Monthly Archives: December 2013

Advent: Jesus Is Coming, Brother!

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geralt / Pixabay

Advent is a time when you anticipate the first coming of Jesus.  It gives us the chance to slow down and reflect on what the Incarnation means.  Jesus moved into our neighborhood, as Alan Hirsch, author the great book The Forgotten Ways, always says, and Advent gives us space to re-imagine our lives in light of this truth.  Advent is the time of year in which we allow ourselves to be moved by the unexpected mix of the divine and the human.

Advent is also the time to pick up your dog’s poo on a Sunday morning.

This is exactly what I was doing this morning when a man walked by.  We made eye contact, the man and I, and he said to me, “Jesus is coming, brother!”  I was taken aback by what this guy said!  After all, I had been hoping for an uneventful, morning stroll.  But this random man changed all that.

I need to set the scene a little better.  This man who said “Jesus is coming, brother!” sounded a lot like Hulk Hogan!  Some of you know exactly what I mean.  For those of you who don’t, check out this video:

“Jesus is coming, brother!”

This guys words are very appropriate: Jesus is coming.  This is what we celebrate at Advent!

But he is also coming again — his second Advent is yet to come.  And when Jesus comes again he’ll make all things new!  That’s good news!  There’s a bunch of stuff in my life that needs to be made new!  How about you?

So this Advent season, spend some time meditating on what it means for us that Jesus came, that he is the Incarnate One.  But also think about what it means in your life that Jesus’ second Advent is on its way.

Have you given Jesus’ second Advent much thought during Christmastime before?  Let me know in the comments below!

The Ghost of Church Present: Part Three (A Missional Response)

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My wife, parents, and I recently watched a stage production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  As I watched it I couldn’t help but imagine what the ghosts of church past, present, and future might say to those of us who follow Jesus.  Last week I looked into the revelations from the ghost of church past (Part One, Part Two, and Part Three).  And this week we’ll hear from the ghost of church present (here’s Part One and Part Two).

A Missional Response

So the ghost of Christmas present showed us that the US is a mission field in need of fresh encounters with the gospel and that many of our churches are not responding to this reality all that well.  There are some, however, who are.

Here’s one such example: Adullam in Denver, Colorado.

A missional congregation in Denver

From Adullam’s Website

Adullam’s lead pastor is Hugh Halter, the author of Tangible Kingdom.  In his book Hugh tells the story of how God helped reignite the missional fire in him and how he and his ministry partner Matt Smay, along with their families, reluctantly planted a church in Denver.  In this post I want to explore how Hugh and Matt have led Adullam to be a community with a missional impulse.  (The source for all the material below is either my memory of reading Tangible Kingdom or the “About Adullam” page on their site.)

  • Missional Vision — Here’s Adullam’s vision statement: “Adullam is a congregational network of incarnational communities that are apprenticing kingdom people” (form the “About Adullam” page).  So, their centering values all lean toward being missional and away from being attractional.
  • Discipleship is the Engine — Did you note the word “apprenticing” in Adullam’s vision statement?  This is their code word for “discipleship.”  The purpose in shying away from the word “discipleship” is, in my estimation, because it is too churchy and has come to mean something (classroom-style, cognitive learning) that it doesn’t mean in the New Testament (learning from a respected person by living life together).  Thus, Adullam is saying that apprenticeship is the engine that drives them into their mission field.  Without it, there’s no evangelism, no growth, no conversions, no leadership development, etc.
  • Focus on Being the Church — You probably also noted that Adullam’s vision statement doesn’t use the word “church.”  This had to be intentional!  Instead we find the words “congregation” and “incarnational communities” and “people.”  Their focus is clearly not to become a place for people to come and receive spiritual goods and services (which is how I define our attractional understanding of “church”) and is instead on being the church.
  • Praxis, Praxis, Praxis! — Adullam also says that their explicit goal is to make the kingdom of God tangible.  By this, as you can read in Tangible Kingdom, Hugh means living out the good news in the lives of people.  This means serving, having fun, and, yes, talking about God too.  But it means all those things, not just the last one!  Thus, the people at Adullam are trained to and expected to express their love for God and their neighbors in real-life, real-world ways.
  • Symptoms of an Apprentice — Furthermore, Adullam spells out very clearly what the life of an apprentice of the kingdom looks like: 1) They’ll be involved in inclusive community; 2) They’ll experience communion with God (together, in smaller communities, and as individuals); and 3) They’ll be on mission for God in Denver.
  • Incarnation – You may have also noticed how much Adullam uses the word “incarnation.”  Their informed belief is that “the best environment for the kingdom to appear tangible is in the context of an incarnational community” (form the “About Adullam” page).  By “incarnation” they mean being Jesus in their own communities — in essence, enfleshing the gospel of the kingdom of God where the live, work, and play.  This is a missional way of thinking that stands in direct opposition to the attractional mindset that says “If we build it, then they will come.”
  • Discouraging Consumerism — Being a consumer Christian (meaning a follower of Jesus who just wants to be fed with as little effort as possible, whether on purpose or subconsciously) would be really hard at Adullam.  They don’t always meet together.  The purpose of their times of gathering is to be a blessing to the kids and for their various missional communities to connect.  In fact, Adullam is so serious about discouraging consumerism that they provide links to other churches in the Denver area where folks might find a better fit.  That is revolutionary!

