My Greatest Leadership Challenge:

I recently posted this on another blog where the author asked what pastors' greatest leadership challenges were:

Balancing the biggest priorities! Allow me to explain:

I love being a husband, father, church planter, and leader. Most of the time, I'm red-hot passionate, even in dealing with tough stuff. My on-going greatest challenges is balancing my passions for family, ministry, and leadership. To me it's not "work" planting, leading, and pastoring our church. I love what I do (and that's not because we haven't been through tough stuff).

I believe firmly the core value communicated well by Martin Luther, "pray like everything depends on God work like everything depends on you". But type A, entrepreneurs will finish praying and keep on working.

I'm learning to balance putting down what I'm passionate about and what I'm called to and prioritize my marriage and family.

• What are yours?
  

It's Scary When...

The worst thing possible for me is to be stuck in a rut or consumed with details and administrative responsibilities. It stifles my passion and fire. And as you know, I want to stay fired up, focused on God's purposes for my life and at Lifehouse Church East.

Recently, when reviewing my weekly schedule with our administrator, I noticed that I'm actually in control of my weeks... wow! I can plan meetings, schedule sermon prep and event prep and set aside time to plan, read, pray, meet with lots of leaders, organize ministries, or even meet with other pastors. My schedule and the urgent aren't driving me.

And that's when it gets scary. Oh, not for me... but for everyone else on our team. Why you ask? Because the more time I have to think, pray, plan, study, and lead leaders, the more passionate I get, the more our vision grows for Lifehouse East, the more I'm convinced that we've only just begun, and the more I know that we've only seen the tip-of-the-iceberg of God's favor working through us to impact this city.

Let's change the world. Not just make a difference, but make it different. That's what I'm praying and planning for. I've got red-hot vision and passion running through me. And I don't want to just spew it all over this blog. So, little by little you'll be hearing of the ways we are going to continue to organize and strategize to impact this city, region, and world for Christ.

FRIEND DAY promo...

Here's our video promo for Friend Day. This is crazy, fun, and incredibly biblical. Don't know why we didn't think of it sooner, but tons of kudos to Melody, our administrator for the idea (heaven will be populated differenlty because of this event and because Lifehousers will "be the Church").

Check it out:



Here's the plan:

• on May 4th we're asking that all Lifehousers invite 4 people/ families to church
• then out to lunch- whether over for a BBQ or to a restaurant.
  
• Hang out with them, build relationships. That's it.
  

HOW BIG IS YOUR GOD?

Often I will challenge people with a what seems like a brash statement, "I think you have a wimpy God!" or the question, "How big is the God YOU believe in?" Why? I don't think Christians have a very magnified view of God. We do the God-of-All-Creation a serious disservice. Now, before I vent too much, please forgive me too... I'm in the same boat. There are many times when my view of God is pitifully small.

Maybe if we believed what we say we believed about God, we would pray bigger prayers, take impossible risk-steps of faith, sacrifice anything, dream anything, and actually follow his plan.

Do you need a glimpse into God's vastness? Here's something I shared in a sermon recently from Isaiah 40, and couldn't tell you where I borrowed it from:

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand: He can hold the oceans of the earth in the smallest part of his palm. That’s a few drops of water 841 miles in diameter.

or with the span of his hand marked off the heavens? He measures the universe with His hand, meaning from tip of His pinky-finger to the tip of his thumb. Imagine this- just what you can see with your naked-eye off the horizon is 28 billion light years wide. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. Light takes 8.5 minutes to go 96 million miles from the Sun to Earth. And travels about 6 trillion miles per year. That means that God’s hand is at least 28 billion x 6 trillion miles wide.

Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?

Can you compare God to anything? Can you compare him to an image of anything?

Who created all these stars? … The Lord is the God who lives forever, who created all the world.

He does not become tired or need to rest.

So, let me ask YOU: HOW BIG IS YOUR GOD?

I'll be kicking off a new sermon series this week called, "Magnum Opus Dei" meaning "the great work of God". Excited and can't wait to preach it and lead our church in discovering that they are and their life is the masterpiece of God. God has placed Destiny into our very DNA. As we live according to God's plan, our life is becoming a significant part of His Magnum Opus.

I hope each of us have open hearts and mind to follow God's design for our life.

Here's the design we had created to go along with the series.

Being Proactive

As a kid I used to hope for the best and then not plan at all, counting on the fact that what I hoped would happen actually would happen. You know, so some kid was mean to me, I hope he would just go away. Or I needed to write a paper, get some chores done, and study for a test- I just hoped school would get canceled. You see what I mean.

What I'm learning is to be proactive, plan ahead, pray for and hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. We are responsible to do all that is humanly possible, then leave the impossible up to God. Many people suffer from doing only part of what's possible and then expect God to come through- not only on what's impossible, but also what's possible.

Here are some areas to consider becoming more proactive in (and I'm listing them because I feel like I'm being proactive in these areas as an example, and the one's I'm not doing, I didn't list:)

• Taxes (for those who are panicking, waiting in long lines, my apologizes), but Laura and I try to file our taxes as soon as all the necessary paperwork arrives. Ok, seems impossible, you can do it.
• Savings and retirement: the Bible teaches that a righteous man leaves and inheritance to his children's children. We should plan ahead, save, and invest for retirement. Don't hope that money will be there to live on, plan for it and save.
• Life insurance and wills: Laura and I just got this one taken care of, and it was scary. We sat down and had a will, living will, and all that done. I hated answering some of the questions, but it's necessary. I hope that if you read this, and you haven't set up a will, living will, etc that you'll do it very soon. I actually have this thought that if I've prepared and got everything in order, I'll never need it.
• Conflict resolution: NO! the tension won't just go away, we've got to talk about it, look people in the eye and deal with issues. Go out of your way to make things right with others, and take personal responsibility for the tension. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Make the phone call. Go visit them. It will pay off!

again, be proactive. Things won't just take care of themselves!

FRIEND DAY- MAY 4
Here's the plan:

We're asking everyone at Lifehouse to invite 4 friends, families, co-workers, neighbors, who-ever, who don't currently go to church TO Lifehouse on Sunday, May 4. AND invite them to lunch, either at their home or out to eat. That's it!!

It's so brilliantly simple, and biblical! Here's the thing, we're challenging Lifehousers not to make a big deal about the meal. Don't stay up Saturday cleaning the whole house or cooking for hours. Just invite people over and hang out. You can even ask people to bring something. Matter of fact, I'd HIGHLY recommend asking those you invite to bring something, they're significantly more likely to come over.

All right, so start connecting and inviting friends. I'm busy inviting my neighbors and friends.

Spring Cleaning

One of the great things about living in a townhouse is that it takes about two days a year to landscape and keep my property looking good. So, the other day I bought and laid mulch, trimmed my bushes, and cleaned up my lawn. Oh... in about 4 hours. It's called "spring cleaning" to most people.

I'm doing some other spring cleaning. It's my time to evaluate my health, get more consistent in my diet, my work-out regimen, get back outside where I love to pray, make time for personal solitude and fasting, and spend more time with Laura and my girls outside enjoying the fresh air.

It's also time for connecting with neighbors and the community. I'm really excited about our upcoming FRIEND DAY on May 4 at 10am. I think our plan is both BIBLICAL and BRILLIANT. I blog that next.