SoStinkingCool

Tonight we started our In-town Retreat for the Coaches of our pre-school and elementary ministries.  These folks are the backbone of our ministry… they manage teams, encourage them, equip them and make sure they have everything they need to make every small group leader successful.  How do you pour into your team and it’s leaders?  Here are some things we think are invaluable:

• Creativity:  Make the sure the event is fun to walk into, thoughtful and inviting.  Make sure they know from the minute they walk in that you’re excited that they are there and that you appreciate them.  Everything from the tables, gifts, stage decorations and food should scream, “YOU ROCK!”.
• Fun:  These hard working volunteers need time have some fun.  Our Coaches events are usually two days, sometimes over night at a retreat center, sometimes in-town.  Either way, I love to do sometime fun and foolish the first night, something to allow them to get to know each other and let’s face it; laugh!  We’ve done zip-lines, ropes courses, and tonight; video scavenger hunt!  Not only are these fun activities, you’ll also learn a lot about the people on your team (not to mention a little about yourself too).
• Vision:  Never miss an opportunity to communicate the vision of your ministry.  Speak it often, say it in different ways, everybody on your team should know why they do what they do!
• Practical Tips:  What is it that you expect your leaders to do?  Train them, equip them and then release them to lead.
• Pray Over Them:  Pray a blessing over their work, pray a blessing over their teams, pray a blessing over the kids they’re leading and pray a blessing over them as individuals.
• Love Them Well:  The way you love your team is a direct reflection of the way they will love their teams.  Everything rolls down hill.

I’d love to hear what you do to train your leaders~

I live in the desert, the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert to be exact in central New Mexico.  It’s dry in the desert, it’s brown in the desert (well, that’s not totally true, the Bosque is beautiful and dances with color for nine months out of the year … you can Google “Bosque”) and it is not humid in the desert (a definite advantage).  I grew up in Oregon, so this was a huge shock to my system and to my skin that evidently was accustomed to moisture in the air.  Along with all of the obvious permutations my Pacific Northwest personality had to navigate, was summer rain; monsoons.

At first this southwest phenom sounded a bit tropical (which suited me fine), although that was before I had experienced walls of water careening down arroyos, flash floods that mysteriously evaporated by the next day and what it did to dormant, hidden little specs of vegetation we call: WEEDS.

As I was out pulling the new monsoon fed flora which had cropped-up in our front yard overnight this morning, it occurred to me, how fast weeds crop up in my life; agitation, pride, anger, gossip, lust, selfishness, laziness, malice, gluttony… okay you get the idea.  We’re all like this, admit it or not, we all struggle occasionally with weeds in our lives.  Left unattended, the little seeds lying under the surface of our human-ness can grow into weeds that will riddle our attitudes, behaviors, words and actions with poisonous, noxious, joy-robbing infection.

How do we maintain our “soil” with all of the “rain, wind, chaos, lightening and thunder” swirling all around us in our day-to-day lives?  Colossians 3:1-2 says, “…set you hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set you minds on things above, not on earthly things.”  Peter got to live this first hand when Jesus told him to walk out on the water toward Him in Matthew 14~ he stepped out of the boat and was actually walking on water, until what?!  The Bible says when he “saw the wind..” he started to sink.  He took his eyes off of Jesus, he listened to the chaos around him.

For a split second there were no weeds in Peter’s heart, no earthly things, no distractions~ only Jesus.  The weeds will come people, don’t get distracted by the rain, the wind or the lightening~ pull them out, remove the invasive little thorn before it poisons your entire heart.  Set you heart on things above~

This being the first post of what started as an inside joke within our office of all women, screams to be shared in order to laugh at ourselves and the interesting creatures of God we are.  Reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan today I was once again reminded of our call to love each other well~  not just those that love us back, not just those that are easy to love… even unbelievers do this.  We are called to love the unlovable, the hard to love, and even those who hate us, who have done wrong to us and hurt us… “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6:32-36

That being said, there are some crazy things we do as human’s that crack me up.

