All of that is healthy.  To think there's nothing to admire or learn from others is egotistical.

But sometimes admiring someone can lead you to want to be like them, or to be them, or - eek- even to be the next "them".  Twitter, facebook, podcasts and this increasingly connected world make it so easy to watch someone else's every move that I wonder whether some of us sometimes stop living our own lives and start living vicariously through others.

If you think that might be happening, here's what to do: find a big red button and connect it to a loud buzzer and press repeatedly until you can't stand it anymore and stop the behaviour.

Whenever I speak, write or lead, I feel the pressure to be better.  I listen to other speakers, watch other leaders and read other writers.  And once in a while I catch myself thinking "I wish I was __________" or "I wish I could be more like _________".  This is when the stinkin' loud buzzer should sound.  Right now.

Think about it...God will never hold you accountable for being someone he never created you to be.  He will not say "Carey, how come you weren't more like Craig Groeschel or Andy Stanley?"  If God had wanted that, he would have made more Craig Groeschels and Andy Stanleys.   Good parents would never lay that pressure on their kids ("Hey, how come you're not more like your friend Taylor?" - and those of you who had a parent who did that are wincing right now).  But sometimes we put that pressure on ourselves.

The only task before you (and me) is to take all the faith, talent, trust, ability and gifting God has given you and use it to be the best 'you' you can be.   God actually wants me to be more like Carey  - redeemed, forgiven and empowered Carey - but Carey still the same.  Ditto for you.

What will you be held accountable for?  Being 'you' in the context of the cross and tomb.  Nothing more. Nothing less.

So have the humility to learn from others, but then, go be you.  It's the best gift you can give yourself, the best gift you can give God, and the best gift you can give the world.

It releases today on iTunes and I'd love for you to pick it up and, if you're excited, tell your friends about it.  Chris is a great guy and awesome leader in the church.  He's pulled together 32 worship pastors on this project (including Connexus' own Andrew Walker)...the idea is to create music for the church by the church.

You can check out all the details on Chris' blog.

I imagine you would expect in keeping with new blog disclosure policies that this is where I'm going to disclose that I was paid to blog about this.

Nope, I wasn't.  I actually don't have any personal stake in the project, although he did send me a few of the tracks from the EP for free last month. (But I don't think that counts.)  I'm just telling you because I think Chris is a a great leader with a great idea.  Hope you enjoy it!

There have been a few, but I really want to find one that resonates.

Sooo....

1. What's been a game changer for you personally, spiritually, in ministry or in life?  What defining moment do you look back on and say "that pretty much changed everything?"
2. For those of you who know our ministry or me, what do you think a key game changer for us has been?  Sometimes the best person to judge that kind of thing is someone slightly outside an organization. So what do you think?
3. A third angle:  if you could pick any game changer to speak on, which one would you choose?

Love to hear your thoughts....over to you!

A few times every year I see a passage that I swear someone added to the Bible since the last time I read it.  It just pops out...I just missed it before.  Had one of those experiences this morning.  I hope it encourages you.

From childhood we have watched
as everything our ancestors worked for—
their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters—
was squandered on a delusion. - Jeremiah 3:24

It's as clear a picture  as any of what happens when people live life without God at the center - everything we work toward ends up squandered on a delusion.   Wow.  (You might read the whole chapter.  It's fascinating.)

I'm not saying God might not be calling you out of ministry (that does happen), I'm just saying if you are called, keep at it.  Giving up your Sundays year after year is worth it.  That criticism you took for a wise decision you made was worth it.  Overcoming your sadness and pushing through was worth it.  The extra prayer and extra sacrifice financially was worth it.  That relational risk you took inviting your friend to church was worth it.   That extra static that seems to visit your home because you're in ministry is worth it.

Because everything else is well, a delusion in the end.  Christ is who it's all about.

One day we'll all look back and wonder why we ever thought it wasn't worth it.  But in the meantime, we need to remind each other it is.

It is.  It's worth it.  Keep going.  The mission is not in vain.

