Conference Attending 101

We are about to enter a new year, filled with new opportunities to spend money on things that have absolutely no impact on our daily lives. One such thing will be a whole slew of conferences that we can choose to attend, get excited about, and then forget.

Just in case you are sitting there wondering if I am arguing against attending conferences let me be more clear. I think that most people who attend most conferences would be better served by taking the same time and less money and just sleeping in their hotel room or reading a good book by the pool. This has a bit to do with the conferences themselves, which are mostly attempting to accomplish things for which they were never designed. It has more to do with the way people attend conferences.

As a person who still does attend conferences (even those obscenely expensive ones) I figured I would share my thoughts on how to make the most of a conference seeing as how many leaders will choose to spend precious time and money on them.

Choose your questions before you arrive. Conferences offer a plethora of answers on any number of topics. Most of these answers are to questions you were not asking. Perhaps they are questions you should be asking, but that is something that you should deal with in a future conference. Change happens in our current reality. That means you need to answer questions you are asking right now; questions that are immediately applicable to your life and organization.

You should choose one or two questions that you want answered... three if you are feeling extremely confident or cocky. These questions should guide you as you choose which sessions you are going to attend and which people you are going to try to meet. As a side note, the people you can meet at a conference are often much more valuable to your future than the information you will hear.

Choose questions that deal with character and vision, not best practices or programs. If you are looking for ideas on how to implement a new marketing strategy then read Seth Godin's blog and buy some books. You will get a much larger return on your dollars spent that way than from any conference. The most valuable thing you can change in your organization while at a conference is you. I recommend questions along the lines of "Where should I be focusing my energies?", "Where am I currently stuck in achieving results and what can I do about it?", and "If I had to choose three people to pour into this year (in preparation for one of them to replace me), who should they be?"

You may be thinking, "But conferences are not designed to answer such questions!" Well, that is why I think most conferences are a complete waste of money for most people. Conferences are designed to transfer information and provide inspiration. What they lack any power to do is lead to transformation. That is why so many people who attend a conference and "learn" something that "inspires" them do not actually change anything in their daily routine that lasts longer than a few weeks.

Decide what it is you want to discover beforehand. Focus on what can change in you as much as in your organization. Let these things be a filter for every talk you attend and you will be amazed at how answers come to your very specific questions.

Make your action plans before you leave. If you "don't have time" to work through your questions and all of the information you gathered and make some specific action plans before you go home, then schedule more time for your conference. The money you spend for an extra day or two of lodging and food will be well worth the investment.

I am sure I could dig up impressive numbers on how many people fail to implement any of the things they learn at conferences, but the most important research is personal. Think back to the last three conferences/seminars you attended and then point to the daily, weekly, and monthly activities that are on your schedule as a result of them.

If you believe a conference will answer some questions that are crucial and immediately applicable to your life and organization, then schedule the time to work all the way through that process before you come back home. You know what is waiting for you back home, and "time to think through all that good stuff you learned while on your conference vacation" is not one of them.

There you go. Two steps to increase the impact of your next conference exponentially. If instead you decide to just skip the conference and spend a day by the pool reading a good book... I won't tell if you don't.

Green and Red

There are at least three distinct kinds of drivers on the road. I call them Green/Green, Green/Red, and Red/Red. I think these people exist in our organizations as well and are the cause of much frustration for leaders. What separates these drivers is not any skill or competency, but merely expectations and assumptions. Any successful leader will be well served to discover the expectations and assumptions of his or her followers and learn from them accordingly.

Yes, I said learn, not change or manipulate or deal with. That is always my first response when I find someone has a different outlook from my own, to figure out how I can change them so that they see things my way; the right way. I am growing to see the value in alternate viewpoints, especially when they are connected to a single vision.

Green/Green - These are people who see the green light in front of them and take off, assuming that the next light they meet will also be green.

Green/Red - These are the drivers who move slowly off the line. They recognize that the light in front of them is green, but they figure that the next light will likely be red, so there is no real reason to get in a hurry.

Red/Red - These are the drivers who refuse to recognize or realize the light in front of them is green, and they know that any future light is going to be red, so it is probably just as well to sit where they are.

Understand that I am not trying to make a case for which of these is the best or which you should aspire to, I am simply observing that each of these seem to exist. So, let us look at the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each type and how they might work together.

Green/Green - The world is full of possibilities, and only those who are ready to move will be able to realize them all. The reward always outweighs potential risk in their mind. The words "fast" and "good" are almost synonymous when it comes to decision making. They add strength to a team by opening up possibilities that others might miss and generating momentum towards movement. Their weaknesses often come in the area of recognizing "reality". The truth is reward does not always outweigh risk for every decision. Left unchecked these guys will definitely move your organization somewhere; whether it is a place you like or not is another matter.

Green/Red - The world is full of pitfalls, and those who run ahead haphazardly will fall into them. These people love the story of the turtle and the hare and recite it any time a big decision hits the table. They add strength to a team by opening up risks that others may overlook and helping fill in the plans. Their weakness often arises in very time-sensitive situations. The necessity to make quick decisions adds a great deal of stress, and given their assumption of risk in the future they will often say "no" any time they feel pressed. As such they will likely lead an organization into a safe, secure, and stable future that never quite reaches its potential.

If Green/Green people are rocket fuel, then Green/Red people are their engine housing. In general it is not a good idea to put fire to rocket fuel, but if you have it properly housed in a working engine it can propel you faster than you ever imagined. That is exactly what can happen when people with these two outlooks on life work like a team.

Red/Red - There are not any real strengths to mention about this outlook, and their weaknesses are obvious. Negativity drains energy, creativity, and momentum. The danger when dealing with these people is to assume that they have no strengths. The fact is that their outlook on life often masks their strengths. You will rarely find these people in high leadership positions in an organization, but I would speculate that you can find them quite often within the support structures of many organizations. Leaders have to decide if they are going to help move people out of this mindset or move these people out of the organization. There is no middle ground, because red/red people will drag down an entire department or even company given enough time. Think how many cars are affected by a single driver who refuses to move off the line when the light turns green. The same is true in an organization when one person consistently refuses to move to the vision.

Laura on Communication

Though I often fail miserably, my general intent is to provide content on this site on M/W/F. Every so often if I drop little bits on off-days it will be light, as is the case today.

I have a 2 year old daughter named Laura. She is incredibly bright and incredibly strong-willed. Communication is one of the things we are working on with her, and that she is working on with us. At first I was worried that she could not talk. I have slowly begun to realize that she merely chooses not to talk.

This has become clear as we will try to teach her a new word, like "Daddy" or "Juice" or such. Each time she will say the word once. Then she never says it again. It is as if she is trying to show great patience and say, "Yes, large humans, I can speak your language, it is just such a bother. My life would be better served by you continuing to run around attempting to read my mind... plus that is more entertaining for me."

At other times I get the feeling that she has consented to verbal communication, she is just not sure English is the language we should choose. I am not against new languages, but the problem is that no one in the world except Laura can understand her personal language.

Just this morning after breakfast it became clear that she wanted down from her chair. (Clear meaning she was thrashing around screaming at me... I picked up on the subtle hint.) I calmed her down and asked, "What do we say when we want down?" She answered me with a clear sentence made up of at least 7 distinct words, and then stared at me.

So, I re-phrased my question and said, "What do we say in English when we want down?", to which she answered, "All done" with her arms outstretched.

It appears that I am either winning the battle of wills, or she has decided that I am completely unteachable. Either way I am hopeful that verbal communication will continue to increase in our home.

