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Leadership Email – Don’t Misdiagnose

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Here’s the email I sent out to leaders in Reno County on 3/11/13:

The Kansas Leadership Center has many great tools for you to use.  One such tool is the KLC Playbook.  I commend it to you when you have a leadership challenge that you’re working through.  One of the first exercises they have under “Diagnose Situation” relates to distinguishing between technical and adaptive work.  Here’s how they helpfully describe it: “Your issue is complex. So don’t make the mistake of treating an adaptive challenge as if it were solely a technical problem. 
“Most leadership challenges have adaptive and technical elements. 
“Technical problems are usually clearly defined and have ready solutions that can be implemented by authority figures or experts. Adaptive challenges are dramatically different. They require us to learn new ways of operating. Progress is made when stakeholders, not simply authority figures, take action. Adaptive challenges almost always involve some sort of loss.
This is followed up with some activity:
Observations, Activities, Possible Experiments:
Answer the question, what kind of work is it?
Technical Elements
·         Expertise or Information Needed
·         How might we get this done?  Who could help?
·         What challenges might we face?
Adaptive Elements
·         What do we need to learn or change?
·         How might we work together?  What process should we use?
·         What challenges might we face?
(KLC Playbook, pp.5-9)
I think for me a great takeaway came in that middle statement: “Most leadership challenges have adaptive and technical elements.”  In our leadership dilemmas or those areas we’re really trying to make a difference in, there will be elements of both the technical and adaptive.  Working to distinguish these is an act of leadership.  So, diagnose away and see if it doesn’t help us make progress toward our goals.  

Weekend Recap – Called To Love

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My 3/10/13AM sermon, Called To Love, from Revelation 2:1-7 is now online.  This sermon was really unpacking the message the Risen Christ had for the church at Ephesus and helping us see exactly what the Risen Christ might be calling us to live.  Specifically, there’s a call to love.  There’s a warning if we fail to live it and a blessing should we choose to obey.  All of this, too, brings glory to the Risen Christ in obeying.  So, how’s your loving?  Maybe this sermon would help you see what the Risen Christ is calling you to do.

Dangerous Calling Email – All Too Familiar

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My email to leaders in our local church highlighting a chapter from Paul Tripp’s Dangerous Calling book went like this on 3/6/13:

So far as we’ve moved through recommended reading out of sessions 1 and 2 of the DVDs, we’ve been working through Dangerous Calling chapters 1-5 consecutively.  Now, we fast forward to Chapter 8, Familiarity.  Tripp’s big point here is that there’s a great danger for those of us in church leadership when it comes to God.  “What is the danger?  It is that familiarity with the things of God will cause you to lose your awe.”  “Awe of God must dominate my ministry, because one of the central missional gifts of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to give people back their awe of God.”  One part of this that was especially relevant and convicting for me was the relationship between our awe of God and theology.  Here’s Tripp: “Awe of God is one of the things that will keep a church from running off its rails and being diverted by the many agendas that can sidetrack any congregation.  Awe of God puts theology in its place.  Theology is vitally important, but whatever awe of theology we have is dangerous if it doesn’t produce in us a practical awe of God.”   
Now, there’s probably much more that could be said about this, but, gentlemen, have you lost your awe of God?  Have you slowly began to confuse awing Him with activity?  Today, as Tripp concludes, “I don’t have a set of strategies for you here.  My counsel is to run now, run quickly, to your Father of awesome glory.  Confess the offense of your boredom.  Plead for eyes that are open to the 360-degree, 24/7 display of glory to which you have been blind.  Determine to spend a certain portion of every day in meditating on his glory.  Cry out for the help of others.  And remind yourself to be thankful for Jesus, who offers you his grace even at those moments when that grace isn’t nearly as valuable to you as it should be.”
With you in the all too familiar, longing for more of Him…

Leadership Email – Playing It Safe

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Here’s my Monday email to leaders in Reno County from 3/4/13:

In Vol. 4, Issue 2 of the Journal of the Kansas Leadership Center (p.51), Joyce Webb made an interesting few comments about our engagement in the civic arena, especially on issues that are “value-laden.”  She writes,
“Effective interventions requires a keen sense of self-awareness and awareness of others, which is really hard to hold onto when the person across the table is polarized.  People have territory and values to protect and often get mired in the energy this defensiveness brings. 
“Whether one of us agrees with any factions’ opinions or not probably isn’t the issue when it comes to practicing leadership.  It’s OK to hold to purpose and not compromise values.  But one is always presented with a potential dilemma when deciding to make opinions and beliefs clear.
“This work requires us to be honest, yet challenges us to be intentional in reaching out and embracing those who have different life experiences, beliefs, values, and sometimes fears to protect.  It highlights our own beliefs and exposes our own biases and potential losses.  It requires tremendous courage, openness and love for our neighbors to be effective. 
“That kind of vulnerability seems to be too risky these days for most of us, including myself.  But we need a great strategy than playing it safe and doing nothing in order to make progress.
(Webb, Joyce. “When It Comes to Civic Life, We Need To Do More Than ‘Play It Safe’,” in The Journal [published by the Kansas Leadership Center] Volume 4, Issue 2, Fall 2012.  Pp.50-51.)
There are many things that resonate with me in what Webb writes, but one issue we consistently encounter is what we might call “Kansas Nice.”  We don’t want to cause trouble or a ruckus, so we choose silence and miss out on opportunities for leadership.  Now, I’m not suggesting we try to be intentionally unkind or mean-spirited.  I am saying that to make progress on issues that matter, it will require us to step into acts of leadership that are risky.  We must try to free ourselves out of that ever pressing default mode and find new behaviors that will help us make progress.  The competencies like managing self, diagnosing the situation, intervening skillfully and energizing others help give us some different ways of acting in leadership.  Today, what strategy will employ to help our community make progress?  It might be that rather than helping us make progress, playing it safe will actually hinder progress.  At the very least it’s something to think about.  At the most, it requires our skillful intervention.  Let’s check ourselves on this point, then, and see if we can’t make progress in these areas we are so passionate about.

Weekend Recap – To The Church

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My 3/3/13AM sermon, To The Church, overviewing Revelation 2-3 is now online.  This sermon was challenging in tying these two chapters to the rest of the book.  For instance, the Risen Christ, addressing the seven churches comes from chapter.  And the fulfillment of promises to those who conquer are, by and large, fulfilled in Revelation 20-22.  Other emphases I highlighted were that Jesus knows His church, He calls His church to endure and He urges them to listen.  I hope it proved helpful to people.

And, I trust and hope you had a great Lord’s Day, as well.

Dangerous Calling Email – Needing The Body

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As our leadership team reads through Dangerous Calling together, I try to pull together a devotional insight for us.  Here’s one from Chapter 5:

Chapter 5 of Dangerous Calling (if you’re reading roughly a chapter a week) is the chapter we come to this week.  It’s called Joints and Ligaments.  The point: leaders are not above the ministry of the body of Christ, they are in need of the body of Christ.  Using Hebrews 3:12-13 as a springboard, Tripp outlines the critical warning: see to it that none of you has an evil—unbelieving, falling away—hardened heart.  He then follows that up with the essential call of this passage: encourage each other daily so that sin doesn’t do its blinding work in you.
Much of this chapter is written to pop the ministry bubble that pastors often live in, devoid of the body of Christ.  So, it’s a great reminder for us.  The question Tripp began this chapter might be an appropriate way to end: “Who are you and what do you spiritually need?”  Know that I’m here for you if you need to talk and I know many of you are there for me.  Let’s model the body of Christ in action to our body and see if it doesn’t help our people see how glorious the Gospel we believe is.

Leadership Email – Natural Born Leader

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As we’ve maneuvered our way around some of the 5 civic leadership principles over the past few weeks, some collisions might have occurred in your brain regarding other examples or definitions of leadership that we regularly encounter.  Part of the foundation of these principles comes from the pen of Ed O’Malley: “Kansas said a different type of leadership is necessary if we want to make more progress on our biggest challenges and opportunities.  The ideas in [the KLC Quick Guide] embody that leadership and come from intense listening across our state.  Today, thousands of Kansans are working to exercise the type of leadership described here.” 
One notion that you’ve maybe heard of is that of the “natural born leader.”  When we press a little further to define what we mean by that, the language we gravitate toward can often tend to be a charisma, twinkle-in-the-eye, or a willingness to step out and lead by example.  So, as you think about these 5 principles: 1) Leadership is an activity, not a position. 2) Anyone can lead, anytime, anywhere.  3) It starts with you and must engage others.  4) Your purpose must be clear.  5) It’s risky.  I might concede that there are certain traits within certain people that make them more willing to engage others in risky ways, but leadership is decidedly about making a conscious choice for yourself to be about the activity of mobilizing others to difficult work. 
Progress in our communities doesn’t happen as we all sit passively waiting for the next great natural born leader rise up and fix the daunting challenges we face.  No, progress happens as we individually choose to step into risk and engage others with a purpose (often higher than ourselves) so that progress is made little by little and our community is a better place. 
Today, then, step out and be the leader you’re capable of being.  With you…

