Category: Leadership

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Road Work

As some of you know, I like to run. I started last year and have been running in some local 5K’s. I am running in one this weekend in New Philadelphia. Most of the training I have been doing is running on the roads around my house. Usually between 2-5 miles at a time.

On Monday night I was working late, so I decided to run on the treadmill at work. As I started running I soon was reminded how different it is to run on a treadmill versus running outside along a road. I was in a nice air conditioned room with a big screen TV and a fan. I had a machine keeping my pace and elevation. The treadmill gave a little cushion as I ran.

When I am running outside, I have the heat and the wind to deal with. I have tar and road apples to dodge. I have hills and slopes and potholes. Running outside on a road is much different than running inside on a treadmill.

As I was thinking about all this it hit me that our spiritual life is much that way as well. If all we ever do is run on the treadmill spiritually, we never experience all that God has for us. Our treadmill can be going to church, going to Bible study or small group, even our personal devotions. All of those are helpful and good, just like running on a treadmill is helpful and good.

However, when you get out on the road and put your faith into action things are different. It gets a little messy, you have some unexpected challenges. You get stretched and uncomfortable. There are hills to climb, sometimes the wind is in your face and sometimes it is at your back. When you put what you have learned into action incredible things happen.

I believe God wants all people that consider themselves to be followers of Jesus Christ to get out and run. Be the person that makes a difference in someones life, by taking the time to do something. If each of us would do some road work every week, we could change our communities and our world.

Keep running on your treadmill, but get outside and run as well.

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Stop & Learn

I started reading the book of Isaiah on Monday. In the first chapter there were a few verses that really jumped out at me. They are so simple and yet give us great direction and purpose in life. It starts at the end of verse 16 with a simple “Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!”. Sometimes when I am counseling someone or listening to someone I just want to say Stop doing wrong, learn to do right and send them on their way.

Is there anything you need to stop doing, because it is wrong? What are you doing to learn to do right? Do you know what is right and what is wrong?

It goes on to say this, “Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” There, in a simple sentence is a great way to approach life. read that over several times and ask yourself how you can put that into practice over the next week. If you are already doing this, it should be an encouragement to keep doing right, seeking justice, encouraging people, defending and pleading the case of the widows, single moms, elderly, disabled and children that need help.

Sometimes it is very difficult to stop doing wrong, it may be comfortable, enjoyable and thrilling. However, there are always consequences to our actions. God created us to know the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard, but God rewards those that do right. Listen to verse 19 – “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Are you willing and obedient or resisting and rebelling? Is God calling you to do something, go somewhere, help someone, give something, give up something? Take a moment right now and ask God where you need to be willing and obedient.

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Goals & Excellence

Organizations/Teams can only accomplish two or three goals at once with excellence.

That quote from Stephen Covey has had me thinking all weekend. I threw out that quote to see who agrees with it, so I thought I should share what I thought.

I tend to agree with Covey in regards to doing it with excellence. As an organization, if you have more than three major goals you begin to diminish how effective you can be. You might have some smaller goals underneath those three major goals. Those are the how I am going to get it done kind of stuff. The problem is when you take on more and more you tend to lose steam in the other areas. It is a constant struggle to stay focused and do what you do best every day. When we start to dabble in areas we are not experienced in and good at we risk losing the effectiveness of what we do well.

I have also found that to be true in my own area of work. The department that I lead is Care Ministries at NewPointe Community Church. I have three major areas I try to focus on. For now those areas are:

  1. Developing the Mentoring Ministry (one-on-one and couple to couple ministry) – Helping people through difficult times in their lives.
  2. Launching a Leadership Development Experience for NewPointe leaders and potential leaders.
  3. Coaching small group leaders to lead healthy thriving small groups.

In each of those areas, I have multiple goals to help accomplish the bigger goal. What gets me in trouble is all the other smaller things that come up every day. I can’t always be focused on just those three things, because I have many other responsibilities. I think most people can identify with that. However, by having those top three goals I can regularly step back and look at those areas to see if we are making progress. If I would have four, five or six major goals, I would find it even more difficult to be excellent in any of them. As a matter of fact I wonder how “excellent” those three are right now.

The more you can narrow the focus the more excellent you will be in that area. The more time you can spend on something the better you can get at it. So yes, I agree with Covey in the sense that your organization should have no more than two to three major goals. Each department or team within the organization should also have two to three major goals that support those top three for the organization. If you want to be excellent you need to focus on the things you do best. Too many goals tends to paralyze you and keep you from being world class, instead you become average.

