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?

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?

Chances are you’ve had it happen before – you completely navigate a difficult situation and your friends ask "how do you stay so calm and composed when everyone’s losing it?"  You don’t really know the answer to that question, but you make something up and tell yourself you’re doing really well.

Then someone cuts into your lane on the drive home and you almost lose it. His action was a two out of ten, but your reaction was an eight.  Or someone sends you a slightly critical email and you brood around the house dumping on the people you love and then can’t sleep for two nights because you’re so angry/upset/emotional about it. His slight was a three out of ten.  You reacted with an eleven.  

Sometimes the things we think don’t bother us really bother us.  The emotions we never process don’t disappear, they just go underground and decide to bubble up in the most incovenient and inappropriate ways.  

A mentor told me a few years ago that he’s convinced that one of the silent killers in ministry for church leaders is what he calls "ungrieved losses".  I think he might be on to something.

The Jews have an elaborate mourning ritual when someone dies. Consider how Job’s friends responded to the tragedy that Job experienced.  When was the last time you said nothing for seven days, tore your clothes and sat in silence when something catastrophic happened?  Today, many of us process grief while talking on the phone with iTunes playing in the background while we’re trying to finish making breakfast so we can get the kids off to school.

My mentor friend’s theory is this: people in ministry suffer loss every day. Heck, life brings loss every day. Every time the grocery bill runs too high and the bank balance gets tight, it’s a loss.  Every time someone leaves your ministry, it’s a loss.  Every time someone steps back from your team, it’s a loss.  Every time you give something only to find ungratitude, it’s a loss.  Every time someone tells you’re great but you should really see the other guy who’s awesome, it’s a loss.  Then add in death, illness and strained or lost relationships and, well, you get the picture. 

And my friend’s theory is that so many people up and quit ministry or lose their effectiveness in life not because any one incident made them snap or quit – but rather because the loss that provoked their exit is tied to dozens or hundreds of ungrieved losses along the way.  They might not even understand why they’re stepping back, shutting down or resigning.  All they know is they just can’t take it anymore. 

One of the practices I’ve adopted over the last few years, as strange as it still seems to me, is to try to grieve my losses as they happen.  I try to take time daily and weekly to review what’s bothering me and simply pray about it. Sometimes I talk to others about it.  I try to let myself stop and feel what I’ve experienced.  And when I feel it, something surprising happens – the negative feeling pretty much disappears.  If I do it promptly when a loss occurs, I can even respond to a four out of ten email or remark with a two out of ten reply – not a twelve.  I can actually offer grace.

How about you?  Do you find life full of losses?  How do you grieve them?  What have you found helpful?

“The crowd listened until Paul said that word. Then they all began to shout…”He isn’t fit to live!”(Acts 22.22).

What did he say?  You’d think he dropped some profanity.  Nope.

You’d think he denounced Jesus.  Not that either.

What did he say?  The word was “Gentiles”.  He simply announced that he was going to work with people outside the boundaries of the existing church.  He was taking the Gospel to outsiders.  To the Gentiles, people who had never had access to Jesus before.

That made the insiders furious. They saw it as scandalous that Paul would actually work with people who didn’t fit their category of righteousness.  The text electrified me when I read it earlier this month because I’m not that sure it’s different today.

What do you think? I believe if you are going to reach outsider, you’re going to offend insiders.  Not that you would set out to offend them.  But if you’re really doing meaningful ministry, you will.

Sometimes the very idea of inviting outsiders in is scandalous (what are people with that kind of past doing in church?) Sometimes the methods are scandalous (why would you play that music in church, preach in that manner, or not cater just to my wants as a Christian?).  But bottom line, it is and likely will be scandalous.

Could it be that if you are not offending insiders from time to time, you’re likely not actually reaching outsiders?  Could it be that if you are not offending insiders, you’ve lost your mission?

What do you think?  What’s your experience and what’s your perspective?