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Category Archive: Church Scattered

The Priority Of A Life Plan

Posted by on April 25, 2016

All of us have become proficient at doing all the major components of the business plan at work. We know how to define goals, create plans, execute priorities and evaluate success.

However, very few of us use these same disciplines to help lead our personal lives. Research shows that approximately 95% of us have never written out our personal goals in life, but of the 5% who have, 95% have achieved them.

Steven Covey popularized the phrase Personal Mission Statement in his bestselling book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He makes the point that ultimately all professional success flows out of our ability to lead ourselves first.

Every day we must say no to something because there is simply too much to do when you include the personal, family, career and civic responsibilities of our lives. If we do not take the time to define what we want our legacy to be for the people and things we care about the most they will by default usually end up on the no list.

What the annual plan does for your corporate productivity and performance your personal mission statement will do for the rest of your life. It will help define the core values for you personally and your family and set realistic goals with strategies that will help you to write your own script for the totality of your entire life.

It should never be acceptable to succeed in one area of our lives only to fail in all the others. Take the time to write down what is personally and professionally important to you in this life because in the end that is all that will really matter.

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How To Deal With A Spouse's Bad Habits

Posted by on April 22, 2016

Marriage may be the single greatest leadership challenge in all of life. First of all, these people know everything about us and there is no way to fake it. We also over time develop these lists of annoying things they do that drive us crazy. So practically what should we do when the same old stuff keeps coming up over and over. Mark Merrill has some advice:

“He left the toilet seat up…again. She interrupted me mid-sentence…again. She hounded me about that to-do item…again. He left his clothes in a heap on the bedroom floor…again. Those annoying habits can be frustrating, especially when we’ve asked our spouse to stop doing them so many times.”

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A Simple Way To Combat Chronic Stress

Posted by on April 20, 2016

We just finished a three week marathon of moving into a new house and doing most of the packing and moving ourselves. Needless to say the stress levels are still out the roof and I found these simple techniques posted by the HBR to be helpful:

“For most leaders today, frequent stress is inevitable. But with awareness and a little skill, its negative impacts are not.

Intense negative experiences of stress are all too common. Consider Stefano, coauthor of this article. In 1998, Stefano began a career abroad while simultaneously completing an MBA. He worked and studied 14 hours a day, seven days a week, fueled by a constant flow of stress hormones. ”

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Security and Significance Part III

Posted by on April 12, 2016

God has designed us so that the most important needs in our lives can only be met through Him. His next priority is for us to be in a relationship with our spouse that reflects Christ unconditional love for the church and His willing submission to the will of the Father.

The trap I mentioned in the last post is that we can move our faith to the top of the list of personal priorities but we can substitute church for Christ. Church in many ways is just like the emotional support we get from our career.

We can serve in an important role and gain significance through our responsibilities and tremendous encouragement from all the people we help. Although these are certainly good things the danger of religion taking the place of a relationship is always emotionally seductive.

Even with faith at the top of the list and family in second place there are dangers there as well. When husbands and wives do not place their personal relationship above all other people and the pain of rejection starts hurting both parties they move their remaining emotional energy to the children.

After all doing what is best for the children is a worthy goal and it brings great emotional significance. It can be easy to justify hanging in a bad marriage “for the sake of the children.”

There is only one major problem, it will never work. The most loving thing a parent can ever do for a child is to love God in a passionate real way and love their spouse with grace and humility.

Other people and other things can never give us what only God can provide unconditional love and lasting significance. Beyond that the single most important relationship that we have in this life is with our spouse. Church and children can be dangerous temporary substitutes but they too will leave us empty in the end.

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Leadership's Responsibility In Life After Work

Posted by on April 1, 2016

I really get amped when the whole conversation of work-life balance is addressed. Many bottom line supervisors really don’t seem to mind if people take too much work home and stay connected 24/7. However, they must realize that everyone brings home to work every day and it definitely impacts performance. This HBR post tackles this difficult subject:

“And yet more often than not, the unspoken rules of “killing it” here in Silicon Valley might prevent people like these from even mentioning their needs to their managers. If you’re not sleeping under your desk, you’re not committed — an attitude we sometimes refer to as “martyr capitalism.”