This can be one of the hardest things you ever do. Saying no to big opportunities because it is not what is best for the organization, or it would cause sideways energy. The more sideways energy you create the weaker you get in the areas of true importance. The best leaders stay focused and can say no to the things that don’t fit or would cause you to get distracted.

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Who Knows Your Name?

One of my favorite songs on my iPod is Boston by Augustana. It came out in the summer of 2007. Here are some of the lyrics:

You don’t know me and you don’t even care

You don’t know me and you don’t wear my chains

I think I’ll go to Boston

I’ll think I’ll start a new life

I think I’ll start it over

Where no one knows my name

I think that I’m just tired

I think I need a new town

To leave this all behind

Cause you don’t know me and you don’t even care

You don’t know me and you don’t wear my chains

No one knows my name


If you listen carefully you can hear the pain. We all crave to be known, for people to know our name and to be accepted and loved. When that is missing in our lives we want to disappear, because we already feel invisible. Many people are feeling this way. Feeling lost, hurt, broken like no one cares. Even the smallest thing can convey to a person that they matter, that they are worth noticing.


If you are feeling like no one cares, it sounds intriguing to go to a new city and start over, however all of your baggage goes with you. It won’t be long until some of the same old patterns start popping up again. That is why it is so important to work through your conflicts, your hurts, your hangups and your bad habits.


This song is also a reminder to all of us to pay attention to the people around us. Are you interested enough in the people you meet to remember their names. Calling someone by name is huge. We all love to hear our own names. This is an area I can certainly work on. I have my good days and my bad days. Mostly we struggle with peoples names, because we are not really listening to the people we meet and really don’t care. We are usually too busy to take the time to get to know someone. When you get to know them, you remember their names.


This week try to call more people by name. Reach out and do something kind for someone. Make an investment in the life of someone you may not have noticed before. Maybe its the quiet guy at work or the elderly lady in your neighborhood.


Also don’t run from your baggage, face it and deal with it. Get involved in a small group, take the initiative to get connected with other people. Just like “Cheers” used to say on TV – We all want to go where everyone knows your name. Find a church that you feel is accepting and inviting. The really cool thing is that God knows each of our names, he never forgets.

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If You Don’t Know, You Can’t Care

Over the past month I have been challenged in multiple ways to examine what I really care about. It started when I heard this quote: “If you don’t know you can’t care”. How true is that? You are not going to care about something you don’t know about. You are not going to care about someone you don’t know.

So I started asking myself, what do you really care about? What do I think about all the time? What do you talk about? Where do I spend most of my free time? What do I make time for? Where do I spend my money?

It is very easy to live in our own little world and not care about anything outside of that. If we ignore the things around us like poverty, divorce, abuse, addictions, hunger and homelessness it does not just go away.

This weekend I went to our Free Methodist Annual conference. One of the reports was on how the Free Methodist church can reach out and make a difference with the poor, hurting and disenfranchised people around us. We heard many stories about efforts to make a difference. Food pantries, homeless shelters, food delivery, church in a local park in a poor neighborhood. It was exciting to hear that, yet I thought we can do more, I can do more. God has been working on my heart, breaking my heart for people in poverty, people struggling with addictions, people experiencing divorce and separation, families being torn apart. Those invisible people that are feeling abandoned and alone, hurting and hopeless.

I want my church, NewPointe, to be known as the church that cares, that takes the time to listen, that takes the time to invest in one person and one family at a time. Together we can impact our community in a profound and real way. It will take a new way of thinking and a new way of leading. I am praying and asking God to direct me in how we can make a bigger, longer lasting impact in peoples lives. Helping people become healthy, physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. What do you care about? Who do you care about? What breaks your heart?

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PDA

Here are some insights from Mark Sanborn on leadership. Mark was a speaker at the Maximum Impact Simulcast last Friday. He has a new book out called “Encore Effect”.

What if you were so good at your work, such an asset to your company (or family), such a remarkable leader that your boss (or spouse) or board of directors would do almost anything not to lose you to a competitor.

PDA stands for Performance Development Agenda. He challenged us to think two levels up instead of just one. Try to think about being a more remarkable performer, thinking two levels up. Be a more remarkable person, understanding who we are is critical. Help others become more remarkable, help others surpass themselves.