On an organizational note this reminds me just how important and how difficult communication can be. The ability to clearly express expectations and assumptions is a highly valuable skill. The ability to hear others and perceive their expectations and assumptions is almost priceless.

Stop and Go Driving

Few things frustrate me more than gross inefficiency. One place where I am continuously amazed at the level of inefficiency we humans can achieve is in the area of driving. (Can I get an AMEN!) The other morning I was in traffic so congested that the road was like a parking lot for two miles. There were six or so stoplights along this stretch of road and traffic was such that you could barely cross the intersection of one light before running into the end of the line at the next. No, there was not a wreck or construction or weather or anything other than human inadequacy to blame it on.

I had two options. The first was to rail against the people who create our roadways and train our drivers. The second was to step back and look at the process of driving in strop and go conditions and see how it might apply to an organization.

After a few minutes of raging I felt better and my head was clear enough to bring processing. I remembered that every goes through seasons. Some are seasons of growth, others of consolidation. In effect, organizations are going to experience stop and go movement. Nothing is in “go” mode all the time.

This is a big point, because I think it is sometimes easy to look at extremely successful organizations and assume that they never experience a slow down, or even backwards movement. That is untrue. Every organization faces stop and go seasons. The key then is not in how to avoid the slow seasons but how best to use them to prepare for the go seasons.

Successful organizations are those that make the most of their Go seasons. The primary method they use to accomplish this is vision alignment.

Back to my driving experience, as I began observing what was happening I noticed a few things. First, green doesn’t mean Go. Green should mean go, but it does not happen like that for most drivers. That is because they are not as focused on the light as they are on the car in front of them. So, instead of experiencing instant movement when the light turns green you get to watch as one-by-one each car slowly begins moving. Someone might say, “What do you expect, all of the cars to begin moving at once?!?” Yes!

A simple understanding of math and physics reveals that two objects moving in the same direction at the same speed will not collide. That means that as soon as the light turns green everyone should be able to move forward at the same time, even at significant speed. Instead what you generally get is a situation in which the first few cars move off quickly with each successive care releasing more slowly. At one light this was so bad that a light went from red to green to yellow and back to red and I never moved.

This experience can be frustrating when driving. It can be devastating when leading an organization. Whereas cars are independent of each other, parts of an organization are not (or should not be). So, when some members race ahead in the Go times and leave others in Stop mode, serious consequences occur. You either have leaders racing ahead of their followers, leaving them lost, confused, and frustrated. Or you have leaders who are constantly racing off and backing up to pick up the stragglers.

This is what I see taking place in many organizations. During the stop season they do a good thing, get the lead team focused and ready to move. What they often miss is the crucial step of getting the rest of the organization ready to move. So, when the light turns green the leadership takes off, only to look back and see people creeping through the intersection behind them, or even worse, getting stuck behind the light as it turns red again. So, the leaders are left to either run off, disconnected from the organization, or stop and wait for the next light. Meanwhile those organizations that managed to move as one go racing by.

Some leaders try to fix this with clear lines of communication that travel from the top of the organization to the bottom. That helps. It is similar to what happens if everyone in a line is focused on the car in front of them (rather than those delightful people who just stare off into outer space, seemingly forgetting that the light is going to change at some point). In this model, however, you still get movement that is progressively slower the further you are from the top.

The answer lies not just in helping people focus on those in front of them, but in helping them all focus on the stoplight at the front of the line. If everyone is focused on the light then when it turns green they will all be ready to move forward together. Imagine that, a line of cars all moving forward as soon as the light turns green, going from 0-60 in mere seconds. It would revolutionize our traffic system. It does revolutionize organizations.

You see that organization that started their journey after you did and yet is miles down the road from you? It is likely not because they have had less stop lights, but because then the light turns green they are ready to move, together, at a high speed.

So, let me assume that you are following the analogy and perhaps even agree with my assessment. What now? How do we change our current reality and get our people to wake up and focus on the light? How do we make use of this Stop season, knowing that a Go season is just around the corner? Here are a few suggestions:

1) Make a clear focus. The vision has to be clear and clearly visible. If people don’t know where they should look or what they are looking for then do not get angry when they sit still. If you drive up to a busy intersection with no light and no signs, the only intelligent choice is to stop. Your people know the pain of running off and getting emotionally involved in something only to have it disappear or come crashing down. Don’t expect them to just “jump in” and invest their time, talent, and treasure without a clear picture of what they are doing and why.

2) Take advantage of the Stop seasons. Rick Warren refers to these seasons as the times where the roots grow. Use them to answer questions like “Who are we? What are we about? How do we plan to accomplish this? Why are we doing this in the first place?” Train existing leaders and recruit new ones even though you don’t “need” them right now. In a word, prepare for when the light turns.

3) Know when the light is going to turn before it does. This may sound strange, but as a leader it is your responsibility to know when the light is about to turn green and communicate that to your people. The people in the front of a traffic line are in a unique place to be able to see the cross lights. They can see when those lights turn yellow and know that their light will soon be green. As a leader it is your responsibility to be so in tune with your market and environment that you see the signs that a Go season is coming.

Imagine a perfect world where stoplights had the ability to transmit to the radio in our car. You might hear something like, “Your attention please, in 20 seconds the light will turn green. Please place your attention on the light. Prepare to move forward in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Go!” (I would seriously LOVE something like this!)

In organizational life this type of preparation is possible when Go seasons repeat themselves. For example many churches experience the most numerical growth in the Fall, just after the New year, and perhaps around Easter. If you know that, then there is no reason your church should not be ready move at those times of year. Smart retail business make sure they are ready for the Christmas season. They know that missing it means waiting a year to catch up… if they are still around.

Successful leaders are constantly looking for signs that the next Go season is just around the corner. Experience is one of your best tools in this search, both personal experience and that of others in your industry or market.

Questions for further diagnosis:

1) Looking at the next six months can you foresee any Go seasons on the horizon? If so list them. If not where could you look for help to identify some?

2) What would synchronized movement look like in your next Go season? If everyone was ready to move and followed your lead perfectly where would you be when it is time to slow down again? This is where questions about vision, measurement, and evaluation come into the picture. Where are we going? How far is it? How will we know when we get there? Are there any special instructions we (your followers) need? Are there any known obstacles we need to know about?

[Note that the longer your Go season is the more detailed you need to be in your vision and directions. If we are simply traveling three blocks to the next stop light then it should be easy enough to stay together. If we are taking a 200 mile trip then the chances some of the organization is going to get lost or distracted are high. Thinking along those lines we can see some of the benefits of the Stop season.]

3) Think back to your last Go season. Did your leadership move out and leave the rest of the organization behind? Look at the organization and see if you can identify the exact levels, departments, or people where the slow down occurred. Just as it only takes 1 car in a line of hundreds to slow everyone down behind them, it could be that a single area is causing your entire organization to slow down as well.

Knowing that, once you have identified the key areas, how can you focus on them during the next Stop season? What could be done to refocus each division in your organization not just on the one in “front” of it but also on the green light?

The Problem with "Perfect"

I find myself in a constant battle with destructive and debilitating mindsets. So many people spend their time talking about practices, procedures, and systems that they overlook the ways of thinking that brought all of the above to life in the first place. Change the thinking and often the rest will change quite naturally.

One such mindset is the pursuit of the perfect decision. I know I am facing this mindset when I hear people talk about needing to make the “right” decisions or being afraid of making the “wrong” ones. They look at the world and assume that the successful organizations are the ones that made a series of perfect decisions.