1.  Carving you name into a toilet seat in a convenient store bathroom.

Now seriously, I’m not really thrilled to land upon said toilet seat to begin with, but I can’t imagine getting face-to-face with a toilet seat that hundreds, probably 1000’s of people have placed their behinds upon.

I would be lying if I said I’ve never carved my initials or name on a random bathroom stall wall or door, I even can see the temptation to do so (I was young, middle school brains, I’m convinced are not fully developed) for a young, rebellious, wanting to make your mark on the world in some weird kind of way, thing.  But a TOILET SEAT?!

In the words of the uber intelligent words of SNL;   REALLY???!!!!

Just sayin’

Things I’ve learned from camp:

1. Parents of pre-teens have a harder time saying good-bye then pre-teens themselves.
2. Camp will exhaust even the most in shape adult.
3. Sunblock and water is very important at 7100′ elevation.
4. Given the opportunity, pre-teen boys and girls WILL enter into worship and bring their leaders to tears.
5. Using a cow tongue, flash light and an illustration of a brother/sister fight will create a light bulb God moment in a 9, 10, or 11 year old.
6. Running in front of pre-teens shooting paintball guns in NEVER a good idea.
7. When a person is being threatened to be mauled by numerous leaders covered in slim, she can out-run anyone (even if she has 10+ years on everyone chasing her), just sayin’!
8. When teaching to a group of pre-teens and their leaders never assume that they will be blessed more than you~ I love you too, I will never forget the moment I looked up and saw you doing this:
9. Camp is fun and I never get tired of seeing God move, supply, teach, stretch, grow and transform through the experience.

So today I had the awesome opportunity to spend a couple of hours with one of our new campus directors!  I love the chance to pour into these young leaders and hear about ministry from their perspective.  Just about every topic we touched today led us back to one thing: “vision”.

Vision holds everything together and keeps everyone on the same page.  The Bible says in Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  Are the people that you lead following or are they wandering in circles?  Are you frustrated because you feel like you talk and talk, yet no one is listening?  It might be that they haven’t caught the vision.  Do they know why they do what they do or are they just puttin’ in the time, punching the clock, building widgets and manning the door?

I love the new reality TV show Undercover Boss! Corporate CEO’s and company presidents go undercover to discover the reality of their businesses from the working man perspective.  Most of the time the reality of the vision at the top has not translated properly to the lower rungs of the ladder.  This is a gutsy move by these “bosses” and makes me wonder if I’m communicating in such a way that the passion of my gut is really being heard by the faithful folks who put the pedal to the medal of ministry.

Vision must be communicated often, in various forms and media, with and without words.  How do you cast vision for the team you lead?  Maybe you’re reading this blog and you’re a team member following (or trying) to follow another person’s vision; do you know the vision?  Have you caught the vision?  How would you like the vision communicated?

I’d love to hear your comments, post them here and we can all learn!

I am a “friend” kind of person.  I love people, am a people-person and get energized by people around me.  This morning though as I spent time with my “Papa God” as a new friend calls Him, I am struck by the question, “Do I love others like Christ does and how He instructs me to?”

John 15:9-14 is our template for loving others,

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this:  Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command.”

Do I lay down my life for my friends?  What does that even mean?  In practical terms it would be putting my agenda and desires aside for those of a friend, it is listening to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to pick up the phone and call someone He’s laid on my heart, it is stopping and praying for someone immediately, instead of saying “I’ll be praying for you”, it’s allowing my day to be controlled by the Holy Spirit living in me instead of being controlled by the day I’m living in.

And yes, it might even mean taking a “bullet” for a friend.  Throwing myself in front of an oncoming piece of shrapnel and risking my life in order to love my friend the way Christ loves me.

When we obey this command to love with unabandonment and sacrifice, Christ’s desire, joy and delight  for us will result in  joy and gladness that will be of full measure, complete and overflowing.  We delight Him when we love others like He did.

Still learning how~

Friday afternoon’s, about once a month means coffee.  This is the time that I have the opportunity to meet with a very excited, super stoked friend who I am mentoring through her year of ministry training.  It’s a huge privilege to be asked to be someone’s mentor, it’s also a huge responsibility.

