The most important about leadership is...?

Today someone asked me what I would talk about if I was given the opportunity to talk about leadership, what would I talk about?

I had to think about it for a moment and then I responded by saying - brokenness.

At first, it was not a popular response to the questioner.

In this world today any of us can go straight to Amazon, a bookstore, a friend's shelf, a business person, a pastor, or anything/anyone else and there will be a multitude of different books on leadership. I love Maxwell but I'm not always sure that we need 21 of these, 17 of those, 5 of these, 479 of this, and 15 of something else. What's the one?

Someone else will say this X is the thing that all leaders must have and need to work on while yet another person will advise that we need something else entirely different. When you put it all together it seems like each write or speaker will give 1/2 of a new thought and use 76 other thoughts. What's the one thing I need?

I answered brokenness a.k.a. humility. My questioner summed it up with a different word - character. I like that one better and I'm gonna stick with it.

Every leader cannot survive without character - strength of spirit, resolve, knowing who he/she really is, know what makes them unique, knowing strengths and weaknesses. Character is defined as "the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual."

The truth is this: we can work on 43 of these and 27 of that. We can pick up tips and tricks on "visioneering" and "habits" and "boundaries." We can listen to our favorite CEOs, leaders, organizations, trainings, books, authors, and whatever else but if we do not have character we will all eventually fail.

What's the most important thing about leadership? Working on one's self and developing true character.

Who are you really?

One of my favorite questions is this - If everything you love was taken away, who would you be?

It's easy for us to get caught up in life. It's reality right? Aren't we always trying to entertain ourselves, better ourselves, and to enjoy life? But let me ask you this - what defines who you are? Are you a parent? Spouse? Child? Manager? Worker? Leader? Follower? Optimist? Judge? Pastor? Chef? You get the point. What are you? How do you define yourself?

Now, take that title off of you. Who are you now?

Strip yourself of that title. Now who are you?

One of the toughest lessons in life is finding out who you are at the core. When you take (or sometimes forced) to take a hard look at yourself who will you be?

It's a tough question because, in my opinion, it's one of the scariest questions to answer. So often we hide behind our titles, jobs, responsibilities, or fluff.

My encouragement for the week is to dive in and take a look at yourself and see what you may find. Just remember that it might scare you some too.

My newest transition begins

My newest transition is upon me. My last few transitions have been very happy ones. That makes me real happy since so many of my transitions in the last 5 years seemed to be surrounded by pain. I have written about this pain before - I think it is safe to say the content will not change

Recently, I was married. That’s a lot a lot of transitions there. And now, I also have finally found where I want to be – here in Sioux City, IA working at Riverz Edge Church as Operations Pastor. I honestly could not be happier and cannot wait to start.

This is a new beginning. A new transition. I can’t wait. I will share this journey. My favorite part of this journey will be when I stop writing about pain, transitions, new life and move into other types of thoughts. That will be a good day. But for now – thank you for reading. Check back again.

Optimism vs Pessimism

Have you ever met one of those people (you know exactly who I'm talking about to) that seem to NEVER have a bad day? In college, my friends and I referred to these people as "River people" and I'll just leave it at that. Some people just have this ability to always look at things optimistically while others struggle with this. And it seems like those optimistic people seem to always have something to be optimistic about.

Is there a secret I'm missing here?

I don't know how these people are able to do it, but I know that my life doesn't always look up. In fact, a lot of the time, my life doesn't look up. How can I change that? I feel like every time I hope and pray for something to happen, it doesn't. Now, I have no problem being optimistic that this transition of my life will end and things will be better and I can continue on with the rest of my life, but that doesn't change today does it?

Feel free to add some advice for me and others like me to help us to change the way we think, if that's what needs to happen that is.

Saturday is Coming...

As I mentioned yesterday, I just got back speaking from a camp last week. Dream come true and I hope it doesn't stop with one experience at Covenant Heights.

One of the things that we talked about was passion and how to keep it coming. Since I knew ahead of time that this would be around a campfire I decided to use the fire as my prop. So I talked about how passion is more than an emotion and we can decide what our passion looks like. Often, at camp, we can use emotions to fuel our passion, but this does not last long. After saying this I poured some lighter fluid on the fire and said this was camp. Then I said, Saturday is coming and it looks like this - and that's when the flame died down quickly.

All week long I said Saturday was coming and unless we started putting logs in our fire, (i.e. Bible reading, prayer, consistency in church/youth group/missions/sharing the Gospel with others/etc) then our flame would die out. I talked about this all week in fact - that Saturday was coming.

Well, my Saturday hit me on Friday night. I experienced a very quick letdown and I even faced what seemed to be this rapid depression over the weekend. Saturday always comes...

Be ready for Saturday. Prepare for Saturday. It always sneaks up on us when we aren't ready...

Camp

Last week I had the privilege to speak at Covenant Heights Camp in Estes Park, CO. I have always, since age 13 or so, wanted to speak at a camp but never thought I would have the opportunity. Those speakers were so polished and good, well some not so good, that I didn't think I would ever be in that class. I still don't know that I am but I never thought I'd get the chance at 28 to do a camp. It was amazing!!

If you have never had the opportunity to go to camp as a speaker then you are missing out! Open and flexible schedule every day! Hang out with the campers...when you want to! And then lead campers (7-10th grade in my case) to connect with God in a real and powerful way!

When asked to speak, as random as it was, I knew that a huge part of the camp experience is the music/band. So I asked some friends of mine, the worship band Sanctified, if they wanted to join the adventure and they graciously said yes. They were PHENOMENAL!! Like me it was their first camp as well. We saw God do some amazing things. We saw some campers do some amazing things! And we saw a counselor live out the gospel in the most real and relevant way imaginable!

If nothing else, this experience has renewed my desire for youth ministry, really ministry in general. It reminded me of God's call on my life. It also gave me the opportunity to speak, for real, for the first time in over two years! This experience even made me start thinking about doing more camps and how I might need to let that be known - so it's now written on a blog for the world to see, even though I am fairly confident that no one will read it.

Wow. Over a year. Wow. In any of my past posts did I mention anything about struggling with consistency?

Anyway, I have some great reasons for not blogging for over a year, but now feel that it is time to start it up again.

I've learned a lot in the past year. I learned more about my struggles in life. I've also learned, as much as I wish it wasn't true, that coffee = inspiration for me. I have learned that I know what I love and I love what God has called me to do. And also, that depression comes when I sit around and watch a lot of TV and play a lot of video games (a.k.a. NCAA Football 12 - such a wonderful game)

I have some great things to talk about and so I will do my best to start with those. None of the least would be lessons learned/ing from the Bible, life, coaching, mentorship, and God. If you happen to stumble across this blogsite I hope you are encouraged and continue to read. In fact, give it to a few friends. I definitely write these things for myself, but it so encouraging to know that others are reading as well.

Bible Reading Struggles

My New Year's Resolution is to read the Bible this year. See, I really struggle with daily discipline. Such as exercise, which is why my gut exists, eating habits, personal hygiene, bad joke telling, and my daily devotions/"quiet time." So I decided that this year I would make it a point to read through the Bible. Honestly, I don't even care if I don't get anything out of it. I just want to get in the habit. This was all fine and dandy until I became unemployed and began doing nothing with life. Strangely, when I had the most time to read my Bible, I didn't read it at all - for a month and a half.

So being weeks behind and I have to catch up. This basically means reading Exodus through Numbers in just a few weeks and I've always loved reading about Moses and things he went through. This makes you just lucky enough to get to read some of the things that I think about Moses and lessons we can learn from him. So starting tomorrow will be a mini-series on Moses.

seeking you as a precious zune

If you haven't read yesterday's post make sure you scroll down and read that first so this can make a little more sense to you.

In rewriting a few of these lyrics, let me explain the significance to me anyway.

"You are my strength when I a weak"

God is my strength. In the past I have been beaten down, pushed around, trampled on, and nearly destroyed both emotionally and spiritually. My strengths were stolen and I was left with nothing but weakness. But God was always there for me to lean on. Despite all I've gone through (or what any of you have gone through) God is always there to keep us from completely collapsing. Thank you God for being my strength.

"You are the refuge that I seek"

Similar thought as above. The Bible says that God is our refuge. In the OT certain cities were even set up as refuge cities so that if you needed to get away from accusers, attackers, etc. you could flee to these cities to seek refuge and the city would protect you. God will protect. Crazy thought here - God will protect you even if you are guilty. Welcome to the grace and love that He uses to protect us.

"Seeking You as a precious Zune"

This is the good one. If you aren't familiar a Zune is an mp3 player just like an ipod. I use a Zune because I just kinda like it better. Anyway, weeks ago I lost my Zune and I went CRAZY trying to find it! I searched every inch of my car, every inch of my apartment (except the one inch where I ended up find it a month later.) A few minutes into my search the Holy Spirit "gently" nudged me and reminded of the parable Jesus tells about seeking a treasure. He would do anything to get this treasure. Well, my treasure was my Zune because I listen to music EVERYWHERE that I go. As I frantically went through everything that I own God told me I was to seek Him in the same way.

Now, my desire is to seek God with the same intensity but I'm finding that often times, He doesn't mean as much to me as my Zune did that day.

my all in all

I was just kinda hangin with God a bit when He reminded me of an old school song (at least old school for me) called All in All. Here are the verses to that song.

You are my strength when I am weak

You are the portion (treasure? I can't remember) that I seek

You are my all in all

Seeking you as a precious jewel

Lord to give up I'd be a fool

You are my all in all

Jesus, Lamb of God

Worthy is Your name

Jesus, Lamb of God

Worthy is Your name

Good song, good lyrics. But I can make em better!

You are my strength when I am weak

You are the refuge that I seek

Seeking you as a precious Zune

Lord to give up I'd be a fool.

Stop in tomorrow to read the method to my madness behind these lyric changes

Lessons to Learn from Moses pt 1

In my Bible reading I have been reading quite a bit about Moses lately. Truth is, he is one of my favorite biblical characters because of the all of the leadership dealings he had. For one to lead over a million complainers into the desert for 40 years, one is going to have to know something about leadership and certainly learn a lot about leadership. Periodically, I'm gonna go ahead and share some of the important leadership lessons that I learn from Moses. This is the first one.

Intimacy

In Exodus 34 Moses is coming down from Mount Sinai. As he descended from the summit Aaron and others noticed that his face was shining. Moses was literally radiant from his time with God. He was shining so brightly and frequently that Moses had to wear a veil over himself so others could look at him and be around him. Moses would continue to spend time with God and he would continue to send off light from his body. So what can we learn about this? An important step in leadership is intimacy with God.

If we do not spend time with God then let's not bother leading. This is when pastors/leaders/businessmen, etc. run into their first problems: they begin to rely on themselves. We must know God's will and plan and submit ourselves to him. Our thoughts, our actions, our lives, and our time must be devoted to God.

I don't know about you but more than anything, I want to be intimate with God. That starts by simply spending time with Him.

Twitter Account

About a year ago I joined Twitter and used it about 5 times. So I decided just the other day to go ahead and be more active on that account. My plan is to use that and Facebook a little more and hopefully get some more people to read this blog. And I don't do that because I want to be "popular." I do write this simply for me and if anyone else wants to read then that's great. But I really love the idea of putting my thoughts in the open to start discussion. I guess we can call it iron sharpening iron. I really do seek discussion on a lot of topics.

But one problem I'm having is that I can't get my tweets to come up on Facebook and that's important to me. For some reason whenever I try to get the app for Twitter it doesn't work. Any suggestions or fixes to the problem?

The Key to Christianity

First of all I'm not a huge fan of the term "Christianity." Not because it isn't relevant or because it doesn't have good meaning. I just think it's become so broad and so general that it has come to fit too many things. I think I'm a little more of a fan of Christ-follower, Jesus lover, Jesus stalker, Christo-imitator, etc.

All that nonsense said I think the key to Christianity is brokenness.

I've talked about this before on here and I probably am not going to say anything incredibly new or insightful but I think that without brokenness we miss an incredibly huge point of following Christ. The main reason for my thought is this: Without brokenness, Christ cannot be Lord.

Think about it. One of my fav verses in the Bible is in Matthew 16. It is about taking up our cross and following. Those who save their life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will find it. The core of Christianity is following Christ and letting Him be in control. This cannot be done without brokenness, the act of saying God you and in control and I am not. Honestly, I hope everyone following Christ is daily praying for brokenness and humility because without it we are lost.

What are you thoughts?

First Impressions

I have recently realized that I am not very good at making good first impressions. I think my second impressions are good, but not my first ones. And I've decided that those first impressions are incredibly important for someone in sales and for any pastor. So, I am trying to do all I can to figure out how to make my first impressions better.

Any thoughts? Please share any advice you have one how you personally try to make a good first impression, or if there's any tips of anyone you know. Also, if you know me, anything you can think of for me that I do wrong or something else I should try?

T-Minus 7 Days

I have a new look now which means a few different things. 1) I'm going to start blogging again. 2) I have entered a new emotional stage of my life which we will talk about later. 3) It just looks cool.

Just wanted to let anyone that's checking that a week from today I will begin blogging again. New topics, new theme. No more whining and talking about how hard my life has been. The truth is, a corner as been turned and I am extremely excited about my life right now. For a long time, it has been hard for me to live in the NOW, in the present. Today, I am happy to say that TODAY will be a great day!

