I know I’m skating on thin ice with this one.  But it should be a fun and I hope rewarding discussion.

Let me preface it all by saying Canada is my home.  I love our country.  I’m called here.  I’m staying here and I love that I get to do what I do.

But I frequently speak and work with leaders in the US, and one of the questions I get all the time is ‘what’s the difference in leadership between Canada and the US?”

For what it’s worth, here’s what I think.

In the US, leaders sit around a table with a new idea and discuss 21 ways to make it happen.

In Canada, leaders sit around a table and think of 21 reasons why the idea can’t happen or shouldn’t happen.

Now there’s a bit of hyperbole in there.  But you see the point.

I’m not trying to be unpatriotic but I am frustrated by the seeming lack of progress in the church we see in our country.  I am frustrated by the constant stories I hear from church leaders about why they can’t make a difference and why their church can’t grow.  I’m baffled by the relative peace some people seem to feel with a status quo that’s far from desirable.

At Connexus, where I serve, our team works hard every day to try to create a culture where great things can happen.  I love the heart and attitude of our team.  Next week on the blog I’ll share some ways we try to shape that culture.

In the meantime, what do you think?  Do you agree?  We have readers from both sides of the border on this blog.  What do you see?  What frustrates you in your culture (Canadian or American)?

So I feel like I emerged from a cave yesterday when I came out of a five day social media fast.  How do I feel?  Like the rest of the world gets around by sports car and I got handed a wagon with a broken wheel and no horse.

My rules were simple:  communicate with people voice to voice or face to face for five days.  I got rid of Facebook and Twitter, and only answered texts and emails with a return voice call, not by keyboard.

I thought it was going to be a great week – I’d be more spiritual.  More time for rich relationships.  Time to deeply reflect.  Mind you, I try to take time like that every week.  But I thought my social media fast would enhance that to the nth degree.

Uh.  No.  Not at all.   It just made everything more difficult and more complicated.  Sign of an addict?  I don’t think so.  Hope not.  Read on and make up your own mind.

Some random learnings:

• It wasn’t that hard not to tweet or update my Facebook status.  I had the urge, but it wasn’t like the response a caffeine addict might have to no coffee.  I could easily last a month or more.
• What I did miss is knowing what was going on in my friends’ lives.  Most of the benefit of social media for me is staying in touch and keeping up on what’s happening in other peoples lives and ministries.  It felt lonely actually, like a bunch of great people had exited my life.
• It was incredibly inconvenient.   I could not get to inbox zero because I couldn’t effectively follow up on everything that came across my inbox or desktop.  Not only was it inconvenient for me, it was very inconvenient for our staff and other colleagues.
• Phone communication isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  When you’re used to communicating with someone via text or direct messages, switching it up to voice mail makes is more complicated. Text based messaging gets sent at the convenience of the sender and read at the convenience of the recipient.  The phone is very intrusive compared to that.
• Good communication rule: communicate with people the way they want to be communicated with.  I decided I would read email but ask people to respond by phone.  I had an auto-responder set up on the gmail explaining my five day fast and asked people to call me instead.  Not many did.  I could be wildly unpopular or it might just be that people pick the channel of communication they want and stick to it.  I did call a few people and we had some fun conversations, but got more voicemails than actual conversations.  Online messaging is FAR more efficient and fun.
• I did have more time reflect and think last week…not much, but some.  But I felt my world got much smaller, and I missed the people who make it larger and richer for their presence.

Conclusions

• I thought the fast would be liberating, clarifying and spiritually uplifting.  Instead, it was mostly inconvenient.
• Social media can lead to narcissism for sure, but I found I wasn’t really missing updating my own status, I was missing every else.  And missing the chance to engage and interact.
• I thought I would be asking everyone to do a media fast in our Like Me series on social media (coming up in November at Connexus).  Maybe a better bottom line is this:  some of us (narcissistic folks etc) need to use social media less, but some of us need to use it more. If you’re not texting, on Facebook or online in any meaningful way, you’re missing a huge part of the conversation.  You’re being left behind.  And people younger than you might not be talking to you at all.  This is just actually the way millions of people communicate now.  You miss it at your own peril.

That’s what I learned.  Ever done a media fast? What was your experience? If you haven’t done one, what do you think you might discover if you did one?

This week I’ve decided to fast from social media (Facebook, Twitter, blog commenting, even email)….actually all forms of online communication.  It’s in preparation for a series we’ve been planning for a long time at Connexus called “Like Me”.  I want to drill down on the implications of what’s happening to human relationships as a result of social media.

The truth is, like so many, I love social media.  But as Shane Hipps and others have pointed out, it’s a double edged sword.  You can be much more selective in where you journey with a person online than you can in a face to face relationship.  We’re calling the final week of the Like Me series “Going All The Way”, because in a real human relationship, you are stuck with someone in their good moments and their bad moments.  Defriending is much more complicated in real life than it is on line.

