Sep
11
Learning to Think Better
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To reach the world with the gospel, what we need more than anything is a good idea. Good ideas however are rare- -perhaps because good thinking is rare. Learning to think better will make you a better leader for “leaders are always good thinkers and great leaders are always great thinkers.”
In his recent newsletter, Mark Sanborn suggests the following helpful practices toward better thinking.
- Make time to think. Make it an objective to spend 15-30 minutes in uninterrupted thinking a day. Why is it that we don’t take time to think? Perhaps it is because we confuse activity with accomplishment. We can stay incredibly busy and still accomplish little. Thinking helps us separate the mundane from the magnificent in our lives.
- Find a good place to think. A purposeful thinking-place quickly enables thinking mode. When we go to a specific place or spot to do our thinking, the mind becomes conditioned to do just that. Find a place that invigorates your thinking and go to it frequently.
- Focus your thinking. One of the biggest obstacles to thinking is lack of focus. At times it benefits one to let his or her mind wander; at most other times it’s helpful to focus. You can develop focus in two ways: first, focus on a problem to be solved or an obstacle to overcome. Second, focus on an opportunity to be exploited or an improvement to be made.
- Record your insights. Sanborn observes that most people have pretty good ideas. The problem isn’t a lack of ideas but a lack of recall. Ideas are fleeting and must be captured. Some of the biggest payoffs from thinking occurs when we revisit or review notes from our thinking sessions–adding or modifying what you’ve come up with.
- Consider how you know what you know. As Mark Twain once said–it wasn’t what we didn’t know that hurt us, but what we know that just ain’t so. Thinking should be the pursuit of reality. To be sound, you should consider questions like “What do I believe?”, “How do I know this conclusion is true?” and “Says who?” Sanborn says that thinking can be somewhat threatening because it causes us to reexamine things that we often take for granted. Good thinking isn’t just about the new things we learn but also the inaccurate things we abandon.
- Stimulate your brain. Some believe coffee is the ultimate thinking elixir. I certain do some of my best thinking at Starbucks. There are other ways to stimulate your thinking. Sanborn suggests that reading outside your comfort zone is one. Going over the same familiar “reading” road will take you to the same familiar places. To reach an exotic destination requires a different route. Introduce new concepts/ideas into your mind.
Sign up for Mark’s excellent newsletters: www.marksanborn.com
Aug
30
I recently bookmarked Steve Addison’s world changers blog to my RSS daily download. (In other words, I make sure I check it daily.) Check it out yourself. Steve’s a church planter from Australia.
His down under perspective on movement building offers a fresh approach. We’ll be better at transforming the nations of the world–if we go to school at steveaddison.net. Whenever Steve reads the Gospels or Acts, he asks these questions: How did Jesus found the world Christian movement? What did he actually do? What characterized the early church as a dynamic missionary movement? (Not a bad discipline for us)
Steve’s five common characteristics of renewal movements take this month’s top blog post:
By “movement” I am referring to any group of people called by God who are dedicated to pursue individual and corporate transformation; resulting in the renewal and expansion of the Church in its mission.
Throughout church history there has been an incredible diversity of renewal movements, each making their unique contribution. The most effective share five common characteristics.
1. White-hot faith
A sixteen year-old boy is taken captive by raiders and sold into slavery. Desperate with loneliness, hunger and cold he cries out to God for deliverance and is answered. He goes on to pioneer one of the greatest missionary movements the world has ever seen. An obscure Augustinian monk agonizes over what it means to be made right with God through faith. His is an intensely personal struggle out of which the Protestant Reformation is born. A young minister returns from the mission field, a failure in his own eyes, devoid of the experience of God’s loving acceptance. His heart is “strangely warmed” by the grace of God and one of the most significant awakenings in modern history shakes Britain and spreads world-wide.
Patrick of Ireland, Martin Luther and John Wesley—we remember them as powerful historical figures through whom God renewed the Church and transformed the world. We honour them as heroes of the faith. We forget they began as broken men crying out to God for an encounter that would change their lives. Out of personal encounter with God, these transformational leaders went on to renew the Church and to shape the world in which we live.
2. Commitment to a Cause
We all seek to avoid the tension created by the gap between our ideals and our reality. Effective movements exploit that gap and raise the tension. They make life uncomfortable for us all. Movements are uncompromising. They heighten tension inside the Church and with the surrounding culture. Movements are born in conflict, because they stand for something.
