nazareth as “bringing good news to the poor,” and finally tells us that how we treat “the least of these” is his measure of how we treat him and how he will judge us as the Son of God, radically defines the social context and meaning of the Incarnation of God in Christ. And it clearly reveals the real meaning of Christmas.

The other explicit message of the Incarnation is that Jesus the Christ’s arrival will mean “peace on earth, good will toward men.” He is “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.” Jesus later calls on his disciples to turn the other cheek, practice humility, walk the extra mile, put away their swords, love their neighbors — and even their enemies — and says that in his kingdom, it is the peacemakers who will be called the children of God. Christ will end our warring ways, bringing reconciliation to God and to one another.

None of that has anything to do with the Fox News Christmas. In fact, quite the opposite.

Making sure that shopping malls and stores greet their customers with “Merry Christmas” is entirely irrelevant to the meaning of the Incarnation. In reality it is the consumer frenzy of Christmas shopping that is the real affront and threat to the season.

Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.

Imagine Jesus walking into the mall, seeing the Merry Christmas signs, and expressing his humble thanks for how the pre- and post-Christmas sales are honoring to him. How about credit cards for Christ?

While we’re at it, here’s another point of clarification: The arrival of the Christ child has nothing to do with trees or what we call them.

Evergreens and wreaths, holly and ivy, and even mistletoe turn out to be customs borrowed from ancient Roman and Germanic winter solstice celebrations, assimilated and co-opted by the church after Constantine made peace between his empire and the Christians.

Now, my family loves our Christmas tree, but its bright lights and wonderful ornaments don’t teach my children much about why Jesus came into the world. We do that in other ways, such as giving needed gifts — goats, sheep, and chickens and the like — to the poorest children and families of the world though the World Vision web site on Christmas Day. The goal is to make our sons more excited about the gifts they give than the ones they get, and it usually works. Last year, my boys sponsored a child in Ghana.

I have no probl

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog: 7 Keys to Managing Willful Blindness

Maybe the best we can do is to balance our biases. Heffernan suggests several ways we can manage our blindness:

Reexamine Your Life. When we are younger we do it more frequently. But at some point we stop doing it. “Is it that it gets too draining to keep questioning your life?”

Travel between Perspectives. Hannah Arendt calls it “thinking without a banister.” Traveling between points of view can be risky says Heffernan. “But in the intersection between disciplines, real insight can be gleaned.”

Recognize the Homogeneity of Our Lives. Put more effort into reaching out to those that don’t fit in. “Diversity, in this context, isn’t a form of political correctness but an insurance against the internally generated blindness that leaves [our Congress, corporate boards, think tanks and churches] exposed and out of touch.”

Know the Limits of Our Cognitive Capacity. Go home. Working long hours taxes our cognitive capacity. Exercise. “The only exercise that seems to nurture, or at least protect, our brains is aerobic exercise.”

Seek Disconfirmation. Hire dissent. This is most critical and often the most strongly opposed. “The ability to endure or even welcome debate and conflict requires practice and protection….You need to create a state in which [employees] have the courage to do something. You want to build organizations where everyone sees provocation as one of their essential roles.” Too many leaders are saying, “Why are they questioning me?” or “That’s none of their business.” Get a thinking partner for that third opinion. (See Bill George’s True North Groups.)

Professional “third opinion” Saj-Nicole Joni, told Heffernan:

Having a small network of people, who will bring you the unvarnished truth and with whom you can have unfettered exploration, are a partial antidote to willful blindness.

True leaders—whether they are at the top of an organization or within it—know that you cannot go into execution mode and retain peripheral vision. You cannot focus both on the woods and the trees. So you need a network to watch out when you have your head down. There is a tremendous value to being able to shut down and focus—but you put yourself at risk if you don’t have people out there scouting the horizon, covering your back.

Heffernan adds: “Outsiders—whether you call them Cassandras, devil’s advocates, dissidents, mentors, troublemakers, fools, or coaches—are essential to any leader’s ability to see.”

 

Challenge Complexity. Provoke skepticism around complexity. “Many organizations view their impenetrability as a feat of fantastic intellectual virtuosity. In reality, it’s a huge cause of blindness and explains why, when such companies get into trouble, they can’t find their way out of it.”

Endure the Noise. Silence—fear of debate, fear of debate—becomes self-perpetuating. “Without conflict, everyone remains afraid and blind…We need to celebrate those that make the noise, heroes more inspiring than talent contest winners and drunken movie stars.”

Heffernan concludes that seeing starts with simple questions: “What could I know, should I know, that I don’t know? What am I missing here?”

via www.leadershipnow.com

With Credit Card Debt on the Rise, 5 Tips to Know Whether You're Borrowing Too Much | Moneyland | TIME.com

I get it: We’re tired of being so darned frugal. Letting go a bit may make some sense. But before you go any further, now would be a good time for a debt checkup. How much debt is too much? Here are some guidelines:

