5 Lessons in 5 Months

5 Lessons in as many months: Ministry

The fun of Twitter to me is that connection and challenge you receive when other take the time to truly engage one another through social media. This week a good friend and former staff member @joshburcham (on twitter) asked me a question: What are the 5 things you’ve learned about leadership &/or ministry since being at Pin Oaks Christian Fellowship the last 5 months? We should all be asking this question, and on a regular basis as well. So, after some time, thought, and prayer here are my answers:

1.Prayer is only an option for those who plan to fail.

I fail in prayer far to often. In any given week and at multiple times I am relearning this powerful truth. Prayer is the foundation of any great leader, movement, or ministry. Be disciplined about your prayer efforts and be consciously aware of how God uses a more prayer centered version of you in the coming week.

2.NOTHING is more important than keeping the Bible at the center of all you do.

The bible is our guide. Often I will buy into the hype that clever phrases and systems are all that is necessary to be successful in ministry. All we really need is to make sure that at the heart of our every efforts is the desire to make sure people come face to face with Biblical truth.

3.Never underestimate what God is capable of doing because you can’t imagine it yourself.

The imagination is amazing. Dreams are more than a gift. Imagination and dreams working in tandem are…fantastical…I know that is not a word but work with me here! However, our best dreams and most wildly imaginative goals are never big enough to match the wonders of our creator. His mind wanders in pools we are desperate to drink from and clouds we would die to fly through. Getting lost in the grand scale of our God’s scheme is an admirable pursuit worth our last drips of limited energy. Get lost in Him today…FYI this takes us back to the first to points of being in prayer and rooted in the Bible.

4.Good communication is NOT the same thing as lots of communication.

With the dawn of the social media tempest…or maybe it is more like it’s blazing noon day sun. We are surrounded by ways of communicating to those in and out of our spheres of influence. I will take the lead of @human3rror here and not argue the pros and cons of how and who to follow when engaging these tools of modern communication but I will say this: Just because you use any or all of these tools does not make you an effective communicator. Mass amounts of information does not take the place of careful, thorough, and intentional communication. In fact, many people are far more effective with 15 emails in a day than I have ever been with 2,285 twitter updates. Just think about how you can be more succinct and thorough in what you say and execute. Everyone around you will be grateful.

5.It is never as easy OR as hard as you thought it would be.

A quote I heard once on Man Vs. Wild can be paraphrased like this, “in survival it is not always about heading in the right direction. Sometimes just the act of doing anything can feel like progress and progress can propel you to rescue.” I hear the host say these things and my immediate thought is…I can do that. Really? I am barely running 4 miles without calling for an ambulance. Truth is survival is a lot harder than it seems. As I watch these shows I have learned a whole new respect for survivors of all shapes and sizes: People who are debt free, cancer patients, church planters, and many many more. However, a friend recently reminded of how we talk ourselves out of things before we ever begin with a comment about her journey to learning how to scuba dive: “Scuba was that way. I was so wrapped up in the thought of not breathing that it affected my breathing. Then I just breathed.” Sometimes it isn’t that hard at all. So the crazy paradoxical truth here is that you should have enough respect for the task you are about to undertake and avoid underestimating its challenge, all the while remembering that you are capable of accomplishing things you could never imagine in a thousand lifetimes if you rely on God for your direction.

Go do something. Do it now and have a blast.

Catapult Canyon

In response to an exercise in creativity (I needed it, felt really stiffled). I am posting a picture of a them park attraction. Hope you like Catapult Canyon. The name says it all!