I’m at one of my favourite places (the Orange Conference) with some of my very favourite people. (If you’re not at Orange, catch glimpses of it online here).

Conferences are often places for information and ideas.  And I’m a strategy wonk for sure.

But what I love about Orange10 is that this year, it feels like God is trying to do something in us.  This conference has felt even more personal than usual…more like God was trying to speak to me and in me.  Which is so helpful.  Often we just want God to do something through us. But God usually won’t do anything through us until he does something in us.

One way I know where I’m at spiritually is how I feel when I sing the words to a worship song.  This year, I’m not only singing the words, I’m feeling them.  There’s a sense of awe and wonder that’s returning to my heart and life that is so refreshing. I’ve had those moments where I think "If only everyone could get this"!  Inspiration is the rocket fuel that propels action, and when you are actually inspired, it can bring life like nothing else. 

So…Orange leaders….what’s your experience been?  What is God doing in you?  What’s been your biggest "God is doing this in me" experience so far?

I’m so grateful for my Calvinist background.  One of the Calvin quotes I think about regularly is that the human mind is a perpetual factory of idols. 

What this means is that we continually invent new ways to crowd God out of our lives and worship something else.  For some of us, that may mean other religions.  But for many of us who follow Christ, it just means something other than Christ.  

The surprising thing is that so many of the idols we might struggle with today are ordinary things.  Some are even good things.  Here are some idols I’ve seen…some in me…some around me:

• Success
• Family 
• Children
• Money
• Achievement
• Health
• Coolness, fitness or looks
• Style 
• Cynicism (Cynics love to be right about everything and down on everyone)
• Technology
• Possessions
• Pride (that’s when we put ourselves ahead of God and other people)
• Sports
• Hobbies
• Career
• Emotional Pain (people can grow more fond of their sad story than the healing Christ offers)

It’s not at all an exhaustive list. Basically, anything that would compete with Christ as first place in your life and mine is an idol.  Even your family.  Even your kids.  

So how do you know it’s an idol?  This is what I’ve been working on.  Two thoughts:

• If I worry about it a lot it might be an idol.  Worry demonstrates an absence of trust in God and shows I want it more than I want Him.
• If I fear what my life would be like without it, it’s probably an idol. 

That’s part of my God dialogue.  I’m working hard on this because I have a book release coming up this week.  I want no anxiety around it.  And if it doesn’t sell a single copy, I want to be at total peace with that.  The funny thing is, I think I am. Time will tell, but positioning yourself ahead of time can be helpful.  I hope that’s where I am. If I can hold it very loosely, it becomes something God can use – not something that can become god.  

The side benefit of losing your idols is that it actually brings joy.  If your idol was to disappear, you’ve still got contentment, because you’ve got who really matters.  

How about for you?  What do you think some modern idols are?  What would you add to the list? 

So it’s tempting as we head into the weekend to say things like "so stoked about Sunday" or "so pumped about our next (fill in the blank for the service or event here). 

But why are we stoked?

Are we excited:

• because we’re speaking?
• because we organized the event?
• because we’re trying to get or we have momentum?
• because we’re trying something new?
• because we did a killer job planning it?
• because we just like the things we create?

I know that’s a tad cynical, but honesty is a good policy.  Many of us who have led ministries or events have had some of those thoughts (or all of the above). Personally, I think I’ve been guilty of all of the above.  

There is one reason to be stoked about Sunday: because Jesus Christ is risen and interacting with people He loves.  

You can phrase it differently, or maybe even better.  But the bottom line is the same. He is the one who draws people to Himself. 

Now I’m still excited about a great band, some intriguing video, and a message that I hope inspires and helps people. There’s nothing wrong with that. 

But Jesus is the deal.  The only deal.  The only One worth doing this (or anything) for. 

The more I keep that front and centre, the more there’s actually something to be stoked about. 

Most of us want to be good at what we do. Most of us would love a little more than that – we’d love to be great at what we do.

Think about this math.  If you’re going to get top 10% results, you’re probably not going to get them using the same methods that 90% of other people use.  The methods the 90% used generated the results that 90% of people get. 

We often want results that are disproportionate to our effort or methods.  But the people who got top 10% results used different methods than most others.  They did something, or a (more likely) a combination of things that moved them ahead of others in whatever they were doing.  The people who get top 1% results are doing things differently than 99% of everyone else.  If you’re playing on the first line of the winning team in the Stanley Cup finals, it’s not because you simply skate with the boys from 6 – 7 a.m. before work every Tuesday.  

• If you want an excellent marriage, you have to have different patterns and habits than most others couples.
• If you want your business to be the best in its field, your methods will be different than most of your competitors and colleagues.
• If you want your ministry to reach more than people than you’re currently reaching, your methods are going to be different than 95% of other churches (less than 5% of Canadian churches have an attendance of 350 or more on a Sunday).  
• Most of us have a reasonable level of dissatisfaction with some aspects of our lives.  Jesus invites us into a radically different methodology (love your enemies).  Most of us really don’t want his methods; we just want his results. 

If you want different results, you have to work and live differently. And the change that represents to most of us is steep enough that we’ll keep living and working like the 90%, hoping to be like the 10%.  Not wise, but real. 

What different patterns have worked for you?  What’s helped you overcome obstacles or helped you make a break through in what you do?

Perseverance is highly underrated.  

I sometimes wonder if more than a few leaders who quit were one step away from a breakthrough right before they stepped back.  The temptation to quit is always strongest right before the critical breakthrough. 

