Archive for March, 2005
English Camp Weekend
This will be the last post probably until we are home. I´ve got over 350 pictures to comb through and good luck finding which ones to post.
Remember the Tall Skinny Kiwi? He blogged on the Evangecube and this group from Florida brought them.
Yes – I will link it when I get stateside.
Yes – it is corny.
Yes – it works when language is a significant barrier. Or your audience doesn´t have a clue about the Rubik´s Cube.
Lot´s of God stories – we´ve seen 27 decisions for Christ and it isñ´t even the weekend yet. Pray for God´s protection of the camp, that no evil spirits or demons would be allowed on the camp.
Spiritism is huge here and well, let´s say the 5.36 we have when we get back is going to be one big Godfest of stories.
I need to end this – the internet cafe lady is not exactly the friendliest chick in the world. Some things are so cross-cultural.
Rock Stars
I´ve signed more autographs in the last 24 hours than U2. It´s nuts. And it gave us the chance to preach the gospel in a public high school in the poor part of Porto Alegre.
Evan got the Harry Potter remarks as usual. Michael Wenneker has many marriage proposals to go through when he gets back home. Danielle and Matthew and I were on Porto Alegre TV. Yeah, we´re famous.
We are flexing like crazy because – well, it´s Brazil.
I love the country and the people. I´m not as impressed with much of what we (the US) have exported to her, particularly in the church/Christianity department. I´m gonna write more on this later – when I get on a normal keyboard!!!! hahaha…typical western arrogance…
Bottom line – we make the same mistakes overseas that we do at home. We don´t investigate the culture we are trying to reach before we open our mouths to proclaim. I think we are changing that…I hope we are changing that.
Happy Birthday
Quick blog for my dad. Happy Birthday – to both of them. Long story.
I´m in Brazil ruining teenagers with Jesus and I was thinking about Ron. The guy has ruined me forever. In a good way.
Try new things. Push ahead. Keep praying. Trust God. Follow Him down whatever crazy path He takes you. It´ll be worth it.
Thank you.
Feliz Pascoa
Yesterday was both Feliz Pascoa (Happy Easter) and my dads birthday. You read that right – my dads birthday. Both my stepdad and my dad have the same birthday – long story which will not be told here…
We did two services here – the early one (9 AM) was in English. It was okay. In a Baptist church and honestly – didn´t feel like all that much different than when I was 10.
The evening service was altogether a different story. All Portuguese, all the time. The showed clips from the Passion of Christ to start the service – and they weren´t PG clips either. Very moving.
The service was good. We thought the pastor was preaching up a storm – then someone told us he was reading the bulletin.
The highlight was singing Come, Now Is The Time To Worship in both English and Portuguese. And Because He Lives. You´d never think that Bill and Gloria Gaither could be so cross-cultural, did you?
Evening was topped off with Brazilian Hot Dogs and caf̬. If you thought I was a coffee snob before this trip РI am only getting worse.
Wè are here
I am in a LAN house in Gramado – which is about an hour and half bus ride from Porto Alegre. Beautiful town – but man, I miss the wireless coffee houses and my American Keyboard…minor details, I know.
We made it in Sao Paolo, changing airports. The airport was on the other side of town. Town – yeah, the 3rd largest city in the world. It took us 2 hours. Fortunately customs was the fastest I have ever experienced it.
150 Brazillian teenagers are on the camp this weekend and it is fun. It is cool to hear familiar songs in a different language.
The students are on the work crew for the camp. This morning at breakfast, Junior (the camp director) chewed out his Brazillian crew saying they were getting outworked by the Americans. At first I thought it was a joke but Agnes quickly got me to shut up and said Junior was very serious.
Personally – I think they are still bitter about us beating them in the World Cup.
Will keep you posted as I can.
Gordo y feliz!
Rat Killing
Okay – I’m up. I’m rested. I’m ready – sort of.
Got to:
1. Pack Laptop case. For those of you who travel alot – you know how important this is. Don’t want it too heavy – BUT must have the essentials. Book. Bible. Journal. DVD Movies. (I know – travelling in the new era)
2. Bank. Might be nice to have some cash.
3. Update MP3 player – done. Now I’ve got Sting’s Sacred Love and Nothing Under the Sun and Switchfoot’s The Beautiful Letdown on it as well as Amy’s favorites Chris Tomlin’s Arriving and By The Tree Hold You High. (She digs Switchfoot as well.)
