twitter search for resource

Most people that know me know that I love connecting with people. Not just anyone, but people that have either a) similar interests as me or b) are an expert in something I want to know about. Well I’ve learned a new way to do this through the twitter search function. It is really cool.

Step 1: Go to twitter search

Step 2: Type in a word or phrase that interests you. (i.e. I am learning quite a bit about multi-site churches right now. So I searched “multi-site”)

Step 3: Click on the tab in the upper right corner that RSS Feed for this query.

Now you can with just a quick glance see what other people are writing about multi-site churches. I have already made three friends just today that have helped me with resources because of this search function.

It also is fun to type in your friends names and see if anyone is talking about them.

whiteboards, sticky notes, and oversized post-its

I had the unique experience to join 10 other churches in a Multi-Site Leadership Community this week.
–Christ Fellowship, Miami FL
–Flamingo Road
–McLean Bible Church, McLean VA
–Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, Menlo Park CA (John Ortberg is the pastor)
–Real Life Fellowship, Corpus Christi TX
–The Crossing, Quincy IL
–The Journey Fellowship, St. Louis MO
–The Oaks Fellowship, Red Oak TX
–Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington IL
–Woodside Bible Church, Troy MI

This was made possible by the Leadership Network. I can’t begin to tell you how impressed I was with what they were able to do in a couple of days. Here is the process they took us through as I saw it.

Step 1—Tell your story
This part helped us to know where we were all coming from

We used the game of "Life"

Step 2—Learn together
There were 8 learning teams. The three people from our church went to different teams. My team focused on collaboration. When we got in our group there were 8 people and we had four articles to read. There was only enough time to read one each. We did that and then reported our findings to the rest of our team. We then found commonalities and put together a picture/chart to share our findings with the rest of the community.

Step 3—Challenges/Opportunities
After that we split into our individual church groups. So Dan, Mark and I went to a corner and brainstormed our current challenges and opportunities.

After this was done we reported to the community. From that report we agreed on common themes in all the groups and formed teams to focus on those. I choose the “church merger” group. Dan went to “overall church structure,” and Mark went to “developing metrics.”

Mine was great. We discussed the growing trend of hurting churches partnering with well equipped, reproducible churches to have greater impact. Very interesting. It is what we just did with our Mesquite campus.

Step 4—Develop specific church plan
We will be in this leadership community for the next two years. So we (Justin, Dan, Mark) got together and set some two year goals that we would like to see happen. We then developed action items and 6 month check points. This way when we come back together in April we can be held accountable to what we are saying we want to do.

Step 5—Speak into it
We ended by displaying all the charts for everyone to see. We then were tasked individually with giving feedback/suggestion to the charts. We were handed 6 yellow sticky notes and were asked to write our idea on it and put it on the chart. I wrote things like,  “check out some books by Robert Webber,” (they were looking to add creative elements to service) and “I can email you information about our charter schools.” (they were looking for creative income streams)

I felt like I needed to get this information down so that I could process it better. I hope you find it helpful. I cannot say enough about The Leadership Network and their ability to bring great leaders together to collaborate and grow in their vision and effectiveness. I look forward to our next meeting in April.

a new way of thinking

I always find it interesting when I read something that puts into words practices that I have tried to implement in my life. I recently read an article on a new way of thinking on productivity and I wanted to comment on it.
Here are four of them that stuck out to me.
1.    Crank it out
Old School tells you to crank out tasks and that speed is essential to success. The more tasks you check off a day the better. Deep focus is the new order of the day. Clearing distraction and thinking about the task at hand. Intensity is valued about quantity.

2.    Minimize meetings and planning
The old school says to plan things out to the max. I have found over-planning actually paralyzes productivity. The biggest projects that I have ever completed turned into big projects because I just started working on them. Obviously planning is needed but not at the sacrifice of productivity.

3.    Multi-tasking
Multi-tasking is a myth. Multi-project and single-tasking is where it is at. Many times I am working on a task in one area only to find I am at a stand still. Either because I’m waiting on information from someone else or because the creative energy is gone on that task. I will move to another task in another project.

4.    Produce more
This is a whole other blog entry someday. Many times we find ourselves producing so much that we aren’t thinking. I am guilty of this. For some people this is what they should be doing. They are producers. But many out there have too many great idea’s to be constantly doing. I have made a priority in my life to keep my mind clear so that the ideas that I get paid for keep coming.

why i’m not voting for president

So as everyone knows, tomorrow is election day. I know the title of my post is why I’m not voting, I actually did that as a shameless way of getting people to read this blog. I actually AM voting, what I want to post about though is a reasons why I don’t want to vote.