The truth is that most successful organizations make a series of “better” decisions, not a lucky string of perfect decisions. Instead of talking about right and wrong they talk about better or worse. The goal is not just to avoid making poor decisions, but to avoid repeating poor decisions. This means that they generally place a much higher value on measurement and evaluation than their perfectionist counter parts. They are also talk less about abstract things like "success" and "failure" and more about movement and progress. These organizations are willing to let people experiment and even “fail” as long as each decision provides a learning opportunity and helps move the organization toward its vision.

The perfect decision mindset carries a high price tag; including missed opportunities, guilt over past decisions, fear over future decisions, and loss of creativity and growth to name a few.

Missed opportunities occur because we are so consumed with making the perfect decision (or more often afraid to be blamed for the wrong decision) that we just make no decision at all. The reality is that almost every opportunity comes with a countdown clock. Whether it is the 30-second elevator sales pitch or the 3 months you have to prepare for your next growth cycle, your decision has a clock ticking.

It is very seldom that no decision is the best decision. Yet, this happens alarmingly often when people have the perfectionist mindset. Team meetings may generate any number of ideas and strategies, but none of them are actually executed, measured, and evaluated. Ideas arise, are discussed, and then fade away. The “time clock” ends up making the decision as opportunities come and go.

Guilt over past decisions exists because things like “success” and “failure” of the organization are tied to specific decisions and the people who made them. Rather than motivating better decisions in the future this leads to greater fear over future decisions. That creates hesitancy, which adds to the previous issue of missed opportunities.

If, instead, we related things like success and failure to a series of decisions then they would be something that we share. We would see the reality that no one decision made or broke us, because every decision is affected by the ones made before it and itself will affect future decisions. Instead of focusing on particular decisions made by individuals we would begin assessing the movement of the entire organization. Certainly specific decisions must be measured and evaluated, but not as if they existed in a vacuum.

The perfectionist mindset limits creativity and growth on the “front end” (before decisions are executed) because so many decisions just fade away, losing any potential for learning they may have contained. It also limits learning on the back end by labeling decisions as good and bad or right and wrong.

[I am a stickler for using words that best communicate the intended meaning. As such I attempt to get my clients to avoid using words like “right” and “wrong” in anything except areas of absolute knowledge. If it is a legal, ethical, mathematical, or theological issue then it is proper to use such terms. If the decision is more relative such as marketing, operations, or customer relations then terms like “better” or “worse” are more appropriate.]

When something is labeled wrong or bad we have a natural tendency to distance ourselves from it. In many cases a better response is to dig in and see what can be learned from the decision, especially if we do not wish to repeat it. It is amazing how many times organizations make big breakthroughs while dissecting things that did not work as intended. On the other side is it often just as unhealthy to simple repeat decisions because they were "right" the last time. Without proper measuring and evaluating we do not know why the decision was right. In many cases repeating last years decision may not be the best option.

The process of measuring and evaluating decisions allows poor decisions to be redeemed. I am not trying to say that every decision is actually valuable, merely that every decision contains value. Successful organizations have systems that reward and promote better decisions while also limiting and learning from poor decisions. In this way they allow a person to redeem poor decisions, which decreases guilt over the past and removes fear over future decisions.

Questions for further diagnosis:

1) How many “good” ideas that are generated in team meetings never move beyond the meeting and get executed?

2) How are decisions measured and evaluated in your organization?

3) When evaluating decisions (or their measured results) do you look backwards (to the supporting decisions that made this one possible) and forwards (to the systems that may need to change to either repeat positive outcomes or remove negative ones)? This is particularly helpful when looking at decisions made by other organizations. It is much too easy to attribute success or failure to single events and consequently miss the principles that are actually responsible. Such principles are only revealed over time.

· For example when evaluating a recently fired employee one might be tempted to say that the “bad” decision was the hire. In reality the hire most likely occurred because of a certain need assessment, which led to a skill set requirement, which impacted the resume search process. Understanding the entire process provides more value than just trying to “hire better” next time.

4) What happens to people who make “bad” decisions in your organization? People who make “good” decisions? What would it look like to allow people to redeem decisions in your particular context?

Redefine Success

My tenet for this post is that success carries with it satisfaction and fulfillment. That means that if you believe you are successful but are not satisfied and fulfilled then you are not, in fact, successful.

Think of the person who climbs the financial ladder, continually reaching higher and higher levels in the pay charts. By most external accounts he is successful, even by his own accounts he calls himself successful; and yet he is not truly satisfied or fulfilled. He is left thinking that perhaps the next level will be where satisfaction truly begins. That is where he will be able to stop for a moment and enjoy his success. How laughable... that one could be successful and not full of joy already.

There are also the millions of people who believe success is reaching a certain number on a scale. Then when they get there (or convince themselves they have come close enough) they find that it is not nearly as satisfying as they had hoped... mostly because the awful truth hits them; after you hit the magic number on the scale you do not magically stay there. The process is not truly over, and most of the time they hated the process it took to get to the number, hoping that the number itself would bring them fulfillment and satisfaction.

I believe we need to redefine success. We call so many people successful when they are not even happy. How can that be success?

Certainly we can play word games and paint the difference between external success (say winning a football game) and internal success (receiving satisfaction and fulfillment from that win). My recommendation is that we spend more time talking about the latter type of success. That is, the success that is focused on the process and not on individual achievements.

In this new world we can call people successful who are only a few steps up the corporate ladder but somehow manage to enjoy their families, give back to their communities, and smile at their co-workers. We can call someone successful who is 50 lbs. overweight, because we know that three months ago they were 60 lbs. overweight. We can count ourselves successful when the dishes only stacked up 2 feet before we got them cleaned... instead of the 3 feet it used to take to move us to action.

Why is it so important to think of ourselves as successful? Because the alternative is that we wallow in apathy. We begin to believe that success is not meant for us or that we are unable to achieve it. This is not only contrary to any objective look at the human condition, it is completely contrary to Scripture.

I am not trying to say that "Everyone is successful, you must only believe that it is so!" I am saying that everyone can be successful, and that they can achieve a type of success that is lasting and meaningful. There is success to be found on the journey that dwarfs anything a mere, momentary achievement can provide.

Process is Reality

Some of you may have missed the hugeness of the point I made in my last post (yes, hugeness is a word). I am only beginning to realize the scope of this truth and the impact it has on every facet of my life. Process is reality, and I don't like it. Let us just take a few examples of how this works:

1. Clean House. Most people want a clean house, and they hate cleaning. The fact is cleaning is a reality if you want a clean house. You don't just "achieve" cleanness and then it stays.
2. Getting in shape. Everyone wants to be in shape and have good health, few people like to change the way they eat and exercise. The fact is even if you reach your "goal weight" or look or whatever, you won't stay there unless you continue the process.
3. Spiritual development. It is all good and well to say that I want to learn how to "trust God better". But, there is a process that is required for that trust to move from intellect to experience. And, once I have learned to trust God in one area He will move the process to another area.

Life is a moving stream. We never sit still. You are either moving forward or backward... because process is reality; achievement is fleeting at best, pure fiction at worst. Think about it. How valuable are your greatest achievements in life if you take them as stand-alone events? Even beyond work, if we think of things like our marriage or our kids... they are without value apart from process. It is the process of being married for 12 years that has been valuable, not the one day that I actually became married. The same is true with my kids. There is very little value in having children if we are not going to put the time and effort into them that they require over the rest of their lives.

Every thing you have achieved at work is the same way... it finds its value within the process, not the one-time act. Even still we seem to fight this constant desire to "arrive". We think that if we can only, "meet the right person", "have good kids", "get that new promotion", or "meet this life-goal" that we will finally arrive at a destination that will bring us joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction.

The problem is that joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction are all things that are supposed to come from the process, not the achievement. Achievements are too small, too quickly come and gone, to carry the weight of something like joy. Achievements are too anchored in time to be able to provide something as future-minded as hope.

