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.

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?

On Father's Day, we often say "Dads, time to get your act together...step up...accept responsibility...be a leader...we expect it, and you're not measuring up."

Try that on Mother's Day.  Exactly.

I'm not saying we should be hard on our moms (not at all), I'm just asking why we think the best way to challenge a man is to beat him up.  That's all.

What would happen if we encouraged dads?  What if we celebrated each time a man took a step toward where God wanted to be?  What if the church was a place where men felt encouraged and empowered?  I'm not saying we don't need an occasional swift kick...I'm just saying maybe it's a good idea to stop once in a while and celebrate the good.   We need to be called, but when we've answered, it might be great to come alongside and say "good job".

Maybe men don't want to go to church because men tend to gravitate toward where they are respected.  Maybe it's time to encourage the family rather than criticize parents and spouses who have heard enough criticism already.

Happy Father's Day guys...and thanks for taking steps in the direction God is encouraging you to run.   It may not feel like you're making progress, but God sees all, and there are more than a few of us who are cheering for you!

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?

When I entered into Apple world three years ago, I assumed Apple would have exceptional reliability.  That's their reputation after all.  For sure, all my Apple products have better reliability than any PC I've owned (not to mention being way more fun to use). but after less than three years, my MacBook Pro died.  Apple tried to fix it more than once, but it died.

That could have been a deal breaker.  Try a product, it fails.  You grow disillusioned, cynical and move to another company, only to repeat the process.  But that didn't happen.  Not at all.

What shocked me is Apple's radical commitment to customer service.  They really tried to fix my old laptop.  In the last month, they put over $2000 of brand new parts into my three year old laptop last month.  When it didn't fix the problem, Apple decided to give me a brand new 15" MacBook Pro.  I didn't even ask for it.  A senior manager arranged a direct pick up at the Apple store in Toronto so I could just walk in and swap it out. In the end, they gave me an even better computer than my old one (I got the top of the line i7 processor) because it was the only model they had in store when I was there.  They could have told me to come back or that they would ship me a new one, but they didn't.  They gave me one worth much more than my dead one.  Unbelievable. 

And maybe that's the key.  On this side of eternity, everything breaks.  People are flawed.  Systems are flawed.  Even really cool products break down and die. 

Often we're tempted to make exaggerated claims about how great our product is.  We claim might even claim it will never break down.  In church world, I've been tempted to say "our church isn't like that' or 'we won't do that here.'  But the truth is, we're a divine organization populated by sinful people.  We will mess up.  We will let people down.  We will make mistakes.

Maybe the key isn't whether your product or community is flawed - maybe the key is what you do when things break down.  I've had far too many customer service people run away from their product when it broke down.  Apple didn't run away from their product or their customer; instead, they embraced both.  

Wonder if that's what people are looking for you and I to do.  The promise of the church isn't that we're a perfect organization.  Far from it.  When we stand up as leaders and tell people we're great, no one really believes us.  When we admit we're not perfect, absolutely no one is surprised (especially those closest to us).  Maybe we should just be more honest about who we really are.

I've taken to telling people who are new to our church that we will let them down, we will make mistakes, but where I hope the difference will be is that we'll look them in the eye and own it.  We'll journey with them through our mistakes and be as accountable as we can for our failures, working together to make it right.  

I haven't got it figured out by any stretch...all I know is this.  When a leader or organization makes a mistake, being honest about it, owning it and having them assume full responsibility for the consequence of the failure makes a world of difference. That's what Apple did.  And I'll be making many more purchases from them in the future (and telling others about them yet again).  I'm all evangelical about them, actually.  Maybe there's a lesson there. 

What do you think?  What are you looking for in your leaders?  What do you hope will be true of them?  

Never forgotten that.  And it's completely true. 

That free CD you got - somebody paid for it.  That free ticket to the show?  Somebody ponied up. That free replacement of your defective Blue Ray player?  The store or the company absorbed the cost. 

Realizing this made me much more grateful for every 'free' thing I received.  Someone paid.  It just wasn't me. 

Now, that's also true of grace.  We speak pretty loosely about grace being free.  We even talk about grace being limitless.

And that's true.  But it's only free to the recipient.  And it's only limitless because somebody is willing to pay the price.  So when we receive grace from God, it cost God something.

And today, grace might cost you.  If you are going to offer it, it will be expensive. Real grace (undeserved love) doesn't happen when there's a mis-understanding that gets cleared up.  Real grace doesn't happen when someone apologizes and makes the situation right.  Real grace is extended when someone wrongs you and you forgive them.  Real grace is extended when you decide not to engage the battle or treat wrong with wrong, but to love anyway.  And it hurts.  It will cost you something - you are giving of yourself something you'd rather not.  But you do it anyway.

Once I understood that, grace - real grace - ironically became easier to give. It was going to cost, but I just have to decide to pay the price on someone else's behalf.

So go give grace freely today.  Just remember it's expensive.  It will cost you something.  And when you receive it from God, remember it cost him something too. 

Because nothing is actually free. 

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!