Australians are cynical when it comes to religion. But in Australia the Salvation Army has a 98% approval rating. That’s pretty good considering God polls at only 72%! It has taken generations to build that respect. How did the Salvation Army begin as a renewal movement? They began with the same Church and societal opposition that the early Methodists and Pentecostals faced. They were mocked in the Press, they were beaten by gangs, their meetings were disrupted, their buildings burnt down.
Passionate people make history. That’s true for both social and religious movements. They take their cause seriously. They have a clear message that is communicated unambiguously and lived out consistently. The result is often dramatic growth.
3. Contagious Relationships
Changed lives are at the heart of every rapidly spreading religious movement. Lives are impacted— friends and family are influenced. New converts become doors through which the Gospel enters into previously unreached social networks. Sociologically, “Conversion is adopting the faith of your friends.”
A key to the incredible growth of Pentecostalism in the 20th Century has been its tendency to grow via face-to-face recruitment by committed individuals using their own pre-existing, significant social relationships. Today, the impact of the Alpha program around the world is attributable to that same dynamic— the spread of the Gospel, from life to life.
A simple, supernatural message of salvation; lives are transformed; and the Gospel spreads like wildfire throughout networks of relationships. The cycle begins again as new converts are quickly deployed in ministry.
4. Rapid Mobilisation
George Bernard Shaw observed that, “Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.” It’s not that movements abolish the clergy. Rather they abolish the laity. Everyone is ordained and mobilized for ministry.
In 1776 just 17% of the Americans were affiliated with a church. By 1850 that number had grown to 34%. The change can be attributed to dramatic success the “upstart” Baptists and Methodists had in reaching unchurched people on the frontier. The Baptists and Methodists were led by poorly educated, poorly paid “amateurs” who closely resembled the people they served. In contrast, the sophisticated clergy of the established churches were not trained to earn their own livings behind horse and plow, nor were they prepared to spend half their days in the saddle going from one rural hamlet to another.
The Baptists and Methodists planted churches where the people were and empowered them to take responsibility for the ministry. A rapidly changing environment demanded that new models for leadership development be implemented. The rest is history.
5. Adaptive Methods
Unencumbered by tradition, movements feel free to experiment with new forms of the church and new effective methods of ministry. Religious organizations are notoriously difficult to change. Over time our methodologies become even more sacred than our message. In contrast, dynamic movements are characterized by “sanctified pragmatism.”
They are conservative in doctrine but radical in methodology.
When John Wesley first encountered field preaching as a means of mass communication, he was offended. Yet, as he was increasingly shut out of the churches of the day he became an ardent practitioner. “I love the rites and ceremonies of the Church. But I see, well-pleased, that our great Lord can work without them.”
Movements adapt themselves to the world around them. They pioneer new and effective strategies without compromising their message.
(Listen to Jay’s Interview with Steve under Podcasts)
Aug
30
Edison and Innovation
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I’m on a flight to Eastern Europe and browsing through a British magazine with a synopsis of a study on Thomas Edison, the famous American inventor. Several lines have caught my attention:
“Central to Edison’s success was his ‘invention factory’, bringing together great people, constant prototyping and a culture of innovation and enterprise … He believed that, while ‘books show the theory of things, doing a thing itself is what counts.’ He saw failure as part of the inventive process.”
I continue to be amazed at how movements can ossify and institutionalize. Organizational gravity inevitably pulls toward institutionalization. The justifications used by the bean counters, policy makers, and those who must have rules and regulation are legion: “accountability…stewardship…excellence”…can all be admirable labels for clubs that are used to beat innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit out of an organizational culture.
In my experience the only way to keep an edge and a step ahead of the maintainers is to recruit and empower a steady stream of what Edison called “muckers.” They are the trailblazers who simply need running room and someone to believe in them. That’s why recruiting such men and women in the emerging generation is one of my top priorities. I believe nothing has the capacity to bring about as much lasting, transformational change as this. It’s part of my own personal mission statement.
Part of that to which God has called me is:
To challenge, recruit, sponsor and empower growing numbers of godly, high potential leaders into apostolic ministry and
To pioneer, nurture and grow apostolic structures which will multiply leadership for the Church in every nation.
Edison’s Muckers crica 1876
“In selecting what he called his ‘Muckers’, he [Thomas Edison] prized curiosity, reasoning, resilience and versatility over specialization …He was a magnet for talent from all over the world. Over time, a team of virtuosos emerged that he entrusted to deliver on his dreams and generously rewarded in return.”
“Edison was one of the boys yet still the authoritative leader. If expectations on his team were at times impossibly high, the atmosphere was informal and freewheeling. The ‘Muckers’ did not work to any rules,’ said Edison, ‘because they were trying to achieve something.’ Announcing momentous success before the solution was even in his view. He stretched his Muckers, creating an astounding esprit de corps in the process.”
