I am a Big Picture guy who is scared of Big Pictures. If you are like me then you will understand, if you are not then let me explain. I love to dream about the future and the things that could and should be. I have a rather large view of God and what kinds of things fall in the realm of "possible" with Him. So, it is not unusual for me to have dreams that cover things like "What it would take to end world hunger" or "What it would look like to completely restructure the American church." These are what I call "Big Pictures".
The thing is, it is not uncommon for me to spend time thinking about these things and then start getting scared, anxious, and overwhelmed. It is as if I am a painter who gets scared looking at his own paintings. That is a good thing, because it helps me to rely upon God. It is also a bad thing because when I freeze when I allow fear into my life. You have all heard the line that, "A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step." That sounds nice, and helps little. A more meaningful phrase would be, "This 1,000 mile journey begins with that particular step." It is not the last 999 miles that stop most people; it is the first step. They see the goal and have no idea where to get started, how to get started, or who to talk to about getting started.
That is where the 5 Part Principle comes from in my life. It helps me take a Big Picture and break it down, like a Mosaic if you will. It is a simple process that you can do for almost anything in life; so simple that to many of you it will likely seem common sense.
You start by identifying with as much clarity as you can your Big Picture. Let us set an example of "I want to graduate from the University of Texas business school with honors." That gives me a good sense of what, where, and how. My first step is to break that down into 5 parts. These parts don't have to be equal in size or scope, it just has to be FIVE parts. So, for our example it might be:
1. Apply to UT
2. Get accepted
3. Get into the business program
4. Make good grades
5. Graduate
Four out of my 5 parts will happen in about 3 months total time. The other part (make good grades) will actually take 4 years. That is OK, the point is to start breaking the Big Picture up and giving us some practical steps to look at. After your initial 5 is done you start taking each step and breaking it into five. For example, taking "Apply to UT":
1. Research application deadlines and requirements.
2. Get an application.
3. Fill it out (remember the fee!)
4. Write the essay.
5. Mail or deliver it to the school.
You can keep doing this process of breaking a Step into 5 parts as many times as you want. My rule of thumb is; if it takes you longer to break down the step than it would take you to DO the step... you should stop breaking down steps.
At some point you will find that a Step can only be broken down 2 or 3 times; that is OK. When you get to the end of the process you will have anywhere from 5 to 50 to 500 steps. And, all of a sudden your Big Picture is not so big. And, if you make your steps chronological (I started with apply, ended with graduate), then you have actually created for yourself a nice little map.
I find that dreams and visions are not so scary once I put them on paper. And, when I take a little time to define what the "first step" actually looks like I am much more likely to actually do it.
So, what is your Big Picture dream? Has God laid something on your heart for your life, your family, or His Kingdom? Why not take some time this week to start your own 5 Part Principle and see where it leads?
On Leadership, Church Health, and the hope that God will change the way we do Church in America.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Flashy People Don't Connect
This post was inspired by a recent MasterCard commercial in which Peyton Manning only hears the best even as people are trying to say hurtful things. For example, when a room service man tells him, "Don't choke on that" he responds, "Thanks, I think I will just cut it up, maybe make a fruit salad!" Or the woman who tells him, "Hey Manning, take a hike!" to which he responds, "You know, that's a good idea, I think I will go for a hike today... this weather is great!" It was classic Manning; self-deprecating and humorous.
As I sat there I realized that he probably got paid many, many dollars to make those commercials. MasterCard had many, many choices of celebrities they could have chosen, and they chose Peyton Manning. They did not choose him because he is flashy, because flashy people don't connect. Flashy people may catch your eye, they may even help you move some product, but if your goal is to connect on a personal level with people... flashy people just don't do that very well. We may love to look at them, but for many reasons we never feel truly connected to them.
There is this flawed belief that it will be the flashy Christians that change the world. That is just not true. The flashy Christians will play their part, and it is an important part because they help communicate a message to many. It will be the ordinary Christians, however, that win the day. Because, at the end of the day Christianity is about relationships, and relationships require connection. As important as his ministry is, Billy Graham did not change many lives. He touched millions of them... and then God took that touch and connected those people to ordinary, every day Christians. That is where the process of life change really happened in those lives. And, for every one Billy Graham there must be millions of us ordinary people to carry out our special calling.
Look at any successful ministry that has maintained a large impact and you will find thousands of ordinary people at the heart of that success. Of course, I may have it all backwards, and what I call flashy God may call ordinary. It could just be that the truly extraordinary among us are those who make the 1 on 1 connections that help change lives.