I will be coming back to this mindset change from time to time because it is insidious in its ability to work its way into every facet of our life... telling us that if we can only reach some higher achievement that we will finally be fulfilled.

People don't like Process

That has been my operating assumption over the last few weeks anyway. That is why I have been rather silent on the writing end of things... I don't really feel like I have accomplished anything. I am in the middle of many things, but with nothing very tangible or concrete to show for it.

Even as I write that sentence it seems rather depressing. At the same time it also reveals something in my heart that I believe God is attempting to remove... this need to achieve. More specifically He is attempting to remove the value I derive from my achievements. It is not that I believe God is calling me to a life of half-effort that never materializes. It is that He wants to make sure that my sense of self and success is not tied to those efforts or the things they produce.

So, in the last two weeks I have met with some churches about the possibility of coming on staff, been invited to join the leadership team on the church planter network in town, dropped off a non-profit business plan to a few key people around the country, and met several new pastors/pastoral teams that are doing ministry in the city/for the city. I had a blog picked up by Christianity Today and God dropped a huge financial gift on Leslie and I through some friends here in town and back East.

I would be a total brat if I did anything but respond with a heart of gratefulness and thanksgiving both to God and those He is using to minister to us. And yet I still fight the feeling that my life is actually counting for anything at the moment. It is at the same time incredibly frustrating and fulfilling. Frustrating because all of the usual things I point to in order to convince myself that my life matters just are not there. Fulfilling because I don't know if I can really explain the feeling of seeing God come through just in time again, and again, and again.

We often talk about "growing" to become "more like Christ". In business people talk about growth and process too. I think it is all a bunch of hogwash. Nobody likes to grow and people hate process. In reality we all want to get there. We want to arrive, not be stuck on the journey forever. I don't want to become more like Christ... I want to be a good Christian. I don't want to keep becoming a better leader... I want to learn that one trick that will make me a good leader.

My life is currently one long, drawn out process, and I am learning that it is in the process of life that transformation occurs. I have also made a rather startling discovery. It could very well be that God never wants me to leave the process. Certainly the specifics may change, but I have a very strong belief that He will not be content to let me arrive until I actually DO arrive in Heaven.

More on this as I work through it. If you are one of those people that like to read the messiness of the process let me know and I will do my best to keep track of it. I give fair warning though that the life Leslie and I are currently leading is rather messy, and the road is often winding... so don't blame me if what I say one day gets contradicted the next :).

The End?

Last week Leslie and I were in Romans 6. On Sunday night my brilliant wife was used by God to impart wisdom to me. It was one of those moments where a verse we have read hundreds of times became clear in a new way.

We have been reading Roman with the thought of sovereignty and salvation in the back of our minds. The first question was, "Do I play any part in my own salvation?", to which the answer is a rather clear "no"; unless you count "receiving it" as an action.

The next, and more difficult, question was, "Do I then play any part in my damnation?" I have written many pages on these two questions over the lat few weeks. Then God, in His wonderful wisdom and simplicity, answered them both in a single verse.

Generally I consider it bad form to build doctrine and theology on a single verse. That is not what I am doing here. I just believe this verse sums up God's position, a position He expresses throughout Scripture.

Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Do you see it? Remember in Romans 4:4 where it says, "Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation."

In chapter 6 Paul completes the thought. We see that salvation is not something we earn, as if God owed us mercy and righteousness due to our works. Death, however, is something that we are owed. It is the fitting wage of our sin. Wages are awarded to a man for his work, not as a gift from God as it were.

So we see that we work our way to hell, and God pays us the wage we have rightfully earned. Yet it is His grace and mercy alone that leads us to salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Lewis and Value (ie. random thoughts)

I have been reading through Mere Christianity again recently... and come to the realization that I do not believe I have ever actually finished the book before. Most of the times I have read it before were part of a discussion group. The discussions always lasted longer than the alloted time, and so the group would finish before we got through the entire book.

As a result I am just now reading Lewis' thoughts on the trinity and time/eternity and some other things. Suffice to say I should have just quoted him in my last post. As is normally the case he makes a more concise argument than I do; more clear as well most likely. It is comforting (for me anyway) that our basic thought process leads to the same conclusion... namely that our understanding of "time" causes unnecessary confusion when we try to understand God and how He works within Creation.

Randomness Part 2:

I was thinking today about how people define their value. I started off making this a "male/female" thing, and I think in general it would still hold, but I am not ready to make that generalization completely. The two distinctions I wanted to focus on were those who find their value in who they are and those who find their value in how they perform; my person or my performance. My thoughts centered around how these two people enter into conflict. For example:

Those who find their value in their person will often make personal attacks when facing conflict. Words will be said surrounding a person's character (you are a liar, cheat, bum, etc.) The game is won when you can successfully build a picture of your own person that is somehow better, purer, holier, etc. than the other person.

Those who find their value in their performance will make attacks on another person's competence (you suck, loser, moron, etc.). In fact these people assume that each party has the same basic skills. This is a necessary assumption in order for their perceived victory to have meaning. It would be like a football team that got spotted three touchdowns and managed to win the game; there is no real victory there because they had an advantage. People who base their value on performance actually like it when the other team has the three touchdown advantage and they still manage to win.

Obviously both of these are an insufficient basis for our value, but I think they provide a helpful understanding of why people respond the way they do in conflict. If you hear people making personal comments in heated moments it is because they are feeling like their "person" is under attack. You might be talking about mistakes they made in a recent report and they shoot back with personal attacks on your or a co-worker.

You will find people defining themselves either by what they do or how they do it; or perhaps some combination of the two.

End of randomness.

Romans 9 – Relation to Time

One reason we often struggle with passages of Scripture is our relationship to time. Often we will say “God did it” and we speak at the same time a true and unenlightening statement. The question we are often asking is not a “how” but a “why”. When “because God” is the finality of our answer it is easy to get into a circular argument in which God does things because they are good and they are good because He does them. So we learn that it is good because it is good. While true, this is not helpful in discovering the character of “good”.

In an eternal context everything that will happen has happened, and it all happened because God is. He is the beginning; He is the end. All things that happen, happen in and through Him.
In essence our entire experience is like a game that God decided to play (pardon this purely human argument, I don’t mean to make light of the entire human experience). The question then becomes, does God play a game in which He moves all of the pieces, or did He create a game in which he plays referee and the pieces move themselves, or is it some mix of both?
From a long-distance view (say 1,000 years or greater) it will appear as if God alone moves the pieces, because His hands will be seen constantly moving across the board and pieces will be flying around accordingly. This is the eternal view; and it is truth. God moves and the pieces follow suit. God is at work playing the game, moving pieces where He wants so that the end looks the way that pleases Him.

As we zoom in, however, we may find a somewhat different picture. Some of the pieces seem to move of their own accord, at times in line with God’s hand and at other times struggling against it. When we quickly zoom back out we may well find that they never succeed in moving contrary to God, but not for lack of effort!

So, how does this game work in which the reality seems to be both that God moves the pieces and the pieces have some ability to move themselves (even though they can only move with His help)? Who knows, but the only evidence we have, His revelation and our experience, suggests that it is so.

I see potential error enter into our understanding of God’s character when we choose to view through only the eternal or only the temporal view. Take a passage along the lines of Romans 9 where Paul quotes a passage in which God says that He raised up Pharaoh for the purpose of displaying his power and wrath. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. It is quite clearly an eternal view of the matter; God’s hand moved, and Pharaoh moved accordingly. If we were to look at the temporal view we might well see that Pharaoh moved perfectly in step with God through that process; that he in fact wanted a hard heart. This is the way that same process is described in Romans 1 after all. People who knew God (this implies God had revealed Himself to them in a real and meaningful way, that they had been made awake or alive in some way… dead men after all cannot “know” anyone can they) chose to reject God. In accord with their wishes God gave them over to the desire of their hearts, hardening them as it were to His truth.

