1-5: Other People Matter!

I don’t usually get weird about birthdays, but a couple weeks before I turned 30 (on October 23), it hit me that – arbitrary or not, 30 is a pretty big milestone.  Since then, I’ve been wondering what I’ve learned in my first 30 years of life.  Here’s what I’ve come up with, 5 at a time!

1. The person who knows 1, knows none.

This would probably be hilarious if we knew Arabic...This is true of languages, religions, culture and pretty much everything.  If you don’t take time to get to know someone else in a real and deeply significant way, you won’t know yourself.  We have less in common with God than we do with any person on the planet.  If we don’t learn how to live in true community with Others, we won’t connect with God as fully as we could.  We were designed to need each other.

2. You’ll get further this week developing a genuine interest in 2 other people than trying to get 2 other people interested in you.

palsThis is a quote from Tim Sanders. It’s true.  Dale Carnegie also talks a lot about this in his classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People.  My dad made me read that book when I was 16 and it’s still one of the best books I’ve ever read, one that has shaped me more than most.  Learn the art of caring about others… it’s a skill you can develop.  And it will change who you are.  For the better.  Because at the end of the day…

3. It really is more blessed to give than to receive.

I have one of these waiting for you... you know, if you drop by for a visit.

We are created in the image of the God who is fundamentally a giver.  We are hard-wired to be most fully ourselves when we’re giving.  This is the direct opposite of what our culture teaches (and you’ll hear in any Economics class that there’s no such thing as a self-less gift).  Giving makes us more human, more truly ourselves.  You can learn this art (and if you want a good place to start, do yourself a favor and pick up Miroslav Volf’s Free of Charge).

4. If you can help it, don’t open your mouth unless you’re giving something to someone.

I’m not here yet, but this is where I want to get.  I tend to be a very sarcastic person by nature, and I’m tired of making people feel like trash.  I want to be a person who’s a constant source of encouragement and life to other people.  I don’t want to feel good at someone else’s expense.  It’s something I’m still working on.

5. You have to fight for good relationships.

Quite a comeback they're making! I hope they win!

Somehow, I think we all got the impression that if a relationship is right and good, it just comes naturally.  Well, bad news… that’s a dirty lie.  True life-giving relationships take a lot of work.  We have to learn that Others are never going to be like us, no matter how much we try to change them.  God revels in diversity, so we have to figure out how to live with Others.

And that takes work.  In marriage, in friendship, in family, at work and church and even international politics (I suspect).

We’ve been fed the lie that we should surround ourselves with like-minded people and we’ve happily gobbled it up.  Time to switch tables and find some new cuisine!

If you want a good place to start, try reading a book by a person you don’t like (or think you won’t) and forcing yourself to write down something positive for every negative thing you say.

That’s it for this week… next week’s all about Story.  But for now, what do you think?  Do you agree or disagree?

Andy Stanley (pt. 2)

These are my summary reflections from the Catalyst East Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The theme this year was “The Tension is Good”, so the speakers mostly used their talks to explore various tensions we all feel in Leadership.  I don’t summarize every speaker.

Andy always speaks twice at Catalyst – opening and closing.  His closing talk is always hardcore, nuts-and-bolts leadership, and is always among my favorite of the conference.  This year proved no exception (though I was disappointed to learn that he’d already given this talk at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit).

Andy used the opposable thumb to great effect: because we have an opposable thumb, we can leverage tension to create and progress far beyond the rest of the animal kingdom.  Tension is actually necessary for any organization that wants to make progress.

Every organization has problems that shouldn’t be solved and tensions that shouldn’t be resolved.

If you “resolve” any of these tensions, you only create new tensions elsewhere, and you’ll create barriers to progress.  Progress depends not on the resolution of the tensions, but on the successful management of those tensions.

