Messy Stuff is Good Stuff

Now, I'm thinking of the "messy conversations", and to me that is exactly where this idea of the soft stone is at home.  To speak into someone's life means to find the courage to say the hard things but in love.  This idea is very hard for some people and easy for others.  There is a very important couple in my life who have full reign to speak to me about anything.  The interesting thing is one spouse struggles with being too nice while the other battles with ... let's say ... gruffness.  They are masters at it though.  No matter what the circumstance, they will push and prod with scripture and wisdom just to make you think.  If you're a leader in anyway, you have to get people like this in your life.  If you don't, you'll either give into the manipulators or actually believe the flattery or criticisms that are constantly brought your way.  The attitude of a messy conversationalist is one that you develop. 

Three ways to work on your messy skills.

        1.  Listen to what they are saying ... not just the words but the body language and tone. Is there a tear in their eye? Are there ears red? Are they having a hard time looking you in the face? To notice these details you have to be listening, not just planning on what you're going to say next.

        2.  Ask questions.  As cheesy as it sounds ask, "How does that make you feel?"  "What I hear you saying is ..." "What does that mean for you?" "What do you plan on doing about it?"  If you haven't helped them move past the problem, you let them wallow in the mess.  

        3.  Speak the truth.  Use scripture not as a hammer to beat them down, but to encourage.  To do this you have to read the scripture more than for message prep, "Ouch!"  Was that harsh? My bad.  Joshua 1:6 "Be strong and courageous", becomes the mantra for a "life speaker."  Say what needs to be said, but be sensitive to the limits.  Once again pay attention to them.  If you dont listen to them, it does not matter how much truth you drop on them if they're not in a place to listen to it.  By speaking too early, you may miss your chance to be heard.

Some days I am awesome at this, while on others I am terrible.  It's not that I dont like people, it's that I am afraid of messing up the friendship.  I want to be liked way too much to take the chance on speaking truth.  How do we find the balance and should there be a balance? Sounds like another soft stone to me.

Perspective

I just had an interesting conversation with the owner of my favorite local coffee shop.  We were talking about a church plant that meets there once a month.  She said, "honestly, I don't know why you guys dont stick with what you got."  Several things come to mind.  First, she is not a church goer.  Her frame of mind is business, why do you need 80 churches when 5 will serve the area ie. if you overpopulate the market with coffee shops you cut into your available profit.  Her thinking was why go to the trouble of building new when you have the old. Second, she sees all churches as irrelevant.  Not just the old the new too.  Yes even yours with the great music, casual dress, and cool looking graphics.  Are we so busy making cool churches that we forget the reason we are working for those in the first place?  My large white mocha lets me speak into her life, not the video I just put together.  My grilled roast beef lets me ask her about her day not my dark rimmed glasses or my MacBook Pro.

The question becomes do we get so busy with the pulling off church that we forget the people we are doing this for.  My personal church philosophy is attractional missional or if you prefer missional attractional.  Yes, I think you can do both and do both well.  If we haven't effected the community why would they care about our lights or the fog machine?  I believe that we should give people the best experience they possibly can have at church because that honors God.  Creating environments where people come face to face with Jesus is a beautiful calling, but it doesn't mean we shirk the responsibility to love on a personal level.  I also believe if we don't do the messy work of speaking to people where they are at we will never get the Sunday morning opportunity.  This all points me to my next post about how to have those conversations.  The conversations where soft stones are needed and required.

BB King and your art

As I write this I am watching BB King play in a concert honoring him.  (Its on TV I'm not there) The concert is something to behold.  I don't really enjoy the blues, i don't understand the different runs and musical things that are going on.  Yet, there is something in watching BB play that guitar.  It is effortless and beautiful.  While others look like they are lifting a boulder when they play their instruments BB looks effortless.  I'm sure that their has been days where he couldn't get the guitar to do what he wanted.  He has probably has had guitar cables go out on him.  He has probably been booed and walked out on.  But to watch a man that is the pinnacle of his craft is beautiful.  He makes it look so easy I almost think that I could play the guitar.  Unfortunatly, I know this to be false I cant, I'm terrible.  But his love and perfection of his art makes me what to participate in his art.

What is you "art"?   What do you do well?  So well that it might seem that you aren't putting effort into it.  What do you do that inspires others to try and do it?  Is it the way you teach, mentor, create, give announcements, or recruit volunteers?  Find your Art!  Protect it! Explore It!  Improve it!

Kindness

What could our students be capable of if we equipped and unleashed them?

Change Rage

You want to make someone mad?  Change something they are used to.  Want to make them really mad?Change something they use all the time.  If you have been living under a social media rock you need to know that Facebook changed and there is a new kid on the block called google+.  It seems that Facebook changed to try and compete better with google, but what happened is they drove angry users to Google+. I will be totally honest I am confused by Google+, but Im confused by Facebook now.  So what is everyone going to do?  Use Facebook or in a disgruntled huff move to Google+?

