Posts Tagged ‘leadership ramblings’
The Inconvenience of Community
“I only disciple guys that I’m doing life with. So if you’re not in my Life Group or doing ministry with me, I’m not discipling you.”
I could tell the words shocked him. He went from smiling to jaw hanging open astonishment. There was no anger or tension between us. I like this guy. I’d love to hang with this guy. He wants to become more of a man of God. He’s a good man already. But he’s looking for more.
It was the last of 5 hard conversations I had on Sunday. The other four wanted personal, face to face, extended attention. Life had one way or another got upside down on them. They were in crisis. Needed some help. Wanted someone to walk through the crisis with them.
I’m flattered they trusted me enough to talk to me. I am. But the problem is – there is only one of me. Besides that…as many of the comments on this blog will attest…I’m not that smart.
I listened to each one. Their issues were varied but each had come to a crossroads of sorts. A tragedy in a family. A trust broken in another. A man wanting to become more of a man of God. After each one got finished, I asked the same question.
“Are you in a Life Group?”
No.
“Are you serving in a ministry with a team?”
No.
“Do you have any other believers that you meet with regularly to pray and study the Bible together?”
No.
After each one, there was a long pause and a look at me like – “What has this got to do with my problem?” After each one, I had the same conversation inside my head with God.
I don’t want to say what You are telling me to say. I asked the questions. You help them figure it out on their own. I don’t want to have this conversation, that’s why. Because I don’t want to be the bad guy. No, God. No. Okay…fine.
So I’d ask….”Why not?”
Every answer was the same…too inconvenient. Too busy. Another night out.
“How much would it be worth right now to know that you had 5 other couples you could call, cry with, pray with, laugh with, be real with – no masks – people that could walk with you through this crisis?”
Would it be worth 2 or 3 nights a month? The inconvenience of getting kids to bed late once in awhile? The inconvenience of having someone spill something on your carpet? Or break a Xbox controller? Is it worth a 12 pack every other week? Would it be worth just those 3 or 4 nights a year of bitter cold, having to wait on the car to warm up and scrape snow and ice off the windshield?
I told each them – “The greatest moments of healing and transformation in my life have come because of the community I’ve chosen to do life with.”
The jaw was still slightly opened. I shrugged my shoulders.
I leveled with him. If we started this discipleship thing, you’ll make some changes. Those changes are going to have a profound impact on your family. Your wife is going to need some godly woman around her, just like you’re going to need more than just me around you. That’s a Life Group. We’ll challenge each other. The two or three coffees a month will have a much great impact if we’re in a Life Group together. But the best first step in becoming a man of God is realizing you can’t do it alone then doing something about that.
And the truth of the matter is this – it would be easier, more convenient, and safer to hole up and stay private. It’d be easier to let people believe that I’m more patient than what I really am, smarter than I really am, and more together than what I really am. Tons easier.
But it wouldn’t be better.
Oasis: From Director To Sage
Opening Thought Questions:
Where do you put the weight of your leadership expertise?
Where do you invest the most of your leadership time and energy?
If you’re answers to these questions was anything other than yourself, I’d like to challenge you for the next few minutes.
If you spend the best part of your leadership time, expertise, and energy feeding the ministry beast – program, calendar, etc – your soul will die. You will never make it long term. You’ll be one of the statistics.
There is nothing more important than your own personal relationship with Jesus. Nothing. It may sound counter-intuitive but the best way to become a better leader is invest in your relationship with Jesus. It’s the only way to move from being a director to a sage.
By sage I mean a “Yoda.” Remember the first time you saw Yoda? Empire Strikes Back, little green guy comes waddling out of the swamp and you knew it….you KNEW he was the Jedi Master. The Force just dripped off of him. We waited over 20 years to see him pop out the light saber and when we did – we were like …”I KNEW IT!!!! Yoda is a STUD.”
He wasn’t cool, fly, hip – he just dripped with the force.
We need Yoda youth pastors who drip with Jesus. Don’t have to be cool, hip, athletic, smart. Just have to drip with Jesus. Our relationship with Jesus should ooze out of us like this. That’s what students need, not a calendar.
How to be a sage?
Find a sage, walk with him (or her).
Get deep – students need Jesus…the real Jesus. not a cool youth pastor. Get deep in the word, not pop theology but continue to dig deeper for yourself in the Word.
