- Good night tonight, not great, but good
- I felt off in my talk, so that may be why I say it’s good
- Never really felt like I hit my stride tonight, don’t know why
- What a huge passage: Hebrews 1
- Feel like I tried to cover too much ground tonight
- Love the first night of a new series
- The band nailed the song “Jesus Christ” by Brand New
- My jaw is still killing me, it’s hurt all day, definitely not fun since I had to talk tonight
- I’m blown away every week by the people who make Revolution happen
- So many people, so many things go into making our church happen and they do such a great job and they show up week after week to do it
- Thank you, it makes a difference
- Had a great lunch with Craig Coulter, always enjoy hanging with him, he stretches my leadership thinking
- Interesting factoid, this is my 1,000 post, crazy
- This past week I took Ava out on a daddy date, that is something I try to do each month but have slacked recently. It’s incredibly important
- Also got to take Katie out on a date last night, so not a bad week, dates with both of my girls, nice
- It gets harder and harder to make date night happen with our growing family, but that makes it all the more important
- I have just one book left to read for school, it will be nice to have that done, sadly it’s the longest book I have to read
- The new Bon Iver EP is awesome
- I have some seminar talks coming up so I have to write some stuff on leadership, got a lot of ideas floating around in my head of things I’m learning and things we’re learning at Revolution
- I’m sure I’ll be blogging about them soon
- Have a meeting up in Phoenix on Monday, that drive seems to get longer every time I make it
- We’re adding some new people to our creative team process this week, so that should be fun, always good to add some new voices
- If you didn’t get a study guide tonight, you can download it here
- The new U2 album comes out Tuesday, it’s a little different so I’m not sure I’m going to get it
- I’m debating about trying Tucson Tamales, I keep hearing about it from Jake
- I got asked to do a wedding tonight, so that should be fun, meeting with the couple this week, always exciting to be part of weddings
- Tomorrow is family day, nothing but hanging out with the family, gonna be great
- Click here to join our online discussion
- Below is the clip we used from Dogma, definitely makes you think about how people view Jesus and the church
Archives
All posts for the month February, 2009
Here’s a comedic look at the TV evangelist. Check out his site.
Sacreligious? Yep.
Blasphemous? Yep.
Funny? Yep.
Just finished Ronald Heifetz’s book Leadership without easy answers for my next class.
This was an incredibly difficult book to get into as it took awhile to get going, but it was definitely worthwhile once it got going. A lot of valuable nuggets in this book.
One of the things that made the book more interesting was that it had examples that took it out of the “typical” leadership book categories. It did not rest in the area of business or church, but when to other areas to pull its examples (such as politics). While not a new thing, it definitely brought a different perspective to the main point of the book.
Authority.
What Heifetz looks at is how authority shapes our society, how it shapes children, adults, large groups, small groups. What it means to have power and authority, what to do with it, how to lead with it, what is expected of those with power and authority. But he also looks at the flip side of this topic: how to lead without authority.
He also points out the danger in the are “leaders born or made” argument. He said, “If leaders are born not made, it can foster both self-delusion and irresponsibility. For those who consider themselves “born leaders,” free of an orienting philosophy and strategy of leadership, their grandiosity is a set-up for a rude awakening and for blindly doing damage. Minimally, they can waste the time and effort of a community on projects that go, if not over a cliff, then at least in circles. Conversely, those who consider themselves “not leaders” escape responsibility for taking action, or for learning how to take action, when they see the need. In the face of critical problems, they say, “I’m not a leader, what can I do?”" What this argument brings out is the danger when it comes to authority. If you have to be the leader to lead, that is problematic. This also brings to bear how many leaders feel that because they have authority, they are the leader and that is all there is to it. The reality is, not everyone who leads the meeting is actually leading the meeting.
As Heifetz points out “formal and informal authority roles do not necessarily overlap.”
What was fascinating was the studies he used that showed how children and adults interact with authority. That children, as young as 4 will stay within groups of like children. The brightest, most authoritative will rise up and children will look to them to take care of the group, speak for the group. Ones not in this group will migrate to this group at appropriate times, but will also stay within their hierachy.
Authority provides direction.
To keep followers though in the midst of a crisis, to keep your authority, you must “perform.” “As long as the person in authority can provide the services that keep the group composed, her authority will increase; if not, she may get desposed, or the group may fragment. Her latitude for frustrating the expectations of the group may grow if she has succeeded in the past in meeting the group’s expectations; she can earn “idiosyncrasy credits.” But in a stressful situation in which she does not have the answers, she can also run out of credit.”