God, give me a life surrounded by a growing number of “muckers!”
(Quotes are from Bill Fischer, professor of technology management at IMD, and Andy Boynton, dean of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College).
Jul
25
Lessons Leaders Need to Know
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July 15th, 2008 by Mark Sanborn (register for Mark’s excellent emails)
These are lessons I either learned early (thankfully) or I wish I had learned earlier (regrettably).
1. The responsibility and service of leadership always outweigh the recognition and status.
2. Responsibility is rewarding, but it isn’t about rewards
3. Anyone can lead but not everyone should lead. If you don’t have your heart in it, you’ll be mediocre at best.
4. Leadership doesn’t make a difference; leadership makes the difference, personally and organizationally.
5. Anything the leader does that benefits only him- or herself was done out of ambition; leadership done right benefits others as well.
6. Consensus building is harder but far more powerful than control.
7. Your impact will rarely be bigger than your vision.
8. People draw big conclusions for little gestures and interactions.
9. As John Maxwell says, “It shouldn’t be lonely at the top.” If it is, you’ve done something wrong getting to the top.
10. I learned from the autobiography of John Ashcroft that as a leader more people will befriend you than be your friend. Understanding the difference is critical.
11. The best way to gain cooperation is by asking, “How can I help you?”
12. Leaders make time for what’s important.
Jul
12
Learning about Your Team
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I ran across an interesting article from John Maxwell. He noted that in all his years of studying leadership and evaluating leaders, he stumbled across an amazing leadership shortcoming. He said,
Leaders will manage a team, work with the same individuals every day, yet hardly know anything about their people! These leaders have never prioritized acquainting themselves with the dreams, thoughts, hopes, opinions, and values of those they lead.
Maxwell suggests a set of three simple questions to help leaders “read” their people. The best leaders are readers of people; they possess an intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and by recognizing what they sense.
To develop this ability, Maxwell suggests that leaders ask these three questions about their people’s passions.
1. What do you dream about?
A person’s dreams are powerful revealers of passion. When a person starts to talk about their dreams, their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.
2. What do you cry about?
Passion can be uncovered by peering into the hurts deep inside a human soul. The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force. When listening to a story of grief, you hear a voice thick with emotion, you see watery eyes flooded with feeling, and in that moment you glimpse the intense connections between a person’s deepest pain and their greatest passion.
3. What makes you happy?
Enjoyment is an incredible energizer to the human spirit. When a person operates in an area of pleasure, they are apt to be brimming with life and exuding passion.
Maxwell maintains that once you’ve uncovered a person’s dreams, hurts, and joys, you’ve discovered the central dimensions of their life. By asking questions that are both positive (what makes you happy) and negative (what makes you cry), a leader can find the opposite feelings and emotions which reveal the true inner self.
Maxwell suggests the following exercise to ingrain this simple method of “learning about your team.”
1. Ask yourself and answer the three previous questions. In doing so, you’ll enhance your self-awareness.
2. Share your answers with your team to allow them to learn about you.
3. Ask your team to answer the questions to encourage their self-discovery.
4. Ask your team to share their answers with one another. This practice will bring team members closer together.
Maxwell suggests some other questions to add to your leadership toolbox. Ask your team members:
What is your biggest asset?
What is your biggest liability?
What do you most like from others?
What do you least like from others?
What is the best thing to have?
What is the worst thing to not have?
Jun
27
Practical Movement Building Skills
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I’m hesitant to write this article. As a ministry committed to building movements of evangelism and discipleship everywhere, we are more comfortable listing broader sorts of leadership “qualities or characteristics.” In this letter, I’ve often spoken of “vision, a vital spiritual life, emotional maturity, etc.” and less often of the practical skills necessary for building movements. Of course, both are critical; the former admittedly more so. Yet, “being” must walk hand in hand with the “doing”. We need both character and competence for successful movement building.
The most successful team leaders always couple their character qualities with practical skills. And perhaps the two most important practical skills, according to a recent study within the Vineyard Movement, are the team leaders’ ability to gather people and to develop and lead leaders.
The Ability to Gather People
People go about the gathering process differently. Some people are good at one-on-one conversations; their gifts and attractiveness naturally come out in personal interactions. Others more naturally gather people with their upfront skills: interacting with large groups, communicating, teaching, and casting vision.
However it is expressed, though, the ability to gather people is one of the first and most fundamental of abilities that must be present in the local team leader.