Examples: Evangelism vs. Discipleship.  Building vs. Giving. Music vs. Sermons

To distinguish between problems to solve and tensions to manage ask the following:
  1. Does this problem/tension keep resurfacing?
  2. Do both sides have mature advocates?
  3. Are the two sides actually interdependent?
The role of leadership is to leverage the tension for the benefit of the organization.  How?
  1. Identify the tensions to be managed.
  2. Create new terminology.  Vocabularize what you’re doing so everyone can be on board.
  3. Inform your core team.  Make sure everyone is in on the conversation.
  4. Continually give value to both sides.
  5. Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases.
  6. Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day.  It’s not a win when somebody wins.
  7. Don’t think in terms of balance.  Think in terms of rhythm.

My job is to make sure the important, progress-critical tension never drop out of sight.

We need passionate people who will champion their side and mature people who understand tension.

As a leader, on e of the most valuable things you can do for your organization is differentiate between tensions you organization will always need to manage and problems that need to be solved.

T. D. Jakes

These are my summary reflections from the Catalyst East Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The theme this year was “The Tension is Good”, so the speakers mostly used their talks to explore various tensions we all feel in Leadership.  I don’t summarize every speaker.

The Bishop T. D. Jakes leads the famous Potter’s House down in Texas, and is well-known as a preacher and author.  He’s wild and energetic, and embodies the best of the black preaching tradition.  So I knew whatever he was going to say, it was going to be a lot of fun.

Leadership is foresight and vision.  It’s not about catching up or keeping up.  It’s about being ahead of the curve.

Jakes remembered his childhood; his older brothers would go hang out ‘on the corner’ where shady things went down.  Jakes wouldn’t elaborate so as not to offend our ‘delicate sensibilities’.  When he turned 16, his mother forbade him from going down to the corner.  When he argued that he was old enough, she replied that she ‘didn’t raise him to live on the corner.’

People who hang on the corner think the whole world is the corner.

Our responsibility is to speak to all people, and you can’t change the world from the corner.  This is hard, and it’s dangerous, because we’ll have to step out of the crowd and do something different.

If you get out front, you’ll get shot at; they can’t pick you off if you stay in the crowd.

It’s dangerous to step out, but people who play it safe aren’t leaders.

Jakes then encouraged us all to pursue diversity.

When you write the books you read, your truth is distorted.

He reminded us that secular industries spend billions of dollars to figure out what people think and how to talk to them.  Only the Church doesn’t take the time to learn the language of the masses.

Are we armed with the message that reaches the masses… or only the corner?

Jakes concluded by telling us that fish grow to the size of their tanks, and challenged us to provide our people with unbounded space.*

God doesn’t allow sameness to procreate.  Differences bring fruit.

*It turns out that the fish tank thing probably isn’t true.  Fish that are kept in tanks too small for them become deformed.  So the metaphor may actually work even better.  Are you responsible for creating environments that deform your people?

Craig Groschel

These are my summary reflections from the Catalyst East Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The theme this year was “The Tension is Good”, so the speakers mostly used their talks to explore various tensions we all feel in Leadership.  I don’t summarize every speaker.

Craig Groschel is the pastor of the innovative LifeChurch.tv and spoke at Catalyst for the first time a few years ago and has since been a Catalyst favorite.  His style is blunt and in-your-face tempered with a large helping of humility and confession.  This year, he told us that he’d been asked to speak about generational tension, and since he’s right at 40 years old, felt he could speak to both the older and younger.

To the Older generation:

Don’t resist, fear or judge the next generation.  Instead, believe and invest in them.  The older generation feels insecure far too often.  Remember: you don’t have to be cool; you just have to be real.  Don’t give up.  If you’re not dead, you’re not done.

To the Younger generation:

Our challenge is that we feel entitled.  We want the giant ministries and fame instantly.  We typically overestimate what God wants to do through us in the short-term, which leads us to underestimate what God wants to do through us over the course of 15, 20 or 50 years.

If we want to lead up, we need to learn to honor the persons God has put in authority over us.  There’s a difference between respect and honor.  Respect is earned; honor is given.

