Crazy ones

I saw this great video the other day that really reminds me that leaders need to have a dislike for the status quo. Everything inside of a leader should want to push back against the apathy and the "she'll be right attitude". That's probably the hardest part of leadership because the current will want to take us into complacency through tiredness, discouragement or business. Anyway watch the clip and remember its the crazy ones who make some of the best leaders.

The home of ginger beer

Kathy and I are up at Bundaberg this weekend speaking at an awesome church called Citicoast. We did a leaders meeting this morning with a whole group of hungry, expectant people. Even though we will miss Elevation Church tomorrow it's always good to get out and see how others do church. God is doing something amazing in my wife Kathy as wherever she goes she is connecting with people who don't know God or people that have been hurt in church and have lost a love for the house. People don't have a problem with God its just the church that they stumble over. Its stirs us even more in our responsibility to create churches where anyone can come and connect with God.

Get outside

Genesis 15:4-5 (NLT) Then the Lord said to him, "No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit everything I am giving you." [5] Then the Lord brought Abram outside beneath the night sky and told him, "Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!"

You got to get this! Then the Lord brought Abram "outside". When I read this my heart jumped. It wasn't until Abram got outside of his own world, his circumstances, his mindsets, his ceilings, his way of doing church, his assumptions about leadership, his assumptions about life that God could show him His vision for his life. Sometimes we need to stop working in it take a step back, go outside and then we can work on it. So what do you need to get outside of?

Book junkie

I did it again! Am I compulsive? Do I have an addiction? Is this pathway I am on taking me somewhere? I tried so hard not to but I just wasnt strong enough. I am sure that people will understand. This is what I was navigating with this morning after I ordered yet another book on Amazon. I am halfway through the two that arrived on Saturday and this book I have read a few times but gave my copy to a friend years ago and I never got it back. The book is called The General next to God, the story of William Booth and the Salvation Army. Ever since I made a decision for Christ this man has inspired me. His love for the lost and broken coupled with his vision for people that seemingly had it all together is still at work many years later.

Here is a little extract from the book:

The evangelist halted outside The Blind Beggar Tavern up the Mile End Road, East London. He was a tall figure in a frock coat and wide-brimmed hat and his piercing grey eyes looked out from a pale face. Drawing a book from beneath his arm, he gave out the verse of a hymn and faces pressed against the pub's glass windows. 'There is a heaven in East London for everyone,' he cried, 'for everyone who will stop and think and look to Christ as a personal Saviour.'
From the pub came a volley of jeers and oaths, followed by a rotten egg. The preacher paused, egg running down his cheek, prayed, and turned west towards Hammersmith and his lodgings. He made his way through savage fighting men, ragged match-sellers, orange-women, and Irish flower girls clad only in soiled petticoats with their bare feet covered in dirt; children with wolfish faces gobbling up decaying food left by the street market, or swaying blind drunk in tap-room doorways. He strode past crowded tenements and stinking alleys where life was a just a struggle; and the dark alleys near the docks where the sick and dying lay side by side on bare boards of fireless rooms under tattered scraps of blanket.
'A large muckheap what the rich grows their mushrooms on,' was how one pauper described East London. After thirteen years as a Methodist Circuit Minister, the preacher was no stranger to it. But as he walked home a conviction grew within him. Towards midnight when he arrived at his lodgings, he found his six children in bed. His wife, Catherine Booth, who worried over their precarious financial position, waited in the living room. Excitedly he burst out: 'Darling, I've found my destiny!' Convinced that the churches had failed the people, William Booth would set out to save the world. The year was 1865.

Ladders

I love getting my books in the mail from Amazon. This morning I went to the gym and then made my way over to the office to find a Amazon box on my desk and like a kid at Christmas I tore open the packaging to reveal a book that I had ordered a couple of weeks back. "What got you to here Wont get you to there".

I am 10 pages in and already it is identifying areas in my leadership that need an adjustment.

Isaac Newton said: "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants".

Thank God for people who are willing to take what they have learnt in order to allow others climb to greater heights.

I want to be a Studd!

I just had a friend of mine stay with us for 4 nights. He is down to look at how to do church better. I love spending time with people that have a Godly discontent with the status quo in their life. I like the way that the 20th century missionary C. T. Studd said it. He said, “Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” The church needs more Studds, and you can quote me on that.
Every pastor has to come to terms with the wrestle of their focus. Do I focus on "keeping people" or "reaching people"? The answer to this question will be foundational in setting the culture of your church.

Out of the boat

This Sunday we start our series called Surviving the storm of fear. We are going to cover 8 different fears that we all struggle with. A couple are The fear of the economy, the fear of failure, the fear of betrayal and the fear of insignificance. While preparing for this Sunday nights on the fear of failure I cam across a very challenging statement by Gary Haugen president of International Justice Mission, a ministry committed to the stopping of human trafficking. He said the following:

To sinful patterns of behaviour that never get confronted and changed,
Abilities and gifts that never get cultivated and deployed- Until weeks become months and months turn into years, and one day you’re looking back on a life of Deep intimate gut-wretchingly honest conversations you never had;
Great bold prayers you never prayed, Exhilarating risk you never took, Sacrificial gifts you never offered, Lives you never touched.
And you’re sitting in a recliner with a shriveled soul, And forgotten dreams, And you realize there was a world in desperate need, And a great God calling you to be part of something bigger than yourself- You see the person you could have become but did not; You never followed your calling.
You never got out of the boat.

Getting rid of fear shouldn't be our goal as Christians it will always be a constant companion to anyone that wants to make a difference.