So for the next five days, I’m not responding to any social media.  Instead, I’m going to have the conversations I would normally have online face-to-face or voice-to-voice.  No keyboards…just conversation.

The point?  I want to see what impact it has on me after five days.

How about you? What impact do you think social media is having on you, positively or negatively?  I’ll return next Saturday and would love to see what you think.  In the meantime, call me or drop by!

I love social media. I love life online.  But I’m worried about what it might be doing the souls of some leaders.

Does closely following the lives of other leaders threaten to erode the unique footprint of your leadership?

Let me explain.  Fifteen years ago, most of us couldn’t closely track other leaders.  If you wanted to know about a leader, you had to buy a book or attend a conference.  You might get to their website on a good day when the dial up connection was strong.

Now, through Facebook, Twitter, podcasts and blogs you can follow anyone you want to and everyone you want to and know pretty much anything you want to about them.  So many of us follow dozens, hundred or thousands of leaders: from Erwin McManus to Andy Stanley to Reggie Joiner to Donald Miller to Perry Noble and more.  We do it because we admire them and appreciate them. That in itself isn’t a problem.

The problem shows up here: It’s hard not to imitate the people we admire.  But how much energy do we squander as leaders trying to imitate someone we will never be?

How many leaders mismanage time and energy trying too hard to imitate the communication of Andy Stanley, the creativity of Erwin McManus, the innovation of Reggie Joiner or the poignancy of Donald Miller when they should be developing their own gifts, loving their own people and working hard at building the ministry God has given them?

In all likelihood, the people you admire most never set out in life trying to be someone else.  They made a mark by developing the gifting God gave them.

Don’t get me wrong: I love learning from the best of the best (and I track with lots of people).  But healthy learning encourages us to get better at what we’re doing.  Unhealthy imitation makes us wish we were doing what they’re doing.  It can also lead to a cascade of negative thoughts like “How come I can’t communicate like _________?  Why can’t I be as clever as _________?”   Just enough for the enemy to squander potential.

God will never ask me or you why we weren’t more like Andy Stanley.  He won’t ask us why we didn’t write more like Donald Miller or have as many brilliant ideas as my good friend Reggie Joiner.  Here’s the question God might ask us:  why didn’t you develop more of the unique gifting and talents I gave you? After all, God will never hold you accountable for something he never gave you.

Do your social media habit feed an unhealthy desire to be someone God never created us to be?  What would happen if you diverted half the attention you give to others into asking God what he would love for you to do? What are some other pitfalls you see of social media and instant access to people we admire?

Apologies are difficult.  Those of us who have been given even a tiny bit of authority are often reluctant to apologize to those we work with. Isn’t apologizing a sign of weakness?  Won’t people see through you?  Aren’t leaders supposed to have all the answers, to always be right?   Well no, but we feel that pressure anyway.

The problem is that those of us who are in charge have an advantage: we (usually correctly) suspect the person under our authority will be hesitant to correct us, challenge us or confront us.  We could fire them, hold it against them and, well, we’re the boss and they’re not.

Don’t be that way.  Just don’t.  All of us have worked for someone at some point who stole our ideas, took the credit, made poor calls and refused to accept the responsibility, and who – even when it was clearly due – would never apologize.  I don’t want to be that guy.  And I don’t want to work for that guy.  Nor does anyone.

Case in point:  today at our weekly staff meeting I apologized to someone who reports to me.  At Connexus we produce ‘title packages’ for our series.  The title package for the current series arrived a bit later than we’re used to, and quick final view left me unsatisfied.  At the time, I said I thought the video package lacked punch…it didn’t make the point we were hoping to make. I loved the basic design and concept…just wasn’t sure it told the story we wanted it to tell.  Our Service Progamming Director,  Justin, who is a year into his job, recently out of college and who designed the package, liked it the way it was.  I trusted my judgment on this one, not his.  But we didn’t have time to remake it and we ran it as is.

Turns out…I was dead wrong.  He was right on in his judgment.

We ran it ‘as is’ and I’m so glad we did.  In almost three years of weekend services, it is the only time I’ve ever heard people respond to a title package.  They loved it.  They laughed out loud, started conversations with friends next to them and buzzed about it after the service. It just worked.  (Check it out for yourself here.)  He called it.  I missed it. And I was wrong.

As a leader, I had a choice.  I could have pretended it was my idea all along, (nah, that’s not me).  But I could have ignored it…pretended it didn’t happen.  Or pulled him aside private and apologized.  But since I had said I didn’t like it when others were present, I felt I needed to apologize when those same people (and in this case, more) were present.  So I did…I told our staff how off my judgment was and what a great call he made on it.  I apologized for getting in the way of a great decision.  It’s pretty kindergarten if you think about it, but it actually doesn’t happen enough in leadership.

