Church

Have you ever noticed ... we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and judge others by their behavior. In other words, we're quick to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, even when our actions don't match what we set out to do.  But we're slow to grant that same favor to others.

“Vision, sure.  Strategy, yes.  But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time.  In other words, you must win through superior logistics …” (Tom Peters).

Many of you know that I'm a big fan of all things Google.  Google.com is my home page, Google Maps is my default mapping software, and I recently bought my wife a phone with Google Android as the OS.  So, it should come as no surprise that the following blog post about how Google sets goals caught my attention.  Read and learn ... How Google sets goals and measures success Google sets impossible bodacious goals…and then achieves them. The engineering mindset of solving the impossible problem is part of the culture instilled in every group at Google. Tough engineering problems don’t have obvious answers. You need to invent the solution, not just optimize something that exists. Every quarter every group at Google sets goals, called OKRs, for the next 90 days. Most big companies set annual goals like improving or growing something by x%, and then measure performance once a…

"Can Geico really save you fifteen percent or more on your car insurance?  Is Ed 'Too Tall' Jones too tall?" That's the line from a new Geico commercial.  For years, I have loved watching Geico commercials ... the gecko, the cavemen, and now this guy who has his hair slicked back and looks a bit like Pierce Brosnan. Why can't the church be as creative as Geico?  We're not peddling insurance; we sharing the good news that Jesus Christ has come to redeem people from darkness and bring them into the light. Yet, in many churches we avoid the heavy-lifting required to be creative.  We offer up to those who find their way to our pews something we have warmed up from another church.  Or worse, we don't even bother to warm it up. God deserves better.  People's eternal destinies hang in the balance.

We had nine guys turn out for our first "Letters from Dad" workshop on Saturday.  It was an interesting mix of dads -- young dads and older dads.  The youngest kids represented were three week-old twins; the oldest, children in their mid-twenties. The common theme as to why each had attended was this: we wanted to leave a written legacy to our kids. I spent about fifteen minutes going over some background material and sharing a few passages about a father's responsibility to pass down the faith to their children.  And then we were off and writing. At the end, I asked how many would like to do it again and the response was ... how soon?