Gathering people also means being able to attract and empower others who are themselves people gatherers: people who are extroverts, or who are natural evangelists or “bringers and includers.” The team leader who is skilled at gathering people will empower those in his core who are natural gatherers themselves.\
The Ability to Develop and Lead Leaders
The number one characteristic in successful church plants (or in successful movement building)–according to Todd Hunter and others in the Vineyard Movement–is the team leader’s ability to “identify, recruit, train, and deploy other leaders.” Team leaders must have the ability to attract and lead other leaders.
If the movement builder can lead people to Christ and nurture them, but cannot develop and lead leaders, he or she will not be able to build much more than a large home-size group. In other words, the ministry will never grow beyond what the team leader can directly oversee and lead…and thus, it will never become a movement.
Jun
27
Seven Practices of Effective Ministry
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New Series: Over the next seven months, I’ll be unpacking each of the 7 practices discussed in this book. I’m convinced that we need as a ministry some help in developing a simpler, more effective approach to our movement building efforts. Within our four local team objectives (Love God, Love Your Team, Launch a Movement, Learn for a Lifetime), we need some additional practices or principles that will help bring clarity and focus to everything we do—while also helping us build effective local teams. I think the 7 practices discussed in this book can really help us. Please join me in reading this book over the next year and/or listening to its authors discuss each practice (see practicallyspeaking.org).
To whet the brain, here’s a brief overview of each practice:
Practice #1 - Clarify The Win
Even the best team can’t score if they can’t find home plate. As ministry leaders, we must help our organizations clearly defining a win—at every level of the organization. We have to help define what is important so that everyone at every level knows what that win is.
Practice #2 - Think Steps Not Programs
Ministry leaders need to ensure that the end is in mind. We determine where we want people to be and then figure out how to get them there. To do so, we need to think steps, not programs. Briefly, programs are often disconnected from the organization’s purpose; by nature, a step’s success is tied to the organization’s success.
Practice #3 - Narrow The Focus
The longer a ministry operates the more complex it can become. To maintain a winning organization, we must continually face the challenge of narrowing its focus. Ministry leaders help the organization “do fewer things in order to make a greater impact.”
Practice #4 - Teach Less For More
People are bombarded by thousands of messages every week. If the local church or movement is going to be effective it must cut through the noise. It must learn to say only what needs to be said to the people who need to hear it.
Practice #5 - Listen To Outsiders
Why is it that our movements aren’t reaching the lost? Could it be because you’re focusing on who you’re trying to keep instead of who you’re trying to reach? We have to learn to listen to outsiders.
Practice #6 - Replace Yourself
We all get replaced eventually. The wisest leader will extend his or her influence by finding and mentoring their replacement. If “multiplying leaders” is a clear mark of movement building, we’ll never build movements everywhere unless we consciously and deliberately develop people to replace us. We have to learn to hand off what we do.
Practice #7 - Work On It
To really work on our ministry, we have to take the time to evaluate our work and to celebrate our wins. We have to develop learning organizations. Learning organizations have developed “margin”–places and times where they can confront the facts, make improvements and still celebrate the stories of their wins.
Jun
27
Ethos, Pathos and Logos
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The Greek philosopher Aristotle divided the means of persuasion into three categories–Ethos, Pathos, Logos. For years, every time I’ve taught the Scriptures or spoken somewhere, I’ve evaluated my own communication using Aristotle’s grid.
Ethos (Greek for ‘character’) refers to our trustworthiness or credibility.
In today’s audiences, this often equates to authenticity or sincerity. As a communicator and leader, we must convince people that we are worth listening to; that we are likable and worthy of respect. We convey such ethos partly through the tone and style of our words and message.
But mostly we establish ethos when we communicate what we have in common with others and indicate (authentically) that we have their best interests in mind. The basis of all rapport and trust is perceived similarity and perceived sincerity.
When we thus win the trust of our listeners, we open their minds to consider our message. But ethos is not enough for persuasion, we must also impact our audience emotionally.
Pathos (Greek for ‘suffering’ or ‘experience’) is often associated with emotional appeals. But a better equivalent might be ‘appeal to the audience’s sympathies and imagination.
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An appeal to pathos causes an audience not just to respond emotionally but to identify with the our point of view–to feel what we feel. Perhaps the most common way of conveying pathos is through narrative or story, which can turn the abstractions of logic into something palpable and present. Our values, beliefs, and understandings are implicit and conveyed imaginatively when we tell stories. Pathos thus refers to both the emotional and the imaginative impact of our message on an audience, the power with which the our message moves the audience to decision or action.
Ethos and pathos are critical, but both need logos to be convincing.
