jodyearley.com
Thoughts on life and ministry with a hint of randomness.
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Recently I came across this verse in James 1:27 (NLT), “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.”
This verse shares that there is a pure and genuine religion, which would lead us to believe that there is also a “wrong” type of religion.
“Right” religion is NOT about rituals or irrelevant traditions, but it’s about outwardly expressing our beliefs through good works.
What are some differences between right and wrong religion?
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What do you want your organization and family to value as important? Where do you want the people of your organization to invest their time and resources? Values help us to align what we desire to see happen with what we are actually doing. This concept is applicable on an individual level as well. What do you want your family to value? The first step in pointing your organization, life, or family in the direction of your values is determining what they are and putting them in writing.
Do you have clearly defined values? If not, start writing some down today.
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No one need aspire to leadership in the work of God who is not prepared to pay a price greater than his contemporaries and colleagues are willing to pay. True leadership always exacts a heavy toll on the whole man, and the more effective the leadership is, the higher the price to be paid.J. Oswald Sanders
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Reading the book of Acts this morning and I am amazed at the early Church. The unity, selflessness, generosity, exponential growth, boldness, and most of all the simplicity. Simple men would boldly preach the Gospel and God would move in a big way. There was no mistaking that God was at work and that it was not something manufactured by man. The apostles would do their simple part and then move out of the way of God. I am challenged by the example of the early Church to carry out ministry and live my life in this manner.
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Being a part of a rapidly growing church it’s important to realize that some things will never happen, if you don’t realize this you might end up pretty frustrated. It is easy to view most things in ministry as problems to be solved, but the reality is that many things will never be “fixed” and shouldn’t be. Many issues in a thriving organization are actually tensions to be managed not problems to be solved. Here are 4 things you will never do in a growing church (at least not for a long period of time):
1. You will never have enough volunteers. This issue shouldn’t be the result of poor recruiting, but because of increasing ministry opportunities. Develop a culture of “each one recruit one”.
2. You will never have a large enough budget. Be a good manager of the resources that you have and trust God to provide the resources that you need. He is faithful.
3. You will never have enough staff. Pour into the staff that you do have and teach them to lead and equip volunteers to do the work of the ministry.
4. You will never have enough space (especially kids space). If you’re growing rapidly you need to find creative ways to create more space for ministry. Clean out the closet, meet outside, go multi-site, add another experience time.So, if you are faced with some of the these “tensions” then view them in a positive light because you are on the right track.
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Recently churches and ministries have been making their resources available for others to download. Here’s a short list of some different websites were you can get some videos, artwork, teaching and other free stuff.
If you know of more sites that are worth checking out be sure and leave a link in the comments section.
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The following are some key points from a talk that Andy Stanley gave at the Drive Conference entitled The Opposable Leader: Why organizational tension is essential to progress.
The idea of this talk is that as a leader, you have to differentiate between tensions your organization will always manage vs. problems that need to be solved.
Every organization has problems that shouldn’t be solved and tensions that shouldn’t be resolved.
- For example: What’s more important, excellence or stewardship?
- If you “resolve” any of those tensions, you will create new tension.
- If you resolve any of those tensions, you create a barrier to progress.
- Progress depends not on the resolution of those tensions, but on the successful management of those tensions.
The role of leadership is to leverage the tension to the benefit of the organization.
- Identify the tensions to be managed in your organization.
- Create terminology. (Tension is something we manage not resolve.)
- Inform your core. (Teach your leaders.)
- Continually give value to both sides. (Example: excellence vs. stewardship)
- Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases.
- Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day.
- Don’t think in terms of balance. Think rhythm. (Balance is equal amounts all the time. Rhythm understands there is a season for everything.)
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Last night I returned home from spending a few days at North Point Community Church attending the Drive Conference. It was amazing, to say the least. I gained a ton of insight and clarity for Kids Ministry and ministry in general. I came back full of vision and direction. I look forward to putting in to practice some of the principles and ideas that I took away. I’ll share some of what I learned in a future post, but in the meantime check out this highlight video below.
DRIVE 2010 Highlight from North Point Media on Vimeo.