4. One more blog. Can’t stand the thought of leaving both my readers in suspense of my morning.
5. Good lunch. Important to have a nice, sit down meal before the hectic herding of teenagers begin.
Now – if we could only take the train to Brazil.
Last Minute Blog
Leave for Brazil Mission Trip tomorrow. It’s my third trip. I love it. It’s about hanging out with teens, being relational, earning the right to be heard, then sharing Jesus. No pretense, just loving on teens.
Why won’t that work in the states? I think it does – mostly. Although even I have to admit that the largest “mission field” is in our own basements and coffee houses. And they are jaded. The Brazillians aren’t….yet.
I’m going to try to get some pics and snippets of the week on the blog.
But if I don’t – just pray for us. There is 18 of us going – 13 senior highers. Don’t pray for a safe trip – pray for a good one.
Guidance
Guidance is when we help others learn to listen to God. It’s not just ‘good advice’ or wise counsel. It is about helping people discern what God is telling them to do.
The Quaker tradition has what is called Clearness Committees. The committee’s job is to ask questions, lots of them. By asking all those questions, they often remove the fog of a decision.
For true guidance to take place, I think we need one more piece of the puzzle. After all the questions, are we going to be vulnerable enough to say what we think God wants to happen? Is there a high enough level of trust to be completely honest – everyone around the table, not just the one making the decision?
John Ortberg tells this story as an example. A famous writer and educator was offered the presidency of a college. He came to his Life group and asked them to be his Clearness Committee. The questions were easy at first – what would you do, where would you live, what are your goals.
Then someone asked what do you think you would like about being president. He said, “I wouldn’t like wearing a suit and tie, structured office hours, the politics, and fundraising.”
They came back, “Okay; we know what you wouldn’t like. Tell us what you would like.”
“Yes, I know. I am getting to that. I wouldn’t like that it would take me away from my writing, the travel, attending lots of meetings, and the pressure.”
“Okay, but what would you like.”
He was silent for a long time and finally answered in a meek whisper, “I would like having my picture in the paper with ‘President’ underneath it.”
Nobody said a word. The answer was clear now. Finally someone asked, “Isn’t there an easier way to get your picture in the paper?”
They laughed but the decision was made – he was not going to become the president.
If we are going to see and experience life change, we have to practice the discipline of guidance in our Life Groups.
Back To Life Group Disciplines
Back To Intern Track
Back To Life Group Leader Track
Accountability
Debunking the Myths
Sitting across from someone, asking a list of sin management questions, then finally asking if they have lied to you is a poor imitation of accountability. Real accountability is getting ‘on the scale’ to see if the application is working. Ideally, what lifewalking means is that we are ‘in each other’s stuff’ enough to see what is working, what isn’t working, and what needs to be worked on.
True accountability attempts to answer the question “Is what I am doing facilitating spiritual transformation?” To put it another way, ‘Am I allowing the Spirit to transform me in my habits, actions, and thoughts. ‘
Choose You This Day
I’m guessing that right now you are thinking – how in the world do you measure that? Most of that work is internal, some of it is external but if we only judge/evaluate the external we are on the road to becoming incredible legalists. To further complicate things, others can see more objectively what is working and what isn’t in our lives than we can. How then do we exercise this discipline?
I think it all comes down to choices.
1. Choose to be real and authentic. Yes, it is risky and yes, you will be misunderstood. Yes, you can and probably will get hurt. But there is NO accountability without this.
2. Choose to engage. If you see a glimpse of something that isn’t quite ‘right’ or genuine – love them enough to engage in their world. Catch the wording of this – engage their world. Find out what is going on by lifewalking with them. Earn the right to speak truth.
If we are honest with ourselves, most of us have a leaning. We either lean toward loving and caring but find it excruciatingly painful to speak truthfully about stuff we see in someone’s life, OR we lean toward speaking truth to people that we know nothing about their context or situation. We’ll be quick to give advice, but sit in a waiting room for an hour just listening is a waste of time in our minds.
They are both needed. Remember our airplane talk? Same principle here. It’s imperative for you to speak the truth, but it is equally imperative that we do that in love. The best way to communicate love is still time. So choose to lifewalk with people AND speak the truth.
3. Choose to be teachable, not broken. If you have to have it all together and perfect, guess what gift God is going to bring to your world? Brokenness. He will wreck something in your world that you can’t fix if only for the reason to break your will. So be teachable, no matter what side of the conversation you find yourself on.