It should though.  The more freely we apologize as leaders when we’re wrong, the more we:

• Give permission to release the best ideas in the organization (they usually aren’t the bosses’ anyway)
• Create a culture where people can apologize and forgive freely
• Foster trust
• Prevent the need for the people under us to “vent” to others
• Remind ourselves that we are hardly the smartest, best or brightest people in our organization

Leaders:  what have you learned about apologizing?   And for all of us, what are some of your worst/best moments when it comes to apologies? 

As leaders, it often feels like we’re asking people to give us something.  Time. Energy. Money. Ideas. And so much more.

Years ago I heard Andy Stanley say that before we ask something from people in terms of giving, we should do something for them.  I’ve never forgotten that, and it’s a shift in perspective that’s starting to invade so much of my thinking.

You can spend your life trying to get something from your kids, from your spouse, from your friends, from your faith, from your family, from your employees, from your volunteers, from your community, from your congregation.  But what are you doing for them?  What if you cared more about wanting something for them than wanting something from them?  See the shift?  I think it’s huge.

A great example came a few weeks ago from friends who are in real estate.  We’re on their mailing list, but instead of the typical “please use us and please give us business”, they instead sent a newsletter full of helpful tips on credit rating management.  They didn’t ask anything of their customer base.  They did something for us.  They added value.  They really want to see their clients and friends manage their money well, so they sent out practical tips.  With no expectation of anything in return.  And of course, that made me appreciate and respect them even more.

There are multiple ways this idea is impacting me:

• As a boss, I’m thinking far less less about what I can get from my co-workers and far more about what I can do for them.  Sometimes it’s material (how about some Starbucks?), but often it’s less tangible than that.  I just want them to be better off for because we worked together.  I’m looking for ways to help them professionally and personally.  I want to do as much to add value to our time together as I can. Whether it’s sharing insights, encouraging them in their personal journey, praying for them or offering some of my time to help them with their responsibilities.  It’s getting to the point where I don’t think they work for me; I think I work for them.

• As a friend, husband and father, life shows me again and again the best thing I can do in a relationship is to bring something to it, not simply try to get something out of it.  In fact, the more I try to get something out of it, the less healthy it becomes.  The more I give, ironically, the richer and more rewarding the relationship becomes.

• When leading any group that “follows” you (whether it’s a congregation, a crowd or even your Twitter/Facebook friends), the more you can do for them, the better it gets.  Share freely…point to the work of others…celebrate other people’s victories…mourn when they mourn.

This may not be news for you, but just being honest, many leaders are inherently selfish.  Maturity involves crawling out of that skin and putting on another one.

None of this should be a surprise because this is actually how God operates.  He didn’t really come to be served, but to serve.  And as much as God asks us for things from us, underneath that is a much deeper desire he has to see something positive happen for us.    It also shouldn’t be a surprise because some of the most draining people in our lives are the people who always want something from us and rarely do anything for us.

What are you learning in this area?  What are some of the best ways you’ve discovered to want something for others and to do something for others?

At some point this week, this month or this year, something good will come your way.  A promotion, an opportunity, an advancement, a raise, a new relationship, a new level of ‘success’.

What if every time something like that happened, you were to say to yourself: this is a trust.

Not “I deserved it”.  Not “I’ve always wanted this.”  Not “all that hard work finally paid off.”  Not “finally, I’m getting what’s coming to me.” Not even “wow this is cool” (okay, you can say that…just don’t stop there.)

What if instead, we just started saying “This is a trust.  I know he didn’t just give it to me for my benefit, he entrusted me with.  It’s a trust.”

What’s at stake is whether we believe that life and opportunities are about God, or whether we believe they are about us.  Our culture says they are about us.  But the scripture would say something different.

If you live like everything that comes your way is directed your way mainly for your benefit, you believe:

• This has come to me mostly for my benefit and the benefit of my family.
• I can use it any way I want.
• It doesn’t matter how I use it, because it’s mine.

If you view things as a trust, you believe:

• God likely didn’t give this to me solely for my benefit.
• I need to use it in the way that best honors God and others.
• It matters how I use it, because it’s not mine and I’m accountable.

I want to get into the habit of viewing all good things that come my way – every opportunity, reward, relationship, ability, advancement and gift – as a sacred trust.

How about you?  What do you believe about the good that comes your way?  How do you process it?  What helps you think this through?

I’d love your input!  I’ve been invited to speak at a conference where the theme is “Game changer”.  I’ve been reflecting for a week now on some game-changers in my life…and I’m not sure what to choose.

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!

Need some encouragement to keep going in ministry?

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.

Where are the great leaders in this generation of church?

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?