And Another Thing

I usually try to keep an open mind about things but sometimes I just get tired of it all. I just don't care what people think and some things just need to be said. So here are a few things I would like to get off my chest before the end of the year.

Tattoos are ridiculous. Really, what is the purpose? Are we so desperate to express our individuality that we need to permanently mark ourselves? I have yet to see a tattoo that I thought really had staying power. I have never seen a painting that I would want permanently attached to my living room wall. How can people suddenly decide that they want something permanently tattooed to their bodies?

This leads me to piercings. Whoever thought that was a good idea? What purpose does a stud in the side of your face serve? How strong is peer pressure that people will mutilate themselves like that just to fit in.

And finally, coffee. Why can't there be a coffee shop where there are no flavors other than coffee and the only options are in terms of size and strength? The should have strengths from 1 to 10 with 1 being slightly tan and 10 being burned black. You could just walk in and say, "Give me a 6 large," and be done with it.

Well, that's about it. I am ready for 2012. I think I'm getting grouchy in my old age.

The Good Citizen

The point has been made repeatedly that our emphasis needs to be on the Kingdom of God. Jesus constantly talks about the Kingdom and when he uses the word "Church" he is still talking about the Kingdom. Of course, scripture also says a lot about the local church but it is always in support of the Kingdom. But what does that mean for the local church and individual followers of Jesus?

In the "Lord's Prayer" Jesus lays out the Kingdom mission when he prays, "They Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We understand then that we are to live in light of this mission. But what does that mean? I think we have a tendency to make it a lot more difficult to understand than it is.

One thing that we understand quite well is good citizenship. Not they we necessarily see a lot of good citizenship but we understand the concept and we talk a lot about it. though there are some significant differences I think we can apply our understanding of citizenship with being a citizen of the Kingdom.

A good citizen does his part for his country. He wants what his best for his country and understands that he has a responsibility to his country to do his best to make his country the best it can be. A good citizen is required to use his gifts and abilities for the good of his country. He has a part to play on a national level as well as regional and local level though most of the focus for most citizens will be at the local level where he wants what is best for his community and fellow citizens. He is obligated to represent his country well where ever he goes and what ever circumstances he finds himself in.

A bad citizen doesn't feel this responsibility and obligation. He lives with a sense of entitlement and has an adversarial relationship with a good percentage of his fellow citizens. He feels no compulsion to serve his fellow citizens or his country because he believes it is the responsibility of his state to serve him. He wants all the benefits of the state without having to make a contribution of his own.

The same holds true for the Kingdom of God. 1 Peter 4:10 says, "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, administering God's grace in its various forms." As a citizen of the Kingdom I have a responsibility to use my gifts and abilities to serve others. I need an "ends of the earth" perspective but I spend most of my time and effort locally. I am not simply a receptacle of God's grace, I also do my part in administering God's grace. I need to be a close observer of my local community and do my part to help it reflect the Kingdom positively.

It is easy for citizens of the Kingdom of God to simply sit back and expect the King to take care of all the problems in our location. It is easy to ignore our responsibility and obligation in that process. It is easy to blame our fellow citizens for the problems. It is easy to care little about the well being of our fellow citizens and proclaim they deserve what they get. But that is being a bad citizen of the Kingdom.

With the high level of patriotism we have in the USA you would think we would understand what it means to be a good citizen. How much more should be good citizens of the Kingdom of God.

"c"hurch No More

I think the use of the word "church" should be banned for 5 years in North America. I preached a sermon one time explaining the difference between the big "C" Church made up all followers of Jesus around the world and little "c" churches that we use to describe our individual local congregation that may or may not include followers of Jesus. And I still see a lot of confusion between the two. In fact, I was recently listening to a nationally know author speak and he mixed the two freely and had them mixed up in the same sentence. So, until we get it straight, I propose banning the use of the little "c" church from our vocabulary.

Every church name would have to relate to THE Church. No "Community Church" or "First," "Second," or "Third Church." Every church name would start with "The Church That Meets at ____________," where the blank would be the street address. Our church could no longer be called "ZUB Church" but would be named "The Church That Meets At 3092 W. Broadway."

