Creating Your Dream Life

This specific post is about the guy who really blew my mind today. Business professor Vijay Govindarajan. He was amazing and everything he shared had deep implications for the church. Here are some of the things I took away from his interview with departing WCA president Jim Mellado: Quotes: “Ongoing operations are at odds with innovation.” “Dominant logic is a double edged sword.” “Dominant logic can become our self-imposed boundaries inhibiting innovation” “Innovative leade

Still, to this day, that comment, “you’re not a leader” echoes in my mind. Honestly I think there’s some truth to it. Leadership doesn’t come easy for me. What I think I’ve learned over the years though, is that while leadership may not be my primary gift, leadership is still demanded of me. More importantly, while leadership may not come easy that doesn’t give me an excuse to avoid legitimate leadership development even as a “non-leader”. In observing those who are effective

Got a note recently asking if I thought a lay leader should step down because they’ve been struggling with porn and masturbation.  This is my response: Here’s the thing, your friend has a sin problem for sure. But are we to think that there are others in lay leadership who don’t have some private sin issues too? Should they all resign? That is why my answer is really not so much about the fact that she is a leader with a sin problem as much as it is about how she should deal

The course I’m a part of is called Shaping Culture.  This is huge!  As a leader I’ve seen that the most powerful force we face is the culture of our church or organization.  I also believe that our effectiveness at shaping that culture greatly determines how successful we’ll be in accomplishing our God-given mission.  I’m looking forward to learning and interacting with other leaders as well as the facilitators of the course. I’ll post about my experience with the course over

It was great to see some old friends, and get a feel for what our church in North America is thinking when it come to how we do ministry in today’s world. Honestly, I came away impressed, and encouraged by what I experienced.  Here’s why: #1 The conversations: It seemed to me that we were talking about the right things! So often we just aren’t having relevant conversations, but this was different.  From casual conversations with pastors in the hallways of the hotels, to the b

Leadership Summit Day 2 The Summit went to a new level today. John Burke pastor of a church in Austin, TX spoke on the importance of grace. His church is embracing the broken and lost in a way that really boggles the mind. His message challenged the church to get involved in people’s lives and get our hands dirty while at the same time not compromising on truth. He was very authentic and touched my heart. Efram Smith pastors a growing church in urban Minneapolis. His church i

Day one of the summit was pretty amazing. It started with an opening message by Bill Hybels the senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. The title of his message was “The High Drama of Decision Making”. It was classic Bill Hybels, but what I most appreciated was the part of his talk where he talked about his new book Axiom. These leadership “proverbs” that he has spent the last 30 years saying, but not until this book had he put it all on paper in book form. He mention

Okay in my last sermon of the “Topics” series I focused on the church. In that rather lengthy message toward the end I attempted to make a point about the importance of the pastor rising to the occasion and my own personal view about how I want to be right in the the thick of ministry when things are going on. So I said something like: “It’s Tiger Woods in a major on Sunday…It’s the bottom of the ninth, 2 outs and 2 strikes, I’m swinging for the fences!” Well the truth is you