Honor publicly leads to influence privately. – Andy Stanley

Gabe Lyons

These are my summary reflections from the Catalyst East Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The theme this year was “The Tension is Good”, so the speakers mostly used their talks to explore various tensions we all feel in Leadership.  I don’t summarize every speaker.

Gabe Lyons helped to start the Catalyst Conference, but left several years ago to pursue Q.  He co-authored the excellent book unChristian and released just last week his equally excellent follow-up The Next Christians, which fleshes out many of the ideas he presented at Catalyst.

The next Christians are engaging cultural tensions in a whole new way.

Our world is changing.  But what is it changing into?

  1. Post-Modern – a skepticism towards certainty
  2. Post-Christian – the Church has moved from the center of culture to the margins.
  3. Pluralistic – the Judeo-Christian worldview is no longer exclusive.

When engaging culture, Christians fall somewhere along a spectrum between two poles:

  1. Separate
  2. Enculturate

Those who have captured the heart of the Gospel do neither.  They take a third path.  The Next Christians seek to restore.

80329357 What is a restorer?  How is s/he different from the poles of the spectrum?  Consider this as the outline of the Gospel story:

Creation –> Fall -> Redemption –> Restoration

Separatists tend to focus on the Fall/Redemption aspects of the story, ignoring that creation and culture are good, and that it’s all going somewhere.

Encultureists tend to focus on the Creation/Restoration pieces without taking Sin seriously enough.

A Restorer listens to the whole story.  S/he is provoked by brokenness to step-up and get involved.

Gabe has elsewhere categorized culture in seven different spheres, and pointed out that the Church (the religion sphere) is the only sphere that regularly gathers the other spheres.  Every person in your church already works in the world, in the other spheres.  This means that your church is an unmobilized army already on mission.

What are you doing to train and equip them to become restorers?

Our job isn’t just to show up and state the Good News; it’s to embody the Gospel so people might catch a glimpse of what the Gospel looks like.

Seth Godin

These are my summary reflections from the Catalyst East Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The theme this year was “The Tension is Good”, so the speakers mostly used their talks to explore various tensions we all feel in Leadership.  I don’t summarize every speaker.

seth-godinSeth Godin first spoke at Catalyst two years ago and really impressed everyone with his Tribes concept.  This year he was back and blew us out of the proverbial with some thoughts from his newest offering, Linchpin.  Get ready…

The Economy always drives our culture (and our religion).  When our society was hunter/gatherer, our religion was a lot more portable (think Tabernacle).  When we had monarchies, we had a strong, hierarchical church.  And now that we’re all capitalists, our church is strongly consumer.

The interesting thing is, however, that our system (of organizing and maximizing) is just that, a temporary system (that’s only about 200 years old).  And in this current (but failing) system, if you have something you want to sell, you advertise (which is basically just trying to yell louder than everyone around you, which ought to make you think of tract or bullhorn evangelists).

Modernism created the Factory system, which requires people to be interchangeable.

So the system created schools that train us to be identical, interchangeable people who obey the system.  No one teaches us how to solve interesting problems or to be creative.  The Factory wants you to conform so it can ignore you.  But in the world of Google, competence isn’t a scarce commodity.  It’s easy to find someone else to do your job better than you can.

Because we’re all more connected than ever before, all that’s left is to matter.
  1. Are you doing work people will miss when you’re gone?
  2. Todays ‘win’ is being more connected.
  3. Failure isn’t scary; in fact, it’s necessary to succeed!
No one joins a boring tribe.  You create a movement by doing something people are talking about.

In a world without bosses, who is setting my agenda?  Art is a human act that changes someone; it’s a generous gift.  Untamed generosity is the heart of genuine relationships.  So in your teams and organizations, ask What are we rewarding?

BUT

There’s a small part of our brain that’s afraid of risk-taking, afraid to step out and embrace new opportunities.  Seth calls it the Lizard Brain.  It’s the enemy of progress and growth as our culture shifts because staying where it’s safe creates deniability.  If I don’t step out, if I don’t risk, then it’s not my fault.

If I stay where it’s safe and don’t grow, then it’s the company’s fault, not mine.

Seth ended by encouraging us not to be afraid to step out and do something radical and different.  He closed with this idea:

As the community gets more orthodox, the outliers will always outnumber the insiders.

Dan Pink

These are my summary reflections from the Catalyst East Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The theme this year was “The Tension is Good”, so the speakers mostly used their talks to explore various tensions we all feel in Leadership.  I don’t summarize every speaker.

Session two featured Dan Pink, author of the very excellent Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us.  His talk was sort of an executive summary of the findings he presents in Drive.

Every leader has a motivating tension that emerges from one of three spheres:

  1. Biological drives (Andy’s appetites)
  2. Rewards/punishments
  3. Contribution to the larger world

What’s surprising is that the second drive is only effective in a small range of circumstances.

The best way to motivate someone is to make him/her feel as though s/he is contributing to the world at large.

Caveat: Money is a motivator.  If you don’t pay someone enough, you won’t get quality work.  But more isn’t more.  Once someone is earning ‘enough’ (whatever that looks like), a higher salary isn’t an effective motivator.  So pay your people enough to take money off the table.

So what does motivate people?

1. Autonomy

We think management is a force of nature, but it’s not.  Management is a technology from the 1850s.  How many other technologies from the 1850s are we still using?

Imagine that you had the best, most functional telegraph (built in the 1940s) in history.  You still wouldn’t use it because an outdated technology you refine is still outdated.

Management achieves compliance.  But we want engagement, not compliance.

We want autonomy over our time, tasks, teams and techniques.  How can we create systems that encourage autonomy in our people?

Examples: Google, Dell, Best Buy (corporate)

2. Mastery

Being able to see that we’re making progress is what motivates us, and feedback is the best way to chart mastery.  The younger generations live in a feedback rich world – everything we do from turning on the TV to sending a text gives us immediate feedback.

Even so, our work environments are feedback deserts.  What the older generations often perceive as a deep-seated insecurity is actually a hunger for feedback in one of the places it matters the most: our work.

Annual performance reviews are a joke, and almost completely ineffective.  Consider the DIY Performance Evaluation.  At the beginning of each month, create clear, measurable goals for yourself and then at the end of each month, evaluate yourself.

3. Purpose

A great person has one simple sentence that states his/her purpose, not a convoluted paragraph.

Examples: “Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union and freed the slaves.”
“FDR led us out of a depression and helped us win a world war.”

So ask, “Am I better today than I was yesterday?”

Carrots & Sticks are so last century.  For the 21st century, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose.

BONUS! Here’s a sweet video of a similar talk:

Andy Stanley (pt. 1)

These are my summary reflections from the Catalyst East Conference in Atlanta, GA.  The theme this year was “The Tension is Good”, so the speakers mostly used their talks to explore various tensions we all feel in Leadership.  I don’t summarize every speaker.

Andy’s first talk was brilliant, as always.  He explored the tension we feel because of our appetites – drives for food, fame, sex, etc.  He gave us this framework for understanding appetites:

Our appetites create tension in our lives because they always want more.
  1. God created appetites.  Sin distorted them.
  2. Appetites are never fully satisfied.  We live as though there’s something or someone out there who can, so we always experience tension.
  3. Appetites always whisper ‘Now’, never ‘Later’.

He then took us into the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25.  Esau, the older brother, trades his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew.  Andy asks, “Who would trade his birthright for a bowl of stew?”

Actually, most of us would, thanks to how our brains manage our appetites.

Andy cited two psychological phenomena that make it hard to say NO to our appetites:

  1. Impact Bias – When we want something, our brains magnify that simple appetite out of porportion.  Essentially, our brains tell us that the object of our desire will satisfy said desire to a far greater degree than it actually will.
  2. Focalism – When we want something, our brains focus our attentions on the object of our desire to the exclusion of everything else.