Sure, it would cause a lot of problems. Just the website confusion alone would be a major headache. But maybe we would finally start thinking straight about the Church.

Where Do You Grow?

I've been processing some thoughts on the environments where we grow in our relationship with God. Here is a diagram of the concept.



















The larger the circle the larger the impact the indicated environment has on your spiritual growth. In this diagram "Personal Bible Study" has the biggest impact and a relationship with a "Mentor" has the smallest impact. This is just an example so in real life there would probably be several more environments and the sizes would be different for each individual person.

The thought is that each person needs a number of environments where we can grow in our relationship with God. Some of the environments may serve other purposes so just because they are small doesn't mean they have less value. The church can help people by making learning environments available for people.

But to do so we also need to understand that everyone is at a different point on a continuum with regard to their desire to grow. Consider the following diagram.








Individuals would fit all along this continuum. A learning environment that included people from a wide range of this continuum would have a smaller impact on an individuals spiritual growth because to include everyone the environment would probably need to target its purpose and activities to meet a broad range of desire. An environment that included individuals that also fit fairly close together on the continuum would be able to focus more and would therefore probably have a greater impact on the individual's growth.

Environments could also have greater impact the farther the members of the environment are toward the "Highly Motivated" end of the continuum because these individuals would be more likely to accept a purpose and activities for the environment that targeted spiritual growth. Individuals toward the "casual" end would tend to favor other purposes and activities for the environment.

Practically, we can set expectations for an environment, and avoid a lot of frustration, if we are aware of these factors. If we create an environment that consists of individuals from a wide range on the continuum we should realize that we are probably not going to get high impact spiritual growth from that environment. Instead we can use that environment to build community, nudge individuals in the direction of growth, etc. On the other hand, if we create an environment that is made up of a group of individuals that all come from a region far to the right on the continuum we can expect that this environment will need to challenge the individuals to grow or they will probably quickly lose interest.

Just thinking out loud.

Education

I'm a big fan of Khan Academy. I think it is genius and I have fun learning on it. But I think Khan makes a great point about how we learn and it has me thinking about a lot of different areas of education.

In a typical educational setting a teacher will teach their block of content and give a test to see how well the students are grasping the material. Let's just say the students take that test and a few get 95% correct, several more get 85% correct, and a several get 75% correct. The question is what will happen in the very next class after the test.

The answer is that in most cases the teacher moves on to the next block of content. I suppose some teachers may take a few moments going over what was missed but it is doubtful that such a review is very thorough. The fact is a good portion of the students do not understand 25% of the content, the average student in the class doesn't understand 15% of the content, and even the brightest students do not understand 5% of the content. A few subjects can handle this problem because understanding the new block of content has little impact on understanding the previous block of content. But most subjects build on previous learning so this lack of understanding is just not acceptable.

When I was at boarding school I remember a teacher arriving who taught my brother's class and a few other classes below me. I remember that one of the things he wanted to do was teach basic English grammar no matter how long it took. If nothing else those kids were going to know about sentence structure, verbs and nouns, adjectives and adverbs, and all the rest. I think that was brilliant. I think a lot of us went through school learning only about 75% of what we needed to know about grammar. A thorough understanding would have been a blessing.

I also admire Kahn's approach to using technology to actually humanize education. In many cases technology has the effect of de-humanizing whatever it is we are using it for. How many times have you heard people complain about automated answering systems when calling a company or organization on the phone? Using technology to increase the value of our human interaction is something we need to work on a lot more.

Reality

Heh Heh. I can't believe that I am writing a post on reality.

I think it is very hard for most Americans, including American Christians, to accept the reality of reality. It is much more fun to create our own.

Calvin, from the Calvin & Hobbes comic series, said, "Reality continues to ruin my life."

Adam Savage, of Myth Busters fame, said, "I reject your reality, and substitute it for my own."