From an eternal view it would seem simply as if God had decided that those pieces should be hardened… but the temporal view says that they also wanted to be hardened.

In fact, one of the biggest ways that people seem to struggle against God’s hands and lose is in the matter of mercy. This is revealed both in Scripture and in our personal story. We did not want God. We did not long for righteousness. It is almost as if despite our great struggle against Him He was unwilling to relent and moved us to mercy. It is then quite impossible for us to imagine how someone would end up in a position to receive God’s wrath unless he moved them in the same way.

At this point I like to look back at the “rules” of the game, as established by the one who created it. Here are a few key rules that I find.

1. Winning is God’s glory increasing. Because of the great sacrifice that God made for us it is tempting to say that God’s love for us is the greatest love in the universe. This is not true, though, because His love for His own glory outstrips His love for us by far. The cross was not for our salvation as much as it was for His character. God’s character demanded that the cross happen… which is interesting just in itself, and gives us a clue as to what “winning” looks like to God.
2. Choice is required for one to be considered a “piece” on the board. I don’t know why this is, I just know that it is. Both angels (God’s servants) and humans (God’s children) are said to choose. This reveals that choice plays a key role in the game from God’s standpoint. So, in my mind our rules are incomplete unless we take that choice into account. Some say that choice died with the Fall, or that everyone made their choice in the Fall and God alone chooses after that. That position requires too much semantic dancing because of the great multitude of passages that speak of choice after Genesis 3. However it works, choice remains a part of the pieces in God’s game up to the very end.
3. God wins. This is both a matter of God’s strength and His character (which is somewhat saying the same thing because strength is a part of His character). Because God is who He is, He will win the game; His glory will be increased through it all and His will accomplished.
   

Given those rules we are left with a picture that combines the eternal and temporal view into some mysterious dance in which God’s will moves pieces as they also make choices to the result that in the end everything ends up both where it wants to be and where He wants it to go. Personally I am not sure I will ever fully understand that process on this side of eternity, and that is acceptable because I am convinced that God understands it, and it is His game afterall.

Romans 9: Reason for Wrath

In answering the questions raised in Romans 9 I want to back up a little at first. Every passage in Scripture needs to be read in context, difficult passages even more so. Many people find Romans 9 to be a difficult passage (personally I think 9-11 are the same thought, if not 1-11). That is because what is read in chapter 9 seems to go against so much of the rest of the old and new testament revelation of God’s character.

If you have people read Scripture, or even just read the book of Romans, and then ask them, “What is the main theme?” I would be shocked if they answered, “God designs some people to display His wrath so that His mercy may be understood.” Paul would be shocked too.
When drawing conclusions on passages of Scripture I like to see what conclusions the author makes himself. Romans 12 gives us Paul’s conclusion to the first 11 chapters. He says, “Therefore, in view of God’s mercy.” He did not say in view of God’s election or God’s wrath, but in view of God’s mercy. In fact God’s mercy is one of the over-arching themes of Scripture, and it is in particular point here in Romans for a specific reason.

Some people believed (and taught) that birthright carried more weight than belief in whether or not someone received mercy from God. Being a Jew by birth was more important that believing in Christ on the cross in regards to acquiring righteousness. Paul began answering that issue in Romans chapter 4. He shows that even before the notion of Israel existed God imparted righteousness because of faith. Faith precedes both the law and the Jewish nation.

In chapter 9 Paul reveals that wrath exists outside grace not just outside the Jewish nation. In this he is reaffirming his previous point that belief carries more weight than birthright. His story of Jacob and Esau points to this specifically. The point is that God showed mercy to the one to which mercy was not expected; and the one who expected mercy (due to his birthright) found wrath instead.

Why did that happen? Because God chose to make it that way is the quick and unsatisfying answer. (Yet the answer we must accept, just as Paul reminds us.) Paul expands the answer in 9:30-33 when he says that some receive wrath because of their unbelief. This is where we begin to understand how wrath “reveals mercy” and how justice demands that God pour out His wrath on some Israelites. (It is important to note that Paul is speaking specifically of God’s wrath upon the Jewish nation in this passage.)

The reason he states is that those Israelites had attempted to gain righteousness by the law and God says it comes through faith. Christ on the cross is the message of mercy, and they rejected that message. It would be unjust for God to grant them mercy, because in doing so He would make the cross worthless.

When God reveals His wrath on the unbelieving Jews it proves that mercy is available to the Gentiles. Because, if birthright were enough to attain righteousness then the promise is meaningless (chapter 4). But, if birthright is not enough, then there is room for belief, and God has made that available to all. Not everyone can be a genetic child of Abraham, but everyone can be a child of the promise.

This is the point Paul makes in verse 32 when he concludes, “Why is all of this so? Why do some receive wrath instead of mercy? Because they pursued it (mercy) not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone’,” that is Christ on the cross.

Side note on Love and Wrath

Another issue arises when wrath is necessary in order for love to exist such that love is incomplete without wrath to help define it.

The issue is that the thing that defines carries more power than the thing defined. If love is dependant upon wrath for its definition, then wrath is more powerful than love. If, however, wrath is merely a function of love, then love remains supreme and wrath is its servant.

When I read of God's nature in Scripture it is clear to see that his nature is defined by Love. In fact, He defines himself with that idea. We can also see a world in which love displays wrath. In Hebrews we read that God disciplines those He loves, and in Revelation we see that God will punish those who killed His bride.

It is also clear that wrath is poured out upon sin, because sin destroys God's creation... and love demands the removal of anything that destroys the object of that love.

In the beginning there was God. In the end there will be God + whatever He wishes to create. Sin will no longer exist, because sin corrupts and God is incorruptible. Wrath is a function of love that is required in order for love to be complete (God's love for Himself and His character is the ultimate love). If sin were necessary for God's love to be complete, then I would expect a much different creation story... one in which God created that which was necessary for His glory to be fully revealed.

Think of Jesus speaking in John 10 when He states that He is the good shepherd. Do you think anyone in that crowd would have considered a shepherd "good" if he intentionally slaughtered the sheep? Most likely not, even if they belonged to someone else.

If that same shepherd killed a wolf invading the flock, however, he would be seen as a hero. Love for the sheep demands wrath upon the wolf. Wrath upon the sheep does not make sense. (Of course some will argue that the sheep receiving God's wrath are instead goats, but for this point I am merely looking at the necessity of wrath either as a function of love or a defining factor of love, and one would not attempt to define love for some sheep by destroying other sheep.)

The Supremacy of Love

One of the issues that has arisen in my recent Sovereignty journey is the possibility that God's wrath is necessary so that His mercy and grace can be fully understood and appreciated. I agree with the statement as it is. The question then becomes, how did God plan to reveal his wrath? What was His original design, and what does it say about His character?

In the beginning we are told that God creates. He called His own creation "very good". Wrath was missing in creation, and in the rest of the story I get the idea that God does not pour our His wrath on "very good" things. Wrath is reserved for evil things, disobedient and unbelieving things.

However, wrath and justice were clearly a part of His original plan (because they exist if not other reason). They reveal a truth about His love, that love costs the lover. He designed a system in which wrath would necessary not just to define His great love, but also to deal with sin. Sin entered the world (we can presume it was by God's plan) and sin must be destroyed according to God's character and nature.

