Tag Archives: leadership

The Stuff of Friendship

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the stuff of friendship

I’ve been gone for a week. I traveled with friends to the Orange Conference 2013. If you’ve never been, you’re missing out. I invited six friends to go with me. This was the first time for them to experience an Orange Conference and I suspect they will continue to unpack what they heard and learned for weeks to come.  I’m still chewing on the great stuff I heard. I’ll write about that great stuff later, but right now I’m focusing this moment on the stuff of friendship.

Those six friends that accompanied me to Atlanta are new friendships in the making. They don’t know me well and most have not heard my story of being rescued by Jesus Christ. They don’t know my family, my children and grandchildren. They don’t know about the crazy wild and fun adventures my family has experienced or the deep sadness of loss we have dealt with. These new friends do not know my history, yet they are now part my life story. And you know what, I am now woven into their story, too.

I had to stop and think about that…I am now woven into their story, too. My new friends have opened a small window into their life story and I have offered them a glimpse into my history. The stuff of friendship is messy when everyone’s history is dumped on each other. I realize it takes time for friendships to become engrained with trust, laughter, and acceptance of the real messiness of junk. All of that junk that keeps us bending the knee in prayer and surrendering in submission to God for help. The stuff of friendship means that I give them grace when they mess up and they give me grace when I fail.

The stuff of friendship is built on the foundation of Jesus, the number one example of what being a real friend is. While Jesus was all God (think about that! ALL God!) He was very comfortable hanging out with the “worst ” of people. The worst of people who needed a real friend to impact their history…nasty and messy people with raunchy stories that would soon be filled with supernatural beauty of healing, forgiveness and life change. Jesus added more fun and laughter into their lives. He gave them something real to be happy about!

Those friends of Jesus were transparent before him. They spilled their guts and messiness all over him. They wanted more of Jesus and he welcomed them into a new life of freedom and victory. He took their mess and began to rewrite their stories. Jesus offered them a way out of their messy junked up life. Their history was forever changed.

The stuff of friendship is like that. We are the voice of Jesus into a broken world, shouting beautiful words of hope and joy, sounds of laughter, having fun and sharing stories of real life change. We can help shape another person’s story, add grace from God’s truth and begin to weave it into the life of a new friend’s life story. The stuff of friendship is the stuff of stories full of God’s redeeming grace.

So, I’ve been gone for a week. I walked in the door of our home very late. My husband was waiting for me. When I walked in, very tired and weary, he was there to embrace me and he said, “Finally, you are home! It’s good to see you!”

The stuff of friendship is woven into our marriage, our life together means transparency and acceptance of all the junk and messiness that we are capable of and we continue to love each other through it all.

My husband is a handsome introvert. Introverts find their strength and rejuvenation with retreating into a quite respite by themselves. Introverts are very contented with alone time. I know this about my hubby and since our friendship is woven deep and knotted with life, I am very happy to give him time to be alone.

That’s why I treasure the words he said to me, “I am most contented with me, myself, and you!” No longer is it, “me, myself, and I” but YOU.

The stuff of friendship is about including the people whom God moves into our stories. It’s knotted up in the life of each other. It’s including all of those “YOU’s” out there into our life. We have very little time left to make a difference in the lives of our families, much less into the lives of friends that God brings to us.

We are people needing the stuff of friendship…the catalyst for a deep devotion, and sustaining faith in God.  Friendship and loyalty that can single-handedly make it possible for us to survive.

“Friendship” is a mild word for such an extraordinary and holy connection, for what can be the most sustaining, life-giving, death-defying relationships some of us will ever experience. My closest friends are the reason for my deep faith in God, because through them I have discovered what superhuman intimacy and devotion are. ~Anne Lamott

How to Break Bad Habits

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Don’t you wish breaking bad habits would be as easy as digging in your heel to stop and never doing it again? Aristotle had this to share about habits: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit. I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”

Thank you Taryn and Bethany for the photo!

Yes, we are what we repeatedly do and the hardest victory is over self.  I wish it were simple, don’t you? Just stop doing whatever has repeatedly become a bad habit and victory over self is accomplished. Ta Da!

In our family, you will often hear us say to each other, “Stop It!”  You’ll appreciate this comical skit from MadTV with Bob Newhart as Dr. Switzer, a psychologist with a simple theory on human behavior.  The skit is hilarious and worth watching through the end!

For me, overcoming a bad habit is more complex than hearing the words, “Stop It!”  I must make the deliberate effort towards changing a wrong behavior or I will forever be stuck with a burdensome yoke around my neck as, “The Bad Habit.”

Changing behavior must be intentional. It will require you to be introspective regarding your behavior and lifestyle. Study yourself  in the fashion of looking through a binocular lens…but this lens is looking into your inner most being, studying what makes you tick, what brings you low or lifts you high. You want to get into your head and to know yourself really well!

Here are 4 ways I’ve found helpful to breaking a bad habit:

1. Identify the habit you want to change. (over eating, spending too much money, substance abuse, not exercising, etc.)

2.Use the binocular lens to identify the cue that triggers the behavior. (hungry, angry, lonely, tired, stress, insignificance, etc.)

