The leadership of Jesus - Mark 5

I continue to look at the Biblical book of Mark for clues into how Jesus led his organization. Today I'm struck by how Jesus seems to be able to do anything. Well duh... he is God. One minute he is teaching his disciples, the next he is healing people, the next... who knows!!

But, the point I take today is this. He can do everything, but only because he is God. People so often set up organizations with all kinds of roles whose "job descriptions" are to do everything for the people under them. To some degree we are asking them to be little gods who can do everything. We ask them to hire, to train, to inspire, to organize, to develop, to manage, to care, to report, to administrate, to... to... to.

The model of Jesus' organization is that everyone is good at and gifted for only a thing or two. All together they work as a body, not as an endless leadership hierarchy.

I'm going to explore this here for the next few days. Join in the conversation!

Tomorrow: Short order cooks, French restaurants, and the leadership of Jesus

Later in the week: Urgent vs important, hierarchy vs body

Fall family photos

We took a drive a couple of weekends ago up to northwest Arkansas to see all the fall leaves.

Here are some family photos:



Elenita's is our favorite Mexican place up there!




Alex LOVES dogs... here's a dog we saw when we made a stop on the trip...

Memorizing 1 Peter 1:3-9

I'm leading our LifeGroups at Mosaic to memorize 1 Peter 1:3-9. If you want in on it, go here for details.

What is God up to?

I love how I've gotten to do some very different things.

Worship leading
Master's degree in Electrical Engineering
Implanting ions into silicon
Technical production team leadership
Hurricane relief
LifeGroup ministry leadership
Video production for a restaurant chain
and now adding some development and operational leadership in children's ministry (of all things!...I never thought I'd spend a morning reading preschool curriculum!)

God just keeps moving me around and adding new experiences. Some people would be driven crazy by that. Not me... I love digging into new areas and helping to develop them.

It does make me wonder what is in my future. Will I continue to move around to different areas to help develop them? That would be fine for me. Or... is all of this going to play together in some way? Either way, I'm having fun.

How did You do that?

The other day at sunset it was raining with overcast skies, but somehow You made a smooth, seamless, not jagged, gradient transition from overcast gray through pinks and ending in a fiery orange horizon. The sun, just descending out of view, cast a rainbow opposite the blazing horizon. How did you do it? It was amazing to see. Alex was amazed as well. Your creativity is beyond words. Your beauty is beyond description. You are God. You are living and moving and leading and speaking. Thank you for sharing your creativity and beauty with such lowly, sinful people as my son and me the other day.

DNA of an organization

This week someone said something to me that struck me as odd. This person said that she needed to inform people in her organization that a particular practice is part of the organization's DNA.

It seems to me that if you have to inform people of that, then it is really not in the DNA.

So how do you put something into the DNA of an existing organization? I think it takes a lot of hard work, strategic thinking, and also prayer.

We can't just tell people they should participate in a certain practice of the organization (in my case a church). I think we must draw them in and inspire them by doing things like:

-- Vision Casting
-- Teaching
-- Modeling
-- Storytelling
-- Logistical tweaks to give that practice a better chance of taking off
-- Changes in programming to lead people by the hand into the practice or value that you are trying to instill


How successful have you been at embedding new things (or strengthening the presence of old things) in the DNA of your organization? How have you done it? What are some tactics to add to my list above?

Interesting post I read today...

I'm not sure what to do with this, but I found this a very interesting post.

What do you think of the unschedule?

Building community at our church

Each month on the third Sunday at our church we have a "community meal" after morning worship. This month we arranged the tables in a new way to cause people to more likely sit with those they don't know instead of just with their usual circles of friends. We also had cards at the tables with some questions aimed at spurring conversation.

I thought the changes helped a lot. I saw people mingled in diversity even more than usual.

My favorite thing from the day was seeing my tiny, smiling 4-year-old daughter and a really big older African-American gentleman sitting right next to each other as our family sat adjacent to theirs. Wish I had a photo...

I'm so glad that my kids are in an environment that fosters comfort with people different from them.

Thanks Mom, Dad, and Rob for helping us with the rearrangement of the table and chairs.

Sticky Teaching - Mark 4

Painting a word picture conveys an idea so much better, stronger, stickier than an explanation.

I continue to look in the Bible book of Mark to study what Jesus did in leading and building his organization. The parable of the sower is a great example of "sticky" teaching. The book "Made to Stick" talks about six characteristics of a sticky concept.

Simple
Concrete
Credible
Unexpected
Emotional
Story

The parable of the sower, at least in some ways, meets all six of these.

Paint! Don't explain.
Paint! Don't explain.
Paint! Don't explain.