That means that from the beginning it was God's design to create, have sin enter creation (the story is also quite clear that God did not create sin directly), and then deal with sin in a permanent way. That is where God's wrath enters the equation. God's wrath is such that it is able to destroy sin completely (and death, the effect of sin).

The question then becomes, who did God plan to release his wrath upon? The answer also becomes clear in Scripture... Himself. If we look at the conversation in Revelation we see that a question went out as to who would be worthy to bring salvation to the world. God Himself was the only one found worthy; and one might even say able. His wrath is such that were it poured out on anything or anyone else they would be forever destroyed. Only He was able to take upon Himself the full measure of His wrath and still survive.

God's plan was not that His creation would endure His wrath, but that it would experience and witness His wrath; the fullness of which was displayed upon Christ on the cross. He could do this because wrath is inferior to grace. Life triumphs over death. Love reigns supreme and is able to swallow up sin and death... and still has more to give. As Paul writes, where sin abounds grace abounds all the more.

We read in Scripture that some of creation will also partake in God's wrath. That does not mean God designed creation for His wrath. When God speaks of sin and redemption He speaks of all of creation. All fell; all were redeemed. On the cross He completed the task and paid the price in full. Those who fail to enter in to His rest do not do so because of a lack of grace but a lack of belief.

Thoughts on Sovereignty: Who should I hate?

Yes, this topic is still on my mind. Over the last few weeks I have been looking at this area of Sovereignty and it led me to jump back into Romans to do a nice 16-week study of the book focused around this one question: How are we justified and how are we condemned? Certainly one cannot come up with doctrine simply from one book, but I had to start somewhere and Romans seems to be central to the discussion.

Today I am focusing on one of the questions that arises from the position that God designed part of creation for the purpose of receiving His wrath. The question simply is, "What part of creation should I set apart for wrath?" or "Who should I hate?"

If God's design was that part of His creation was purposed for wrath then that means that displaying wrath is part of God's nature. God never acts outside of His nature. When we look at "wrath" in its pure and final form we see that wrath = separation from God. If love is unity with God, then eternal punishment is banishment from God. This is an entirely different problem, the fact that wrath is central to God's nature, and it involves people being separated from Him. It begins to sound somewhat Eastern to me; a belief that God is both the good and the bad; that His love is defined by His wrath just as much as his wrath is defined by His love.

For the sake of this blog I will assume that the above works out, and that God did indeed design part of his creation for the sole purpose of revealing His wrath against it in order that His love may be clearly understood to those chosen to receive it.

The next truth we are faced with is that those who are chosen have been chosen in order to be changed; changed into God's likeness specifically. This is referred to countless times throughout the New Testament, that God is at work changing us from the inside out, making us look more like Him.

This is not a new teaching at all; we have always been told that we should be patient because God is patient, forgiving because He forgave us, giving because God so loved that He gave.

The teaching I have not received is that which helps me understand how I am to embody God's wrath. It seems to follow that if God knows those He has set aside for wrath that it is in His will that I also discover those. If His will is not just for eternity, but for the earth too (something we teach on the love side) then part of my transformation should include displaying God's wrath to that part of creation that was designed for it. (All of a sudden I can see where things like Crusades come into being.)

To be fair, I have never met anyone I consider a credible source that has actually taught this message; that just as I grow in God's love I should also grow in His wrath. Wrath is something we withhold for sin, not the sinner... for that is God's job. It is interesting how we make that distinction in the area of wrath, but not love. Of course we were never commanded to display God's wrath (towards creation), and we were often commanded to display His love. Perhaps that is significant in understanding God's design.

Still two issues arise that I have been unable to answer:

1. Jesus makes it clear that thinking is equal to doing. It seems that some hold onto the position that certain parts of creation will go to hell, and that in doing so they will be accomplishing their God-ordained purpose. IE - God's character led Him to design part of creation for destruction. It seems like a semantic "out" to say, "I believe this, I just do not act on it, for that is God's job." Would that not be like hating someone but refraining from murdering them? I cannot imagine anything close to "hate" than the statement that a person was designed for the sole reason that they might be punished for all eternity. So, if we believe this, shouldn't it enter into our actions in some way? Otherwise we seem to be living outside our character; hypocrites as it were.
2. Others will say that vengeance is God's responsibility. Wrath is something that He reserves for Himself because He alone truly knows the destiny of creation. Though I have not arrived at Romans 12 in my study, we know that it tells us to avoid revenge in order to leave room for God's wrath. The implication here is that God is repaying a wrong that is done. When we look at sin (doing wrong against God) it has a simple definition of living outside of His will and plan. When I choose my will instead of His I have sinned against Him. That presents an awkward situation in the case of the person who was designed to reject God's will. Is He not actually living in obedience to God by his rejection? Such a person would be disobedient to his calling if he were to seek repentance or grace. So, how does vengeance, wrath, or justice fit into such an equation? If rebellion is obedience, and obedience is loving God, then where does punishment fit?

Let me say at this point that Yes, I believe it is possible to over-think things and miss the simplicity of the truth. Yet, truth is my goal. It is created in me to search for the truth until I reach one of two conclusions. Either I will find the truth because it is knowable or I will conclude that this truth is currently unknowable, a mystery as it were. We know that such truth exists for us on the earth because we do not see clearly here, not as we will see in eternity. (Honestly I believe God's sovereignty may be just such a mystery... but for now I am still pressing to see what is knowable.)

Why the press to "know"? Well, my life is consumed with God's character. Submitting myself to Him such that His character is made more real through my life is my purpose... to live is Christ. If it truly is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, then my life will look like His. And, if displaying wrath against creation is central to God's nature then follows that I should be seeing that same wrath against creation revealed in my life.

Something in my spirit struggles with that concept, even beyond the fact that I don't see any commands along those lines in Scripture; it goes deeper to a belief that God's love is self-defining and complete and that wrath is merely a function of love, not a definer of love. I will delve into that concept more in another post.

The Priority Principle

As I spend time with leaders from both the business and church world I have noticed a common theme. With a few questions, a decent cup of coffee, and about an hour of time they can describe why they do what they do. What they talk about are their core values; those things that they want to describe their life when it is all said and done.

Another thing becomes quite apparent with just a bit of digging. Many of these leaders have a hard time connecting the tasks that fill their days to their core values.

Sometimes it is just a matter of better understanding what they do and why. This is especially true of people with repetitive job cycles (each day looks the same, or each week follows the same pattern).

Most pastors fit into that category as there are certain things that must be done each week before the next Sunday arrives. Their to-do lists are often full before a week even begins. Many times they struggle with motivation because they have forgotten the connection that the task has to their values.

Other times the reason it is hard to find a connection between task and value is because there is no connection. People in this state often talk about things like "the tyranny of the urgent". They are doing things that must be done, but when you ask, "why?", they have a hard time giving a satisfying answer.

One little exercise I ask clients to walk through is to look at their To-Do list for a given week, take each task listed, and ask "Why am I doing this?" Take that answer and ask "why" again. Keep asking why until you get down to something you would consider a core value.

For example, a task might be "write follow-up letters to all guests from Sunday". Why? Because we want guests to feel welcomed and help them connect to our church. Why? God welcomed us into His family, we want to do the same. Why? We value Grace and Hospitality; two characteristics God displays to us.

Each task could go a number of directions. This exercise does two things for you. First, for those tasks that do lead to a core value it allows you to speak vision and not just task. We are no longer "writing follow-up letters to guests", we are extending Grace and Hospitality to people that God loves, just as He did to us. It might flavor those same letters with a different tone and passion.

