Time Flies

Wow! I just looked at the date of my last post. Time does fly! This recent break from blogging was not intentional, it just was. However, there are times when breaks like this are needed. Turns out this was one of those, I just wasn't aware initially.

As I think about how quickly these last few weeks have gone, it is quite honestly a bit scary. It seems like I was just waiting for school to start back up for my girls so we could return to a more "normal" schedule, and here we are 5 weeks in already. This week, my wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary (14 years! I know, hard to believe anyone has willingly put up with me that long!). While I was out shopping for a present for her, I came across Halloween items. Wow, it is only a month away now. Then I turned the corner and it was all Christmas! Really?

This week, I also sent an email to my staff going over the next few weeks of events and activities. I think I scared them. I know it got my attention.

In all of this, the point is quite clear: if we are not intentional with each day, then it will be a missed opportunity lost forever. It would be very easy to go into the "live our lives right because it will be over before we know it" or the "tell everyone about Jesus while there is still time" mode. Both of those are true and both are good messages. But, let's look at it from a different angle and maybe see something.

What if in realizing that every day is a fleeting breath, we mapped out our priorities and lives with absolute intention to squeeze every drop of possibility from each day? How many times do we catch ourselves saying, "the day got away from me and I didn't get anything done I needed to"? Follow the stream on Facebook, this may be the most common post next to "is". If the day got away from us, it is only because we weren't prepared for it.

It has been a hard lesson for me to begin to map out my days. Most of us have calendars to track appointments and to do lists to track tasks, but are we creating a plan for the day?

I am working on this skill and have made some strides, but still have a long way to go. Not a one of us wants to get to the end of anything and look back and realize all the lost time leaving us full of regret.

There are so many time-wasters vying for our attention. They are attractive. Some of them are even good things, but they may not be the best things in the moment. Hard work and efficiency are important for productivity and that is something we need. However, this does not guarantee effectiveness. To be effective in life and in our God designed plan, is going to take something more. It is going to take the extra step of planned intention. Knowing what needs to be done is not enough, we must strategize and then implement what it is going to take to get it down. (On a side leadership note, many times this means giving it to someone else.)

Here is what I am beginning to do. Each night I check my calendar and notes for the next day to make sure I have a big picture understanding of what I am facing. This gives me time to "sleep on it" and then wake up with that in mind. In the mornings I double check the calendar. Then I look over any reminders or thoughts for the day I have may noted (whether you use a computer program or paper journal for this, use one thing consistently). Many times I already know at this point or have even laid out the truly significant things that must be accomplished or addressed that day. Then I simply adjust or align the priorities of the day (not necessarily tasks, these are objectives) and do what needs to be done to fulfill those objectives starting with the most important and hardest first. This leaves the easier and less intense items until later in the day when I am getting tired anyway. Objectives early when we are sharp and focused, and tasks later when we are tired and spent. One key to this is to learn to say "no", "not now", and/or "you take care of it".

It also involves learning how to recognize those urgent things that pop up that seem immediate, but truly are not that significant. Distractions exist for every one of us. We must be able to know how to deal with them and this requires an intentional plan that allows us to side step the time-landmines that exist.

Now, there will be things that pop up that are both urgent and significant which will necessitate a shift in the plans for the day. It takes discernment and experience to know what fits this. That's also why margins in schedule are important. There must be some room to maneuver.

What are some things you are doing to keep time from "getting away from you"?

Discipline

Ed young posted this tweet this morning "Discipline is doing what you have to do so you can then do what you want to do."

Simple and profound yet extremely difficult.

I have two girls, 8 and 10 years old, and they are wonderful. I love them more than life. However, they can frustrate me like no one else. (Don't look at me that way, if you're a parent you know it is true.) Part of my responsibility is to train them to be productive in life that they may live up to the potential God has given them. That means teaching them to do what needs to be done, even if they don't feel like it.

Parents, see if this scenario is familiar. I ask one of my girls to clean a room or pick something up. The response I get is that she didn't make the mess and doesn't want to. My reply is to guilt them into it by reminding her all the things her mother and I do for her. Actually, most of the time I do try and help them see that we have to do things in life, just because it is a part of life.

Last night, it played out this way. My youngest wanted to have a friend over after school today. Her room and the basement were both less than tidy. She was told to clean them. It was easy for her to grasp the reward part of the task and so she bounded off to clean with no fuss. That is not normal by any stretch. The difference was she understood and could sense the immediate result of doing what she had to in order to get to do what she wanted.

Yet, much of life is not that way. Too often we choose the immediate want over the long term need. One easy example is in the way we eat. Too often we grab the quick burger and fries chased by ice cream rather than eating a properly healthy meal. Then we complain about the expanding waistline and the fact that we get winded climbing the stairs. If we would be disciplined and eat right most of the time and exercise regularly, then we could eat the junk once in a while and be much more active in life.

In our jobs, we do what must be done so we can do what we want later. We work and earn a living so we can afford the trips and leisure activities and so we can support missions and live generously.

