“It is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in their personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into him, that they may delight in his presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God himself in the core and center of their hearts.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer
Chicago Illinois
June 16, 1948
From the Preface of: The Pursuit of God

What do you think the application is?

Success is not a matter of Luck.

Are you ready to make a positive choice what you want? Are you finished with hoping and relying on luck? Let me know what you’re going to do.

Several years ago we started watching NCIS. It used to be a great show about the Naval Criminal Investigative Service before it got political. The characters are great and the story’s were great. I really liked all the characters but I loved Gibbs.

Gibbs is the leader of the team and is a seemingly heartless pragmatist. Until you get to know him. You find out quickly that he has a huge heart and lots of baggage. But is very good at his job and a great leader. Someone I would like to emulate in some ways, in others not so much. One of the mainstay of the show is Gibbs rules. He doesn’t write them down. He feels it’s his job to teach the rules and he expects everyone on the team to know them.

I started thinking. “what are my rules?” so I started a list and here they are, 30 of Gary’s rules:

1. Always default to relationship
2. Always assume the best in people
3. Don’t make arbitrary rules
4. Always give your people a “why”; or they will come up with their own and they will be wrong
5. Always give honor and respect; not always obedience
6. Never judge motives, only fruit
7. What you allow you promote
8. What you reward you get more of
9. Unity trumps disunity
10. Continually cast vision
11. Email is the lowest form of communication; texts are the next lowest
12. Vision that creates opportunity for others; will never lack the involvement of others
13. Sometimes your’re wrong; when you’re wrong apologize, it’s a sign of strength.
14. Direction comes before correction
15. Always over communicate
16. Don’t give too much attention to your biggest fans or your biggest critics
17. If you’re going to get into trouble anyway; get into trouble doing the right thing.
18. Be predictable; your team should always know how you will react
19. Training too close to the decision making process looks like lobbying.
20. Ignore the squeaky wheel
21. Ignore your weaknesses; hire or delegate to your weakness
22. The best time to remove a team member is before they’re on the team.
23. Always reward faithfulness over giftedness.
24. Never confuse familiarity with understanding
25. Focus on building big people not big organizations
26. Nothing grows without conflict
27. Consensus is the end of leadership
28. Be very careful when playing the “God” card
29. Take responsibility not blame
30. Always give credit, take blame

These are not all original. I’ve stolen most of them and have forgotten mostly where they came from so if you know the origin feel free to give credit in the comments.

I plan to do a series of blog posts expounding on these rules someday. Stay tuned.

What do you think?
What would you add?

Don’t spend one second worrying about yesterday.

William Durant said “Forget past mistakes, forget failures, forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.”

If you like what you hear please share.

According to scripture;
What is God’s highest priority on the earth?

On February 5th & 6th I have the privilege of addressing worship leaders at the Continuous Worship Conference at Maranatha Bible Camp. I have a premise that will be the basis for the entire weekend and you can help my expressing what you think the Bible says is God’s highest priority on the earth.

It’s only one question. Please click through and answer the question.

God’s highest priority is….

Feel free to comment below as well. Thanks again.

Don’t forget to check out the conference.

As leaders we need to be competent in our craft but it’s not our first priority.

What are your thoughts?

Several years ago I was blessed to be at a pre-conference event with Jack Hayford. The event had not been well advertised so there were only a few of us in a small room with Jack Hayford. I count it as one of the most valuable days of my life.

I have always admired Jack and what he has done. It was incredible to hear him talk about the early days of the his church plant and being all alone in the chapel asking God to send people. He said something that day that has impacted significantly.

“We never set out to build a big Church, we set out to build big people”

Acts 20:28 instructs us as elders to take heed to ourselves and to the people Jesus bought with His blood. We must not use people to meet needs and serve events. I have never met a leader who would say that is their goal however the way many leaders do things has the end result of using people to meet needs and serve events.

We must always treat people as those who Jesus bought with His own blood. We must be gift based leaders. We must value those entrusted to us as an end in themselves not a means to an end. Until we start stewarding God’s people, His most valued and cherished creation, we should not expect our organizations to be healthy and prospering.

Are you leading with a priority to those you lead or are you merely viewing people as a way to accomplish something; even Kingdom things you feel called to address?

Would love your thoughts.

I attended a state college in Nebraska as a brand new believer where the campus ministry was all about discipleship. Their hearts cry was II Timothy 2:2:

You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others. 
II Timothy 2:2 NLT

Very simple but not easy. One of the leaders carried around a copy of The Master Plan of Evangelism in his back pocket and if you invited him to dinner you better set at least two other places because he was bringing “trustworthy”, or what he called “FAT” people (Faithful, Available, Teachable), with him. What he was doing was simple. He was simply sharing life with faithful men. But not easy, they were with him all the time.

If you have followed this space you know I love technology and I love systems. However my rule #1 is “always default to relationship”. People are the point of everything we do. Consider what Paul thought would be his final conversation with the elders at Ephesus.

So guard yourselves and God’s people, Feed and shepherd God’s flock-his church, purchased with his own blood-over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as elders. 
Acts 20:28 NLT, emphasis mine

When we get a revelation of this it changes everything we do. Jesus bought His people with “His Own Blood” and then appointed us as stewards of His greatest treasure. Don’t get caught up in the word “Elder”. If you are a leader in the church, or in any organization, you have been “appointed by the Holy Spirit” (see Romans 13 if you’re not sure about that) to “shepherd” them.

We are always looking for a new idea, a new tool, a new system, a new book, a new revelation. Not saying that’s a bad thing we should use every tool at our disposal to complete the call God has put on our lives. However:

Hans Ur von Balthasar wrote in his book Prayer:

we think that God’s Word has been heard on earth for so long that by now it is almost used up, that it is about time for some new word, as if we had the right to demand one.

James Clear wrote today in “Do More of What Works Already“.

There are many examples of behaviors, big and small, that have the opportunity to drive progress in our lives if we just did them with more consistency. Flossing every day. Never missing workouts. Performing fundamental business tasks each day, not just when you have time. Apologizing more often. Writing Thank You notes each week. Of course, these answers are boring. Mastering the fundamentals isn’t sexy, but it works.

We definitely need revival in the church but in my humble opinion we will bring revival by returning to the fundamental things of the faith ourselves and bringing as many people along with us as will go.

Do something simple today. Spend 20 minutes in the gospel of John, call an old friend and thank them for what they have contributed to your life, invite your neighbor to Church this Easter Sunday. Simple kindness is a game changer.

Life naturally becomes more and more complicated and we must fight to keep things simple. Make a decision today to be a people focused leader. With the empowering of the Holy Spirit look for the gifting in those entrusted to you, call it out, equip it, and release it. That is how we will change the world.

Let me know how it goes.

“We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”
Anais Nin

Are you ever frustrated because people don’t behave in a certain way? Do you ever get angry because someone didn’t respond the way you would have?

The right way.

We tend to be a self-centered bunch. I don’t mean selfish I mean self-centered. It’s something we have to constantly stay vigilant about. We are all uniquely made by God with specific gifts, talents, and bents. This is how a community is built. This is how a church is built. We all bring something unique and valuable to the community.

We must constantly be on guard against expecting others to behave in a certain way or respond to things the way we would.

This morning I was looking through my Strengths Finder results and realized I have put expectations on people based on my personality and my priorities. I haven’t been fair.

I’m reminded of a song by the band DOWNHERE called “The Problem”

Today I repent of my judgmental spirit and my expectations on people that have been unreasonable. I will walk in my gifts, not someone else’s, and I will not expect others to walk in mine.

Will you join me?

We are a results oriented culture, but are results really the only thing that matter?

For several years I was a Pepsi route salesman back in the day when the driver did everything. Sales, delivery, merchandising, the whole thing.

My first route was a full service route which meant I serviced machines with no real time to grow my route. I was on a dead run from 5:00am to 5:00pm every day filling pop machines all over the city of Lincoln NE.

I didn’t have much opportunity to win sales contests and get the trips or the swag the other drivers got. So when Barqs root beer had a contest I saw an opportunity. Over the next two months I filled every pop machine on my route with Barqs root beer. Both the slot where it went and every nook and cranny in the machine. When you opened the doors of my machines all you could see was Barqs root beer stacked to the top.

When the contest was over I had won a trip to Kansas City where my wife and I stayed at the Adams Mark hotel, went to a baseball game, and a dinner theatre over a weekend and had a great time.

I didn’t sell a another case of Barqs root beer for a year.

Are the results really the only thing that matter?

What was the goal of the contest? To sell root beer right? which we did. My question from a leaders perspective is; was the spurt in sales over two months enough to offset the lack of sales over the next year. I know I wasn’t the only one who engaged in this activity. Maybe Barqs saw some value, I’m pretty sure our local bottler didn’t.

If we as leaders only help people who are producing are we really leading and building people or are we just helping ourselves? I would submit to you that if your only recognizing results your not building anything, or worse yet anyone. If results are our only metric what things are going on to get the recognition, or the bonus, or the office, etc.etc.etc.

We should be looking for capacity and consistency, not results alone, and coming alongside those people to help build the right skillset to get the right results.

If we work with people of character and capacity the results will come. The reason we have problems in our organizations is we focus on the wrong things. Only recognizing high capacity doers is a big problem in lots of churches and organizations. We get the end result but often at a price that is unacceptable if we will stop and consider it.

Results certainly do matter as a metric for evaluating how things are done but be careful how you interpret those results.

You will get more of what you reward.

Do you want results no matter the cost or do you want consistency that will lead to greater, longer lasting, and more ethical results.