I love how the Internet has taken the six degrees of separation and shrunk them to one or two clicks. This morning I was ready my daily intake of Michael Hyatt's blog and it featured a guest post by Jeremy Statton. One more click and I'm at a blog I've never heard of but immediately enjoy. One post, in particular, caught my attention: Is Your Story Weird Enough? Here's just a small piece: Normal is Boring. Fitting in makes sense, if you want to tell a boring story. When you go to the movie theater, you aren’t hoping to watch something completely normal happen. When you open a book, you want anything but the usual day to day events to take place. The world needs you to live an incredibly weird story. We need for you to contribute through your own unique personality and set of gifts. We need you to…
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Tim Milburn has a nice book on leadership entitled, "Leadership Starts with You." In it he suggests that the fundamental test of leadership is self-leadership: The real secret to developing strong, lasting leadership starts with YOU learning how to lead YOU. Because the people whom you’ll eventually lead are wondering: If I can’t trust you to lead YOU, how can I trust you to lead ME? One of the insights he shares in the book is what he calls your growth P.L.A.N. Here's how it works ... Purpose -- What do you need to know and why? Learning -- Where do you want to learn it from? Why? Assessment -- How will you know you learned it? Next Action -- What will you do with what you learned? His premise is simple: personal growth just doesn't happen on its own. To read more about P.L.A.N., click here.
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I spent last night representing Church Planters of the Rockies at Valley View Christian Church's missions fair. There were about 15 of us there ... ranging from a Bible translater in Africa to Camp Como to guys like me. Scott Bloyer was also there. Scott is the lead pastor at Elevation Christian Church in Aurora, a church plant that started on October 10, 2010, and is doing really well. Last year alone, they baptized over 60 people! In December they moved to a larger school that would give them a greater potential for growth. In less than two years they are averaging nearly 200 people a weekend. In a few months they will be launching a video campus inside two of Colorado's prisons. Did I mention things are going really well? They have done all of this with a barebones budget for marketing. Typical of a new church, they started…
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Here is the audio of my most recent sermon -- Beyond Words: Taking Faith from Lecture to Lab. To view notes from YouVersion, click here.
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Last weekend, my communion meditation talked about things that have been discovered by accident. The list includes: LSD Corn flakes Penicillin Microwave ovens Silly Putty Post-it Notes Play-Doh Viagra The Slinky And there are others. It's a testament to the creativity of God and human ingenuity that many of the technological breakthroughs we enjoy were the unintended consequences of someone's tinkering around. In a sense, they were just accidents. That may work when it comes to biology, but it's not the best way to discover your eternal purpose. Few people answer the question "Why am I here?" by accident. It's not they set out to find the best BBQ sauce and end up discovering the meaning of life (though, I have to admit, a good dry rub adds meaning to life). Some wait for their purpose to fall into their lap. Others act like it all depends on them. Neither…
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