State of Broken

I am a firm believer that we are to be humble before God. I believe that God wants us to be in a constant state of submission to Him. I like to use the word broken. I think that God wants us broken so we have to rely on Him and so that He can fix us.

So my question is: "What does broken look like?"

Whenever I have been in a state of broken and I have been at my lowest. I have been beat up, destroyed, trampled on, maybe even abused (all spiritually - not actually physically). In those times, I have felt very close to God because I had no one else to turn. Then, it seems, I get back on my own two feet and I stop relying on God.

I actually like being in the state of broken. I cherish it, I long for it simply because it draws me closer to God. But what about when I'm not spiritually hurting? How do I remain in a state of broken or humility or submission? And the truth is that I may have already answered my own question but I feel the need to continue anyway. I like to be vulnerable even with "stupid" questions.

So, what does broken look like? Or am I maybe using the wrong word?

I Wanna Hang Out With Jesus

I wonder what's its like to hang out with Jesus. I continue to keep going through the Gospels to see what Jesus is really like, but there are some gaps that I am having a hard time filling.

Truth is, there are several people I look up to that have attributes I would like to have. But there is only one person that I admire so much that I want to look as much like him as I can - and that is Jesus.

What I'm curious about now is - what was it like to hang out with Jesus? And I mean that times that aren't recorded in the Bible. You know, just the two of us. Or just a small group of people. I mean, everyone loved to be around Christ, which made him a fun person, right? He had to have told jokes - so what jokes did he tell. I think he knew how to be the life of the party so at times, so what did that look like?

This is some of the stuff I wanna know so I can incorporate as much into my life as I can. I know that he always had the right thing to say. He always knew what to do and performed miracles at the drop of a hat. He was able to change people's lives and confront members in a crowd and leave them speechless and provoked thought. I want that in my life. But what I also want to know is what Jesus was like behind-the-scenes. Surely, he was all about his Father's business, but I also don't think he talked about his Father 100% of the time. I'm sure there was a side to Jesus that just hung out with friends. I wonder what that looked like.

No Preaching

Some times I really miss preaching, teaching, or coming up with any kind of new idea, lesson, etc. This is one of those weeks that I don't miss it at all. One of the tough things of pastoring is always coming up with stuff. Often times, that happens 2-5 times a week! Really? I'm supposed to be that creative all the time?

Well, this week if I had to do something I would absolutely be making it up or else we'd be watching a video or playing a game, because I got NOTHING. I can't even write a blog this week. Good thing I have them sorta stored up from other weeks (with that huge time without a computer I didn't write anything so I'm a little backed up.) I got nothing.

So what do you do when you have one of these kinds of weeks? Whether it's teaching Sunday School, preaching a sermon, counseling, writing a book/blog/anything, mentoring, etc. What do you do? Honestly, what do you do?

Will I Ever Get Married?

It's a good question. Some days I think about it, some days I don't. But I still think it's valid.

I've been around the block....a few times. I've had some great girls in my life and I've let them all slip through my fingers. Heck, it's what got me in this mess in the first place.

But is it ever going to happen? I'm only 26 which means I'm not ancient by any means but at the same time I wouldn't mind it. And then there's all the comments from married people..."When are you gonna get married?" "I have a daughter for you to meet." "I have a friend that you would love." Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I want to get married, I think it would be great. I don't know if I'm ready for it in a variety of areas but I'd at least like to begin my process by actually finding someone. The other funny thing is, and I don't know if I should attribute this to God or my getting old/fat, now that I am more ready to settle down then before I can't find anyone for the life of me. I mean in college this wasn't an issue at all. I had no problems finding someone. If I was single it was truly because I wanted to be single, but now I'm still OK with being single but at the same time I wouldn't mind venturing into some new water again.

Granted, I haven't met anyone worth my trouble yet either. I have high standards. I'm gonna keep those high standards. I've made a lot of stupid mistakes in my day but I still know what I'm worth at the end of the day. A huge difference now is that I'm tired of messing around. I'm tired of just having fun or whatever. I'm ready to at least make progress toward settling down. I don't really know how to express what I'm thinking right now but hopefully all 3 of you get the point.

In the end I think it comes down to whether or not I trust God. Do I trust that God can and will bring someone into my life? Just like in all areas of faith, it's easy to understand and believe in your mind that God has it all taken care of. But it's another thing to live your entire life that way every single moment of every single day. Good thing God isn't rattled by my momentary doubts.

Good News

Finally, for the first time in this transition, I have gotten official good news! I received my letter from Springfield giving me a date. This is huge since I have been waiting for a date for so long. I cannot express my excitement and eagerness to for this date to come around!

Yay for me!