Mark said that both passion and process are needed for success. Passion is not enough, you need a process. This is the process he described:

  • Prepare – This is where remarkable performances always begin. You prepare for what you love. How are you preparing for your performance at work and life?
  • Practice – It won’t make you perfect, but it will always make you better. Learn to summarize critical activities and learn essential skills. Ten thousand hours of practice leads to greatness. Some critical activities of leadership include persuading, vision-casting, coaching, communicating and executing. Are you practicing your critical activities and skills?
  • Perform – This is where preparation and practice payoff. Great performers move people to act, think, feel good and laugh.
  • Pitfalls – Avoid them when you can and be prepared to handle them when you can’t. Most pitfalls can be avoided. Remarkable is not perfection, it is being authentic and real in the midst of pitfalls.
  • Polish – Good is never good enough, keep polishing and improving every aspect of what you do, so that your next performance is even more remarkable than your last.

School is never out for the encore performer. Passion is the fuel for remarkable performances.

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Simulcast

I have been sitting in the Maximum Impact Simulcast at NewPointe today. I just finished listening to Liz Murray talk about her story of going from being homeless to attending Harvard. What an amazing story of growth. Her parents were both drug addicts and they lived in welfare her entire childhood. She described going days without food, eating ice because it felt like eating food. Splitting a tube of toothpaste with her sister and on.

She talked about making empowering decisions or dis-empowering decisions. Those moments in time when we can go either way. She said that self-pity will always lead us to dis-empowering decisions. After losing her mother to AIDS, she started to realize that she had to change something. She started to make empowering choices, like going to school, working hard, getting up ever morning. She ended up applying for a scholarship and getting it, which allowed her to get into Harvard.

Hearing her story was worth the entire day. You can check out her website to learn more. You can also learn more at this site as well.

Also heard from Linda Kaplan Thaler, John Maxwell, Kevin Carroll, Tony Blair, Al Weiss (Disney CEO), Mark Sanborn, Jack Nicklaus and Bill George. More on some of them later.

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Living Life

I have been reading the Message version of the Bible. Today I read Colossians. Chapter three is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. There is such good instruction on living life and how to handle our relationships and our work. Reading this really challenged me today and I hope it will challenge you as well. Take some time and read this several times. Ask God to speak to you about your life.

Colossians Chapter 3:

“So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.

3-4Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.

5-8And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That’s a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It’s because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn’t long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it’s all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

9-11Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.

12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

18Wives, understand and support your husbands by submitting to them in ways that honor the Master.

19Husbands, go all out in love for your wives. Don’t take advantage of them.

20Children, do what your parents tell you. This delights the Master no end.

21Parents, don’t come down too hard on your children or you’ll crush their spirits.

22-25Servants, do what you’re told by your earthly masters. And don’t just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you’ll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you’re serving is Christ. The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t cover up bad work.”

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Leader’s Leading

This week I got the privilege of sitting in a room with business leader’s from our community. We are talking about the idea of a leadership development program at NewPointe. We identified a problem, a lack of leader’s, and are working on changing that. Right now we are talking about the vision statement and mission statement.

This was a very interesting evening and I got a chance to see some quality leaders in action. We shared thoughts, ideas and even had some disagreement. I believe that for great things to happen you need to go through meetings like this. It can seem tedious and mundane at times, but until you can identify the problem and articulate the vision, which is a preferred future, you can’t make progress.

I am very excited about the potential of this leadership development program. This will not only help our local church, but also our community. Each leader that grows will have more influence in their families, communities, workplaces and schools.

Leadership is so important. Without great leadership things don’t happen. Things don’t change and people don’t grow. Leadership is about influence and relationships. It is about motivating people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do and like it. I know that I need to continue to grow as a leader, and my desire is to help other leaders continue to grow as well. When you stop growing you won’t be leading very long.

I hope to be able to share some more soon about the NewPointe Leadership Academy.

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Monday Life Lessons

Here are some life lessons from Proverbs to start your week:

Proverbs 3:5-6: Depending on your own wisdom obstructs God’s better plans for your life.

Proverbs 4:23: Your hearts affections determine your life’s direction. God’s Word keeps your heart pure and safe.

Proverbs 5:1-23: Beware of pursuing a cheap alternative to the blessings a faithful marriage can bring. Evil always tempts us to settle for less than God’s best.

Proverbs13:7: Live by godly priorities. What seems worthless to fools is often valuable to the righteous; what fools pursue is often meaningless in God’s eyes.

Proverbs 16:16 – “How much better to get wisdom than gold!”