I don’t want to vote…

1. as an excuse to complain about the President or our Country

How many times this voting season has someone told you, “If you don’t vote then you can’t complain about what is happening in America.” That is the lamest reason I have ever heard for voting. Using our system as some sort of complaining license. Vote because you feel like you can make a difference not so you can complain.

2. because I am fairly ignorant on political things

I feel like if you want to be an informed voter than you literally have to commit your life to learning and understanding what the issues are and where the candidates stand on each one. Everytime I think, “I would like to know more about this stuff,” I decide otherwise and go on about my day. When you start down that path, I feel like there is no turning back. Next thing you know I will be listening to talk radio at my desk and watching CNN at home. Ugh…

3. I feel like by voting for someone says I believe in everything they believe in.

There is no way either candidate gets even close to me feeling like we see eye to eye on even a majority of issues. I wish I could somehow create a candidate with the same belief of all the issues I care about.

4. people I admire and respect have completely different beliefs.

What do you do about Colin Powell endorsing Obama? He was my hero growing up.

Ok, that is my simple list. Have fun at the polls tomorrow.

Never finish a book

All growing up you are told to read books and the expectation, especially in college, is that you finish the book you are reading. When I was at North Central University, you even had to sign a piece of paper saying that you read 100% of the book.

The older I get the more I realize how much of a waste it is for me to finish a book. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading and even more than that, I love learning. I just don’t think that you need to finish books in order to learn. At some point over the last several years I just decided that I’m not going to feel guilty anymore for starting a book and not finishing it.

I have never been able to master any speed reading techniques, but what I have learned to do is get what I want to get out of a book. Looking through the chapter titles and the section headers in those chapters I can usually easily recognize what I want to gain out of that particular book.

I thought since I am advocating not finishing books I would give you a couple of my great learning resources that have completely changed the way I view personal growth.

1. Executive Book Summaries–This is one of the greatest learning resources ever created. Every month I get the top three business/leadership books delivered to my door in print and audio. I can honestly say that I truly learn from these and they are easily accessible to me because they are tabbed with their subject for filing purposes. This $200 yearly investment is well worth it to anyone that wants to be in the know on the most current leadership thinking.

2. Google Reader–I know blogging has been around for a long time now, but for some reason I was late in the game on being a subscriber. Everyday when I have down time I open up my google reader and read the latest from everything from well known authors to unknown productivity guru’s who share their daily nuggets of insight.

My favorite right now is Seth Godin’s blog. I have read his books for years, but nothing is better than 250 words a day that are as up-to-date as they possibly can be from him.

For all those who have anguished in the guilt of not finishing books for years I hope this has been an encouragement to you.

Time Sucking

I have to hand it to the week in and week out preachers out there. I’m preaching at The Gathering for the first time in 2 1/2 years thus needing to write a message for the service. I forgot how much time it takes to write something that is worthwhile for people to listen to for 25 minutes.

As I was pondering (rather than writing) on how much time this takes I was reminded of a great quote from The Princess Bride. “I’ve just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don’t know what that would do to you. So, let’s just start with what we have.”

So that is how I feel sermon writing is. “It has just sucked one week of my life away.” I guess that is why I love administration so much. I feel as if I get so much more done. God bless you preachers of the word!

ministry productivity

I’m going on 10 years in full-time ministry. I have been blessed to work at two great churches. Emmanuel Christian Center for over three years and The Oaks Fellowship for over 6 years. Something over those years that has become a soapbox for me is productivity in ministry. It seems at times, pastors, especially staff pastors are looked at by others in the secular field as people that don’t do very much, or at the very least don’t really produce very much. There are many a joke passed around by the congregation. Most of them center around golfing or eating out. 

I’m not sure what this blog will actually turn out to be, but in my mind right now, I think of it as a place to share what I have learned about productivity in ministry. I don’t want to pigeon hole myself, but, by in large, that is what I am going to focus it on. As much as I think the world wants to hear about the restaurants I go to and funny things my daughter said to me today for the most part I am going to give it some focus. 

I by no means, think I have it all figured out in ministry or think that I am the most productive minister around, but I have dedicated the last couple years of my life in ministry to learning of to be more productive and efficient in ministry. I simply want to share what I have learned and observed.