Want to be Great?

Serving others is the path to greatness.

Reading in Mark this morning and noticed how Jesus' teaching on service- while I've read it before- was always in response to something else happening, and not just some pithy teaching he was giving.

• Mark 9:33-36- the disciples are jockeying for 'cabinet' like positions in Jesus' kingdom and so when Jesus calls them on it, his reply isn't "shame on you" but rather "whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else"
• Mark 10:17-31- Jesus is asked by a rich man how he can inherit eternal life and Jesus' eventual reply is by selling everything he has.  He leaves disappointed and the disciples are stunned because if a rich guy isn't making it to heaven, then no one has a shot.  Jesus concludes the whole upside-down encounter by saying "those who seem least important now will be the greatest then"
• Mark 10:35-45- here James and John ask to be Jesus' #1 and #2 right-hand men in his new kingdom- a pretty bold request.  When the other 10 hear of it, you can just imagine the "unfair" comments coming from their mouths.  Again, Jesus resets what his kingdom is about when he says "whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else"

Want to be great?  

Knowing the Basics

Salesperson stops by the other day.  Asks me "are you interested in getting more parishioners?"

What a question!  Parishioners?!

Anyway, it's a great question.  Say no, and you're not being honest.  Say yes, and you now have to listen to the pitch.

So I say yes.

And politely listen to the pitch.

After the pitch, I ask how many other local churches have utilized this particular pitch.

The salesperson isn't quite sure.  Salesperson knows of one church who has utilized a different pitch, but that's not the pitch I was given nor is there data on the pitch I was given.  

My question is a basic one concerning ROI or return on investment.  Simply, if I give you x dollars, what's the turnaround, the result?  Fairly basic question.

But if you don't know the basics . . .

A Great Story

If you have 10 minutes, check out this video.

Some interesting tidbits:

• Sunday was the first day we had met this family
• One of our Hillcresters heard this story from one of Shannon's (the mom's) friends.  There wasn't even a direct connection between us and them!
• It is so cool when our God works out stories like this one and such a privilege to be able to play a small part in it!

Smarter. Not Harder.

When I was in college and seminary, my mentor and friend Troy would often say "Smarter, not Harder".  Didn't matter if we were setting up for a Wednesday evening program, moving something around the church facility, or on a mission trip.  If there was a smarter way to do something, it always trumped the harder way.

As I was recently moving stuff around the church facility, I repeated that phrase several times as I used a cart, 4 wheel 'scooter', and a 2 wheel dolly (still convinced you can move anything with a two wheel dolly) to move stuff much larger than I.  It's not that I'm against hard work or working hard- even with the help of the dolly it took some real effort to move some of the items- but I have also realized there are smarter ways to move things- with carts and scooters and dollies!

When looking at your own work or life, be sure to look out for "smarter- not harder".

Brene Brown

I recently finished Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly and while it's a little 'touchy-feely' than what I normally read, it's an excellent book that relates to so many different areas in life:

• On social media: I see how kids that grow up on a steady diet of reality television, celebrity culture, and unsupervised social media can absorb this messaging and develop a completely skewed sense of the world.  I am only as good as the number of likes I get on Facebook or Instagram.
• On comparing your life with others: What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-deflating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we’re holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it.  Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison.
• On anyone who works with children and/or students: With children actions speak louder than words.  When we stop requesting invitations into their lives by asking about their day, asking them to tell us about their favorite songs, wondering how their friends are doing, then children feel pain and fear (and not relief, despite how our teenagers may act).  Because they can’t articulate how they feel about disengagement when we stop making an effort with them, they show us by acting out, thinking, this will get their attention.
• On religion: When religious leaders leverage our fear and need for more certainty by extracting vulnerability from spirituality and turning faith into “compliance and consequences” rather than teaching and modeling how to wrestle with the unknown and how to embrace mystery, the entire concept of faith is bankrupt on its own terms. 
• On leadership: How would engagement change if leaders sat down next to folks and said “thank you for your contributions.  Here’s how you’re making a difference.  This issue is getting in the way of your growth, and I think we can tackle it together.  What ideas do you have about moving forward?  What role do you think I’m playing in the problem?  What can I do differently to support you?”
• On parenting, part 1: Certainty often breeds absolutes, intolerance, and judgment.  That’s why parents are critical of one another- we latch on to a method or approach and very quickly our way becomes the way.  When we obsess over our parenting choices to the extent that most of us do, and then we see someone else making different choices, we often perceive the difference as direct criticism of how we are parenting.
• On parenting, part 2: In terms of teaching our children to dare greatly in the “never enough” culture, the question isn’t so much “are you parenting the right way?” as it is” are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?”.