Adullam is just one example among many that are out there.  Now, in fact, there are even missional networks that help congregation figure out how to get on mission together.  A few of these networks are Missio Alliance, Verge, Forge America, and Acts 29.  Now is a great time to start being more missional!  What are we waiting for?!?

Do you know of some more missional responses the reality of the American mission field?  Let me know in the comments!

 

Dealing with Failure

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“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.”

This famous quote is from “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived” or, as he’s better known, Ted Williams.  What he’s referring to, of course, is that if you get a hit 30% of the times you come to bat in baseball, then you’re a good player.

But think about that for a minute.  Ted Williams, widely considered one of the best, if not the best, hitter in baseball history got hits 34.4% percent of the time.  But the flipside of that stat is that he didn’t get a hit 65.6% of the time.  That’s a ton!

Ted Williams failed to get a hit almost two thirds of the times he went up to hit as a professional baseball player.  Francis Vincent, a former commissioner of baseball, said it best: “Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure.”  So the secret to Ted Williams’ success, and that of any baseball player, was that he learned how to get past failing so that he could be his best during his next at bat.

Here’s the point: Are we able to do that?  As people, as leaders, as followers of Jesus, as missionaries in our neighborhoods, can we fail, learn from it, putting it behind us and trying again?  And how do we do this well?

Jesus taught his disciples how to fail.  Read Jesus’ words from Luke 10:10-11: “But whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, ‘The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.’”

Here’s the backstory: Jesus wanted to give some of his followers a task, so he trained up 72 of them to enter cities that he was planning to go to later.  They were supposed to do the same kinds of things that they had seen Jesus do, namely healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom of God.  But Jesus knew that they wouldn’t be welcomed everywhere they went, so he prepared them for failure.  He told them to put the failure in the rear view mirror and move on.

Jesus’ words are true but so very hard to live out.  At least they are hard for me to live out.  When I fail at something it hurts me.  Maybe it’s because I secretly serve an idol of perfection.  Or maybe its because when I fail at something I interpret it very personally.  Either way, it’s hard for me to move on.

But how can we wipe off the dust of failure and continue following Jesus wherever he leads?

  1. Acknowledge the failure quickly.  It doesn’t do anyone any good at all to let failure fester.  We need to admit that we have failed so that we can begin to heal.  Why hide it?
  2. Apologize and mean it.  If it is your fault that you failed, apologize.  If your failure hurt anyone else, apologize.  If you think your failure hurt no one, then admit it in your journal, on facebook, on your blog, wherever.  We must take responsibility for our failures!
  3. Take time to process feelings.  When you fail you might get bombarded by a series of strong emotions.  You’ll probably be angry, nervous, scared, and frustrated.  Or you might be glad that you failed at something because what was on the other side of success looked pretty daunting.  Whatever it is you are feeling, well, feel it.  Give yourself time (but not too much time!) to experience what you are going through and be honest with yourself and those close to you.
  4. Learn from the failure.  What good would failure be if it didn’t teach us well?  So when we fail we need to take stock and learn from it.  Perhaps there’s some way to prevent the same failure from happening again?  In order to find that out, you’re must learn from it.  Or perhaps God is using your failure to teach you one thing or another, like reliance on him, patience, and humility?
  5. Get moving.  There’s no better road to mediocrity and boredom than wallowing in failure.  Instead you have the chance to work through steps #1-4 and then to take the huge leap of faith into the great unknown.  To put it differently, we can’t follow Jesus well if we stay put and mope.

How have you learned from failure?  Let me know in the comments below!

Little Broken Promises

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I’d like to think that I’m a pretty good husband.  I do most of the big things right and I avoid almost all of the big things that I’m supposed to.  I spend time trying to speak my wife’s love language.  I love with abandon and invest like crazy.  I try to put her interests before my own (Philippians 2.3-4).  Usually, I’m pretty good at this whole husband thing.

Usually.

chefkeem / Pixabay

But I have a persistent problem, a easily-repeated blunder.  I make little promises and then don’t keep them.  Example: We finish dinner and I say, “I’ll do the dishes before I go to bed.”  Then, the next morning, the dishes are still in the sink (like they were this morning).  That’s a little broken promise.

Here’s a doozy from this week: Our dog, who is awesome by the way, is getting old and she needs to have checkups at the vet pretty regularly.  Three weeks ago I said that I would take care of it.  I finally did it…after weeks of saying I would!  The time between the little promise and completion was just full of me breaking that promise day after day.

You may be thinking something like this: Meh, this isn’t a big deal; it is a LITTLE broken promise.  It’s not like you broke your wedding vows or something.  And, you’d be right…objectively speaking.

But subjectively speaking we’re dealing with a different deal altogether.  Each time I break a little promise it erodes my credibility with my wife a little bit.  Rebuilding that trust invariably takes up WAY more time than it would have taken to just fulfill the promise.

And keeping little promises is a sign of respect.  When I actually keep one of these promises it says to Alida that she’s important enough for me to remember what I said and to actually do it.

Luckily for me I have a loving and forgiving spouse.  She gives me the time and space I need to figure things like this out.  But I shouldn’t take advantage of Alida’s patience about this.  I should be more intentional about keeping all my promises, whether big or small.

Here are some pieces of advice (mostly for me):

  1. Make fewer promises.  There’s no point in promising to do things as often as I do.  Maybe if I was more consistent in doing things in the first place I wouldn’t feel the need to make promises.
  2. Accept help if needed or wanted.    A common mistake that I make in these situations is not accepting help that is offered.  If I did, then I wouldn’t need to do whatever it was that I end up make a promise about (e.g., the dishes).  So, if I need help or would rather do something else, when my wife offers to help I should take her up on it.
  3. Keep track of promises made.  I’m not sure exactly how I could do this, practically speaking.  Maybe I could write my little promises down and put them in a prominent place (like on the screen of my laptop).  But an issue for me is that I simply forget.  So I need to facilitate some memory helpers.
  4. Apologize and start at #1 again.  I’m a human so I am going to mess this one up.  When I do I should give a real apology, fully owning my mistake and the pain it caused.  Then I should start back and #1.  Hopefully, over time, I’ll have to do #4 less and less.

Do you have a problem with keeping little promises too?  Let me know in the comments below.

The Ghost of Church Present: Part Two

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My wife, parents, and I recently watched a stage production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  As I watched it I couldn’t help but imagine what the ghosts of church past, present, and future might say to those of us who follow Jesus.  Last week I looked into the revelations from the ghost of church past (see the links at the end of this post).  And this week we’ll hear from the ghost of church present (here’s Part One).

Nemo / Pixabay

A Non-Missional Response

The ghost of church present already revealed that the U.S. is a mission field.  So, how has the church responded?

By and large, the church hasn’t responded all that well.  Here are two statistics that I originally saw in Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay:

  • “Roughly half of all churches in America did not add one new person through conversion growth last year.” (Lost in America by Tom Clegg and Warren Bird, page 27)
  • “In America, it takes the combined effort of eighty-five Christians working over an entire year to produce one convert.” (Lost in America, page 29)

I think we need to let those stats sink in for a minutes and not rush past them.