Second, for those tasks that do not lead to a core value it helps you see that it either does not need to be done or it does not need to be done by the leader. It is important that a leader does not fill their week with tasks that have no connection to their core values. That drains motivation and quickly decreases their performance, creativity, passion, etc.

The simple truth is that there are more things that must be done than a leader can do in any given week. In the past we turned to "time management" tools to help us become more efficient. Sadly, the same technology that allowed us to become more efficient also allowed people to make more demands on us.

Cell phones allow us to make connections at any time, anywhere. They also allow people to believe that we are available to connect any time, anywhere. Email and every other online communication tool allow people to send questions, requests, comments, etc. to us with little to no effort. Put a $0.10 price tag on emails and I bet the average in-box would be cut in half.

Today the focus is not so much on time management as it is on Priority Management. Leaders that will be consistently successful are those that keep a tight reign on their weekly to-do list, keeping them in line with their core values.

Importance of Inflow

These last few months have been some of the most intense of my life. The whole process of hearing from God and then attempting to match my practical day-to-day life with His call has been incredibly transformational.

It has also been draining, and from what I am seeing it is only going to get more so. Some days I find myself looking back on my position as an associate pastor and thinking just how easy I had it. I realize there is always a case of greener grass, but the fact is I did have it easier back then. Some of that is probably because God was in the process of teaching me what it meant to be poured out for Him. Much of it was that I was the associate pastor... and I have come to believe there is just a whole different level of responsibility that a senior pastor feels.

As my ministry has changed I can empathize more with Paul when he recounted his sufferings in 2 Corinthians 11:16-29. That sounds silly even as I write it, but I find it amazing that at the end of his (quite substantial and impressive) list of trials he says, "besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches."

That is a new thing for me, being concerned for "all the churches". I could honestly say that I was concerned with "my" church, but not "all" the churches. Now, as I work with multiple pastors and business people across the city I find that I am constantly being poured out. I pray more, I hurt more. I battle worry and anxiety, not just for my family and our well-being, but for their families and well-being.

It is both incredibly fulfilling and incredibly draining at the same time.

That point become ultimately clear to me today as I stared, blank-faced, at my computer screen. I was trying to write and realized there was just nothing inside of me. I felt truly empty. That is when it hit me. It has been two days since I just sat and soaked in God's Word.

I have read my Bible in the last two days, but it was more of a reference tool as I was dispensing advice, preparing a message, or framing my prayers. I had not stopped long enough to allow God to fill me with His Word, and so I became empty.

Shortly after I realized that I was empty (and why), I thanked God for how He has chosen to use me at this season of my life. I realized that there have been times I have gone weeks or even months without allowing God to fill me before I felt this empty. That was a humbling and convicting thought... that I was giving away so little of what God had given me that I could last months between fill-ups.

That is most certainly not the case now. The calling God has given me is too big for me. The steps of faith He requires are too large. And that is just the way He wants it. Each day I am compelled to come to Him and simply commit myself to His glory. That is about all I can muster, to say, "Today God I am Yours, please fill me and use me as You see fit."

In that beautiful moment He fulfills what He promises so often in the Scripture; He gives me strength, wisdom, clarity, and passion for His Kingdom and Glory. Then He is good enough to take care of all of the other things I need in life as well.

Thoughts on Sovereignty

[This is a rather long, probably rambling thought on the question, "If God deserves the full credit for the salvation of the elect, does He also share the full blame for the damnation of the rest?"]

I have written on this before, but the topic has arisen once again and it is an important topic, fully worthy of two posts on my prestigious blog.

The issue of sovereignty is, at its core, the age old question, “Is God good?” Some think sovereignty is about Gods power verses our lack of power, but that is merely the first level of the discussion, and it is rather easily answered. With just little research and discovery we find that He has all power and we have none, or we have none outside of that which He has given us.

No, the much more pressing question is, how does this all-powerful God choose to use His power? Is He giving and kind or sadistic and evil? It is the question the serpent first posed to Adam and Eve in the garden. Would God really be so cruel as to deprive you of His good fruit? Would he really kill you simply because you ate of it?

Before we go much further let me say that there is only one answer to the question, “Is God good?” It is a whole-hearted “Yes!” Jesus uses goodness as His standard for God. When the people called Him “good teacher” He reminded them that there is only one who is good, and that is God. By definition anything God does is good, regardless of how it looks through our eyes.

With that as our foundation let us consider a more specific case; whether God has found it good to create some people for His glory and others for His wrath. This is the end reality of most discussions about the chosen and elect. In our desire to give God full credit for our salvation (which He deserves) we often paint a picture in which He also receives full credit for the damnation of the lost.

Though I am willing to accept that premise, I neither desire to do so nor do I think it is necessary according to Scripture.

One objection is somewhat subjective, loosely resting upon principle’s found in Scripture. It has to do with my nature as a father in light of God, the ultimate Father. He says of me that I am evil, and yes I still desire good for my children. How much more, He continues, does He want good things for His children? In Matthew this was not directed only at people who were destined for eternity with God. He was speaking in a more general term, relating our “good” wickedness to his perfect goodness.

Imagine a scene that took place five years ago as my wife and I were discussing children. We decided that we wanted two, a son and a daughter. We hoped to have the son first and the daughter second, some two years later.

The son will be our treasure. Each day we will shower him with love, and each night he will fall asleep secure in our acceptance and care.

The daughter will be reserved for our wrath. Each day she will receive only what she needs to survive. We will not let her die so that we can torture her for another day. Each night we will cut, burn, and beat her and then throw her into a room of utter darkness to fall asleep in her misery.

After this talk we look at each other and agree that our plan is good, in fact it is very good. Then we rest and go to bed.

My stomach squirms just writing these things. They are so far from the truth as to be horrific and ghastly. No sane person would read that conversation and call it “good”. And, if I heard anyone talking like that about my children I would do whatever it took to stop it. I would die before I let my daughter be treated in such a way.

In that light it is no great stretch for me to believe God’s heart went out in the same way about His own sons and daughters. Then, in His great power and mercy he made sure that it did not have to be that way. He would do whatever it takes to redeem His creation. And he did it.

Scripture is extremely clear that when God redeemed creation through Jesus that He completed the task. He saved all, fixed it all, and covered it all. Every wrong was righted; every sin covered when Jesus paid the price and proved His power.

This is what we expect from a good and powerful God. When we were completely unable to save ourselves from an eternity of suffering He stepped in and saved us.

And yet Scripture is also clear that some will not be saved. Some will experience God’s wrath for all eternity. That is really where the problem arises. If God were to say to us, “All will be saved, even if you don’t think they should be,” ten we would deal with it. We might not like it, but in submission to His will we would live with it. Jesus told a parable similar to that after all and the message was clear; God’s mercy is much greater than ours.

But, God does not say that. He tells us that some will be judged for all time in endless fire and separation. How does that happen? We only have two choices. The first is that God decided from the beginning that it would be good to create some things for the sole purpose of releasing His wrath upon them. The second is that He created us with the ability to reject His love and choose His wrath instead.

I reject the first option for two reasons. First it goes against the definition of love that God uses to describe Himself. (His very nature is love, defined as fully giving oneself for another. Wrath receives its definition from love, as the absence of true love.) Second, God says that each will be judged according to his own words and deeds.

Some hesitate to land upon the second option for fear that it will raise a new problem. For, if someone is able to choose death, then couldn’t they also choose life? Not necessarily. Let us take the first man and woman as an example.

What part did Adam and Eve play in the life they discovered? None. Yet, what part did they play in their own death and separation from God? Every part according to God, perhaps somewhat shared with the serpent.