That pretty much sums up the view of reality for most people I know. Instead of dealing with reality we seem bent on creating our own. And we do it with utmost seriousness at times.

I recently watched a news report that told the story of a Somali family who walked 24 miles to reach help at a famine relief camp in Kenya. The mom died on the way and the father and children were very weak when they arrived. That is the reality of the world we live in. That's some serious stuff. Funny how we can turn a lot of other aspects of our life and elevate them to "most serious" status.

Sometimes I hear Christians saying that the end of the world is near because of the bad things they are reading about in their communities. I used to go to church with a guy in Africa who didn't have any ears. They had been cut off by rebel soldiers. I bet he thought the end of the world was long past due. We probably would have given up on church if that happened to us. I guess "How bad things are" is relative.

I don't mean this post to be a downer because we have so much to be thankful for. But I think the more we truly grasp reality the more thankful we become. A book title that really helps me (You can tell I am a deep thinker, can't you?) is Eugene Peterson's "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." Now there is a dose of reality I can relate to.

Complaints Blessings

Well, it is really hot. I usually don't run air conditioners in the church sanctuary unless there is an event taking place but I did turn it on this week to try and keep some of gear from melting. I don't worry about the electronics since it's all turned off but I do worry about drums and guitars and other stuff made of wood. It's hot.

My son will be going off to college this fall and he happened to be lucky enough to get stuck in one of the few dorms that has no air conditioning. He complained to me about it the other day. Big mistake. I grew up in Africa and went to boarding school where air conditioning was just a dream. I don't think he appreciated my lesson on evaporative cooling. You sweat for a reason, you know. But it is hot.

It just so happens that the assignment for our small group this week is to list all of the blessings we have been blessed with. All of them. No matter how small. That list gets pretty big in a big hurry and after awhile complaining seems kind of ridiculous. I guess that was the point of the exercise.

So it doesn't matter how hot it is, how stupid the politicians in Washington are being, what the terror threat level might be, how bad my tomatoes are suffering from Blossom End Rot, or how worried I might be about how my kids might turn out (My brother says his biggest fear is that one of his daughters will be the next Lady Gaga.) I won't complain because I am blessed.

Defining Missional

I still haven't gotten my head around this topic so here it is again. If I wanted to get in touch with a group of people around a common interest I would need to define that interest so that people would know if they fit in the group or not. We see this on the web all the time. Some people start groups based on a particular sport. Others refine that even more and create groups around a specific team. And still others start groups that revolve around a specific cause regarding their specific team. (Fire The Coach!)But it gets a lot more difficult when the group is based on a word that has several meanings. This problem is not new.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/march/16.56.html

http://www.friendofmissional.org/

http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/frank-violas-three-questions-on-the-meaning-of-missional/

http://subversiveinfluence.com/2008/07/50-ways-to-define-%E2%80%9Cmissional%E2%80%9D-ix/

So how would I define "missional" if I wanted to create a group of leaders who wanted to encourage each other along that path? What would I throw out that would help people know what I was talking about and what kind of a group I was looking for?

As I look through the notes I have from listening to Reggie McNeil I come up with a lot of ideas.

"The People of God...partnering with Him...in His redemptive mission in the world."

"Moving from church as a "what" to church as a "who"."

"Moving from a noun to a verb. i.e. 'I church at work.'"

"Inward focused to outward focused."

"From program development to people development."

"From church centric to Kingdom focused."

All are good thoughts but how do you put them together in a definition that makes sense? I was at our denominations national conference recently and I heard a guy talking about establishing missional communities. I had a conversation with him afterwards to try to determine exactly what he was talking about. I think he is on a similar path but who knows.

Maybe it is best not to worry about it. My guess it wouldn't take long for people to discover if they were thinking along the same lines or not. Then they could decide if they were in or out. Maybe it should be a word that covers a lot of ground and can't be defined in a sentence or two.