To be honest with you, I think one of the reasons I’m still able to lead in ministry today is simply because I didn’t quit.  I know that doesn’t sound very spiritual or very profound, but I think it’s true.  There have been whole seasons where my spiritual journey felt as flat and dead as it gets.  I didn’t stick with Christ because I felt like it.  In fact, my emotional condition felt like the opposite of Jesus. I just didn’t quit.  I still believed the Gospel was true, so I just persevered. 

We’ve all seen people who have stubbornly clung to bad ideas and causes – I’m not talking about that.  I’m talking about sticking with what you and others know to be true and right even when everything else in you wants to run screaming in the other direction. 

Perseverance is a spiritual discipline and a virtue.  Paul commends it.  He, Jesus and many others in scripture lived it out.  I just in a world where everything is instant and catered to satisfy personal whims, perseverance has fallen on hard times. 

What amazes me is that if you persevere in the right things, the emotions eventually catch up with your behaviour.  You begin to feel good about what you at one time only could imagine was good.  

Perseverance can make tough marriages great, difficult start ups profitable, and friendships awesome.  Perseverance can make faith real.

So that’s it for this Marathon blog series – seven practices that have helped me run at least fifteen years of this marathon.  I hope there’s at least double that left to go. 

As we wrap up this seven part series, two question:

• How has perseverance (or the need for it) impacted you?
• Which of the seven spiritual practices spoke to you most deeply?  Why? 

 Life is emotional.  Very emotional.  

One of the worst mistakes you can make as a leader is to make tomorrow’s decisions based on today’s emotions.  

• You send the drippingly sarcastic or angry email…and regret it the next morning. 
• You are so hurt by the betrayal of a friend that you decide to close yourself off emotionally to any future friendships.
•  Your anger over a bad day at the office means you lose your temper at the kids and cancel the day at the park planned for tomorrow. 
• You cancel the new worship service because of opposition and decide not to do anything new for the next six months out of spite.  

You see the pattern, and you’ve maybe participated in it. 

The fine line is that leaders who avoid making this mistake don’t avoid it because they don’t feel the emotions.  They feel them full on. They just avoid acting on them.  They refuse to make tomorrow’s decisions based on today’s emotions.

Some personal notes:

• Years ago I decided to never send an email when I was angry or upset.  Sometimes that means I don’t respond for a few days.  More recently, I decided to answer angry correspondence (for the most part) with a phone call.  It’s amazing how it can diffuse a situation.
• I’ve been hurt by friends, and the hurt lasts a while.  But I’ve consciously decided to let friends back into my life.  It was a decision, not an emotion.
• I try to ensure work issues stay at work, and home issues stay at home.  
• The ‘I’m just going to pick up my toys and play in my toy box and you can’t come’ emotion is real, but deadly.  Fight it. 

I’ve learned another thing…when you resist negative emotions, positive emotions follow.  Reason sets in.  There are times where my anger against person X from yesterday becomes compassion for them today.  Prayer, consulting with other wise colleagues, and inviting Christ into the situation changes so much. 

Every time you make a tomorrow’s decisions based on today’s emotions, you and everyone else loses too.  I have a theory that many of the bad decisions made in leadership get made because they were emotional decisions, not wise decisions.

Make decisions based on reason, input, guidance and emotions you experience that have stood the test of time.  

How does this principle impact you?  Have you ever made tomorrow’s decisions based on today’s emotions?  What happened?  As you’ve learned and grown, how have you learned to resist it? 

So let’s resume our blog series after a brief break (this is a marathon after all).

It’s the 2% that will kill you. 

This one’s huge friends.  Not cultivating a community of accountability and support is a great short cut to getting into serious moral trouble, losing your family, failing the people you lead or simply not being able to handle it anymore and quitting. 

We’ve all heard that leadership is lonely, but by nature it’s true.  It doesn’t have to be true.  It’s just where you end up when you haven’t cultivated community. 

The real reason I think many of us in charge of something end up isolated and alone is because we fail to understand this principle:  everyone we lead has a dual relationship with us.  What I mean by that is simple:  no matter who we (in leadership) feel we are (hey I’m just a guy like you, let’s just be friends), to them we are also their leader, pastor, or boss.  We have the power to hire and fire them and the responsibility of leading them.  That ‘power’ imbalance, even as strongly as we fight it and resist it (I have fought it every step of the way), is real and it’s always there.  Until we stop being their boss or leader that is.  

But what that means is that our leadership hat never comes off.  As great a relationship we have with our staff and leaders, we’re still always their boss or their leader.  And that changes the nature of the relationship.  I am very transparent and quite gut level honest and free with our staff and wider community.  98% of the time I can share with them what’s going on without much filtering at all. 

It’s the 2% that’s the problem.  It’s the 2% that can kill great leadership, ruin staff dynamics and sabotage.  That 2% needs to be processed, prayed over and dealt with by someone.  And many leaders have no one to share that 2% with. 

Your spouse can be awesome, but there are certain things you maybe can’t best process with a spouse.  It also breaks down when the 2% you can’t process with anyone involves your spouse.  Then where do you go?

Over the last decade, I’ve been able to cultivate a relationship with some friends and leaders who are not part of my community – people I love, admire trust and respect. Ironically, man of them live hundres or thousands of miles away.  In different seasons, I’ve seen counselors as well who have been instrumental in helping me process life, leadership and ministry.

Who are you tracking with? Not for the 98%, but for the 2% that can sink many leaders?  What have you found to be most effective?