Similarly let us consider the children of Israel. What part did they play in their rescue from Egypt? None. And yet to whom does Scripture attribute the blame for those who died in the wilderness? Certainly not to God. The terms “hardened hearts, disobedience, and unbelief” describe those who were saved from Egypt and yet did not enter His rest.

Might the process of our salvation follow a similar pattern? Might it be more of a process than a single point in time? What if we are all dead in our sins, bound in slavery until God comes and breathes new life into us, setting us free with the offer of eternal life? What if when Scripture says that Jesus died once for all it means just that? That all of us who are by our sinful nature objects of God’s wrath are offered freedom? It has nothing to do with any action or choice we take; God just chose to pay the price for our sin and offers us new life. And this new life is offered to us all, in fact it is granted to us all in his superior grace and mercy. He says to everyone, “Come and eat, enter my rest!”

What then do we say of those who end up experiencing God’s wrath? Perhaps it is of those that the author of Hebrews refers in chapter 6:4-6, “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”

This is a picture of one who has been freed from the blindness of sin, who has tasted the breath of life… and yet then rejects that very life choosing to embrace death instead.
And so God retains full credit for all those who are saved, and yet He holds none of the blame for those who are condemned.

Generational Change

Change. It is a hot topic these days as many people find themselves dissatisfied with the status quo. In all of our recent talk about change we seem to have forgotten an important fact.

It often takes as long to change the status quo as it took to establish it.

We know this is true from experience. If you spend ten years adding weight to your physical frame, don't expect it to come off in ten weeks. If you spend ten years building your debt portfolio (car, credit cards, school loans, etc.), don't expect to be debt free in ten weeks.

Most pastors and ministry leaders will nod in agreement to these points; they are things we regularly speak about. But, let us bring it home into the church realm.

If we have spent ten years (or more) building mediocrity and apathy into our churches, why do we expect them to become missional in ten weeks (or even ten months)? People will give lip service to things like life-long commitment to a vision, but few actually mean it.

Everyone wants to sign up to be Gideon; called to change one day, and seeing God's deliverance soon after. Fewer want to sign up to be Moses, who was called, then sent to 40 years of training, then served for 40 years, and then asked to turn the ministry over to someone else before ever entering the promised land.

Imagine if God revealed a fool-proof plan that guaranteed in twenty years your church or denomination would begin growing 100% each year. Would you sign up for that plan?

What if you got to the fine print and read that the next nineteen years will see mostly internal change and very little external fruit. To top it off the twenty-year plan has someone else's name at the top of the leadership chart.

Is the plan still as appealing as it was at first? Would you still be willing to commit the next twenty years of your life to the plan knowing you may never see the fruit?

Our culture has infected us with such "new" and "fast" mentality that we have a hard time talking about generational change. We spent a generation getting where we are; what if it requires a generation to get back on track?

It is true that nothing is impossible with God. He can turn a nation to himself in mere days (see Nineveh and Jonah). It is also true that God is not as concerned with our calendar as our character. If it takes forty years for Him to mold us into a usable vessel that is acceptable to Him.

Is it acceptable to us?

Lessons from the Outside: Why the Walls?

The separation between clergy and laity was very clear to me early in my ministry. In these last years, however, that line has become more blurred. I believe it has much to do with the language I use to describe each one and the connotations it contains.

When I entered the ministry I "surrendered to a call" from God. That accurately describes the process I went through. It was not a quick process, nor an easy one. Following God's call on my life required me to surrender my own dreams and desires to His Will.

The problem comes when we do not use the same phrase to describe how someone becomes a banker, or plumber, or stay-at-home mom. The connotation is that everyone who does not enter "the ministry" does not receive a call from God.

It is as if the call on my life was higher, deeper, or more consuming than the call of the average believer. I don't see that idea supported in Scripture.

We can build an argument that supports the reality that some callings place us in roles that carry more authority or require certain qualifying standards. Say we call that a "five talent calling" (even though I am not sure God would). The question then becomes, "Does God view the 'one talent calling' as less important or less demanding?"

Scripture says "No". That means that our calling has less to do with where we draw our paycheck and more to do with the roles God has chosen for us. He expects the same focus and the same results regardless of where He places us.

Consider this example. We believe that a pastor (bishop and elder in the Bible) will be judged by God according to how he takes care of those in his flock. Do we believe a CEO will be judged in the same way by how he cares for the employees in his business? If not then it may be time to re-read Proverbs, the Prophets, and much of the New Testament.

Even though I am no longer working on a church staff I feel no less "called to the ministry". My role may have changed, but God's expectations of me have not. My purpose is the same whether I am coaching a small business owner or a church planter; to see God's glory increase in and through them.

Lessons from the Outside: "My Identity"

God has been speaking to me recently about my identity, where I find my purpose and value. Though his Word clearly says that I should find my value in His glory (Matt. 6:33), too many times I try to identify myself by my plans, abilities, vocation, and my ministry.

It is deceptively easy to define my identity by the ministry I do for God rather than the purpose for which God created me. God created me to reveal His glory through good works. All too often I begin finding my meaning in the good works rather than in His revealed glory.

That became clear when He removed me from ministry life. I was unaware how much of my “self” was tied to my ministry. Ministry was something tangible that I could measure myself by. I could see “lifechange” and measure things like baptisms and group attendance. If the numbers were good then it was not hard to believe that my life had great meaning; especially since all of these numbers had to do with God’s Kingdom, not my own.

I am beginning to see that when I find my identity in anything other than God’s glory revealed through me I am headed toward idolatry (with me as the key idol). That path leads to both delusion and depression. Delusion occurs when I believe I am overly important in God’s Kingdom. Depression occurs when I believe God could never use me.

The truly amazing thing is that when my value and purpose are resting on things other than God I can swing between delusion and depression at an alarming rate.

It makes me wonder if Jesus felt like he was more successful after feeding the 5000 than the day He spoke about His body as the bread of life and watched most of his followers leave. I doubt it. The mission of Jesus’ life was God’s glory revealed, not God’s glory well received and celebrated.

I have found several signs that indicate a life that is grounded in God; whose sole purpose is His revealed glory:

1. Humility and Intensity. There is a strange mix of humility and intensity from those operating under the identity of Christ. He modeled this in His own ministry. Early mornings, late nights, and days full of pouring Himself out at every turn were the norm. Followers seeking His glory have this same drive, not to lift up themselves, but to pour themselves out each day for His glory.
2. Consistent Confidence. Even your most Christ-centered follower will have difficult days or seasons of doubt. Christ himself struggled as He learned obedience (see the garden before his crucifixion). Consistent confidence comes from daily renewal as each day we lay down our life and take up His cross. God refreshes the discouraged spirit, refocuses any misappropriated glory, and removes any misplaced trust. He reminds us that victory is not a question of if, just when.
3. Creativity. God longs to accomplish His work and reveal His glory. When I line up with Him, He reveals methods of ministry that are beyond my own creative ability. When you see extremely creative ministries do not covet their creativity, covet their connectedness to God.
4. Clarity. The life of Christ revealed God’s glory through the redemption of mankind by His death and resurrection. We also reveal God’s glory through the redemption of mankind by _______________. When I am connected daily to God, it is easy for me to fill in that blank.
5. Audacious Goals. Only God would set a goal of “redeeming all of Creation.” Those connected to God have the audacity to set huge goals. Those goals often go unreached because as soon as they might draw near one they pick it up and toss it further away, raising the bar even higher. They have a hunger to see God’s glory revealed that will not be satisfied until all of Creation is reconciled to Him.

Which of these characteristics are revealed in your daily life? Which are missing, and what does that reveal about where you are finding your identity?