• Mortgage Not so long ago, lenders thought nothing of stretching your budget to obscene levels in order to put you in a house. They might have allowed you to commit as much as 36% of your income to a mortgage and as much as 50% of income to total debt service. More traditional limits are in force today—and should be adhered to even in the unlikely event your banker suffers a flashback. That means a mortgage payment that does not exceed 28% of take-home pay and total debt payments that do not exceed 36%. One in three mortgage holders today is above the recommended threshold, reports consulting firm Strategic Business Insights. Try this calculator to see how you are doing.
• HELOC Closely related to your first mortgage is your home equity line of credit or possibly a home equity loan. Recognize this debt for what it is—an extension of your first mortgage. How much you can safely and smartly borrow with a HELOC or second mortgage depends on how much home equity you have. Your total mortgage-related debt should add up to less than 80% of your home’s value. You’ll get the best interest rate that way, and you’ll be able to tap cash in an emergency. See where you stand with this calculator.
• Student debt You’ve heard all about it: Student loans now outstrip credit card borrowing and total nearly $1 trillion. The typical grad leaves campus owing $25,000. But some owe five to 10 times that figure. Indeed, SBI reports that 2.3 million have outstanding student debts of $50,000 or more—and that includes some 21,000 who have carried this debt into retirement. A good rule of thumb is to leave campus with no more total debt than your first year’s pay, or to keep your monthly student-debt costs to less than 10% of income.
• Credit cards Any balance that you carry from month to month constitutes excessive debt. Credit cards should be valued for their convenience and cash-back rewards as well as for the ready access to cash they afford in an emergency. If you must carry a balance, keep it under 30% of available credit on any given card to avoid a ding to your credit score.
• Auto loans Many people overspend on a car, which they mentally place in the category of a need when it is really a want. Of course you need wheels. But you do not need a new BMW. According to Edmunds.com, the average consumer pays 11% of monthly income to own a car, which leaves little wiggle room for other borrowing—especially if you intend to buy a house. Think of 8% as a ceiling, less if you have credit card balances and student loans too.

via moneyland.time.com

Maybe I Do Want Topical Preaching? | 9Marks

Yes, thank you, give me Christ-centered sermons. But if Jesus is Lord, shouldn’t that fact affect how I go to work on Monday, and speak to my little girl, and spend my money? What does the gospel have to say to me in all those places? What does the gospel say to me about stress, and retirement, and serving in government, and talking to my friend with a gambling addiction?

It seems to me that your gospel-centered expositional sermons should get to all the stuff that topical preachers preach about, right?  Your preaching should be giving people all that and more. I think you call it sermon “application.” Shouldn’t your applications make expositional sermons topical, so to speak? Shouldn’t they, over time, cover all the topics of people’s lives? Shouldn’t the members in your church feel like they’re not missing anything?

 Okay, okay, I know there’s still a huge difference between your average topical sermon and your average expositional sermon, which is crucial. The Bible doesn’t exist, and church gatherings don’t happen, and sermons aren’t preached, simply to help people like me do this or that better. And a steady diet of topical preaching can make it seem that way—like the point of the whole church exercise is to improve my daily life. When really, the whole point of gathering and listening to preaching is to behold God, and to hear whatever he wants to say. I know that. I know I need his Word exposed, no matter what it says. I know I need to hear all of it, even the parts that seem obscure and irrelevant.

I’m just saying that I need you to show me how those obscure bits are relevant, even if those Hebrew chiasms are as naturally fascinating to you as they are to my Sunday School teacher who doesn’t get out much. I need you to show me how those chiasms help me to trust more, hope more, love more, and what that faith, hope, and love look like in the different areas of my life. Make sense?

Connect the dots for me. How do I get from justification by faith alone to being a manly man who cares well for his aging parents?

Okay, I admit, I don’t really want you to give up the expositional thing. I just want more from you. I want to have my cake and to eat it, too. Call me biblically greedy. I want you to apply your sermon in my life so that I’m learning all the helpful stuff they’re learning over at Topical Tommy’s church.  Okay?

Thanks for listening, Mr. Young Expositional Preacher. For real, I thank God for you, and the fact that you’ve chosen the harder, more faithful path.

via www.9marks.org

Please pray for my fellow youth pastor: The best shape of my life « Patrick's Story

I was in the best shape of my life, feeling on top of the world and blessed in every way.  I didn’t know that was all about to change.

The first strange symptoms started Labor Day weekend with feelings of fog and breaking into full sweats at random times.  My legs started to feel heavy; my brain was a few steps ahead of my body.  The first doctor thought it was anxiety, in spite of my effort to explain how “unstressed” I felt.  Muscles in my arms began to have constant tremors, which I could do nothing to stop.

Early November brought my 46^th birthday and a feeling that something was definitely wrong.  My tongue was thick and my words slurred.  A change of doctors and the tests began; after a few weeks, I was referred to a neurologist.  By this time, Dena & I were searching the internet and had read all about the “big 3” neurological diseases.  As we researched with dread, I realized that I was having every symptom under the ALS description.

Reading that and hearing it confirmed by a neurologist are two different things.  On November 29^th, I was told that I probably did have ALS, but we needed MRI’s to rule out tumors.  Something I had never prayed for began in earnest:  “Lord, let it be a tumor.”

6 days later, on December 5, brought the news we had feared:  The MRI’s were clear and the EMT confirmed that I had ALS.

As we wrap our brains around this news, we continually go back to the only thing we know for sure…the promises of Scripture.

2 Corinthians 4:16 “So we do not lose heart.  Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

via patricksstory.wordpress.com