]]> http://careynieuwhof.com/2010/07/its-worth-it.html/feed 1 http://careynieuwhof.com/2010/07/five-things-that-stop-leaders-from-ministry.html http://careynieuwhof.com/2010/07/five-things-that-stop-leaders-from-ministry.html#comments Sat, 03 Jul 2010 03:16:10 +0000 Carey http://careynieuwhof.com/?p=1042 Some insightful discussion last week around this question: where are the great leaders in this generation of church?  What's keeping the next generation of leaders from using their gifts in ministry?

So if the best and brightest of the current and next generation aren't bring their gifts into full time ministry, why not?  Here are some initial thoughts.  I'd love yours:

• Not enough risk.  Face it, the church is often not known for blazing trails.  In an era when the iPhone 4 is a huge story, clearly we need a better plot line (and yes, I'll be getting an iPhone 4 this month like lots of other Canadians).  When the marketplace is leading the way, the church needs to create a better story.  We have the most powerful story, after all, at the center of our faith. The church is known for boring and timid.  We need to get known for being radical.  Talent gravitates toward the most compelling plot line.
• The wrong kind of scandal. Sadly, when the church is not boring, we often embrace the wrong kind of scandal.  When headlines spring from moral failure, emotional manipulation and eye-rolling born of intellectual simplicity, we really resist attracting intelligent people.
• An absence of power. Sometimes I wonder if the church suffers from a divine power failure.  In some churches, things are slow and traditional enough that you don't need God - a semi-retired bureaucrat could run things.  In others, we claim power, but the power is just smart leadership or semi-charismatic emotionalism...is it really of God?  Of course in some places it is, but maybe there are just not enough churches like that. What would happen if God really started to move in people's lives - not just in some churches - but in the church? Would people come running?
• Underchallenged leaders. Numerous people manage, lead, and care for huge numbers of people and major responsibilities each week, only to show up at church and be asked to wash dishes or park a car.  Don't get me wrong - parking cars and washing dishes are awesome ways to serve.  But when that's all we ask people to do - the church misses out.  What if people were asked to bring their best thinking to the Kingdom, not their leftover thinking - or not being asked to think at all?
• Overwork. I resonate with the comment that we've worked ourselves to death in this generation of church (kinda guilty of it myself - I'll preach about it in August).  The other side of the coin is this though - some in ministry are just plain lazy. So which is it?   But what if ministry became a place where human energy combined with divine energy to produce fruit no one could claim credit for?  What if the answer was not just more of our power - but more of God's power? The market place can't compete with that.

What if we risked more - took the right kind of risks?  What if we tapped more into God's heart and power and really saw the church explode with that?

Do these things keep people with great gifts for ministry from doing ministry?  What else do you see?

I'm not talking about the handful we twitter about, follow, admire or whose books we read and conferences we attend.  I'm talking about what happened to great leaders leading in churches in every province, state, city, town and even village?

Maybe it's just nostalgia, but it seems to me there was a day when the best and the brightest got into ministry.  When leadership in the kingdom was serious work and people with true hearts and skillful hands were regularly in leadership.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the smartest and most capable teens and college students sitting in church today (if they are in church at all) are not even seriously toying with ministry.  They're going elsewhere.  And, sadly, sometimes people who might not have the gifting and perhaps only think they have the calling end up leading ministries.  (I know you're wincing...so am I...I'm just sayin'.)

Is there a dearth of great leadership in the church? Do we live in an age when the most gifted leaders using their God-given talents to help corporations make better sugar water, squeeze out a better bottom line,  make music, create art or spawn design that in the end, helps people buy new mini-vans or ends up as just another voice in pop-culture?

What would need to be true to get our best, brightest, and most gifted people who also have authentic hearts and solid character moving into ministry?  Yes, I know....I've read 1 Corinthians 1 and I know God chooses the weak of the world...but the Apostle Paul brought an incredible mind, heart and skill to ministry that led to the explosion of the early church.  Moses was no sap either. God will surprise us and use people we never expected to do great things...but being a capable leader and having a supple heart are not mutually exclusive.

I'll come back with some ideas in a few days, but in the meantime...What do you think?  Are we seeing the best head into leadership?  If not, why not?  And what would you do about it?

That's impressive.