4. Choose grace over book-keeping. Since we are all messes, let’s choose grace over keeping the books. Let’s choose to celebrate wins and to learn from our losses as opposed to grieving over them. Sin and screw-ups have their own consequences to deal with without adding a layer of guilt to them.
Final Not-So-Random Thought
We must focus on BEING accountable, not keeping others that way. That’s the key in seeing if God’s word is working in our life. We must CHOOSE to be accountable.
The focus can never be on KEEPING other accountable. It just doesn’t work. That is why it’s possible to meet every week for breakfast at IHOP for accountability and still be shocked to read in the paper that one of the guys has a lover and is leaving his family.
If we want to see a Jesus transformation take place in us, we must be accountable.
Back To Life Group Disciplines
Back To Intern Track
Back To Life Group Leader Track
Application
It is not merely enough to study and know God’s word. It must be applied to real life. That is the definition of application – putting the Word of God on our real-life situations. Immediately we are faced with two problems.
The first problem can be found with the wonderful WWJD cliché. “What Would Jesus Do?†Sometimes this can be helpful, but too often we answer it so abstractly that it is toothless. “Jesus would be loving, kind, patient, and meek.â€
Honestly – that isn’t very helpful. What does love look like in an abusive relationship? How would Jesus ‘love’ the person who has a string of lies and half-truths behind him, ruined a friendship, destroyed a Life Group, and is wrecking a marriage?
The second problem is that we are extremely good at manipulating the situation or rationalizing our convictions so that the application may not always be what God intended. Ever notice how we tell stories about ourselves? We are either the victim or the hero. Makes for applying God’s word a little difficult.
So what is the solution? Each other. When we surround ourselves with people who love us but aren’t impressed with us – they can see through the fog and insecurities. When we allow them access, they can be tools of God in helping us applying God’s word. They bring perspective to our worlds.
For spiritual transformation to take place, God’s word must be applied to our lives.
Back To Life Group Disciplines
Back To Intern Track
Back To Life Group Leader Track
Sign The Death Certificate
We – the Aimster,me and 16 of our closest friends – leave the country in a little less than 52 hours. That’s nuts. And I’m exhausted. Not curl up in bed for days exhausted – but the “If I talk about one more ‘issue’, I’m gonna open up a can of whip-butt on someone.”
And here is the sucky thing about it – my kids are getting the brunt of it. It took us 6 hours to pick up the house on Saturday. 6 HOURS!! At one point I looked at Amy and said – “Why is this so hard? I mean, get a toy – put it where it belongs!” And yet, this morning Cayden and Camber think I’m awesome (they told me so). Why?? I was Attilla most of the weekend?
While I’m at it – what is the deal with my pace? While I may say and think that I am expendable – I don’t act like it. If fact, I act the exact opposite. I act like that the world would end if I didn’t answer one more phone call, one more email, touch base with one more leader.
Enter Ozzie:
The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature.
These are the days when I look at Paul and say – man, you are so full of crap. There is no way that I have died to sin and Christ lives in me.
There is much about this death that appeals to me. No more need to have to defend me – just resting in His completed work, even when I don’t understand it. No more having to “make sure I get what I deserved” – it’s getting exhausting keeping up with the scores. No more having to have it “all figured out” – just trust and follow.
I’m ready to sign.
Correction, Spiritual & Functional
Correction, Spiritual & Functional
Our leaders will need correction in order to develop. Let’s first make a distinction between two types of correction. It’s important that all parties involved know the difference AND know which one is the topic of the day.
Spiritual Correction is about sin issues. Gossip, slander, breaking confidences, and lying. More often than not these are going to be “elephant in the room” issues. In other words, every one knows it’s there. It’s our job as Coaches to deal with it, gracefully and biblically.
Functional Correction has to do with skill level or lack thereof. Does the leader let discussions wander off and never closes them? Is the leader allowing one person to monopolize the group? Are there habits that are limiting the vulnerability level of the LIFE Group? These are NOT sin issues – these are just skills that need to be sharpened.
There might be times when an issue is both spiritual and functional. In those instances – shoot for the heart issues first.
Correction doesn’t have to be a nightmare confrontation. Let the leader do a self-evaluation. Chances are the issue is already known. In fact, the best way to coach is to ask questions to see if the leader can figure it out on their own. Some examples:
How did you think the meeting went?
What went well and what could improve?
If you could do this meeting over, what would you do differently?