First, half of the churches in the US don’t see any conversions in a year.  There should be some disclaimers, of course.  Many of these churches are small, rural, and in Christianized communities.  But not all of them.  And of the half that did have new converts, I wonder how many of those are really just biological growth, that is, the children of Christian parents.  Are we reaching out into our communities to the unchurched, dechurched, and antichurch?

Second, it takes 85 people working for 365 days to lead one person to Christ!  Firstly, this paints a funny picture.  It’s hard not to imagine a large and cumbersome committee of stodgy Christians trying to work together to save one soul!  Secondly, and more to the point, this isn’t saying that 85 people intentionally worked together for the conversion of one person.  The researchers simply took the total number of believers and divided them by the total number of new converts in a given year.  Thus we are left with the rather shocking fact that the vast majority of us are not actively engaged in making new disciples.

Here’s the point: there’s a massive mission field right outside the walls of our comfortable church.  Right. Outside. The. Walls.  And we aren’t responding.

Well, that’s actually not true.  We are doing some things.

  • We’re preaching sermons.  This is a good thing.  In the New Testament we see a repeated call for folks to proclaim the good news.  So, yay us!  Often we preach sermons that challenge our people to be a witness where the live, work, and play.  Again, yay us!
  • We’re running programs.  We have courses on evangelism that we either create ourselves or buy from an expert.  We have programs like Alpha, which are awesome!  People have come to know Jesus as savior through Alpha and programs like it for decades now.
  • We’re supporting explicitly missional efforts.  A few of our churches are realizing that we’re not doing a great job, so a few of us start funding missionaries who work right here in the US.  It could be through church planting or through an organization like InterVarsity, but some of us are investing in missional efforts.
  • We’re actually engaged in missional activity ourselves.  I use the “we” in that statement very loosely.  Why?  Because my guess is that so very few of us, myself included, live missionally on a day-to-day basis.  In fact, many of us are so insulated by our Christian sub-culture that we may have to try really, really hard just to have contact with a person who does not know Jesus yet.  But there are a few rogues out there living like Jesus did.

The truth is that the statistics show that what we’re doing isn’t really working.  Why not?  Well, in my humble opinion we’ve focused too much on preaching and programs and not enough of funding missional efforts and being missional ourselves.  Our hearts are right but our actions are a bit skewed.

What do you think?  How do you see the church responding to the reality that America is a mission field?

 

The Ghost of Church Past (Part One, Part Two, Part Three)

Goal Setting in Marriage

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Anyone who knows me knows that I almost always rail against structure.  I like to be spontaneous, free, and, frankly, last-minute.  From my biased opinion of my experience, I’m convinced that I work best when these factors are present.  And, by and large, I’ve had some measure of success operating this way.

But the Lord saw fit to lead me to marry my wife Alida.  She’s a planner, a list-maker, and an organizer.  In fact, when she’s in planning mode, she’ll write on her master list which sub-lists she needs to make!  And she’s had a great deal of success living in this manner.

Put the two of us together…well you can imagine the sorts of difficulties we face!  Alida is hoping that we’ll plan and I’m pushing things to the deadline.  I’m hoping to explore random things at the last minute and Alida is thinking ahead to a weekend two months from now.

OpenClips / Pixabay

And for the longest time we just dealt with these tensions.  I’m not sure why exactly, but we never really addressed this issue…for years!  But once I entered into the dissertation phase of my PhD, my life needed to get much more structured.  I needed to research and write everyday, on top of my other responsibilities too.  In order for me to get through this thing in one piece I had to start organizing my life  a bit.  I needed a target to shoot at.

So at first I just tried to do things on my own.  I would watch Alida and try to mimic some of her planning behavior.  This worked kind of well.  But I needed the inside scoop.  My pride, however, prevented me from actually asking for help.  So I waited.

And eventually, after a while, Alida suggested that we do a weekly meeting so that she and I could be on the same page.  To be totally honest, my wife had offered this suggestion many times before, and I had poo-pooed it every single time.  Like I said earlier, Alida is just built this way but since she discovered Michael Hyatt’s podcast she’s been way more goal-focused.  Needless to say,  she was so excited when I finally gave in!

