Bad things happen if leaders get too far in front of the folks they are leading. A great distance may cause the leader to be beyond the horizon of their follower’s view and thus, the followers lose contact with the leader. Is this what happened to a degree with Moses and Joshua? Did they outpace their people? When the spies returned from the promised land, most of their followers did not have the faith to follow into a difficult circumstance. Was this all on account of the peoples’ lack of faith or had their been some leadership pitfalls as well? Did Moses and Joshua communicate effectively the knowledge and vision they were getting from God?

Leaders can outpace their people when:

1. we present them a vision so large they cannot see how God can use them specifically in it. Vision should be God-sized but people-utilizing.

2. we have been ruminating over something for a long time period and then dump it on our folks in one 30 minute message and expect them to follow immediately.

3. we have not taught our followers about spending time hearing God so they can be given a corresponding vision that helps keep them in step with the larger vision.

How are you doing in this?

[via idea that jumped into my head as Omar Reyes shared in an exec staff meeting]

It is getting hot between Israel and the Palestinians. Pray as over 200 dead already.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081227/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

Used this tactic twice this season with hilarious results.
Use it. Simply paste the following into a document minus parenthetical instructions.

THE HOT MAN KIT

Sure to drive the Mrs. wildTM

This kit provides you everything you need to be a Hot Man.

1. Since being a hot man is 90% mental, we’ve provided you a photograph of the quintessential hot man. Before you make any decision that might deal your hotness, look deep into the picture and ask yourself, “What would the Hot Man do right now given my situation?”

(include a cheesy photo of yourself looking hot…Piper took this one of me in the backyard and I look good!)

2. 9% of hotness is scent related. Remember, cologne is our friend and you can never wear too much. Don’t be afraid to experiment, mixing your own blends until you find one that brings olfactory pleasure first to yourself, and then surely to your spouse.

(Go to dollar store and buy 5 cheesy colognes or rummage old ones you have)

3. The final 1% of hotness is brains. Yes, occasionally you will need more than outward hotness. Use the gift certificate to purchase something that will highlight your mental acumen and amaze your spouse.

(If it is upscale and a gift is expected, add #3 and give a gift certificate to Amazon or Barnes and Nobles, etc. If it is an el cheapo party, skip #3 and change #2 to 10%)

A friend of mine recently was given the assignment at seminary to come to class to discuss a shocking verse. He and others were trying to find obscure verses. I disagree…the most shocking verses are:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. John 1:14
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us Rom 5:8

If you share those with someone of another faith (muslim, buddhist, etc.) these verses are the ones that cause them shock and sometimes even offense.

Singing Christmas hymns/carols provides the perfect opportunity to teach on the doctrine of Christ. I encourage you to do so.

For example:

Hark the Herald Angels Sing line “Mild he lays his glory by”

1. Point out that Jesus didn’t leave some of his divine attributes in heaven (as if He could only fill a backpack with a few of them). He was FULLY God.

2. Then go to the fact that Jesus “laid His glory by” in the sense that He didn’t exploit His divine nature for selfish gain as described in Philippians 2:5-7 (ex. didn’t turn rocks to bread, or bow down and worship to get now what he already has coming.) The “If you are the Son of God” literally means “If you are,and since we both know you are, go ahead and…fulfill your rightful destiny instead of submitting to the Father” in the conditional clause of the Greek. (Which BTW if Jesus would have exploited His Godhood would have been sin and created a salvation disaster given the possibility that it could have happened –but that gets into the impeccability of Christ debate, for another time).

This makes and incredible pre-hymn teaching OR a full sermon upon which you can then re-sing the hymn afterward with renewed focus and vigor. It helps to focus the mind’s attention of the worshiper on the statements they are making about God.

Our sound tech, who also is a vocal instructor at NorthWood, wrote a song as result of listening to our message series in November and December called The Cost. Here is a tune he did in service yesterday. A bit of a different style than we normally do at NorthWood, it was a breath of fresh air. Grab it and take a listen.

03-the-cost-free-mp3.mp3

Jesus told us to be in the world but not of it.

Many Christians are of the world but not in it.  

When you are critical of the world, do you use worldly means (harsh attitude, critical tones, mean spirited or negative) to combat views with which you disagree? If so, you are living in the second statement.

Reuters has published a “death map” and in an accompanying article state

Heat and drought caused 19.6 percent of total deaths from natural hazards, with summer thunderstorms causing 18.8 percent and winter weather causing 18.1 percent, the team at the University of South Carolina found.

The article then quotes he biggest threats Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina wrote in their report, which gathered data from 1970 to 2004.

“According to our results, the answer is heat,” as they bemoan global warming.

