Planning Retreat

Hillcrest's staff goes on a planning retreat this week. We'll plan the next year's worth of sermons and series, so if you have any ideas or topics you'd like to see taught, leave a comment or drop us an email.

The Xbox Uno Generation

I was mentoring the other day, and we had to stay inside during recess because of the weather, so we went to my student's classroom and played Uno with him and a couple of his classmates. One of his classmates comes up, sees that we're playing Uno, and remarks "I don't know how to play Uno, but I can play it on my Xbox 360". Our society may never be the same if the next generation loses the time honored skill of playing Uno . . .

Linchpin

Seth Godin is one of those authors that I read pretty much anything he puts out, so I read his new book a month or so ago, and it is excellent. Just excellent. Anyone that has a job, likes their job, or wants a different job (that's about all of us, right?!?) ought to give it a look.

Of course, you can always get short slices of Seth's wisdom over at his blog.

The Sound Guy Problem

How many times have you been at a concert, a wedding, a funeral, a worship service, or any other public event that required a microphone and a speaker, and when there was a glitch in the system, some feedback from front, or the sound cut out, and instantly, without thinking about it, you turned around and looked at the sound person? But, if the event goes off without a hitch, how likely are you to comment to the sound guy or the tech team, "Great job today! No glitches! Excellent work!" It's the sound person problem, where if the sound tech does his job well, no one notices. If he makes a mistake, everyone notices. It also demonstrates our tendency to focus on the negative without crediting the positive.

In reading a new book called Switch about how to change things when change is hard (more on that topic at a later post), one of the interesting things from the book is how predisposed we as humans can be on focusing on the negative. The authors cite the following examples:

• Of the 558 emotion words in the English language, 62% of them are negative.
• People who were shown photos of bad and good events spent longer viewing the bad ones.
• When people learn bad stuff about someone else, it’s stickier than good stuff. People pay closer attention to the bad stuff, reflect on it more, remember it longer, and weigh it more heavily in assessing the person overall.

There's research to back the first three claims, and this last one is anecdotal:

• So when your kids are making As and Bs, you don’t think much about their grades. But when they make a D or an F, you spring into action. It’s weird when you think about it, isn’t it? (46-48).

It's interesting that we have a more of an alignment or focus on the negative. And I think this focus runs true in many different situations- businesses, schools, parenting, and even churches. We notice a problem, we spring into action. We don't notice a problem, we relax and assume all is well. This isn't to say that we shouldn't confront the brutal facts or embrace a negative reality; but if that is all we do, all that we focus on, we run the risk of becoming a 'Debbie Downer', and ironically, we make can make the process of change more difficult.

Oh, and one last thing- next time a public event goes off without a hitch, thank your sound person.

New Blogs

Some new blogs for you to consider checking out:

• Kristi, the mom of the Hillcrest Family who adopoted from Haiti, blogs here.
• The Kindermusik studio that Tarina works with blogs here about all things related to kids and music.
• And finally, the cofounding editor of Fast Company, blogs here.

Soft Skills

I'm not a business or organizational expert by any means, and yet I believe that the winning schools, winning organizations, and winning businesses will continue to excel at what I call soft skills. Soft skills to me are things that any one of us can do, but they are things that can turn an average or pretty good classroom, church, business, or organization into a better one. So in no particular order, here are some of the more important soft skills (I also acknowledge by writing this post, I'm probably guilty of violating several of these as well!):

• Thank yous- it's important to cultivate a culture of gratitude. Just this week I sent a thank you note to a department head at the City of Sioux Falls, to an architect, and to another pastor to thank each of them for their assistance and involvement with a a project we're working on. For some, like the department head and the architect, this is their job, and yet thanking them hopefully builds some sort of relationship as we continue to work together. How can you show appreciation for someone today?
• Return communication- whether it's an email, a voice mail, a text, whatever, I think it's important to return communication. In today's ultra busy and fast blackberry world, perhaps the temptation is to be too quick to return communication, and thus you are never actually accomplishing anything because you're always returning communication. But there's a balance somewhere between being too fast and never returning communication. Those that respond appropriately keep the ball rolling, develop new business, or build partnerships, and continue to win.
• Greeting- one of the easier things human beings can do is simply smile and greet people. How hard is this? And yet, I've been in several volunteer situations and several retail situations where I felt like I was a bother as the volunteer or the customer, instead of being appreciated for my time, my money, or both! It also serves as a good reminder for me and my work to greet people as a way of recognizing who they are and realizing that the had a choice today, and they chose to serve with us, worship with us, etc.

What others might we add to this list?

Never too old

I'm a big fan of the AmeriCorps program. It seems like a lot of the people I work with on community service projects are part of the AmeriCorps program, whether it's the VOA thrift store or the Bowden Youth Center. These young adults are passionate, talented, and dedicated individuals doing reaaly good work in our community and with segments of the city that often get overlooked.

The other day I had a meeting with another AmeriCorps person, except she wasn't a young adult- she was an elderly woman probably in her 70s! I was so encouraged by her and her desire to keep working and to keep advocating for change at an age when most people are worn out from change. There's no retirement from kingdom work.