So, for the better part of a year Aldia and I have been having a weekly meeting.  We discuss our schedules for the upcoming week, our workout plans, when our date will be, and any special errands that need to be run.

There’s one more thing we do: we set weekly goals.  We divide these up into various categories, like “personal,” “work,” “spiritual,” and “relationship.”  Our hope is that we can help one another accomplish our goals and check in on our progress in the future.

Now I’d love to say that doing this has resulted in awe-inspiring results.  It hasn’t.  But it has produced positive results.  Here are a few of them:

Setting goals has helped us…

  • …be more intentional.  We both now know what it is that we’re trying to do so that each of us can focus better individually and as a couple.
  • …understand one another better.  By weekly hearing one another’s goals we get to enter into one another’s thought processes.  This has proven to be so valuable for our relationship!
  • …hold each other accountable.  People always say that it’s hard to hold your spouse accountable; and, for the most part, that is true.  But setting goals together gives each of us the freedom to check in on one another.
  • …know how to pray specifically for one another.  While part of our meeting also involves sharing our prayer needs with one another, knowing each other’s goals has helped us know how to pray for one another more holistically.

 

Is goal setting important to you?  How do you do it?

The Ghost of Church Present: Part One

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My wife, parents, and I recently watched a stage production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  As I watched it I couldn’t help but imagine what the ghosts of church past, present, and future might say to those of us who follow Jesus.  Last week I looked into the revelations from the ghost of church past (see the links at the end of this post).  And this week we’ll hear from the ghost of church present.

A Missional Reality

danfador / Pixabay

There’s a new era dawning.  The West in the twenty-first century is a mission field, no matter how you’d like to define that term.  The power of Christendom once reigned supreme in the West, but now things are changing.  Whereas at one time the wider culture shared basic values with those who follow Jesus, today living a gospel-centered life makes a follower of Jesus really stand out.  There are more and more people who are unchurched, de-churched, and/or anti-church.

Where’s the evidence for these claims?  I need stats!

Okay, okay.  Here are a few:

  •  There are 50.5 million religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S.  —  According to the PewResearch, 16.1% of people in the U.S. identify themselves as atheists, agnostics, or not particularly religious.  There are 313.9 million people in the U.S. right now, and 16.1% of that total equals 50.5 million.  That’s a ton!
  • There are 14.75 million people in the U.S. affiliated with religions other than Christianity — Again, according to PewResearch, 4.7% of Americans are affiliated with a religious group that isn’t self-identified as Christian, such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, New Age, etc.
  • There are 7.5 millions Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S. — PewResearch has found that 2.4% of Americans identify themselves as Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses.
  • That means that there are 72.75 million people who explicitly need the gospel! — If you add the three categories above up this is the total you get.  And this total makes up 23.18% of our total population.  The good news, of course, is that 76.82% are part various Christian groups (Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, etc.).
  • There’s a huge number of “Casual Christians” — George Barna, in his book The Seven Faith Tribes, highlights a massive group of people he calls “Casual Christians.”  This tribe, according to an interview posted on the Barna Group’s website, “are defined by the desire to please God, family, and other people while extracting as much enjoyment and comfort from the world as possible.”  In other words, these are consumer Christians par excellence!  How many of these “Casual Christians” are there out there?  According to Barna, 66% of the American population is made up of “Casual Christians”!  That’s 207.17 million people!  I think almost any missionally-minded person would agree that these folks need to be evangelized or re-evangelized!
  • So, that brings the total number of people who need a fresh encounter of the gospel up to 279.92 million people. — Friends, that’s massive!  If that number holds true, then that means that only 10.83% of the American population is living a life, as Barna put it, “defined by their [Christian] faith.”
  • But of those 10.83% of Americans, how are involved in making disciples? — We can’t say for sure.  There are some studies that indicate that more than half of Evangelicals share their faith at least once a year, but this data is based on self-reporting.  I find it hard to believe that we have such a large percentage of people out there sharing their faith!  My guess is that very few people do this.  What’s the point?  There aren’t that many people actively engaged in reaching those who need to be reached in the U.S.