What amazes me about Apple is how it produces products that dazzle many of us over and over again.  When I picked up my iPhone 3Gs last summer I thought - I don't know how the phone could get any better.  But Apple wasn't thinking that at all...they were already working on the iPhone4 (and likely now are reimagining far beyond that).  iPad lovers - be sure the iPad2 is already in development.

What generates innovation?  The threat of decline and extinction can. Dying organizations often try to innovate...but frequently they fail.  Why?  Because a desperate grasping at straws rarely works.  Secondly, a dying organization's goal is often self-preservation.  It isn't truly about innovating or doing something that benefits others.

How do you create a culture where innovation thrives, where no one is satisfied with the status quo?   I love these four principles Mark Federman outlines:

See what isn’t there. • Think what no one else can think. • Do what no one else dares to do. • Multiply your mind by giving it away.

To do that,  you need to create a culture of risk and make failure a distinct possibility.  Many people realize without risk there is no reward.  But fewer of us are fans of the truth that with risk comes the distinct possibility of failure.   You risk potential failure in at least two ways when you innovate:

• You risk failure publicly - the general consensus when the iPad was announced was that it was a dumb idea.  Critics called it big iPhone that doesn't fit in your pocket or make calls.  But selling 2 million units in less than 60 days shut many of them up.
• You embrace failure privately - the public only sees the ideas that get legs.  We can only imagine how many other ideas at Apple got tested and  knocked down before the iPad or iPhone emerged out of the mix.  To truly innovate, you need to embrace a multitude of ideas that don't work before you find the one that might.

I know as the leader of an organization I can be tempted to thwart creativity in favour of what's working.  Bad idea.  So this summer, we're adding a question to our mid-year and year-end reviews of our staff:  What did you try this year so far that failed? If the employee can't name something, we're going to ask them to risk more. You never get to true innovation without failure.

It's hard to actually live on that edge.  But you need to do it if you're going to see what isn't there, think what no one else can think and do what no one else dares to do.  It also means you need to start celebrating purposeful failure when it happens.

At the end of the day, Apple's only about iPhones and other cool things, but many of us have been entrusted with the kingdom of God.  I live in a community where 93% of the population won't be in church this weekend.  When it comes to reaching families, we can do so much better. I think the church should be leading innovation.  We don't need to change the message.  We just need to get so much better at living and sharing it.  Sometimes I think if the church ran Apple, we'd still be trying to build momentum around the first generation iPod we designed over ten years ago...watching the declining market share and blaming consumers for not being as excited as they were about them a decade ago.  We wouldn't have produced any new ideas in the last decade...we'd just have one approach we were counting on to work forever.  That's not innovation.

What do you do that helps you stay innovative?  How well do you embrace failure as a possibility?  What are some of the barriers you see to becoming more innovative? 

]]> http://careynieuwhof.com/2010/06/innovation.html/feed 0 http://careynieuwhof.com/2010/06/seven-questions.html http://careynieuwhof.com/2010/06/seven-questions.html#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:39:48 +0000 Carey http://careynieuwhof.com/?p=981 It's so easy to become culturally irrelevant.  I don't even need to try.  One day you're doing some awesome worship music, playing Modest Mouse and serving bold coffee, and the next minute it sounds like polka music to the next generation of kids.  It happens so fast.

At Connexus Church, we do a weekly service programming meeting where we plan out our weekend services.  We have a reputation for being 'edgy' as a church.  That's good in our books, because if you're really trying to reach people who don't go to church, using the culture to reach the culture can still be a very effective strategy. And using the culture (in music, messages, media and more) can help people engage what you're saying and apply the message to life far more easily.

Recently it occurred to me that we really haven't done much to specifically engage culture in the last month or two. We've done some songs right off the radio, but beyond that, not much.  That freaked me out.  How could we forget?  It's such a big part of who we are and what we do.

So I took out my computer and wrote down seven question I want us to start asking regularly as a team:

1. In what ways have we engaged our culture in the last 30 days?
2. What's current in our culture?
3. What's everyone talking about?
4. What's our target (in our case, a 30ish married couple with kids) talking about?  How would we know?
5. What's funny?
6. What's viral?
7. What's enduring (not trendy) that people still pay attention to?