But how does on apply power without overdoing it? “To lead from a position of authority requires knowing how to tend and deploy the power that comes with the position. Authority can be divided into two forms: formal and informal. With formal authority come the various powers of the office, and with informal authority comes the power to influence attitude and behavior beyond compliance.”
Here are a few things that grabbed my attention:
- Leaders not only influence followers but are under their influence as well.
- Attention is the currency of leadership.
- The task of leadership consists of choreographing and directing learning processes in an organization or community.
While the book was a little slow at the beginning, the discussion on authority (leading with or without it) was fascinating and one that every leader, on every level of an organizaiton should read. Because we all lead with and without authority.
I am so excited about tomorrow night. It is going to be a great night, an awesome first night to our brand new series.
You don’t want to be late.
Come ready to rock and see what God is going to do!
- Craig Groeschel on Message prep & Authentic preaching
- Perry Noble on 5 styles of leadership that always lose part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
- By 2050 only 10% of Americans will be in church on any given sunday
- Mark Batterson on We are what we read
- Ed Stetzer: New research on parenting
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was on my way to our creative team meeting and got a bunch of questions about how we do that.
I’ll give you the lead pastor view and maybe I can convince Paul to give you his view.
For me, this is something I have tried to do in every ministry I’ve been a part of, whether as a lead pastor or a student pastor. It is incredibly helpful for me, because I am not overly creative. As a speaker, it is important to be in a room with some artsy, creative types. It pushes me not only in my preaching, but also in my leadership as I need to think differently about leadership (but that’s another post).
For this to work well a few things need to happen (in no particular order):
- Lots of communication between the communicator and worship leader (who should lead this meeting)
- As the communicator, you are not the driver of this meeting
- As a communicator, you need to plan ahead, I can tell you a rough outline of what we are planning to preach on for the next 12 months (this may change but a rough outline is helpful on a ton of levels)
- You can’t do anything creative if you don’t know what you are speaking on
- Decide ahead of time what drives your worship gathering. Is it the music, creative elements or the sermon. Something has to be the thing that drives it and everything else work to make that happen. At Revolution, the sermon topic drives our gatherings. Right or wrong, that’s how we do it.
- Always ask, “Will this connect with our target?” If the answer is no, don’t do it, no matter how cool it is. When something won’t connect to the target, use that opportunity to recast the vision and the target.
- Be willing to do something you don’t like. Too many lead pastors (myself included) have a tendency to only do things they would like, have some trust in the people on the team, they may be right
- Have some clear expectations for what you expect from the team. What are you trying to accomplish? What do you need from them? What do they need from you?
I think that churches should be the most creative places on the planet. We are only scratching the surface of what God wants to do at Revolution. I’m so excited to see what God does through this team as we look for new ways to share who God is and how to have a relationship with him.
We will do anything short of sin to help people find their way back to God. For us, that is the ballgame when it comes to this team.
Every church, organization or family has a list of seen and unseen things that guide decisions, what they value and how they function. Since we have so many new people at Revolution, I thought it would be good to share what guides us.
#9: We will target men.
Whether you realize it or not, every church and organization has a target. I hear pastors say all the time, “We’re trying to reach everyone.” This sounds right and biblical, but is not possible. Whether a church admits it, they have a target.
What kind of music is played?
How loud is it?
What is the preaching like?
What is the dress like?
How much money and manpower is spent on kids and student ministries?
What time are the services?
These are just a few basic questions. Another way to figure out your target if you don’t know, look at who is coming to your church.
When we started Revolution, we looked at this idea and we looked at who we could best reach with the people already in our church, who was on our heart and who didn’t go to church. Across the nation, the least likely group to go to church are 20 – 40 year old men. So we set out to reach them.
When we think about sermon ideas, music, videos, how we do church, we filter it through the lens of a 20 – 40 year old man.
We still try to reach women, we still try to reach men over 40. But the reality is that we are best positioned and feel called to reach this group. The reality is that women will go to something men like when it comes to church, but it rarely works the other way around. A great book on this is David Murrow’s Why men hate going to church. This book got us moving down this track. The funny thing is that if I didn’t tell you this was our target, you might not be able to tell. We try to do it in subtle ways, but the reality is women will go to church with a man, but it doesn’t always happen the other way around.
Here is what is funny about this, the only people to ever give us pushback on this idea are people who don’t attend Revolution. In fact, I can’t tell you how many women have come up to me and said, “This is the first church my husband likes.”
I believe that biblically, the husband is to lead his house, he is responsible to God for the spiritual well-being of his wife and kids and will one day make an account for this before God. Not the woman. This doesn’t mean that men rule over their wives in a domineering way or always get there. Men are called to love and serve their wives and kids. But they are also called to lead them spiritually. That’s what we want to do, call men to fulfill their roles and responsibility. We want men to be men.