Do you feel like you adequately prepared for the meeting?
How could you have prepared better?
What did you enjoy most about tonight? Least?
How can I help you continue to improve?
Helpful Hints of Correction
Correction is done one on one, NEVER in front of the LIFE Group. Do we really need to explain this one? Talk about creating bitterness in our leaders.
Use the praise sandwich. Start off by praising what was done right. Next deal with the correction area. Before we end, affirm the things they are doing well.
Have action points. Give the leaders something concrete and measurable they can work on.
Follow up and feedback! Always check back in after correction to see how their heart is doing. Allow some time to hear what they’ve learned through the process.
Back To Coaches
Back To Life Group Leaders
Encourage
Before you get images of standing on the sideline screaming “L-I-F-E!” at your leaders, let’s get a biblical understanding of what encouragment is.
Let’s start with Hebrews 10:24-25.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds…let us encourage one another.
The word encourage means “to make sharp, to irritate, to provoke.” Doesn’t exactly bring images of cheerleaders, does it?
Here’s the picture I have of encouragment – it’s in Matthew 16:16-19. Jesus does 3 key things.
1. He praised him for his success (v. 17a). This is absolutely a verbal thing but if you really want to make a marker for one of your leaders – write a note. Or show up at the beginning of their Life Group and “crash” for the first few minutes just bragging on what he or she did.
2. Jesus points out that God is working in and through Peter (v.17b). Affirming that someone is being used by God, then pointing out how will do more to make solid your leaders than anything else you do.
3. Jesus gives Peter more responsibility (v. 18-19). Jesus gives Peter more responsibility than he could handle. Peter was going to fail. Jesus knew it. More than likely the other disciples knew it. The only person who probably didn’t know it was Peter. Yet – Jesus gave it to him.
What does this mean for us? It means we risk. If we want to reproduce LEADERS, then we are going to have give them the freedom to fail. With out this freedom – we are going to have a hard time getting our leaders to step into new terroritory.
This is why the relational aspect to coaching is so huge. We must have safe, loving, but honest arenas to unpack our failures so that we can learn and grow from them.
Back To Coaches
Vision
We are the vision casters. We lift heads up to ‘re-see’ the goal of why we do this. We are the champions for life changing experiences with Jesus.
How do we cast vision?
Communicate
Verbally confirming the goal of encountering Jesus and being changed by Him. Putting the “pursuit of Jesus and His purposes” in our own words in order to tell someone else. Celebrating ‘wins’ in our Life Groups cast vision. What we celebrate communicates what we value.
Guard
There are too many options competing for priority in our programming, resources, and time. We must ask the hard questions of “Is what we want to do (or doing) going to lead us in experiencing Jesus? Reproducing a leader? Does it lead to spiritual transformation?”
We guard by also evaluating our groups according to our purpose, not by just how many show up.
Back To Coaches
Model
John 13:1-14 Jesus does something nobody expected. He washed their feet. At the end of the shocking event He tells them they should do the same.
Jesus never asked anything of His followers that He himself did not do. We have to be the same. As coaches not only will we lead out of the overflow of our relationship with Jesus, but we will also lead out of the overflow of our experience!
The leaders we are discipling have to be able to see at least a glimpse or a part of the target in us. 1 Corinthians 11:1 ought to be our motto!
We lead out of the overflow, being a model.
Back To Coaches
Coaches
Our definition of a coach is clear – we are disciplers of leaders. Specifically Life Group Leaders and Interns. If we, as coaches, are planning and leading a Life Group – we are failing at our prime mission. In fact, it is going to be extremely difficult to lead a Life Group and Coach more than one couple effectively.
Our goal is to have one Coach for every 2 to 4 Life Group Leaders.
So what does discipling a Life Group leader look like? There isn’t a cookie cutter answer to this. I do have some guardrails for us, though.
1. Relational Proximity
This is just fancy speak for living close with your leaders. We expect you to at the least do these things. Visit their groups four times a year. Have weekly contact with your leaders via email or phone. Grab some face time with them once a month. With consistent contact, you won’t have to start at ground zero every time you talk.
2. Soul Care
When you have that interaction, get good at asking lots of questions. How are your leaders’ souls? Where are they at in their journey with Jesus? What is the relationship like with the intern? How’s their marriage and/or kids? What is the biggest celebration point in their life? Their biggest disappointment? What heart issues are being ignored or glossed over?