Weekend Recap – The Risen Christ

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My 2/24/13AM sermon, The Risen Christ, from Revelation 1:9-20 highlighted how the Risen Christ was active to instruct John to write for the good of the churches, to reveal Himself and to reassure His people.  We tend to make so many minor things the major issues of our day when the Bible holds out Jesus, the Risen Christ, as the compelling vision of our lives for eternity.  My sermon helped to give a picture of Christ that can give us grounding for the future, no matter what we face.

Dangerous Calling Email – Heart of the Matter

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Here’s the email I sent leaders at my church this week related to Paul Tripp’s Dangerous Calling book, Chapter 4:

Did you grow up watching Bugs Bunny cartoons?  It seemed that ever so often the plot involved Bugs being very tired and drained in a desert, only to see an oasis of rest in the distance.  He would run up and start drinking what he thought was water only to have sand in his mouth.  This mirage deceived him.  In Dangerous Calling, Paul Tripp unpacks the mirage of ministry for us in Chapter 4: “More Than Knowledge and Skill.”   He begins with an illustration of a church that hired a pastor only to learn that he didn’t end up being what they thought he was. 
Here’s a great summary paragraph: “I’m convinced that the big crisis for the church of Jesus Christ is not that we are easily dissatisfied but that we are all too easily satisfied.  We have a regular and perverse ability to make things work that are not and should not be working.  We learn to adjust to things that we should alter. We learn to be okay with things we should be confronting.  We learn how to avoid things we should be facing.  We would rather be comfortable that to hold people accountable.  We swindle ourselves into thinking that things are better than they are, and in so doing we compromise the calling and standards of the God we say we love and serve.  Like sick people who are afraid of the doctor, we collect evidence that points to our health, when really, in our heart of hearts, we know we are sick.  So we settle for a human second best, when God, in grace, offers u so much more.” 
Wowzer, that’s definitely the case often isn’t it?  Tripp continues saying that our ministry is never just shaped by our knowledge, experience and skill.  It always shaped by the true condition of our hearts.  On pp.61-62 there are some great questions that might reveal our hearts.  I commend those to you for study.  The solution is so simple: we “must be enthralled by, in awe of—can I say it: in love with—[our] Redeemer so that everything [we] think, desire, choose, decide, say, and do is propelled by love for Christ and the security of rest in the love of Christ.”  “The heart is the inescapable X factor in ministry.”  So, today, what’s being revealed in your heart?  This chapter, for me at least, is one in which I need to put away my “inner lawyer” (Tripp’s words again) and ask for a tender spirit before the Lord.  What’s being revealed out of your heart today?  Find encouragement in the glorious Gospel.

Leadership Email – Risk

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Here’s the email I sent out to Leadership Reno County alum on 2/18/13:

Good morning, everyone.  We’ve been looking at the KLC Civic Leadership Principles:
1) Leadership is an activity, not a position.
2) Anyone can lead, anytime, anywhere.
3) It starts with you and must engage others.
4) Your purpose must be clear. 
And, today, we finish up with the 5th principle: “It’s risky.”  I grew up loving the concept of the game Risk.  I was fascinated that the “older kids” could maneuver those wooden pieces around the board and seem to have so much fun.  There’s a risk to playing risk and achieving global domination. 
For those engaging in acts of leadership, we probably don’t need to be reminded that “It’s risky,” but it certainly is.  When we make a conscious choice to intervene (even if we’ve been effective at managing ourselves and diagnosing the situation), there is a risk involved.  That’s why, we’re encouraged to act experimentally or take a “smart risk” with our actions.  When it comes to deeply adaptive work, where neither the problem nor the solution of our adaptive problem is clear and there are many stakeholders involved, we should be very aware of the risk inherent to an act of leadership.
Deeper still, since leadership is risky, it calls for courage.  We can’t let the risk that goes along with acts of leadership paralyze us from this activity.  In this sense, this final point works well with the other principles we’ve seen.  Since leadership is activity done by anyone, anytime, anywhere and it begins with me and engages others out of a clear purpose, I can courageously step into this risky adventure and see what progress can be made, little by little, on the issues I care about so deeply. 
Today, then, will you resolve to remember that leadership is risky and courageously act to make progress for the good of our community?  With you to that end…