Get authentic. The more vulnerable you are, the more you’re going to see God work. Focus on BEING accountable to others, not keeping others accountable. Raise the vulnerability level on your team by you being vulnerable.
Get risky – go after the real issues that students are really dealing with – abuse, cutting, eating disorders, sexuality. Take them to the REAL Jesus.
Oasis Roundtable: Leader Development
This was the roundtable discussion I led at Oasis.
Grab an index card and write down for me…
2-3 books you’ve read in the last year that fed your soul (Doesn’t have to be religious)
2-3 places/experiences you’ve visited that have been meaningful for you
2-3 new people you’ve met that you’ve learned something from or just like being around
Pick 1 of those things you wrote down and tell us all a little about it.
What does this exercise have to do with leader development?
The most significant leader development class we take in our lives are the books we read, the places we visit, and the people we do life with. If you’re not expanding in these areas, you aren’t developing as a person.
When you start looking at potential leaders, what are the baseline qualifications you have?
Responsive, Available, Faithful, Teachable.
Don’t have to be moral, super Christians. Don’t have to have solid theology. Don’t have to know what God’s voice sounds like. We can model and teach those things. Some people will disqualify themselves from being a leader just by the pace of life they lead.
Got a person that is borderline? Start with the glaring weaknesses, don’t ignore them. Risk early, set the temp of the relationship early.
What does a developed leader look like?
If you have a hard time answer that question, you will not develop leaders. If you don’t have a clear picture of what you are aiming for, you’ll never hit the target. If you can’t communicate where you are going or what you want in 30 seconds or less – you don’t know what you are doing and you won’t develop leaders…you’re developing followers.
Know and communicate their story of what Jesus has done and is doing in their life.
Know and use their spiritual gift.
Serving in some ministry, some way.
Able to feed themselves first-hand spiritually.
Are doing life in community, authentically.
Are taking someone else on this journey with them.
How do you do this? What materials to use?
Nothing will ever replace life on life, grind it out discipleship. Early morning coffees, late night pizzas, lunches, trips, common books, sweaty, messy discipleship. Doesn’t matter so much WHAT you use but how you use it. Do you use it with those targets in your sites?
Doing this with a team…
Get a map and start looking for field trips you can take that are within a 2 hour drive of your house. Might be a museum, state park, lake, historic site, factory tour (New Belgium Brewery). Then take 1 day a month and start hitting these places. Take some one with you, a volunteer, a leader student. Then write about what you learned and saw. I have a blog, that’s where I put my stuff.
Examples:
Downtown Lunch Club
The Ski Crew (Danny, Toby, Steve)
Oasis: Intial Impressions
After the conference I was struck with a couple of things.
First – and I don’t say this judgmentally but a “it is what it is” thing – there seems to be more and more under-equipped pastors serving in our churches.
That’s not a slam on youth pastors. It’s a slam on two things – our seminaries/colleges and senior/lead pastors. Seminaries/Colleges are easy targets and I’ve come to the realization that there are some things they can do well (teach sound theology, Bible, skills, how to study, academics) and there are some they just don’t get and won’t get (practical life on life experience, leadership training, common sense).
The bigger slam is on the leadership culture and team of the local church. When a church hires a new youth pastor (any staff really), the primary job of that lead pastoral/elder team becomes developing and deepening that person you just hired. It means relational investment, professional investment. It means that a lead pastor’s primary job is NOT all the other stuff but investing in the life of his team and creating a culture around that team that develops people, not run the church.
And that’s what I heard this week…a bunch of guys in churches where the focus of the pastor/team is running the church, not developing people. And it’s killing their souls.
For me – it was a huge eye-opener and a moment of thanks for guys like Gene Wilkes, Mark Schartzman, and Ray Schwartz. Yes…we “run” the church but those guys spent just as much time in developing people. Especially, Mark Schatzman.
Second, because of this void, most church staffs are just as broken and dysfunctional as the families they serve. If a pastor can’t be real around the office because he has to walk on eggshells…that church is in deep weeds.
Third, this lack of leadership and authentic community around the staff team is the greatest crisis facing our churches – not the economic situation, political climate, or post-christian/modern/emergent/e-i-e-i-o garbage.
thoughts? comments?
Fall Confab, 2008
Confab – an informal discussion.