As I sat there I realized that he probably got paid many, many dollars to make those commercials. MasterCard had many, many choices of celebrities they could have chosen, and they chose Peyton Manning. They did not choose him because he is flashy, because flashy people don't connect. Flashy people may catch your eye, they may even help you move some product, but if your goal is to connect on a personal level with people... flashy people just don't do that very well. We may love to look at them, but for many reasons we never feel truly connected to them.
There is this flawed belief that it will be the flashy Christians that change the world. That is just not true. The flashy Christians will play their part, and it is an important part because they help communicate a message to many. It will be the ordinary Christians, however, that win the day. Because, at the end of the day Christianity is about relationships, and relationships require connection. As important as his ministry is, Billy Graham did not change many lives. He touched millions of them... and then God took that touch and connected those people to ordinary, every day Christians. That is where the process of life change really happened in those lives. And, for every one Billy Graham there must be millions of us ordinary people to carry out our special calling.
Look at any successful ministry that has maintained a large impact and you will find thousands of ordinary people at the heart of that success. Of course, I may have it all backwards, and what I call flashy God may call ordinary. It could just be that the truly extraordinary among us are those who make the 1 on 1 connections that help change lives.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Something Broke
And I am trying to fix it. Not sure what happened but nothing will display on my front page. Testing ensues...
Annnnd apparently this fixed it. Still not sure what happened, but you have to love simple work-a-rounds!
Annnnd apparently this fixed it. Still not sure what happened, but you have to love simple work-a-rounds!
An Ode to Clive
As is almost always the case... C.S. Lewis is able to say what I think more succinctly and more accurately than I can. I was emailed this little excerpt after last week's Blog and thought I would post it here so that more of my readers could enjoy it, and perhaps be opened up to a new world if perchance you have not been in the habit of finding a reading anything written by C.S. Lewis.
'THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS’ - CHAPTER 8
My dear Wormwood,
So you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I’m sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.
To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more that on peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is filled and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, to assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, then at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up in its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon the universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
But of course the troughs afford opportunities to our side also. Next week I will give you some hints on how to exploit them.
Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE
'THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS’ - CHAPTER 8
My dear Wormwood,
So you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I’m sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.
To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more that on peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is filled and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, to assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, then at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up in its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon the universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
But of course the troughs afford opportunities to our side also. Next week I will give you some hints on how to exploit them.
Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Sincere
Call it lack of sleep, lack of focus, perhaps lack of perspective. For whatever reason I have had a "lack" this last week. I have had some good times in God's Word, some decent conversations with people about a whole slew of topics. I probably have 5 Blog Titles sitting on one of my little white pads (I love those things!). But, every time I sit down to write I find myself writing words that I believe, but I don't feel.
I began wondering if it was just better to wait to write until I could really feel the things that I was saying were true. That was silly of me, because I have taught numerous times that Action precedes Emotion. Truth is not truth because of my feelings. My sincerity does not make something true, and my wavering does not make it false. The only thing at stake is my security and perhaps my comfort. [Quick note, I am listening to Tenth Avenue North's album while writing this... good stuff.]
So, I am trying to step back, make some space, and find my bearings. God speaks every day, and He does not work hard to hide His words. During times like this where life takes a strange turn (lots of unexpected bills all hitting at once, sick kids, weird sleep patterns, etc.) I often have to work a little harder, or more truly stop trying to work so hard in some cases, to just listen.
That is me today. Trying to listen to the voice that speaks to me about things beyond today's to-do list and tonight's crying kid and yesterdays broken water pump. I don't feel very excited about that voice, and thankfully my feelings are not all that important when it comes to what is true and good in my life. Perhaps I can be sincere by doing what I know to be true even if I don't feel like it at the time. Maybe that is even a deeper form of sincerity than merely doing what is right when I also feel like doing what is right.
I began wondering if it was just better to wait to write until I could really feel the things that I was saying were true. That was silly of me, because I have taught numerous times that Action precedes Emotion. Truth is not truth because of my feelings. My sincerity does not make something true, and my wavering does not make it false. The only thing at stake is my security and perhaps my comfort. [Quick note, I am listening to Tenth Avenue North's album while writing this... good stuff.]
So, I am trying to step back, make some space, and find my bearings. God speaks every day, and He does not work hard to hide His words. During times like this where life takes a strange turn (lots of unexpected bills all hitting at once, sick kids, weird sleep patterns, etc.) I often have to work a little harder, or more truly stop trying to work so hard in some cases, to just listen.