Drills

When I coached soccer I was always trying drills that I came up with in my head. I had an idea of what I wanted to strengthen in a player or the team and would develop a drill that I thought would appropriately address that weakness. The majority of those drills bombed. It was very apparent that they weren't going to work after just a few minutes. They were de-motivating and neither the players or I could see any hope for success. A few required significant tweaking and kind of worked. And a an even smaller number worked spectacularly. Even if they were hard players liked them because they could see how they were helping them be the players they wanted to become.

All drills fall into broad categories; passing, shooting, defending, transition, switching the point of attack, etc. But simply telling my team to go do a passing drill wasn't enough. They needed specific drills so if I did tell them to go do a passing drill, without any specifics, it was up to them to come up with something that would work. Most of my players had come from teams with decent coaching so they would come up with something most of the time. But what would happen if they hadn't had that kind of background?

I think this happens a lot with spiritual disciplines. We tell people they should practice spiritual disciplines but we just give broad categories. If we do go beyond that, the "drills" we give them are often inappropriate for their "skill level" or just bad drills to begin with. They don't motivate and they offer little hope for growth.

It turns out something like this. "Go develop a prayer life (broad category) by finding a quiet place where you can spend 20 minutes each day in prayer (probably a lousy drill)." The person is frustrated because it is is hard to find 20 minutes of quiet time because the kids are always wanting something and the actual praying part felt very much like a one sided conversation that was going nowhere. Day two lasted only 12 minutes and the actual prayer seemed an awful lot like day one's.

It's no wonder that thousands of people commit to reading the Bible, praying, practicing solitude, fasting, etc. only to fall off the wagon after a few days or a few weeks. Spiritual mentors need to learn to develop "drills" that inspire, motivate, and give hope for growth. It's not about making it easy, it's about giving the proper motivation.

It also seems that this needs to be customized. When coaching, I got a lot of ideas from coaching books, magazines, chat rooms, and other coaches themselves. But most drills had to be customized for the players I was working with. I had to simplify some drills and make others more difficult.

The problem for spiritual mentors is that such customization takes time and attention. But looking at the current state of North American Christianity I don't think we have a choice. It is time to let the creative juices start flowing.

Rest

In his book "The Good And Beautiful God," James Bryan Smith uses an excerpt from Dr. Siang-Yang Tan's book, "Rest," where he quotes Arch Hart. (How is that for a source trail.:)) I'm too lazy to write out the quote but the key stats where that in 1850 the average American averaged 9.5 hours a sleep/night. By 1950 it was 8 hours of sleep/night. And today it is less than 7 hours of sleep. Smith also states that researchers say we need an average of 8 hours of sleep to maintain health.

The 8 hours of sleep is an average so that means that some people can get by with less but some people NEED more than 8 hours. I suppose this means that most people feel they are part of the average that needs less than 8 hours and apparently all those who sleep longer didn't wake up in time for the survey.

The real problem with sleep is the public opinion of it. If I see someone who is disciplined enough to eat a healthy diet I admire that person. The guy who can turn down a huge bowl of ice cream, or at least severely restrict the serving size, is to be commended. I am amazed when I see a guy with a whopping large salad, a hefty helping of green beans, just the "deck of playing cards" sized steak, and a miniscule helping of cheesy potatoes.

Of course we may hold in our enthusiasm when it comes to pasty pale vegan extremists, but for the most part we applaud those who eat their fruit and vegetables and show restraint with the breads. Eating healthy, if you can manage it, is a great way to win the admiration of those around you.

Not so with a healthy amount of sleep. It starts out with teenagers who we rant and rave about when they don't get up before noon. We make sure they know they are worthless slugs for being so slothful. By the time a person is an adult anything more than 7 hours of sleep is thought to be lazy.

I spent a lot of years in a developing country, living in a town that didn't have electricity. It was close to the equator so the length of the days only varied by about 45 minutes throughout the year. Every day, sometime around 7 AM, it would get light, and sometime around 7 PM, it would get dark. Not having electricity really puts a damper on a lot of things that keep us up at night. Locals would stay up talking around a fire or visit by candles or oil lamp. But everyone was very aware that night had arrived and by 10 PM everything was pretty much shut down until 7 AM when it would get light again.

