I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately on the commitment it takes to generate change. Creating culture rarely happens overnight. It (usually) means doing the back breaking work of plowing fields and tearing down walls. This came clear to me on Monday. I was helping my Dad spread mulch in their yard. We’d already picked up a truck full of mulch and we were doling out load number two. I realized in that moment that most things of value take TIME.

Take on the challenge
Invest in the outcome
Marry yourself to the vision
Engage the process

One tough thing about being a leader is that part of you wants to look for the easy way out. Whether that means acquiescing to those who want to refuse change or settling for the status quo. That’s much easier to do. And frankly, there are a lot of people willing to settle there.

I’m not one of those guys. I want to see people move forward and the Church grow and innovate. My prayer is that more people will be willing to spend TIME on seeing change happen.

What ways do you take the TIME to build culture where you serve and lead?

btw…my friend Chris said I should say that I just came up with that acrostic so no one would think I stole it from a book.

I had a thought today. (congratulatory notes accepted) Could one of the reasons that people leave in leadership transitions in churches be because we as leaders have failed to connect them beyond ourselves to the source of our passion and drive? Could it be that we may have led well, but not really introduced true community to the people we led? I do understand that sometimes people will leave when you exit. It’s happened to me in places. I get that people enjoy different styles and connect to various leaders/pastors in a special way. I still resonate and connect with people I helped lead/pastor in various churches but, if I’m doing my job well, I’m steering every one’s heart toward Him. A proof that ministry is done well, in my mind, is that when you leave people stay because their connection to God is deeper than a personal connection to you.

One of my personal practices in this area is to deflect all the praise to God and accept criticism for myself. Not to be self deprecating, but to steer people to God in the good and to walk with them through the bad. I’m finding that continually refusing to embrace praise and pushing to embrace community is one way to deepen the bonds of friendship and also build the relational capital to help steer people’s hearts past minutia to what really matters.

When it’s all over, I doubt the Lord is going to ask me how well people resonated with me personally. I feel He’s much more likely to ask how much of my life I spent steering people to the only true hope in this world.

How do you steer people closer to Jesus and deeper into community?

I was challenged and inspired by Piper’s post today. You can see the original link here, but here’s the text:

Here is a simple exhortation that I have been trying to implement in our family:

Seek to see and feel the gospel as bigger as years go by rather than smaller.

Our temptation is to think that the gospel is for beginners and then we go on to greater things. But the real challenge is to see the gospel as the greatest thing—and getting greater all the time.

The Gospel gets bigger when, in your heart,

• grace gets bigger;
• Christ gets greater;
• his death gets more wonderful;
• his resurrection gets more astonishing;
• the work of the Spirit gets mightier;
• the power of the gospel gets more pervasive;
• its global extent gets wider;
• your own sin gets uglier;
• the devil gets more evil;
• the gospel’s roots in eternity go deeper;
• its connections with everything in the Bible and in the world get stronger;
• and the magnitude of its celebration in eternity gets louder.

So keep this in mind: Never let the gospel get smaller in your heart.

Pray that it won’t. Read solid books on it. Sing about it. Tell someone about it who is ignorant or unsure about it.

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel…. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

I don’t know about you, but these are all the things I want to see happen in my life. How’s the Gospel becoming “bigger” to you?

There is a push in my life to get back to the basics of what really matters. A calling back to prayer. A calling back to family being priority. A calling back to the words of Jesus and how His character should shape my life and decisions. I heard that John Maxwell said that “Most Christians are educated far beyond their level of obedience.” To say I’ve got a long way to go would be like saying Yao Ming is kind of tall.

What I do find is that when I’m willing to strip away everything I take security in outside of Him; God is waiting to rip down the walls and make my adventure with Him bigger. One of the ways I’m doing this is by reading the Gospels. I’ve joined with Pete Wilson on his 28 day journey through Matthew and trying to take the time to ask God what He really wants to do in my heart and life.

This process of trying to become more like Him always leads to a tug of war for my heart. Am I really willing to step away from all the things that pull me from Him? Am I really willing to die so He can live? Am I really ready to live life always preferring others? Do I really want to be like Jesus?

It’s so easy to get caught up on the theories of how to do church. The right things to say. The right songs to sing and lose focus on the ultimate right in life:

To know Jesus. In the fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His resurrection.

Anyone else down for getting back to basics? How do you make sure your faith is still focused?

I love twitter and facebook. I really dig the idea that I can connect to other folks around the country/planet and get to know them. I’ve shared phone conversations/coffee/lunch/hang out time/halo/iChat/tokbox with people I either a) wouldn’t met otherwise or b) lost touch with, all because of the new and beautiful world of social networking.

But, some (if not most) of the people I’m called to serve in the local church setting don’t get it.

There’s even some that don’t like it.

Think it’s a waste of time.

Not interested in connecting over facebook/email/twitter.

Folks that in my social networking world wouldn’t be “cool”.

People who are just as much in need of life change and someone to love them where they are as all my connected friends. People who need friends and go about sharing life in a totally different way than I do.

I really would love it if everyone was like me and communicated and shared life in the same way. But then again, wouldn’t that make life boring?

I’m trying to figure this out because, at the end of the day, what matters to me is seeing people connected to and embraced by a God who loves them whether they’re “plugged in” or not.

How do you connect with “offline people”? You can talk about them freely because they’ll never read this anyway.