I think of these questions as a way to ensure that we don't think we're engaging the culture around us when, frankly, we're not.  One hour of swirling around in these questions led to some great creative ideas for the coming months (which I probably shouldn't let out of the bag).

If you're in leadership, what do you do to stay current?  What do you think of the questions?  Got any better ones?

Let me explain. 

It's only June, but I think I've gotten more accomplished this year than in many other years combined.  I could say I'm excited about it, but actually I'm a bit shocked.  Shocked because some of the things I've gotten done are the very things I've thought about for years and never completed.  Some I never attempted. 

For years, people told me to write a book.  I even put it on my goal list once or twice. Just never did it.  It helped a lot that a great friend drafted me to cowrite one with him. While we worked on the concepts for a couple years, the real writing crunch happened very quickly.  Within the better span of a solid week, I had most of the first draft done.  Two months later, it was being printed. Now it helped alot that I wasn't writing solo, but after it was over, I realized I might have written earlier if I put my mind to it. The issue:  I wasn't sure I could actually do it.  But now I'm started to think about a second book. 

About six weeks ago, a mentor challenged me to designate a significant goal for 2010 that was doable by December, but that would actually be a challenge.  He encouraged input, so I emailed our staff and elders and asked what they thought I should do. Among the suggestions were:

• Run a triathalon
• Delegate more decisions
• Take a full day off every week

As I thought about these suggestions over a few days, I realized that these are all things I'd been thinking about for a while; in some case for years.  Then I got honest with myself: if I put my mind to it, none of them would actually take me to the end of 2010 to accomplish.  So I put them all on my goals for May and got them started or done.  (Well, the triathalon became a duathalon - I sink rather than swim).

My big goal for for 2010 became something I truly struggle with: I want to learn how to relax and have fun.  That one I thought I couldn't solve in a month. 

I'm sitting here moving into June realizing that I have a huge obstacle in my life: me.  My little brain convinces me again and again that I can't do what I'm actually able to do. 

I'm determined to overcome that.  If I can do even those things I've been putting off for years within a few months of each other, what else can I get done?

None of this squeezes God out of this conversation. I think it's easy to rationalize our non-action as 'spiritual' or waiting on God.  Maybe He's waiting on us - to get moving. 

This energy and resolve can move in multiple directions: your marriage, your parenting, your spiritual life, work, starting a new ministry, fitness - you name it.  

For me, it was simply admitting I spent  time convincing myself that I couldn't do these things.  Shame on me.

How about you?  Do you struggle with this?  What helps you overcome inertia or a lack of progress in certain areas of your life?

PS.  By the way, after a month of working on it, I'm even relaxing better and having some fun.  How about that!

Here is one thing I've found that answers that question better than anything:

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

Face it, there are far more than seven things that won't fuel your passion. Life is full of events, people and situations that drain passion from us. Sometimes it happens instantly.  Sometimes it's a slow drain over time. 

In fact, we probably can't produce enough defence to ward off all the attacks on passion that will hit us over time.  As soon as we think we've got it figured out, something hits from an angle we hadn't anticipated. 

That's why a sustained offence might be all the defence we need. Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the well spring of life. 

Increasingly for me, remembering this is becoming a daily thing I pay attention to.  Staying passionate over the long haul is a life commitment for me.  I never want to retire (even if I one day retire).  I never want to hit 'cruise control' on my calling, spiritual walk, parenting, friendships or marriage.  I want to bring my best every day, add value to those around me, be a constant student of what I see, experience and hear, and for that, staying passionate is essential. 

That may not seem like an 'answer', but it's a principle that I think can guide anyone through various seasons of heart stagnation.  When I find my passion waning, I increasingly see it as a heart matter, and I start a conversation with God, often with Toni, and often with close friends about it. 

The longer I'm alive, the more intentional I need to become about it.  If you don't stay intentional about how you live, you'll hit a default mode that is far below the potential God sees in you.

How about you?  What do you do to guard your heart?  What do you do to stay passionate season after season?

When my heart is alive and elastic, it's because I'm paying attention to this principle.  When my heart is hardening or growing dead, it's because I'm ignoring it.