3. Know yourself really well and understand the need the habit meets. (comfort, creativity, social stimulus, the high from spending cash, etc.)

4. Without changing the cue and reward, replace the routine with a new behavior.

Here are 3 ways I replace the routine with a new behavior:

1. A daily time with God. A lack of personal time with God will result in casualty! There are many options for you to use. I personally am using this method for a consistent time with God. (Four ways to make daily time with God a habit.) Currently, I am reading through the book of Nehemiah, a fascinating book detailing leadership, resolve, overcoming obstacles, trusting God, prayer…God’s Word is perfect at every stage of life and will meet the need at that moment.

2. Spending time with friends. I cannot possibly go for days without being with friends. The adage, “Laughter is the best medicine” is true. I need to laugh and I crave laughter! I need friends to keep me accountable. A good friend will encourage my soul to grow deeper into God’s truth while cheering me on to become the best at what  God created me to be. A good friend will stay with me in the messy places.

3. Exercise. When boredom strikes or if I become agitated or fidgety, I slip on my running shoes and go for a fast walk around the block or in the parking lot where I work. Taking regular and routine 5 minute breaks throughout the day helps me regain focus. I work at staying in the habit of daily exercise, whether it be walking, running, lifting weights or jumping rope.

Real change and real transformation will take work. You can’t do it on your own, and you shouldn’t try to.

You may enjoy reading:

Boasting in Weakness

The Unmaking of a Worship Disorder

Two Ways You can Become a Cheerful Person

 

The following are some resources that I’ve found helpful:

How to Change a Bad Habit Into a Good One

The worship of the living God gives us peace and equilibrium to face the troubles of life. -Tim Keller

How to break bad habits from biting your nails to running late. -Real Simple

What have you learned about breaking bad habits?  Does saying, “Stop It” make it easier?  What do you think?

The Saturday Assortment #7

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The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging. Enjoy!

Family Devotion Ideas – threethirtyministries

Free! Easy! Fun! Family Devotion Ideas! You’ll find FUN theme ideas like Toothpaste Squeeze, Spoon Catapults and Izzy Dizzy Walking Wobble that will keep your kids wanting more family time! All devotions are based on a passage of scripture. You’ll discover clever ways to teach timeless truths in a relevant way.

Top 200 ministry blogs – Kent Shaffer 

Kent Shaffer and the team at Church Relevance has released their latest ranking of the Top 200 Ministry Blogs.

Self-Care or Self-Medication: Which path are you on? – Carey Nieuwhof 

When stress and life overwhelm you, you will either choose to respond to it in a healthy way (self-care) or an unhealthy way (self-medication).  Carey Nieuwhof shares five ways Christian leaders self-medicate and Ten healthy options for self-care.

Page CXVI

Page CXVI is a project started with the idea to make hymns accessible and known again. To celebrate their 7 year anniversary of making music, Page CXVI is giving away their entire catalog of music for the month of March. 11 albums, 74 songs, 2 bands. Go to http://www.pagecxvi.com/jubilee and get your FREE music!

Confessions of an Evernote Junkie

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I confess, I’m an Evernote junkie!  The more I learn how to use this productivity tool, the more I like it.  Here are a few reasons why:

Evernote is like a digital file drawer where I can store anything and find it almost instantly. I’m a creative thinker and a collector of information. With the “Evernote Web Clipper” I  can clip an article and  save it to a designated notebook (folder) and also tag the article into a category. For example, I often read web articles and a variety of blogs on the topic of  leadership. With the web clipper, I am able to save the entire article or a section of the post to my leadership notebook and use a tag that best describes the content of the article, such as team.

My family has the kitchen table back.  I am an “unorganized perfectionist” meaning I keep everything in order except the top of my desk and the kitchen table. There is a paper trail of meeting notes or copies of articles out of magazines and added to that are splashes of color from neon colored post-it notes. To help clear this paper trail,  I’m now scanning documents and saving as a PDF to Evernote. And for all of those ideas I’ve written on post-it-notes,  I grouped the notes in the shape of a square, I took a photo of the notes, dragged it from my desktop into Evernote and saved it to bright ideas. I’m amazed by the search function that even picks up words within pictures!

Important emails can be easily retrieved.  With the unique Evernote email address, I am able to forward important emails to my Evernote  account by adding the name of the notebook I want the email saved in and including a tag to the subject line of the email. To specify the destination notebook, append the subject line with the symbol “@” followed by the name of an existing notebook; to add a tag, include “#” followed by an existing tag.  This has been great to use, especially for saving flight reservations, hotel bookings, or receipts.

Keeping up with notes and reminders has never been easier. I am a note taker. I always write notes in meetings, or when I attend a conference plus I’m constantly writing reminders for myself.  I have always used the note pad on my iPhone or iPad. What has been frustrating is that I am unable to access the notes from my Mac.  There are times when I don’t have my iPad handy or it takes too long to find the notes on my iPhone. I now use the Evernote app for note taking and because Evernote syncs remotely in the “cloud,” I can access the same notes anywhere, regardless of the device I am using.