So given that the temptation we all have to give into our appetites, how bad is that really?  Andy asked us to consider how history could’ve changed if Esau had reframed his desire for a bowl of stew in the larger context of his birthright.  Eventually, God would’ve introduced himself to Moses like this:

I AM the god of Abraham, Isaac and Esau.

But since Esau took the bowl of stew, it all changed.  No one was there for Esau to reframe his appetites.  And no one will be there for us either.

So ask yourself, Where do I want to be in 10 years?  And what’s my bowl of stew?

We have no idea what God wants to do with our lives.  So when it comes to our appetites, we have to reframe and refrain.

Knowing the bigger picture is a cure for our appetites.  What a way to start the conference!

My Favorite iPhone Games

A couple of weeks ago, I offered my favorite iPhone apps.  But since all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, here are the games that keep me entertained.  Nearly every game has a lite or free version you can get to try it out first.  But they’re all worth the (meager) price you’ll pay.

Zombie Smash

Zombie Smash is a fun, addictive game in which you’re defending your homestead from hungry legions of undead.  How?  By flinging them with your thumbs.  It’s got a great set of up-gradable weapons, quite a few types of zombies (each with its own characteristics) and difficulty settings to keep it plenty tough.  Plus they keep putting out upgrades for it, so the fun never stops!

Plants vs. Zombies + geoDefense

Okay, you caught me.  I’m minorly obsessed with Zombies.  But I grouped these two games together because they’re two of the best tower-defense games out there.  In PvZ, you’re a homeowner who purchases increasingly deadly plants from your crazy neighbor to fend off the hoards of undead (who of course want to eat your brains).  gD is a much simpler game in which you construct turrets to destroy wave after wave of geometric shapes (each with their own speed/strength).  Both are challenging and addictive; they’ll keep you entertained (or, quite possibly, frustrated) for hours.

Angry Birds

AngryBirdsThis is one of the most popular games out there right now (if Twitter and sales have anything to say about it).  Two minutes of play will show you why.  Evil pigs have stolen your eggs, so you do what any bird naturally would: you hurl yourself (via a slingshot you aim with your finger) at the pigs’ homes and castles in order to destroy them.  You have four different kinds of birds and these levels are hard.  You’ll have plenty of time to work on them, because once you download this game, it’s not like you’ll be working.

DoodleJump

Speaking of reasons you’ll never work again, meet DoodleJump.  This game is advertised as the most addictive game on the iPhone and they may be right.  The gameplay is impossibly simple.  You jump from platform to platform, steering your jumper by tilting the phone back and forth.  Tap the screen to shoot monsters (or jump on them) and that’s it.  The game has several different skins (space, undersea, world cup, Halloween, etc.) that change the gameplay ever-so-slightly to keep things interesting.  I’ve only owned the game for about a month now, and my friends and I have already dumped several hours into it.  Did I mention it’s addictive?

Words With Friends/ Chess With Friends

Scrabble is one of the most maddening games imaginable.  How are you supposed to make a word with three O’s, an A, E, X and Q?  Well, I can’t, which is why I always lose.  So what better reason to play against me?  Create an account and get started.  Find a partner and then play as often as you like – each person will be notified when it’s his/her turn, and you can take as long as you need to find that killer word.  I wish more than two persons could play a single game, but it’s still tremendous fun.  My user name is jrforasteros, if you want to play (and if you’re a chess player, it’s equally fun).

SkiBall + Paper Toss

Both of these games are also good, simple fun.  They both have the same gameplay – you swipe your finger across the screen to throw your skiball or paperwad.  SkiBall is a blast, and just like in real skiball, you collect tickets you can redeem for prizes.  I already bought Manda and panda bear and now I’m saving up for an 8-ball skiball.  Paper Toss is perfect for the office – you are trying to become the world champion paper-tosser, throwing paperwads into a trashcan (taking into account the wind currents created by the fan).  Since both games track high scores, you’ll constantly be fighting with your friends to maintain your first-place status.

