Initiators

A cool blurb from Seth Godin’s “The Tribe,” regarding leadership:

The easiest thing is to react.

Reacting as Zig Ziglar has said, is what your body does when you take the wrong kind of medicine. Managers react.

The second easiest thing is to respond.

Responding is a much better alternative. You respond to external stimuli with thoughtful action.

The hardest thing is to initiate.

Both pale in comparison to initiative. Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that’s what leaders do… They cause the events that others have to react to. They make change.

It’s easy to react or respond. It’s safer. We can blame others. We can point to circumstances outside our control. But, neither of those are leadership. They’re management. Initiating is difficult, perhaps lonely, always uncomfortable.

Either we are Initiators or we are Responders/Reactors.

Lowering The “If” Rate

Last week as I was writing the message, God kept bringing this to mind:

1 Tim 6:8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

We usually focus on the word “content” in that verse. But as I was working through this God continually brought my attention to the word “If” because “if” some people have food and clothing implies some do not. God started working in me and said, its time this church started taking care of the “if.”  So, from now until Dec. 20th our Christmas service. We are doing a cereal and coats drive. Open Arms provides food to people who can’t otherwise get it. And they need cereal. We’re also in the midst of a freakin’ cold and snow spell up here and some people don’t have coats, while many of us have like 8 and we only wear 2. So it’s about giving those coats that go with that outfit or those shoes (which we never wear or only have once), to people who would wear them every day.  Check out the website for more info.

It’s all about lowering the “if” rate in Uptown.

Francis Chan’s Video Blog

Just checked out a bit of Francis Chan’s video blog. Continuing to be amazed at what that guy is doing and his awesome heart not just for the church, but for the world.  Never heard him speak until last years Exponential Conference and he was absolutely amazing in his encouragement in pushing all of us to continue rocking on in ministry.

New Book

Looking for a new book to read. Thoughts?

Board Meetings.

The Exchange Church Board met yesterday and I LOVE our board meetings. Our board is totally about what we are doing as a church. Not about anything else. As a church plant, we have half our board made up of members of the church and the other half made up from our parent church, The Crossing. The cool thing is our board is completly about, How do we get to the next step of where God is leading us? Its never, “we’ve done this, or seen other churches do it like this,” or etc.  In fact I’ve noticed they ask two main questions every time:

1. How can we best achieve what God is calling The Exchange Church to do?

2. How are you (me as the Pastor) doing in your own well-being (physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, etc).

They care about the church achieving its full potential in the way God has designed it and myself as well by not being burnt out and making sure I take rests, sabbaths, and spend time with God. The freedom that it gives is Absolutely Awesome! They care about the church and the person God has called to lead it. I thank God deeply for our board. They’re creative, they’re loving, they ask hard questions, but above all at the end of the day it’s all about Him and what He is calling us to do and going after it with everything we have.

A Good Reminder.

From Wayne Cordeiro’s “Leading on Empty,”

“So the Sabbath rest becomes a command we respond to, not a result of nothing left to do. It is a part of our obedience, not a consequence of our expedience and industriousness.”

When Prayer Doesn’t Work.

We posted our series on prayer “The Most Powerful Thing You Can Do!” online. Last week we talked about what happens when our prayers don’t work. The core of the sermon was 5 questions we need to ask when our prayers aren’t answered.

1. Is there sin in my life?

2. Am I the answer?

3. Is this about God’s perspective or ours?

4. Is the pain/hurt/difficult time really a part of the answer?

5. Is there a spiritual battle going on I am unaware of?

God definitely worked on me through preparing and giving the talk. Wrapping up this Sunday with April rocking out to “Keys to Prayer.” She’s gonna knock it out of the park!

Stoked!

Over the last month or so I have become incredibly stoked about a couple of our worship leaders who I totally sense are going to do some great things in their lives for God. Steve and Shannon are two people who are bent not only on making worship rock, but who will do whatever it takes to help people far from God meet him. They aren’t afraid to fail and they aren’t afraid to look stupid. Okay maybe they are, but they won’t let it stop them. Rather they are going to do what they can for God and seem to have the attitude of whatever I do, I don’t want to look back and say, “I wish I would have….” God loves to use people like that.

This rocked my world today.

I’m just started going through Revelation a couple days ago in my own personal study.

According to early church fathers, John was doing ministry at the church in Ephesus before Rome sent him as a political prisoner to the island Patmos (where he received the “Revelation”). The first letter to the 7 churches is addressed to Ephesus. It says while they have fought the battles theologically (compared with Pergamum who didn’t do so hot in that area),  they have forgotten their first love. For the apostle who was all about love, I find it interesting, the first letter is directed to what is thought to be “his church.” What Jesus tells him is to go back to doing the deeds they did at first. The solution is “deeds.” Not talking about it, but doing. The result is, “the tree of life.” Just thought it was cool and made me stop and think.

READ THIS!!!

If you are a church planter or pastor, Perry Noble put up a great article “Some Random Stuff” on his blog. It’s basically a collection of some of his top posts and wherever you are in church planting from just praying about it to years in, check this out!!!! good stuff.