We had solar panels which gave us a little more light but with no TV we were stuck with visiting or reading books. I like to read but after 3 hours of reading I was about ready for bed at 10 PM too. All this to say that this probably represents a cycle that is much closer to what we were created for if we are going to be healthy.

I could go on and talk about all the different reasons why we stay up late and get up early or are labeled as lazy. But my conclusion is that I am going to start celebrating sleep. I won't lecture my kids about sleeping too much. I'll congratulate anyone who tells me they got 10 hours of sleep last night. And I'll give a look of suspicion to anyone who tells me they only need 7 hours or less of sleep. I need to work on my suspicious look.

Understanding

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5,6

That is an often quoted and well known scripture to many Christians but it occurred to me recently how difficult it is. It is of great importance when dealing with theology because I think it is easy to only believe what we can understand.

In the past decade there has been a lot discussion about theological issues like the fate of people who have never heard about Jesus, God's ability to know the future, and, most recently, is hell a real place. I'm not choosing sides for any of these in this post. I'm just saying that there has been a lot written and discussed on these issues.

What I have noticed is that in each of these issues I have heard that an alternative explanation was needed because the logical outcome of the orthodox version was incomprehensible. I understand the frustration with that and I think it is good that people discuss these issues. I think we should push hard for understanding. I just don't know when the "incomprehensible argument" became the litmus test for truth.

Didn't God yell at Job and his friends about that?

Expression

Expressing emotion or feelings, at least the very deep ones, is not easy for me at all. It creates all sorts of issues with my wife but somehow we manage. But there is a relationship I have that I feel deeply about that haunts me because of how difficult it is for me to express it. And yes, it needs expressing.

I am head-over-heels in love with Jesus. I know that is easy to say but I'm serious. It is hard for me to think of a decision I make where he isn't a factor in some way. It is what I live for. And yet I don't think very many people would guess that about me.

Now I know there is a difference in that I do believe HE knows how much I love him whereas I need to express that to my wife. But I think that in this case it is important that everyone else knows it too. But I don't think they do. I'm not even sure if my kids know it to that degree.

If you asked most people who know me, "Does Tom loves Jesus?," most would say yes. I hope. But they would say that about anybody that they know who claims to be a Christian. But somehow that doesn't capture the depth of what I feel for Jesus. It is so much more than just a statement and it bothers me, to the point that it keeps me up at night, that I don't feel I express that very well.

I know it is supposed to be irresistible, contagious even, they say. But is that really true for all people? Or is personality type just an excuse? Am I failing to truly make my love for Jesus inherent in everything I do? All I know is I'm tired.

Change

This is something that has been around forever but for some odd reason I have bumped up against it a lot recently. It has to do with changing or, rather, not changing. It seems like I've suddenly run into several impassioned pleas to, "Don't change who you are," or, the defiant, "Don't try to change me. This is just who I am."

Well, yes and no. Every time these statements are made they must be taken in context. Some people shouldn't change some of the things about them because they are pretty wonderful. And some people need to resist the efforts of others to change them into someone they shouldn't become. The problem is that pretty soon the "don't change" mantra gets set in stone and people end up against change.

Well, the fact is most of us should change, or at least change parts of who we are. I've have personally been working on a lot of things about me that I would like to change and I'm sure I'll discover even more things to change in the future. And that list includes some things that you could say I was born with. I was born with a pointy head too but I sure didn't want to keep it.

Pregnant Aliens

So I just got my electronic version of the new NIV Bible. Now I can start confusing everyone in my church when I read scripture and it doesn't follow along with what they are reading. Oh well, they'll get used to it.

I kind of liked the TNIV and I use it quite a bit. But I do agree that it crosses the line in a few places with the gender issues. On the other hand, I do like "foreigner" for "alien" because it seems to make the point more directly in the USA culture. I also like "pregnant" for the more delicate "with child" in all places except the Christmas story. But I read that out of the KJV most of the time anyway. Linus rules.

Mess

I'm working on this blog template and it is a mess. So for the few of you who drop by once a month.. sorry. I'll either get everything fixed or revert back to an old template.

Purpose

I'm reading "Managing Transitions" today. It is a decent book with a lot of general information in it but nothing earth shaking. I did like the following paragraph on purpose.

"The kind of purpose you will need in order to launch a new beginning must come from within the organization - from its will, abilities, resources, and character. To be more specific, it must arise from the way in which these inherent qualities interact with the situation in which the organization finds itself. It is that interaction that spells opportunity in a changing world. If your purpose is simply copied from another organization, or if it belies the real situation in which the organization finds itself, it won't do its job." Managing Transitions by William Bridges, page 63

Losers

This idea hasn't but thought through very carefully but I wanted to get it down on paper before I lost it.

On the way to a meeting this morning I was listening to sports talk radio where the topic was the championship basketball game that was played last night. They were talking about elite college basketball coaches and it was mentioned that they are scared to death of losing. A loss affects them emotionally much more forcefully than a win does.

In church circles we often talk about "wins". We look for wins. We count wins. We keep track of wins. I'm not sure that we spend much time thinking about losing. That isn't very popular and it seems like a rather negative thing to do.

If we aren't careful we may not even know what it means to lose in a church sense. And if we don't know that how can we even begin to be afraid of it. I don't think we spend very much time considering what losing means in a church.

I think losing in a church changes depending on the season any given church is in. Probably the most recognizable loss is if we have to close the doors. When a church gets close to that they probably do begin to fear losing and some of them are probably motivated to actually do something about it. But losing probably means something else to most churches.

This does fit in well with the missional stuff I've been going through with our church. Changing our scorecard does help us define what it means to win but it should probably also help us understand what it means for us to lose.

The benefit of being afraid to lose may be that it helps us define what normal is for us. If all of our focus is on winning it can give us the feeling that we our losers focused on winning. Our normal is to lose but our goal is to win. If the focus is on our fear of losing it gives the sense that we are winners who are afraid to lose. Our normal is winning and our goal is to keep it that way.

There are a lot of arguments against this and the infamous "playing not to lose" mantra quickly comes to mind. Like I said in the beginning, I haven't put a lot of thought into this and the theory seems to have a lot of holes in it. But it did strike me that elite coaches seemed to have this trait in common and that we rarely talk about it in church. I think there is something to the idea that we should know what it means for us to lose and we should be deathly afraid of it. Having said that, didn't Steve Taylor write a song called "Jesus Is For Losers"?

Isolation

When I get home from church on Sundays I am usually toast. I love church and all the interaction but when I get home I'm ready to melt into the sofa and drift off to another world.

On Monday I made two phone calls and wrote 8 emails. I was in my office the whole day. When I got home I was warmly greeted by the wife and conversed on various topics of the day with the offspring. Never interacted with another person.

On Tuesday I met with a couple of people for 45 minutes for some planning. I made a few more phone calls and sent a few more emails. I briefly greeted a friend across the parking lot on my way home for lunch and I spent another enjoyable evening at home with the family.

To sum up my interaction with people not related to me, in the last 70 hours I have interacted with exactly 3 other people for a total of 46 minutes and talked to 5 other people on the phone for approximately 10 minutes. I absolutely love it and I didn't even notice that it is rather odd.

That's the problem. Though I love it I'm not sure it is good for me. In fact, I'm quite sure it's not. It can't be healthy psychologically or professionally.

One of my sons is a rather rambunctious extrovert. But I find it curious that even he consciously processes his interaction with people. The other day, when describing his participation at an event he attended, he said, "You know, I just decided to put myself out there." That's the decision I just don't make. In fact I find excuses to do the exact opposite.

I suppose now is the time to make a resolution to "put myself out there" more but I'm not going to do it. It seems silly to do it just to do it. It would be just as unhealthy to force myself to become an extreme extrovert when I am not one. But I do need to think more carefully about the conscious decisions I make when it comes to interacting with people. The excuses need to bear up under a higher level of scrutiny.

Gathered

The problem with doing something every week is that, no matter how enthusiastic or passionate you might be about it, routine inevitably sets in. The person who lives for the Friday after dinner dessert of ice cream with chocolate syrup and a cherry will soon be looking to add nuts to spice things up a bit. The same applies to Sunday morning church.

I think it is important to constantly be reminded why we are gathered in the first place, but even that can bring howls of protest from dissenting corners of the sanctuary. Apparently the preferred method is to forge ahead with the routine and let each person determine what it all means to them. What may appear as chaos is actually fellowshipping taking place in pews 3 and 4, spiritual meditation under the balcony, liturgical recitation in pew 10 left, utter confusion in random seats of pews 1,3,6,7, 9, and 10, and a few odd naps sprinkled in.

So this past Sunday, at the appointed time, I meandered into the middle of the fray, as opposed to up on the stage, and tried to calm the gathered. The fellowshippers ceased their fellowshipping and turned in their seats to stare. The traditionalists looked around for board members in wide-eyed nervousness. And the bored looked up with only a slight hope of being freed from bondage. All the while the worship team assembled on stage looked on with impatience. I stammered a few words about how wonderful it was to be together at that moment and then cajoled everyone to their feet for an opening prayer. Then the proceedings rushed off, back in their normal rhythm, much to everyone's relief, except mine.

I doubt anyone noticed my protest and that's okay. I'm not even sure if it was a protest. It was more a shout of, "What, in heaven's name, are we doing here?" Maybe I need to be more direct.

Canceled

Once again the kids are home from school today due to a weather cancellation. There have been a lot of those this year and the schools are frantically trying to figure out just how they are going to meet requirements as the state has mandated 180 school day per year, or something like that.

Though I don't go in for the cold I really don't mind the weather as long as we have electricity to keep the heat, water, and internet running. Yes, I am spoiled.

They say that weather is one of the things we are most willing to talk about with complete strangers. It's a safe topic, does not require us to reveal personal information, and usually provides for a lively conversation when the weather turns bad. The storms we have had this winter will have at least a 2 month shelf life and possible even extend out to 4 or 5 months in some cases.

One frequent topic with regard to weather is the local populations inability to drive in it. My wife was born and raised at a point 3 hours north of here and she carries a smug confidence that she and her home town neighbors have achieved a level of expertise in winter driving that we do not possess in this part of the country. We, in turn, do not believe that the populations of Atlanta and Dallas, for example, have the necessary skill set to deal with ice and snow.

Of course there are also the nostalgic ones who remember how they used to brave even worse weather with aplomb in decades past. Their badge of courage is their recollection of school buses with chains and never failing to reach the hallowed halls of their school room on time, or at least only a few hours late.

I don't buy it. I think their are idiot drivers just about everywhere. Twice in recent weeks I have been tailgated by individuals who were oblivious to the treachery beneath their wheels. And for those with memories from long ago I have but one question. How come you keep telling stories about your school bus getting stuck in a snow drift every other day? In short, idiots are everywhere and memories aren't quite as sharp as we like to think they are.

I don't see what all the uproar with the schools is about. The worst part about it is those parents who have to suddenly make alternate childcare plans. Other than that, does it really matter if the kids are in school a few days less this year? In thirty years are we going to look around at a dearth in rocket scientists and point to a few lost school days in 2011? I don't think so. Now if only I can find my shovel and dig myself out of this ditch. Just kidding.

Book

I am writing a book. It will be brilliant and have a profound impact on readers. That is if I make it heavy enough or it gets thrown with enough velocity. This is my first book and though I feel unqualified I figure it is now or never.

I get annoyed with a lot of the books I read because they tend to be filled mostly with theoretical garbage that has never had the opportunity to stretch and grow into life. They were written by somebody just out of school with visions of fame and fortune if they could only be published. And publish they did.