Jesus said it best in Luke 10.2: “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”  So that’s the bare minimum of our call, to pray for more workers for the mission field in the U.S.  But if we all could begin to adopt missional postures and incarnational lifestyles, then we could actually become those workers!  That’s my prayer, namely that God would turn you and I into missionaries right here in the U.S.!

What do you think of this picture?  Let me know in the comments below.

 

The Ghost of Church Past (Part One, Part Two, Part Three)

Lessons from My Weight-Loss (Be Intentional)

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On April 27th, 2011 I was obese.  According to my Body Mass Index, weighing in at a husky 250 pounds at my height (6’2″) slid me right into the obese category.  Over the next nine months I worked hard, counting every calorie consumed and burned, and lost 65 pounds!  Now, quite a while later, I’ve gained back 5 of those pounds, but I’m convinced that most of that is muscle!

In case you were curious, here’s some pictorial evidence.  On the left is me at 250 pounds and on the right is me at 190 pounds!

The purpose of this post, however, is not just to pat myself on my back for my weight loss.  Instead it’s to share some of the lessons I learned and apply them to being a missionally postured, incarnationally activated follower of Jesus.  This is Part One and there will be more parts to come periodically.

So, what is the first lesson? Be Intentional.

Losing weight, for me at least, did not just happen.  It required a great deal of effort and purposefulness.

Getting to 250 pounds just happened though!  That was easy!  But losing the weight (and keeping it off) has been a process that has been difficult for me at times.  I’m not a person who plans things out carefully by nature.  I prefer to live life by the seat of my pants!  But doing so led me down a path to obesity.

So, with some effort, some support from my amazing wife Alida (along with my family and friends), and some patience, I lost the weight.  I made a plan and I stuck to it.  I knew exactly what I was shooting for and I had figured out the best way for me to reach my goals.

How does this apply to being missional?

I’m so glad you asked!  In the American church we have just been “doing church” now for quite some time.  We figured that discipleship was just going to happen, that evangelism was just going to happen, and that leadership development was just going to happen.

Where has that gotten us?  Well, by almost any standard you’d like to use, we have a great vacuum of actively-growing disciples in the church.  Evangelism for many of us has become something only the very few and very, very brave engage in, since we’ve narrowly defined it as going up to a stranger and trying to reason them or scare them or persuade them into saying the sinner’s prayer.  And we have a great need for more dedicated, trained, and passionate leaders.

In other words, we’re in trouble.

What can we do?  Well, we can start by being intentional!  Just like I had to sit down and come up with a plan in order to lose weight, we need to strategize together about how best to reach this mission field called America.  And whatever our plan is, it can’t be just a repackaging of our old methods.  That’s what I tried when I was 250 pounds.  All it did was keep me fat.

It’s my assertion that if we keep on doing the same things as the church, then we’ll keep getting the same results.  It’s well passed time that we try some new methods of discipling up, reaching out, and worshiping well.  The ramifications of us continuing to waste time are simply too dire.  We must change!

There are a thousand things we could begin to be more intentional about, but here’s an “easy” one.  Let’s stop thinking about and talking about the church as a building where we go to consume religious goods and services and instead let’s start thinking about and talking about being the church among those who need the good news.  This small shift can make a huge difference!

What are some other ways that we could be more intentional as missional followers of Jesus?  Let me know in the comments below!

Missional Leadership Development

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OpenClips / Pixabay

If you are a leader you are developing leaders, even if you don’t know it.

The question is this: Are you doing it on purpose or by default?

In my case I’ve spent the last 19 years or so developing leaders passively, or by default.  I figured that as I taught the Bible, led worship, and moderated discussions that burgeoning leaders would simply learn by osmosis.

I was wrong.

How do I know?    That’s not how I learned to be a leader!  Several people took special interest in me, devoting time and energy to me.  They sat me down and taught me how to teach, how to lead, how to counsel, how to plan, how to be on mission, etc.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve submitted to the leadership of some poor leaders in my day too.  And in those cases I knew that I wasn’t being led well because they weren’t leading me.  Instead they were placing all the responsibility on me.  I get that.  Who wants to volunteer for more to be put on his or her proverbial plate?