Today we talked about balance… she’s a wife, a mom, works at a Christian school, is taking an intensive leadership training course through our church and a team member on our Children’s Ministry team.  Balance is that one thing in full-time ministry that is hard to keep in check~ it will be invaluable for her to “learn” this part of ministry early.

The mentors I have and have had in my life are people that have gently asked me the hard questions and strongly encourage me to pray and seek God’s wisdom and discernment.  Mentors encourage, champion and pray~ hard.  So thankful for them, so thankful for the opportunity to pass it forward.

The sad and honest truth is that I love to write, yet tonight when I felt the urge to return to this page, that I have seldom visited in the last several months, I could not remember my password in order to create another post…  embarrassing, but true and should truly require me handing in my “blogger card” and shut down the site.  Thank goodness there aren’t any “blogger police” out there checking the activity (or lack there of) on site such as this that are dreadfully neglected.

I love the Olympics… I could be considered an addict (if there was such a thing).  But I am an Olympics junky none-the-less (don’t ask me how to score the sports though or why some Judges are harsher than others, I just like to watch, I’m not an expert on anything).

Part of what I love about the Olympics is the amazing things the human body can do.  The tone and strength, the height and flexibility that these young athletes achieve through dedication and hours of hard work is astonishing.  One of my favorite parts of the Olympics is the opening ceremonies…I know, it’s a show, no athleticism necessary, but here’s why:  Every nation, every color, every language, body type, hair color, gender walk into the stadium and there is a sense of awe.  The spectacle is almost too much to take in.  The faces of the athletes are glowing with wonder and a childlike surprise and excitement as they walk in to crowds of people cheering them on, chatting their names.  I love this picture of Honor.

As I watched last Friday, I was struck by the enormous celebration this was for these athletes and the honor the crowd cheered out and we at home cheered out as we watched their faces envelope the moment.  This is a shadow of what it will be like when we enter into heaven~ I believe that the awe on our faces will keep us from uttering a word, except for the need to run into Jesus’ arms, I don’t think our legs would carry us because of the mind-blowing brilliance.  

These athletes have put off everything except for one thing, to WIN the gold.  They sacrifice and do the hard things when they don’t really feel like it.  And the moment they walk down into that arena the crowd cheers them on.  They seem to say, “great work”, “well done”, “We’re so proud of you”.  What we do in ministry requires the same type of dedication and diligence.  It requires perseverance and endurance to finish well.  But we are not alone and we don’t have to do it by ourselves.  God has given us His Holy Spirit, who lives inside us, to help us, to teach us and to intercede for us.  We can run toward the incredible goal He has laid out before us because He is the power driving us forward!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1

So from one very bad blogger, press on, finish strong, finish well and listen for the crowds in the stands cheering you on!

How do you connect with the other leaders in your church?  I don’t mean just saying “hi” as you pass each other going down the hall to the bathroom or the quick wave as you’re both pulling into the parking lot in the morning.  I mean the kind of connecting that gets you working shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing the joys and creative ideas you both have to make a bigger impact and influence in your ministries.

I had the opportunity today to spend most of my day with some of the most creative and dedicated people I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with.  The “connections” today occurred in three separate meetings, all with different intent and each played a different role in getting an inkling of an idea from a whisper in the back of our heads, to scribbles on a notepad,  penned into a proposal and finally to full fruition!  It was great to have so many heads working on the same project, all using their gifts and all contributing!

Nehemiah understood the concept of working well together to achieve great things, even things that seemed impossible.

• He identified a need
• He developed a strategy
• He rallied a team

I think one of the craziest parts of Nehemiah 2 is that the people didn’t even hesitate when Nehemiah threw his idea out onto the table.  They were all in; “They replied, ‘Let us start rebuilding.’  So they began this good work.” v18b

That’s what our team did yesterday!  One person threw a crazy idea out onto the table and everyone else said, “Let’s do it!”.

How do you connect with the other leaders around you?  Do you capitalize on the strengths and imaginations of people in other departments?  Don’t assume they don’t want to help or that they’re too busy… we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves!