In years of doing ministry, through personal experience, and by living life with others, I’ve learned a few things not to say. I’ve seen well-meaning people make proclamations they can’t keep. What I’ve come to realize is that life has a way of throwing us surprises, so we should be proactive in guarding our heart and life.
With that in mind, I would be careful starting a sentence with the following phrases:
When I was a teenager, if I wanted to view porn, I would have had to find a magazine. Honestly, even though I may have wanted to, I never had or found a stash. I knew everyone where I might have bought some and if my friends had their own stash of pictures, they never shared them with me.
I did a little babysitting as a teenager in addition to my grocery store work and I did manage to find some magazines at one of the houses where I worked late one night. Those images are still with me today. As much as pornography was probably a part of my generation, it wasn’t that accessible to me.
My boys have grown up in a different generation….
In case you haven’t been keeping up, the world has changed. To be successful today in any profession takes new tools and skills. I am asked frequently by young leaders what advice I have for those just starting their career. Obviously, if you are a believer desiring to do ministry (which describes many of my readers) then you first need to work through your relationship with Christ to be obedient to God’s call on your life, but even Christian leaders need to think how best to succeed in a changing world.
Here are some “must haves” I would advise young leaders to seek to possess in order to achieve personal success:
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
This verse has inspired me over the years, but recently I saw it in a different context for my life. One of the biggest mistakes I see leaders make is failing to learn from the people on their team. We tend to think the best ideas are outside our organization, so we learn from many sources, but many times the best ideas for the organization are already with us. I love to attend conferences, I read tons of books, I follow numerous blogs of great leaders, but the fact is God has surrounded me with great leaders with whom I work. I need to make sure I’m learning from them.
Here’s a gentle reminder…
If you have a smart phone, you never have to leave home again without your Bible!
I love what the team at LifeChurch.tv has done to encourage Bible reading through their work with YouVersion. Our church uses the live version each Sunday (sign up HERE) and it has started to catch on with people. YouVersion continues to improve their offerings for churches. Consider these additions:
Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck! Psalm 69:1
This is my favorite safety pull verse! Helpful always, but especially in emergency situations…
If you are leading a team or organization, I have some simple advice for you. This is based on years of experience. I have been guilty of trying to lead on my own. I once had the false idea that I had to lead independent of others and that if I shared my struggles with other leaders, somehow I would be less of a leader. I felt like a sign of strength was to prove that I didn’t need help, but, as many of you know, this is never true for any leader.
Even still, I have been in organizations where there was no one on my team I felt I could confide in with a weakness. If this is your case, or especially if you are the only leader:
It took years before I felt comfortable teaching about parenting. I don’t feel adequate to teach about parenting adult children now, since I’m still doing that, but I feel better about helping parents of younger children. Our boys have become healthy, well-adjusted, God-fearing children.
This week is Orange Week; a ministry of The ReThink Group. It’s a week to talk about the Orange strategy of partnering churches with parents, believing that the combined effort works better than either one of them working independent of each other. I’m happy to participate. Our church uses and believes in the Orange strategy.
We owe all our success at parenting to God’s grace, but…
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Luke 6:32a NIV
I wonder if Jesus got an answer to this question!
Be honest…it is easier to love some people than others. Some people quite frankly are just difficult to love. (No names necessary, but you know who I’m talking about.)
Jesus doesn’t always call us to easy tasks, does He? We don’t live under the same standards as the rest of the world, do we?
This week I was at the Story Conference in Chicago. Ben Arment and a team of volunteers put together a conference designed to help us creatively tell the story of Christ’s redemptive love for the world. I was challenged personally to be a better storyteller.
It got me thinking though…
We all have a story…. We should share some of them…
Let’s share some of them today.
Here are 10 questions…Answer all…one…or as many as you want to answer…