Logos (Greek for ‘word’) refers to the internal consistency of our message–the clarity of the claim, the logic of its reasons, and the effectiveness of its supporting evidence.
The impact of logos on an audience is sometimes called the argument’s logical appeal. Usually that logical appeal comes in two forms: inductive logic gives your listeners a bunch of similar examples and then draws from them a general proposition; deductive logic gives your listeners a few general propositions and then draws from them a specific truth.
I wouldn’t worry so much about whether you’re using one type of logic or the other. Think of Logos as logic, the marshalling of reason. Ask the questions: does this make sense? Is it logical?
So, next time you speak or listen to someone, work through Aristotle’s grid of ethos, pathos and logos. Were all three present? Which was the weakest? How can I (could he/she) build more ethos, pathos, and logos?
Jun
27
Volunteers–Not Cookie Makers
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I’m increasingly convinced that the key to fulfilling the Great Commission–to building movements everywhere–will be our ability to raise up “laborers.”
As Jesus went from city to village healing, teaching and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, he saw the crowds and felt compassion for them. They were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He then turned to his disciples and said those famous words, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Pray for laborers, Jesus commanded, then call, empower, train and send them into the harvest (Matt. 9:35-10:5).
Today is no different. We can’t reach the world through the military of the world if we don’t “pray for, call, empower, train, and send” disciples into the harvest.
To stretch our thinking on this, I’d like to begin a series on “volunteers”– a word we need to re-envision. Lots of literature exists on volunteers and volunteer-led movements. We tend to overlook this literature given the generic definition we give to the word “volunteers.” We prefer words with more teeth, like disciples or fully-committed Christ-followers or full-time or associate staff. Volunteers make cookies and set up chairs; disciples share Christ and build multiplying movements of evangelism and discipleship.
Yet, the more I read and study “volunteers and volunteerism,” the more I’m convinced that “there’s gold in them ther hills.” I think we can mine some of the best thinking on volunteers–both within the church and without–and find principles for discipleship, for movement building, for calling, empowering, training and sending laborers into the harvest.
First, I propose that you and I start to “re-envision” the term volunteers. Give it some guts in your thinking. Erase from your mind–bulletin stuffers, cookie makers and chair crews. See volunteers as people used by God in ways they would never imagine. Envision them “tent-making co-laborers,” as “disciples in training,” as “kingdom servants and leaders” or “as fellow priests.”
And most of all, don’t ask for their help. Invite them to join you in changing the world. Share how their gifts and experiences will influence the course of the globe and fate of nations.
Jun
27
Volunteers: The Sense of Sentness
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Forty times in the book of John, Jesus refers to himself as being sent by the Father. When he first called his disciples to follow Him, Mark 3:14-15 says that Jesus named the disciples “apostles” (a word that means “to be sent”) and that he was “sending them out to preach and have authority.” In Jn 20:21, Jesus tells his disciples following his resurrection: “As the Father sent me, so I’m sending you.”
As amazing as this sounds, you and I have been sent. As Christ-followers, we have been appointed, commissioned, and sent to represent Him in words and works. If Jesus and the early disciples possessed such a clear “sense of sentness,” maybe that’s what we need as well.
And I wonder–what about the volunteers who co-labor with us? (Remember we’re envisioning volunteers as “tent-making co-laborers, fellow priests, fellow disciples, kingdom servants and leaders–not bulletin stuffers and cookie makers.”) If we need to be reminded that we’ve been God-sent, maybe one of the first things we can do is help them experience a true “sense of sentness” — of being chosen by Jesus to follow Him and of being “sent, commissioned” to a lost and undiscipled world.
How might we do that?
Break Down the Secular — Sacred Distinction in Their Minds. Sadly, many volunteers mentally hold to a secular-sacred distinction in life. Help them break such dualistic thinking. Remind them, that before God, all of life matters–especially the work He’s assigned them to. Indeed, God has sent them there–to that office, to that job, to those people.
Teach Them Over and Over that God has Chosen Them. Walk them thru the Scriptures. It’s on almost every page. God says, “I created you, I choose you, I called you, I’m sending you, I’m appointing you.”
Help Them Discover God’s Energy and God’s Equipping. Do whatever you can to help volunteers discover the Spirit-filled and Spirit-equipped life. God hasn’t just called them, he empowers and equips them. God has given volunteers spiritual gifts, abilities, passions, personalities and experiences as well as the Holy Spirit of God himself to energize each one.
Release Them into the Fight. You’ll never move volunteers beyond making cookies until you let them strap on a sword and release them into the battle. Their hearts were made for it–so don’t do everything yourself…even if you could do it better. Always give the ministry away.