3. Stay Macro
Your job is not to fix every problem in your Life Group Leaders Group. That’s the Life Group Leader and the Intern’s problem. Think big picture, Kingdom mentality. Get in the habit of answering questions with questions that will force them into deeper areas of trusting Jesus. Let them fail, then redeem/restore them.
I’ve broken these out into 4 main areas for us:
Life Group Leaders
I know what you’re thinking…you’re thinking, “Man – that looks a lot like the Intern track.”
You’d be right. Now that you are leading a group – some of this stuff is going to be a lot more valuable to you. Plus we’ve thrown in more bonus features for you!
Increasing an Intern’s Role, Birthing a Group, and Correction.
As usual – this stuff isn’t all that useful unless you’re walking through it with someone. So grab your Coach or your Intern and start digging.
The Life Group Leader Track:
Why Are We Here?
The Inner Disciplines
Life Group Disciplines
Leading a Meeting
Leading a Group
Increasing Your Intern’s Role
Ready To Birth A Group?
How To Birth A Group…
Correction, Spiritual and Functional
Preaching Tired
There are different kinds of tired.
There is travelling tired. Kinda groggy but mostly achey. A good cappicinio and/or sleep can help you with that. This guy’s theory is you take care of your feet, you are way ahead of the game.
Then there is workout tired. Amy knows all about this. I don’t think anything but sleep can cure this one…I think! 
There is “stuffed after a big meal” tired. Football or golf on the TV while watching horizontal is the cure for this.
There is stayed up playing Halo/watching movies tired.
Then there is preaching/speaking tired. It’s hard to explain. Just feel like – blah – like I’ve got no more words to talk, just want to veg out.
And NCAA’s is the perfect thing to veg out to. Although that “hissing” sound you heard was brackets everywhere being torn into shreds – thank you Connecticut, Wake Forest, Kansas, Syracuse, Gonzaga, and Oklahoma.
Leading A Group
Leading a meeting is a good thing to know. Leading a group is better. I think you’ll catch the difference once you go through these sessions.
If the purpose of our groups is to encounter Jesus and be changed by Him, that may or may not happen in your meeting.
Leading A Group
Leading A Meeting
There is a difference between leading a meeting and leading a group. Of the two – leading your group is more important. BUT, it is going to be hard to lead your group if you don’t have some skill in leading a meeting. Hopefully these sessions will help.
Leading A Meeting
Life Group Disciplines
These are the disciplines that have to happen in community in order for Spiritual Transformation to take place. These are what marks the difference between a Life Group and just a group of people who meet together. These disciplines can help you evaluate whether or not your group is hitting the bullseye of having life changing encounters with Jesus.
Life Group Disciplines
(As a sidenote, almost all of this material is from two ‘mentors’ I have never personally met – Richard Foster and John Ortberg. Foster’s work Celebration of Discipline still stands as THE classic on spiritual formation. Ortberg’s session at the 2000 Willow Creek Small Groups Conference framed these sessions as you see here.)
Inner Disciplines
These are the practices (disciplines) that have to happen in the Individual arena in order for us to experience spiritual transformation. They help feed our souls. We want practice these individually to the point that we minister out of the overflow of them.
All of that to reinforce what I said earlier – all the skills in the world will not make a difference if I’m bone-dry in my relationship with Jesus.
Inner Disciplines
Interns
This is good stuff, but it’s only half of it. Plus, it’s not all that valuable unless someone is walking through it with you. That’s part of your Life Group Leader’s job.
Some of it is going to be “no-brainer” stuff. My advice – don’t spend a lot of time there. Focus instead on the stuff new to you or you’re having a hard time mastering. And also realize that this stuff is heavily skewed on the skill side.
The other part of your Life Group Leader’s job is focusing on the heart side. This is going to be stuff like a teachable heart, home life, devotional life. All kinds of ‘personal stuff’ that if left alone will sink us as leaders.
Get used to someone knowing you more than you are comfortable with – that is Lifewalking and that is where true spiritual transformation takes place.
The Intern Track:
Why Are We Here?
The Inner Disciplines
Life Group Disciplines
Leading a Meeting
Leading a Group
Don’t Call, Write, or Email Me
Does anyone even know where Bucknell is?
Way to show up, Jayhawks, and lay a freakin’ egg. You should have blown them out of the gym – now, go home and hope Naismith doesn’t roll over and kick you all in the teeth.
[will spend the rest of day mumbling, grumbling, and searching for meaning in life.]