Flood-It!

lrg

Last, but by no means least is Flood-It!  Again, the gameplay is pretty simple.  You’re presented with a board comprised of squares of six different colors.  You begin in the top-left corner and change the color of the squares until the whole board is one color.  Oh, and you have an extremely limited number of moves.  If you like puzzle games, don’t miss this one.

That’s it.  My best-of-the-best.  What are your favorites?

Preaching From Weakness

This is Kevin Powell. I don't know anything about him, and he's not on here for any reason other than because he's a handsome fellow.

If you read my post on CEO Jesus, you know that I have a minor obsession with the strengths-based, leadership culture.  And since I’ve recently begun preaching a lot more often, I’ve been reflecting more and more about my own strengths.  If you know me, you know that I struggle with pride, which in a lot of ways is a quest for affirmation/approval from other people.

And whether they’re just being nice or not, a lot of people tell me I’m an excellent communicator.  And I take pride in that because I work hard on crafting my communication pieces – both in the study and the proclamation.

And there’s my greatest temptation to pride.  The gathering I’m leading right now, EPIC, was formed to communicate the truth and power of the Gospel to persons who are (in our vernacular) “dechurched” and “unchurched” – that is, those who have had negative experiences with the Church and those who have never been exposed to Jesus and his Church.  When I craft a piece of communication (whether it’s a small group study, a discussion gathering, a prayer, responsive reading or teaching/preaching piece), I keep in mind that I’m speaking to these persons – using language that, while full of meaning to the believers who are gathered to worship, is also understandable and accessible to a person who is unfamiliar with what’s happening.

My problem is that it’s really easy for me to forget that and prepare talks that are meant to impress other Christians.

I can actually do this in real life. What's that? No, I'm not going to show you. I'm not your dancing monkey.We have a lot of visitors to EPIC week in and week out, and a lot of them are ‘church-shopping’ – they’re already believers and are trying to find a church that ‘meets their needs’.  These are also the people who are most likely to come talk to me after our gathering, to tell me what they thought of my communication.  And, God help me, I get (a sick) pleasure when they tell me that I’m better than another minister.

And not only do I feel pressure to entertain, I want to because deep down inside, I want to be the best speaker in town.

Of course that’s fed by the celebrity culture that’s developing in the Evangelical Church at large – we want to find a pastor who’s just like Rob Bell or Erwin McManus or Andy Stanley or Mark Driscoll.  But now consider Paul’s words to the Corinthians:

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.  And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.  My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. – 1 Corinthians 2:1-5*

Paul was (apparently) not a very strong speaker, at least compared to some of the other guys he was up against.  And the Corinthians (apparently) were being swayed by other speakers who presented their version of the Gospel more eloquently.  But Paul reminds them in this portion of the letter (beginning back in chapter 1) that the Gospel doesn’t rest on human excellence – quite the opposite in fact.  The Gospel is for the poor in spirit, the broken, the humble, the least of these.  We shouldn’t rely on our skills to proclaim the mystery of Jesus – to do so is to negate the power of the Gospel.  Our communication needs to be full of our own journeys towards (and with) Jesus.  We need to be communicating from places of weakness, where God is working in us, changing and transforming us.  If we’re not, then we’re no better than the so-called super-apostles Paul condemned.

I’m afraid this is a tension I’ll always feel – I desperately want only to do the best job I can, utilize the gifts and talents God has given me to share the power of the Gospel in the clearest and most compelling way possible to those who do not know Jesus.  But I’ll always be tempted to start thinking more about becoming a preaching celebrity and putting on a show for the Christians who are evaluating how well I stack up.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to be concerned with what church shoppers think of my talks.  I want to spend my energy proclaiming the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection to those who have not heard.

Am I alone here?  Sometimes I feel like I’m crazy thinking these things.

*For the record, I don’t have room here to discuss how this passage has been abused in recent years by certain super-apostles in the contemporary Church.