This is what we call our Life Group leader sharpening. A bunch of us sit around the table, we throw out a few questions we are dealing with, then see where it all goes.
Here’s what we unpacked:
What are you most looking forward to this year? (Life Group and/or personally)
What are you most dreading?
What do you think is the biggest obstacle/opportunity for your Life Group this coming year?
How do you physically grow a Life Group to critical mass?
How do you do that without completely messing up the group dynamic?
As usual, my job normally ends with the asking of the questions. There is so much collective wisdom in our leaders. The time screams by as I watch this group of leaders encourage, instruct, listen, and learn from each other.
If you had been there, this is a sample of what you would have heard.
I am the biggest obstacle in our group.
We laughed when he said it but his vulnerability humbled us all when he said that his desire to be in control and ‘get through the lesson’ was at times the biggest obstacle for his own life group. I think we all gulped at the time because it was one of those moments when God teaches through hilarity.
How do you handle people who hardly say anything when you start discussing spiritual matters?
Still waters run deep. It’s okay to ask them questions, it’s also okay to let them NOT answer them. Couple of other leaders spoke of their own spiritual journey. As new adult believers, they didn’t know any of these crazy stories that everyone else seemed to know so they just kept their mouth shut the first few years of following Jesus. Make sure they have a place to talk and engage – socially, one on one, somewhere. Don’t worry about the ‘lesson’ time if they are connecting in other places.
How do you add critical mass to your group?
“Make sure you’ve got something good going on in your group to start with.” Another nugget from one of our leaders. It’s not about adding numbers, it’s about life change. Are we connecting real people with real issues to the real Jesus? Focus on that as a leader, don’t worry about the rest.
Be available, invite people. It sounds ridiculous to say out loud but I’ve got to admit of being lazy at times…just thinking people will show up. A personal invitation is huge.
Great time with our core leaders at the church.
We’d Better Know The Difference
I’m not sure how I got to thinking about this…especially this week as busy as I’ve been. I’m speaking in a few weeks at a group of youth pastors in Kansas – maybe that’s why but something hit me yesterday as I was 40 feet in the air on an extension ladder hanging speaker wire. (Closer to God? Scared to death? Not sure…)
My first thought was this – what do you say to a room of youth pastors that they haven’t already heard? Maybe that’s not the point but I think it’s a valid question. I’ve sat through my share of boring seminars and talks – I don’t want to be that guy up front repeating what every other student pastor says when he gets asked to speak to a bunch of student pastors.
Then I started thinking – what do you need to hear? What’s been one of the most significant pieces of advice or insight that has shaped how you do ministry?
And I thought of Cindy Rhudy. Then of Mark Edwards. Then of Steve Boehm. And this made me think of other volunteers who became friends who became family that I’ve done youth ministry alongside. But those three came to mind because they were links in defining the single most important insight that has shaped me.
From Cindy Rhudy: Trust your volunteers. Learn from them. That’s a pretty good insight in and of itself, but it wasn’t the lynchpin. It did open the door for the next two people.
From Steve Beohm: If you can’t do what you want, do what you can. Steve and Beth wanted to be missionaries in China. That door got slammed in their face. Instead of being bitter about it – they brought the Far East to them – adopting foreign exchange students. They’ve had 4, putting a couple through college right now. All of them know Jesus.
From Mark Edwards: Knowing the Word is good. Doing it is better. Mark’s modesty will prevent him from saying this but he’s the genius that started the Under the Bridge project. He pushed, pulled, and poked me deeper into Christ just by walking in the room. His faith challenged me. It made me uncomfortable at times but I couldn’t ever resist spending time with him.
I had the noble aspiration to make sure students knew the Word of God. Not bad. But through the advice and insight of these three (and others) I learned…no…I EXPERIENCED something better than that.
It’s Jesus.
The real, messy, unpredictable Jesus. The real Jesus that gets in our mess with us… to redeem it and change us.
“They can’t know the real Jesus without knowing the Word.” That’s true.
But it’s equally true that it’s possible to know the Word and NOT know the real Jesus.
And as leaders of student ministries in this crazy phase of student culture – we’d better know the difference. More to the point, we’d better know how to connect the dots so that the knowledge doesn’t become the stumbling block of the relationship.
Well, what does that look like?
Looks like I need to spend some more time on some ladders…