Whatever the case, somewhere along the line I dropped the ball.  I went from being intentionally developed by a few great people to hoping this whole missionally following Jesus thing would just rub off on those I would like to develop.  This was a mistake…and I don’t want to make it anymore.

So, as I look back into my past I can think of a handful of people that I did invest in intentionally. In these few relationships I tried to be strategic and purposeful.  Here are a few things I learned:

  1. Be Clear about Expectations — If you are wanting to invest in someone or someone asks you to mentor them, spell out the expectations.  How often are you going to meet?  What will you talk about?  Who will be responsible?  What are you asking of yourself and the other?
  2. Hold Each Other Accountable — Listen to the person you are investing in.  He or she will likely tell you, overtly or covertly, how you are doing.  When you get this information, respond!  Make changes when appropriate in order to help the person you are leading reach his/her potential.  And hold the one you are leading accountable to the things he or she agrees to.  Don’t assume progress is being made — check up on it!
  3. Follow up, Follow up, Follow up — I have found that when it comes to leadership development, one old adage is true and one is not.  It’s not true that distance makes the heart grow fonder!  Instead, distance helps lead the heart to wander.  On the flip side, it is true that once you are out of sight, the one you are leading will eventually let you drop out of mind.  How do you prevent this?  Meet regularly, check in via email, facebook, text, etc. more often than you meet in person, and do a drop in every now and then!
  4. Listen a Bunch and Listen Some More after That — If you’re anything like me, then you like to talk!  But if I want to help someone grow in their leadership, I need to listen way more than I talk.  This is so very hard for me!  Instead of listening I’d rather think out loud, fix problems, and just enjoy the sound of my own voice!  But doing so hampers the growth of the one in which I’m investing.
  5. Be Inviting — There may be nothing that is more damaging in leadership development than being overly guarded.  I’m not saying that you should be stupid and eradicate all the boundaries around you and your family.  But what I am saying is that you must be authentic with the ones you are leading.  Invite them in.  Lead by example  Let them see you fail.  And let them see you get back up again!

What else would you add to this list?  How else can we develop missional leaders?  Let me know in the comments below!

A Lesson from Nelson Mandela

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TREVOR SAMSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

It always seems impossible until it’s done. (Nelson Mandela, 1994)

Nelson Mandela spoke these words after his country, South Africa, held their first free election during which he was elected president.  There are two things that are remarkable about his election: 1) He was the first black, South African president in his country’s history; and 2) He was elected to be the president of the country in which he suffered 27 years of imprisonment due to his fight against racial injustice.

Nelson Mandela lived an exemplary life of service and leadership.  Though he suffered mightily, he held onto his convictions and beliefs.  He was inspired at a young age by the gospel in a Methodist school and lived a life that unassumingly proclaimed the evidence of the good news as loudly as anyone else in the 20th century.

Today, December 5th 2013, is a sad day because Nelson Mandela has died.  But it’s also an exciting day to celebrate this man and his life.  His autobiography, called Long Walk to Freedom, should be required reading for leaders everywhere!

But as I think about the quote from Nelson Mandela that I started this blog post with, I can’t help but think of the missional call that God has implanted within the gospel.  God truly doesn’t want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3.9) and he calls and enables us to help him on this mission.

But the mission is long and slow and hard.  It’s fraught with difficulties and easily-committed offenses.  It takes risk, investment, and patience.

Having a missional posture and living incarnationally is no easy task.  It truly does mean putting the interests of others before our own, just like Jesus did (Philippians 2.3-8).

Being missional means getting messy.  It means “obedience in the same direction for a long time,” to paraphrase the title of a wonderful book by Eugene Peterson.  Being missional means putting our selfishness to the side for the sake of the good news of the kingdom of God.

This task seems impossible, and it is in our own power.  But Jesus whom we follow will bring his work to a close; he is the author and finisher of our faith after all (Hebrews 12.2).

So what’s the takeaway?  We must persist in our obedience to God’s missional call on our lives!  We must persevere and we must trust in Jesus who will sail this ship into harbor someday!

What lessons have you learned from the life of Nelson Mandela?