So I was going to take a break from blogging, but you drove me back to it.  Why?  Because I am just amazed at what can happen when people are motivated by love and compassion. I am amazed at the potential of the community that Jesus has in mind.

Thanks for the incredible concern and love you have expressed for Cindy Morris and her family.  Cindy works as my assistant and also manages the office at Connexus.  She is one remarkable woman whom I consider it a privilege to know and work with.  On Tuesday she had a very bad car accident that left her with serious injuries.  You can follow the updates on the Connexus blog, but we are cautiously and prayerfully optimistic that she is going to pull through. 

After more time at the hospital today, my wife Toni and I drove back to Barrie.  As we were talking about community, I pulled out my blackberry and counted 63 missed calls or text messages in the last day.  Those were missed calls.  I took hundreds more live, and my call log thing doesn’t count those. People care so deeply.  That’s so amazing.

There are moments where you just see the potential of love, see the potential of prayer and hope, and see the best side of human nature in brilliant display.

Question:  what if we just lived like that?  Why does it take a crisis? 

True story:  An hour before Cindy’s accident, I got together with a good friend for breakfast and we talked pretty openly, as always.  I was sharing some struggles and things I wasn’t happy about.  Twenty minutes after finishing that conversation, I was on the accident scene and learned it was Cindy who was hit.  Man, talk about a change in perspective.  My friend and I talked later that day and commented on how our "struggles" seemed a whole lot different now.

So that’s what I’m asking myself…why can’t I just "live" this way every day? Thanks for being the community you are, and in community pointing me once again to the redemptive potential of love.

As some of you may have heard, Cindy Morris, who works on staff with us at  Connexus, was involved in a car accident yesterday north of Barrie.  Cindy was seriously injured in the accident, and we are praying moment by moment for her full recovery.  I’ll be off this blog for another day or two.  Thank you in advance for your prayers for Cindy and her family.   We are seeing some good signs of hope in these first 24 hours, and grateful to be connected to such a wonderful extended community. 

You can check the Connexus blog for updates.

#7 Believing the Next Big Thing Will Turn it Around

I am a future-oriented leader. If you were to ever look at my strengths-finder profile, and you’ll find futuristic as one of my top strengths (for those who care or follow Marcus Buckingham, here are my top five: futuristic, relator, command, strategic and maximizer).

But I’ve seen a tendency in myself and in other leaders to always believe the "next big thing" will turn an unpleasant present reality around. Like our consumer-obsessed culture, those of us in church leadership can always believe that the "next best thing" will save the day and make anything you might be struggling with go away.  Sure…maybe some big changes are in order and they could help, but I’ve come to realize how important it also is to name reality as it really is and commit to working through your issues in the context of current reality.

The shadow-side to living in the future is that you don’t live in the reality of the present. You actually miss fixing real problems you might be facing today.  The problem may not actually be your model, but how you’re implementing it. While we’re all "learning" and on a journey, at some point as leaders we need to make a commitment to the best model of ministry we can find or create, and basically give it all we’ve got. 

So at Connexus, we’ve accumulated a few years of leadership learnings and we’ve made a commitment to follow one model of ministry over the indefinite future. It’s simply the best we’ve found, and we’re committed to it.  Further, we have no intention of doing any big "model" changes.  As a strategic partner of North Point ministries, we’re committed to making a consistent, simple model of church work.  It’s a model we deeply believe in (obviously), and a great model well-implemented always trumps the next idea vaguely conceived.

Ironically, by engaging today with full-on attention,  you actually work your way to a better tomorrow in a much more strategic way.