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Why Busyness Is Not Badge Of Honor

Posted by on March 25, 2016

The harder we work the more we get done right? Wrong!!!! Actually, the reverse may be true because at some point in time we lose our margin and stop being effective at anything. Being over scheduled is definitely not something to brag about and according to Mark Merrill we must do something about it:

“I’m so slammed at the office this week. I’m going to be working late every night to get things done!” “This is a crazy month for me and the kids. Between basketball playoffs, piano recitals, and soccer tournaments, I might as well start a taxi service.”

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10 Ways To Create Margin

Posted by on March 23, 2016

A simple definition of margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the opposite of overload because you will have something in reserve for a time when you will need it.

Richard Swenson wrote an incredible book entitled Margin to help us learn how to restore emotional, physical, financial and time reserves to our overscheduled lives. Of all these important areas he believes everything must start with our emotional energy.

Every day we only have so much emotional energy to give to our family, work, friends and other people. Most of these people are making withdrawals from our emotional bank accounts and if we are not careful we become overdrawn with nothing left to give.

We must start each day knowing our emotional balance and then set limits on those people and things that will tend to drain us to the point of experiencing the pain of being overwhelmed. He lists several things that can restore your emotional energy:

Cultivate Social Supports
Reconcile Relationships
Serve One Another
Rest
Laugh
Offer Thanks
Grant Grace
Be Rich in Faith
Hold Fast Hope
Envision a Better Future

Some of the emotional drainers in life cannot be avoided but when you build in things that make deposits then you can routinely within your day monitor your balance and make the necessary adjustments to maintain margin.

We must find ways in this wired world we live in to have peace of mind so that we have something left to give to the people that matter the most.

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The Target Has Changed For Churches

Posted by on March 17, 2016

Any time you talk about some group of people being your primary target most people in the church get offended. It is if they are concerned that because they are not in the target group their needs are not going to be met. This of course should not have to be the case at all.

For over fifty years at least the same target group has existed from a demographic and psychographic standpoint. They were the adults that made up the World War II and the Baby Boomer generations. We developed programs and services to meet their needs and they would bring their children to church with them.

A typical adult conversation on the way home would be how did you like the message, music and the lesson? If both adults had a good experience, then they would deal with whatever issues the children had and bring them back the next Sunday.

Today the overwhelming majority of adults under the age of forty are not coming to church any more. They have a different world view about God and the need for role of the church in their lives.

When they do come because someone has relationally connected with them at work or in the neighborhood the conversation on the way home has completely changed. Now the major thing that matters is what type of experience did their children have and do they want to come back again?

If the answer is yes, the adults are now willing to make the adjustments and they will be back. If the answer is no, then regardless of what happened to mom and dad they are not going to give you a second look.

If your preschool, children and student ministries are not world-class in your church then you cannot expect to reach families in today’s culture. The conversations on the way home have changed and your target group must change with it as well.

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The Problem Of Marginless Living

Posted by on March 11, 2016

In the past I have talked about the need to create margin in our lives. Margin is the space that used to exist in all of our lives between all the physical, emotional and mental pressures of every day and our capacity to respond in a meaningful way to all of the people and circumstances that we must address.

The lack of margin is exactly the opposite when we have too many demands and not enough resources. For most of us the public parts of our lives centered around our work life demands its percentage first. I know people who can make million dollar decisions all day long at the office only to be so spent by the end of the day they can’t even decide if they want pizza or hamburgers for dinner.

They put other people first all day whether they are customers or co-workers only to come home with nothing left for a lonely spouse or stressed out children. We may feel successful at times because of all the public praise that comes with making your numbers but at the end of the day we know something is terribly wrong.

Whatever it takes all of us must find the courage to stake out some core values that are non-negotiable. This will allow us maybe for the first time in our lives to have the margin we need to live the life we want rather than the one someone else has scripted for us.

You have the capacity to write your own script, so take out your pen and start writing.

Find out what works for you to find time for the people that matter most.

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Complacency: The Subtle And Silent Enemy Of Your Marriage

Posted by on March 7, 2016

When I talk with people who say they want to set personal goals around things they really want to change, I often hear this when I check in. Yea, I really do want to do that but you know life got in the way. That has become an all too familiar excuse for not doing the best things. This is clearly a critical problem in a lot of marriages and Mark Merrill has some important reminders:

“The same is true of relationships, especially marriages. If you don’t nurture and nourish your relationships, they will begin to wither. What starts out being comfortable can easily slide into complacency if we are not careful.”

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