That is me today. Trying to listen to the voice that speaks to me about things beyond today's to-do list and tonight's crying kid and yesterdays broken water pump. I don't feel very excited about that voice, and thankfully my feelings are not all that important when it comes to what is true and good in my life. Perhaps I can be sincere by doing what I know to be true even if I don't feel like it at the time. Maybe that is even a deeper form of sincerity than merely doing what is right when I also feel like doing what is right.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Too close... a little too close
My heart will be deeply saddened if nobody gets the movie reference here. For any lurkers who have always wanted to comment but have yet to try... here is your chance. Guess the movie reference in your comment!
I am a big believer in Accountability. I will never be my best unless others hold me to a certain set of expectations and actively check my progress towards goals. As a leader in a church I often have discussions with people about accountability to the teachings of God's Word and the goals that He has set for our life. I want to think that I can be a person who can give practical, spiritual, and relational support to others as they work out their salvation. But, I sometimes wonder where my "line" is; that place that I won't allow people to cross because it is just a little too close.
Some people put that line on finances. They will share their struggle with daily time with God, maybe with prayer, even with some anger or bitterness they are dealing with. They seem to be stressed... maybe having unusual fights at home. But, you ask them about their debt and the way it is affecting many of those other issues and you can almost physically see them close up.
I have seen the same thing happen with parenting. It is amazing to me just how protective we are not of our kids but of the way we are perceived as parents. Offering unsolicited parenting advice is a quick way to see just how close someone is willing to let you get.
On these issues, and many others, my line is a good distance away. I don't mind talking about marriage, parenting, finances, or many other things. I think part of that is because over the last 10+ years God has been digging into all of those areas of my life and He has already revealed some of the darker places I tried to keep hidden in my heart. I am not ashamed anymore because I know that He still loves me, and even more then that it is His love that caused him to bring my dark places into the light.
But, I know that there are areas in my heart that I still struggle with sharing... places I don't want other people to see. And, there are things in other people's heart that I just don't want to hear. For example, I don't mind talking to one of the guys in my group about a struggle with lust... we have all been there and I can pray with you and offer some practical advice. But, what if they share that they are lusting after my wife? I have to say that the same feelings of understanding and support are quickly overshadowed. Just minutes before I could have been nodding my head in agreement with the struggle that we all face. But, when it comes closer to home I would rather just think of you as a pervert who needs to stop looking at or thinking about my wife!
Now, to be honest, I am not sure that I would be the best person to counsel a guy who was having trouble lusting after my wife. But, would that revelation be enough to break a long-term friendship? Would all of the "closeness" we had built over the years be torn down if we crossed a line and became "too close"? When I see who they really are am I still able to love and accept them? Would they do the same for me? Should they?
I am a big believer in Accountability. I will never be my best unless others hold me to a certain set of expectations and actively check my progress towards goals. As a leader in a church I often have discussions with people about accountability to the teachings of God's Word and the goals that He has set for our life. I want to think that I can be a person who can give practical, spiritual, and relational support to others as they work out their salvation. But, I sometimes wonder where my "line" is; that place that I won't allow people to cross because it is just a little too close.
Some people put that line on finances. They will share their struggle with daily time with God, maybe with prayer, even with some anger or bitterness they are dealing with. They seem to be stressed... maybe having unusual fights at home. But, you ask them about their debt and the way it is affecting many of those other issues and you can almost physically see them close up.
I have seen the same thing happen with parenting. It is amazing to me just how protective we are not of our kids but of the way we are perceived as parents. Offering unsolicited parenting advice is a quick way to see just how close someone is willing to let you get.
On these issues, and many others, my line is a good distance away. I don't mind talking about marriage, parenting, finances, or many other things. I think part of that is because over the last 10+ years God has been digging into all of those areas of my life and He has already revealed some of the darker places I tried to keep hidden in my heart. I am not ashamed anymore because I know that He still loves me, and even more then that it is His love that caused him to bring my dark places into the light.
But, I know that there are areas in my heart that I still struggle with sharing... places I don't want other people to see. And, there are things in other people's heart that I just don't want to hear. For example, I don't mind talking to one of the guys in my group about a struggle with lust... we have all been there and I can pray with you and offer some practical advice. But, what if they share that they are lusting after my wife? I have to say that the same feelings of understanding and support are quickly overshadowed. Just minutes before I could have been nodding my head in agreement with the struggle that we all face. But, when it comes closer to home I would rather just think of you as a pervert who needs to stop looking at or thinking about my wife!
Now, to be honest, I am not sure that I would be the best person to counsel a guy who was having trouble lusting after my wife. But, would that revelation be enough to break a long-term friendship? Would all of the "closeness" we had built over the years be torn down if we crossed a line and became "too close"? When I see who they really are am I still able to love and accept them? Would they do the same for me? Should they?