Having quick access to highlights and notes from books on Kindle. I recently discovered through my Amazon Kindle account that I can access all of the highlights and notes I’ve made while reading. I select the book, search for the highlighted notes, use the Evernote web clipper and save to the booknotes notebook with the name of the author as the tag.

I realize there is much more to learn about Evernote and I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of this amazing tool that will help me stay organized and more productive. What do you think? What have you discovered that helps you stay organized or more productive?

Helpful link:

Michael Hyatt (Intentional Leadership) provides a handy index to all of his Evernote posts.

Don’t Just Show Up–Grow Up!

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How many times in our children’s ministry has the story of the Good Samaritan been told? Numerous and countless times. We are able to recite the story from memory and most likely the children in our classes can do the same. Often times in our haste to prepare a lesson for children, we read the bible passage from the mindset of a child. Often times, we quickly skim through the words in God’s book, overlooking the depth and power of timeless truths. Many times we are guilty of not even reading the bible before Sunday morning simply because we are “just teaching children” and so we show up in the classroom and wing in.

I know all about that. I can show up unprepared, retell a bible story, tell kids the facts and hope they experience the love of Jesus in the words I tell them. By doing this, I have lowered the bar of teaching with excellence, decreased the value of God’s timeless truths for children (as well as for myself), and I’ve muddied the beauty and dulled the passion of  glorious grace.

I realize that God can still use my lame-duck teaching efforts to work his glory into the hearts of children but now I’m beginning to see how frequently I miss the mark and I am repenting more so.  I am more and more convicted of my sin with taking for granted the word of God.

Children’s ministry can become a wasteland of morality training instead of a culture of gospel transformation. Having a passion for children’s ministry is having a passion for gospel transformation in the hearts of children…as well as in the hearts of those that teach them.

I pray that we who lead children don’t just show up but we grow up and own this: the grand story of Scripture!

The Saturday Assortment #6

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The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging. Enjoy!

7 Common Energy and Time Wasters for Leaders —Ron Edmonson Staying on task is critical to being a good leader. Here are seven time and energy wasters to avoid.

Actually, it goes the other way. Wouldn’t it be great to be gifted? In fact... Always a good word from Seth Godin

Rebuilding With a Prayer Community —Jared Musgrove (The Village Church) With the ups and downs and stress of any job, in particular a church ministry, learn to pray, listen, and intercede with other. You need community.

How Andy Stanley and Tim Keller Preach with Non-Believers in Mind –Trevin Wax There’s no denying the significant differences between Andy Stanley and Tim Keller when it comes to theology and ministry. But we can learn from them both in how to respectfully engage the unsaved people in our midst.

The Saturday Assortment #5

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The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging.  Enjoy!

10 Resolutions for Mental Health  This is a wonderful and very encouraging post to read! John Piper is the author of  this article, based on a lecture given by one of his professors at Wheaton College. Here is a quote from #3 on the list:

I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities.

12 Essentials to Church Communications  The church is the hope of the world. As church leaders, we have the responsibility of communicating the greatest message known to mankind; the only message capable of changing a person’s entire eternity. The weight of that responsibility is both profound and incredible. It moves us to action, and demands we communicate it well.

A book to recommend:  Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centred Church, Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson and Eric Geiger

We want to remind people that Christ is the head of the Church, and everything about how our church functions and operates should reflect the new life we are given in Jesus. -Matt Chandler

creature-of-the-word

A quote from the book:

 “If mission engagement is in the culture of a church without continual gospel reminders, the tendency will be to drift towards mission as a way to cleanse the conscience rather than a response to God’s mission for us. If expressive worship is in the culture of a church without continual gospel awareness, the tendency will be to focus on what is done for God rather than remembering what he has done. If transparency and honesty are in the culture of a church without continual gospel encounters, the tendency will be to discuss the sinfulness without repentance.” (page 102-103)

The Saturday Assortment #4

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The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging.  Enjoy!

This issue of The Saturday Assortment focuses on children with special needs and the families that love them. (so many children and so many families.) 

Watch this! You will be inspired! You will be proud. I am passionate about ministry to children with special needs. I wish every church would consider how they can become an inclusive church for all families, and in doing so, it will require children’s ministry to change and grow in a new-right direction. And you will not regret the effort. It is so worth it! Listen closely  to what Conner says. Perhaps his words will motivate you to consider how your church can become an inclusive church for children with special needs.

Speaking of an inclusive church, please check out this website to discover a plethora of information about ministry to children to with special needs.  The Inclusive Church blog is packed with resources, practical application, insightful solutions that will surely encourage and inspire.

A very personal journey about a family that thrives on God’s grace, is devoted to family, has ventured on the journey of adoption, passionate about special needs, and brings it home to all of us wanting to know more. Go to: Dinglefest.

Snappin’ Ministries is “a nationwide support network for parents of children with special needs. Their mission is to support and encourage those living with the daily challenge of parenting a special needs child, so that they may experience the genuine love and hope of Jesus in their everyday lives.”

Noah’s Dad writes about his son, Noah that has Down’s Syndrome. This is more than a personal life story, there is information helpful for families and ministry leaders.