I lived in a developing country in Africa for several years and I remember an anthropologist from a prominent US University passing through. He was doing research and asked if I could take him to visit some village elders who could shed some light on their customs. As I sat and listened to the discussion my head began to spin at the stories that the elders were unloading into this academics notebook. I was shocked because I had never heard of such things even though I had lived there for some time. That's when I noticed some of the snickering coming from the darker recesses of the room. Glancing at the various faces in attendance I caught on that this unsuspecting discoverer was being fed a barrel of it. The book he probably wrote because of this encounter is probably misleading generations of wannabe anthropologists to this day. I have been leery of the "study for 6 months then publish" approach ever since.

Over the years I've had several people tell me that I should write a book. Well, make that two. One of those even went so far as to claim that they would actually read it. And they weren't even family members. That was several years ago but how can I ignore such encouragement.

So I am writing a book. I'm thinking I may even have a subject picked out in a year or two. A few years after that I'll probably have an outline. Decades later a highly polished, and heavy, work of brilliance will be available for all to enjoy. In the meantime I'm just going to tell everyone I'm writing a book.

Followership

We can't go anywhere now days without running into books, articles, lectures, seminars, videos, and probably a few delivery devices I've forgotten, about Leadership Development. Create material on the topic and you have a hot product. I think, for a Christian, the focus should be on Followership Development.

A Christian is supposed to be a Christ follower. Period. Every Christian leader should ultimately be a Christ follower. Of course there are sincere Christian leaders who fail, but I think there are many more so-called Christian leaders who are not following Christ and who ultimately will fail spectacularly at being a Christian leader. It may sound like I'm quibbling but I think it is serious for a couple of reasons.

When we put so much focus on "Leadership Development" we fail to adequately develop other gifts even though we don't mean to. We need to be helping people develop their gifts no matter what they are. Some people do have leadership gifts that we need to help them develop, but we need to do that right along side those who need to develop their serving gifts or hospitality gifts, or whatever other gift God has given them. I know that developing these other gifts is championed in a few corners but, by and large, leadership development takes center stage. This is probably due to a thinking that developing leaders will lead (aren't I clever there) to the development of the other gifts. But I'm not sure this has been the experience. Instead it causes people to develop a superiority complex that doesn't do anyone any good.

That leads to the other concern and that is that failing to recognize our ultimate need to be a follower causes us to end up in the weeds more often than not. Using leadership gifts needs to be understood in terms of humbly serving Christ as a follower. Instead we can easily end up at the other end of the spectrum, haughtily dispensing our leadership talents on our followers as an egotistical maniac, or worse.

So I propose that we do away with Leadership Development and focus on Followership Development. It will include Leadership Development, but everything else as well.

Cohorting

I've been part of several "cohorts" but I'm not sure they are named correctly. The first time I can remember hearing the word was back in college when it came up in a class on genetics and negative mutations in people who lived near a nuclear waste sight over a 10 year period. They were a cohort because they lived in the same place at the same time and it was possible to study the collective results of that cohort in comparison with another cohort who lived in a different location or in the same location at a different time. But genetics gave me a headache then and does so even more now.

The point is that I was surprised to be told one day that I was being assigned to a cohort. I thought that I could be defined into one but didn't know I could necessarily be assigned into one. Oh well, what's a word or two between friends.

I usually end up in pastor cohorts since I'm a pastor. Being assigned to such cohorts, or groups, herds, or whatever you might want to call them, never works out well, in my experience. With pastors it usually involves accountability or being told what to do so we don't like them. I guess I have never really been satisfied with the basis of the group. They were never relational or authentic enough.

My friend Dan gave me a little card a few weeks ago that may change my mind. It has a few other things on it but the main statement on the card goes like this:

"Never let me get to the point where I can only be told the things I want to hear, as opposed to the things I need to know! Always tell me the truth. It is important to my ministry."

That struck a chord with me. I'm not sure it works like the card intends it to but I can see how a group could be built on a foundation like that. It requires relationship and authenticity. It takes time. It takes effort. You have to connect more than once a month.

I wonder if pastors would be more willing to join groups where this was the agenda. Maybe they would be more relaxed when they connected. Maybe they would even enjoy it.