Ken

Now that we are one month into a new year, many people who started out with good intentions might find their progress stalled. It's sort of like a sugar high - there's the initial burst of excitement followed by the plummeting of energy. High achievers have learned how to manage the different cycles of life. In particular, they've learned how to create their own personal momentum. With that in mind, let me offer a few tips that have helped me create momentum when the energy levels began dipping low. It begins with a decision: Will you simply go through life or will you grow through life? I know many people who have chosen to simply go through life. They might be 15, 25, or 55 -- age isn't the issue. Attitude is. They might be 55 and still have the emotional maturity of a teenager. Or they haven't added a…

By the spring of 2017, I was worn out. We had just finished the remodeling of our facility, a process that took about six months and “allowed” me to learn much more about finance, construction, and door jams than I ever wanted to know. Mark Scott, one of our former teaching pastors, had returned to the college classroom in 2014. This created a pastoral vacuum that largely went unfilled until we hired Dan Hettinger in 2015. In 2013, we went through a very difficult senior pastor transition that ended in our elders asking for our senior pastor’s resignation. Prior to that, I had battled work-related discouragement for most of the first four years as my competence was under constant attack. This led to an erosion of my confidence for the first time in nearly 30 years of ministry. I was 47 years old and knew and I had to start…

No one wants to follow a whiner. No one wants to hire or date a whiner. Most normal people don’t even want to be around whiners. If you want to be a winner instead of a whiner, it starts with having a winning mindset. Which brings us to our last healthy team commitment: We are committed to living on the solution side of every issue. Rather than blame factors beyond our control (circumstances, culture), we focus on solutions that are within our control. I once worked for a boss who could never accept responsibility for why our organization was underperforming. When numbers lagged, it was the result of competitors moving into our territory – although they had moved in years before and we had been doing quite well during that time. When our revenue decreased and necessitated spending cuts and eventual lay-offs, it had nothing to do with overspending or…