For my daughter who doesn't like school so much, it is hard to understand that she has to go to school and it is important to go even when she doesn't want to. Of course, we understand the reason she must go and what the reward will be later.

One thing I have found to be absolutely true, if I live disciplined (spiritually, relationally, physically) and do what I need to do, then what I want to do does change and begin to line up more with God's wants and purposes and with what is good for me and not just what pleases me.

By the way, Paul wrote about this pretty extensively in Romans 7. While he directly references sin, I'm not sure there is much difference to how it plays out in every area of our life. Plus, being irresponsible and not living up to our potential in God is sin.

What is it you need to do today that you are putting off because you want to do something else?

The Go-Giver

Earlier this week I read a book entitled "The Go-Giver" by Bob Burg & John David Mann. In fact, I read it in a couple hours one evening. Once I started, I wanted to finish it right away. This book is a parable and I love that. Too many books written in the business and leadership world lack creativity. This book is creative while it imparts some business and leadership principles that are excellent. Really the values this book suggests are life values. The book calls them the 5 laws of stratospheric success.

I don't know much about either author. Whether this is a compliment to them or not, they have quite wonderfully captured a very real principle of the character of God within the pages of this book. The whole concept of the book is give of yourself generously and you won't be able to contain the results. While the immediate context of Luke 6:38 is speaking to judgment, it holds true to most of the rest of life as well: "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Jesus also instructs in Matthew 16:25: "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it."

Whether it is money, time, knowledge, energy, experience, whatever; there is no substitute for generosity. Jon Acuff (@prodigaljohn) recently posted this Tweet: The lie is that you'll run out of ideas if you write all the time, the truth is you will if you don't. I would expand that to be true of most things in life. The lie is if you give more away you will have less when the truth is the more you give the you will have. That is one of the points of the parable of the talents that Jesus told in Matthew 25.

I recommend this book for everyone. It will inspire you. It will challenge your thinking. It will entertain you. It will give you and opportunity to take a good look at yourself and the way you handle relationships and people.

If people would live life how this book proposes, the results would be nothing short of amazing across society.

The cover has the line, "A little story about a powerful business idea." It easily could read, "A little story about a powerful life value."

Buy it on Amazon here.

Generations part 2

As we launch in a new direction with our mode of ministry to youth and start ministering with youth, some might (actually have) ask, "where is this coming from?" or "what prompted this change? Is there a problem?" Truth is, there is a problem. The one I mentioned in the last post about the rate we lose students from the church after they graduate high school.

Here's a little more background.

I spent about 13 years in full-time youth ministry in four states. I served in small, medium, and large churches. I saw God move incredibly among youth and watched youth do incredible things. Today, there are youth from our former groups who are pastors, missionaries, youth workers, worship leaders, sunday school teachers, children's workers, and various other levels of involvement in their respective churches. While I can easily point to the success stories and am proud of each one, that is not the whole picture. Unfortunately, I have to say that most of the young people that attended the youth groups we led are not actively living for God today; some are flat out living very tragic lifestyles. It would be normal to claim that is true for everyone and that our percentages are better than the average numbers we read about. That would be a cop out and just trying to ease the blow.

Did we fail? Yes and no. I have stories to illustrate both. The problem is deep and has as many facets as individuals being talked about. With some we did fail, with others, nothing we could have done would have changed the choices they have made.

Several years ago I was in a conversation with a leader from what was a nationally known, very large youth ministry. We were comparing insights and talking about some of the frustrations of youth ministry and seeing students walk away. This brought up the topic os defining success. Of course, that conversation came down to the fact that real success is defined by God not man and numbers do not tell the whole story. Every endeavor to reach and raise up people for God will have the gamut of stories to tell, leassons learned, mistakes made, and lives affected.

As I walked away from that conversation, there was a real uneasiness in me that I couldn't shake. I didn't want to take the cop out approach and "feel better" because even the largest youth ministries were experiencing the same issues we were.

We started to take some hard looks at how we were doing youth ministry and realized we were very top heavy. Meaning, it was mostly adults who were doing ministry and the youth were spectators. We immediately started making changes. Teams were formed from among the young people to get them more actively involved in actually doing ministry on an on-going basis and the adults were adjusted to more of a mentoring and guiding role. I even had a group of youth who met at my house regularly to help me brainstorm, plan, and even present the messages. This creative team took our services to a new level.

We saw some success as youth became much more involved in the overall life of the church as children's workers, tech crew, in the music department, taking part in outreach, and on and on. As youth pastor, I was limited in the full impact of these changes on the church as a whole, but it was a step in the right direction.

Since that time, I have been rethinking youth ministry as a whole and wondering what if we built a youth ministry that was focused on youth doing ministry and made it part of the churches DNA to have the generations working side by side. Much time has been spent in prayer, conversation, and meditating on this.

That is just a bit of the background for the changes we are making.

This post is long enough, so I will wait until the next one in this series to start putting some structure to this new endeavor.