This has huge ministry implications.  Huge!  How many of us are trying to change an event, ministry, or church?  How many times have we had a backlash for what we thought no reason?

Facebook is free they should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want. It is not in the Constitution that we should have Facebook.  The 10th commandment is not thou shalt have Facebook.  But what they did not do is adequately communicate the change.  Im on Facebook all the time and had now idea they were changing.  Now I could have gone looking for the information, I'm sure it was on forum and such but the information did not meet me.  Selfish I know, but how many times do we say I didn't know to have three emails sitting in our inbox telling us exactly what we didn't know.

The take away.  When we change something even for the better it will meet resistance.  If we change it without communicating, the resistance can have big consequences.  This goes for worship styles to how small groups are run.  To how the church kitchen operates to the way the bulletin looks.  We can't just communicate it from the stage or blog.  We have to meet the people where they live.  Do we communicate it through texting, Facebook, twitter, carrier pigeon, smoke signals?  Do it all!
Communicate it so much that when the change happens people have come to expect it and the change isn't a shock.  Its so much more fun to act like your in the know than on the outside.  Why do you think Google+  had the invite only period?  To make people feel on the inside when logically you new the exclusivity of it all was just a smoke screen.  How do you make people feel exclusive?

Take away number 2.  Who is leaving your church simply because you didn't communicate change well?

The Stone of Excellence

In my last post, I finished with the idea of excellence.  Excellence might be a scary standard to hold yourself or others to, but it really is freeing.  I worked for years in both secular and religious organizations that missed the mark of excellence.  It wasn't that people weren't trying hard, they just seemed scared of the idea of excellence ... that somehow if they strived for excellent, they would fail.  Fear of setting the bar too high kept them from jumping over anything.

So what is your definition of Excellence?  Mine is doing my best in the endeavor that I am applying myself.  Notice I didn't say perfection.  Perfection and Excellence are not the same thing. My dad would call this "leaving it all out on the field."  That feeling of all my energy and focus was spent on an endeavor.  This was especially true for me when I pitched in baseball.  Was I expecting to throw a perfect game every time I took the mound? No way!  I was expecting to do it with excellence.  To work the fastball up and in, a curve ball low and away, or a slider just on the inside corner of the plate, that was expected.  If it was hit, then well, dang that guy is good.  To know that I did everything I could to make the pitch count, that's what I had in mind.

So what's your definition of excellence?  Are you confusing excellence with perfection?  If so, you're probably stifling your creativity and production with the fear of failure.

When the stone that needs to be thrown is No

When leading there is that awkward moment when you know someone needs to lead, but you don't necessarily want to be the one to lead.   Its when No needs to be said.

Leadership is all fun and games when you get the credit, the smiles, the slap on the back, or the nice emails.  But leading stinks when you have to be the bad guy.  The person who says not today, not here, not gonna happen.  There can be a policy in place or a standard to point back too, but it still comes back to someone saying no.  Wouldn't it be nice if we all had someone that we paid just to say no? In my mind they would look like a pitbull or look like your grandma.  I can't decide which ... hopefully your grandma doesn't look like a pitbull.  Either way, no one would talk back to them.  But I digress, does anyone like saying no?  What I have learned about saying "n"o is that by saying "no" to something, you are continuing to say "yes" to something you like, appreciate, or find more valuable.  

Personally, I am uncomfortable with this, because I hate to think that someone is thinking that I think I am more important than them.  But then I wonder, does anyone think or care about what I am caring and thinking about?  My narcissism gets in the way of being able to say "no."  So, now I really am the self-involved jerk by debating with myself and thinking that everyone in the world is thinking about what I am thinking about.

I need encouragement to say "no."  I think many leaders need permission to say "no."  There are those uber leaders that can crush people's ideas and not worry about it, but that is not me and probably not you either.  So I try to keep this in mind.  By saying "no" to people and ideas, we keep the integrity of who we are and the mission and values we hold dear.  If we say "yes" to everything, we are essentially saying "no" to excellence and excellence is the one thing I always want to say "yes" to.

Soft Stone

The idea is to be soft and hard at the same time.  Its impossible, but its the goal or drive of leading people.  No one wants to follow a rock and no one wants to follow a fluff ball.  A rock will break and hurt while a fluff ball will never push you.  Generals have called it, "winning the hearts and minds" of people, but the solders still had gun in their hands.  A Soft Stone.  I want my children to love me but i am pretty sure running with scissors is a bad idea.  So, if I have to discipline them, I practice the idea of a Soft Stone.  Soft and Hard at the same time.  I want to explore this idea in leadership with this blog.  What does it mean to lead and lead well?  Do the modern leadership gurus have it right?  Is leadership about getting what you want or is it about reaching goals? Both? Neither?  Lots of questions and few answers as we explore the Soft Stone.