The way I see it mathematically — if it the globe warms up, the 19.6% number of heat death will increase as a percentage but the 18.1% of deaths from cold will decrease. You have a net difference of only 1.5% between hot deaths and cold deaths. That is not a statistically concerning number though the more extreme global warming crowd will very possibly mention only the first number out of context. Let’s approach the situation with moderated wisdom. Everyone chill out a bit as you read Bjorn Lomborg’s excellent work Cool It.

The abortion question hinges on a single point. Everything else is peripheral (ex. is child wanted by mother?, will child be loved?, etc.)  The hinge:

What constitutes a person?

What is the decisive criterion of personhood and non-personhood? Therein lies the problem for the pro-choicer. Regardless of their acceptance or denial of the Christian worldview, the pro-choicer cannot construct a rational definition of personhood which precludes a fetus from being a person without the definition also covering people under anesthesia, etc. as non-persons. However the pro-choice crowd would probably not to think it okay for the doctor to cease the existence of  a subject under anesthesia merely because they could not sustain life on their own while they are in the anesthetized state. Yet logically the pro-choice person must allow the extinction of that non-person since by their own definition the patient under anesthesia meets their definition of a non-person as put forth in Roe v. Wade, etc. It is logical absurdity.

As my friend Mark puts it to the pro-choice crowd…

Give me a definition of a person which precludes the fetus as a person yet doesn’t include any other person under the definition. It cannot be done.

In the coming days, I will include some posts on public ethics. If you like them, read them, if not don’t. We’ll take a peak at reproductive rights, the global climate and other hot potatoes.

Many times Christian art (film, novel, song) fails because unlike the classic Moll Flanders, modern artists are afraid to show sin’s full effect. Defoe, the Puritan criticized for being quite frank about his character’s sin, said:

To give the history of a wicked life repented of, necessarily requires the wicked part should be be made as wicked as the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give beauty to the penitent part, which is certainly the best and brightest, if related with equal spirit and life.

While we are not to use vileness for entertainment, the deeds of darkness and their resultant misery are to be told by the songwriter/storyteller/film maker/etc.This scares off “religious right” viewers. The plot of such movies are darker initially, yet more glorious in the end than soft peddling us mishmash.

A great work that challenges us in this regard is Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts.

Is you ministry a CPU allowing only one person at a time to use their God given talents? Or, is it a GPU, mobilizing the maximum number of people through “parallel processing” at any moment for the Kingdom’s sake?

If you are a CPU, overhaul to become GPU. Things will get much more dangerous AND fun.

[video idea via Rocket Dave]

The Challenge. Every ministry at NorthWood is encouraged to “go for it,”– to think outside the box but coordinate with the Body as a whole for unity of purpose. This presents some real challenges as we recently discussed in the federalism post. Each week I get staff members and laity coming to say, “This just HAS to be announced this weekend.” Then they lay at my feet a carefully crafted announcement and occasionally a brownie bribe to help their cause (Okay, no one has done that but it would help.) It falls upon our Executive Pastor and myself to wade through the requests and decide which ones actual get platform time and which get “relegated” to the foyer announcement loops on plasmas. Often, we must go tell someone who was sure that there announcement would make the cut that it got benched. This isn’t ever fun and can quickly make you the “most hated person on staff” unless you give them the brownies that someone else gave you as a bribe as you tell them.

A Solution. We NEVER do on the fly announcements and everyone knows that. Mike and I look over the bulletin and requests and come up with our top 4 with one alternate. The broader the appeal of the announcement and the better tied to the Word spoken that week, the better chance the obedience opportunity will get announced. We would never announce from the platform a meeting that only affected 20 or even 50 folks. Those can be done by the leader directly to participants via another avenue.

It helps if you have seasons of key emphasis and you forewarn the staff as to that focus so they are not counting on time that won’t be available. For example, in staff meeting on Monday I unpacked our January series called The Marriage Portrait and the stacking events (look for a post soon on how to stack). Once they saw all the emphasis on stacking events that would be made, everyone got a quick picture that obedience opportunities/announcement time would be very full. I then reinforced that verbally stating, “Don’t count on platform time for anything in January to publicize opportunities if it isn’t marriage/relationship centered.” This is especially true as for these type of announcements, we often do them via a creative video so we have to be planned early in the week.

If a lay person approaches me directly, I frankly tell them where we have space for announcements and where we don’t. I then encourage them to get with the staff member who would shepherd that area to see if they could come up with an alternative way to publicize the opportunity.

We also have our church blog option where I have almost no limit of what opportunities can be posted there. It receives a nice amount of traffic.