Clarifying... Pt. 3: Voice & Responsibility

As you clarify and refine the vision for your team/staff/church/business/school/family, you also have to clarify and refine the VOICE. The voice of a team is the shared sense of mission, joy, urgency, passion, work ethic, philosophy, and responsibility that defines the culture of that team. I CANNOT overstate how mission-critical the voice of your team is. It is sink-or-swim, do-or-die, life-and-death critical.


Some people that you recruit/hire/bring on will just "get it," almost from before day one. Some people don't get it yet, but they will as you teach and share it. And, some won't. For those who won't or can't, it means that you hired the wrong person. Not necessarily a bad person, but the wrong person for this team. 


And, some people are just so wounded that they can't get out of their own way emotionally and relationally and it doesn't matter what you do--it will never be enough. We have to love these people, invite them to join us in the larger mission/vision of the team, and help them where we can (or help them find help where we can't help them). But because of our responsibility to the larger team and mission or vision, we can't allow an individual or small group of people to be a drag and drain on our overall culture, performance, and team. 


Hopefully, we're engaged in something so audacious, so monumental, and significant, that to allow that would be catastrophic to our cause. As the leader, we don't have the luxury of settling for the catastrophe of mediocrity. We are responsible and accountable for the vision and the voice that are the vehicles for our vocation, our calling. Regardless of our leadership context or style, our personality, the benefits and rewards, or challenges and obstacles--responsibility is the defining characteristic of leadership. Accepting and embracing responsibility reveals a true leader.


###

Clarifying Dreams & Vision, Pt. 2

Way back in Feb. I wrote Clarifying Dreams & Visions as a calm, almost academic reflection on Dr. Sam Chand's observation: Leadership is like changing the fan belt on your car. While driving down the highway.

At the time, I didn't intend it to be a multi-part posting. But, in the interim six months, God has changed not only the fan belts of our church and my life, but the oil, radiator fluid, all four tires, the transmission, and the very engine itself. All, while driving down the highway. And, sure enough, he has used this process to clarify and refine the vision that he has called us to realize.

The vehicle has changed. Significantly. But the destination, the object of our prayers, work, dreams, hopes, time, resources, pain, and joy remains the same as it ever was: TO GROW THE COMMUNITY OF CHRIST ONE LIFE AT A TIME.

Over the next few days, I'm going to share some of what we've learned and experienced and decided as a result of this crazy ride. Here's the first thing: THE COMMITMENT TO TRAVEL TRUMPS THE MODE OF TRAVEL. If your car breaks down, don't abandon the journey. Repair it or replace it, but whatever you do, keep moving!

If your team's communication, passion, unity, joy, or effectiveness breaks down, the leader is responsible/accountable to repair/replace whatever or whomever needs to be repaired/replaced. The journey (mission, vision, purpose) is too important and the stakes are too high to abandon the journey.

Clarifying Dreams & Visions

At last week's C3 Conference, Dr. Sam Chand likened leadership to changing a fan belt on your car while driving down the highway.

Just for the record, he's right.

God is in the midst of changing some fan belts in me, in our family, and in Lake Hills Church--all while we continue screaming down the highway. It is an incredibly fun, somewhat scary, hugely faith-building time. It's a time of praying, dreaming, seeking counsel, praying, planning, and praying.

I don't know exactly what the next set of fan belts looks like yet, but I know they are bigger and able to sustain higher speeds, hotter temperatures, and greater loads. These dreams and visions that God is leading us into demand change. But, they are clarifying who we are, what we do, and who God wants to be a part of them.

Buckle up.

###

Where There IS Vision...

In the King James Version of the Bible, Prov. 29:18 says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish..." It's an often-quoted axiom that is so undeniably true. Absent a God-given, God-honoring vision, dream, revelation of what might be, people die a little on the inside every day.

But, the flip side of that axiom is equally true and infinitely more powerful: Where there IS vision, the people flourish. Lock eyes with someone who's chasing a God-sized vision or calling, and you lock eyes with passion, joy, peace, determination, loyalty, clarity, and the power to bounce back from setback. (For another take on this see Mike Hyatt's post--very good stuff).

What's interesting about this is that the word vision chosen by the King James translators is more accurately rendered in our day revelation, as in the Word of God revealed in Scripture. With no vision, no revelation from God, people perish--they cast off restraint. REAL vision begins with what God has supernaturally given to people in the Bible. He gives us his Word in divine communication, protects it through human translation, and reveals its power through faithful application.

What's your dream?

###

I Have a Dream

It's not an original line, but here's MY dream:

The Church puts the government out of the compassion business

Crazy? Maybe just crazy enough to work. Here are the dollars allocated to social programs in the current federal budget(these numbers are from the Congressional Budget Office):

$78.7 billion - Dept. of Health & Human Services
$47.5 billion - Dept. of Housing and Urban Development
$9.7 billion - Social Security Administration
____________________________________________
$135.9 billion

Now, here's another number:

$168 billion - Amount available if U.S. churchgoers tithe (the minimum biblical amount, 10% of all God-given income).

Hmmmm...

###

Family Church

From the very beginning of LHC, we have pursued one thing where children and student ministries are concerned: We want kids to drag their parents to church, rather than parents dragging their kids. This weekend's installment of the Soulmate series brings a up a great question (that actually applies EVERY week):

*What ages are welcome in the weekend worship services?

First, EVERYONE is welcome at LHC-at large. But, there is no way that a worship experience can really meet children where they are and lead adults to truly worship in spirit and truth and process teaching spiritually and intellectually. When I say children, obviously every child develops at a unique pace, but there are many more commonalities between 2nd and 3rd graders than between 2nd graders and 30-year-olds.

WE DO CHILDREN'S MINISTRIES. WE DO NOT DO CHILDCARE. We invest significant time, talent, and treasure in creating meaningful worship and teaching experiences through our children's ministries. Even in infant rooms where all they do is sleep, eat, soil, cry and sit, children and their parents are prayed over and cared for by a committed staff and volunteers.

Most--not all, but most--people who demand to "worship as a family" do so out of nostalgia for their childhood experiences and because they remember boring, lifeless flannelboard Sunday School bits that they don't want to subject their kids to. That, I respect. It's just that that's not who God has called us to be, so that's not what we do. And in our context, it certainly isn't because it's what packs the most meaningful spiritual punch in the kids' lives. THAT happens in and through the various LHC Kids ministries.

That's why we ask all parents to lead their kids to the experience designed specifically for their kids. They are prayed over, thought through, and led by such gifted and committed people who are there specifically for kids.

It's a practice, based on a principle rooted in our values and vision as a church. It's part of who we are. Your kids will thank you.

LHC Downtown

In case you missed it, here's a link to this morning's Austin American Statesman article about downtown churches. Special thanks to campus Pastor Chad Zunker and his team for being a light and a haven downtown for so many people who would never have come to us if Chad and his team weren't going to them. Well done, to a lot of good and faithful servants.

This Sunday: ON TOUR

This morning, as I was studying and praying through some sermon prep for this weekend, I started to get really antsy about getting to preach this message. As I read and study the Scripture that we're going to mine this Sunday and pray over and think about our strategy as a church, I get so excited about what God wants to reinforce in our DNA as a called-out community of Christ.

As we conclude the series All Access this weekend, I want to particularly invite you to make SURE that you are in worship this weekend with an expectant and open heart and mind. Really everything that we've been talking about for the last few weeks comes to full fruition in the PRACTICE of what we'll talk about this weekend.

To all of you who decided to Rock Out and signed up to serve last weekend, welcome to the team! As we launch the new ministry season on Sept. 7, I know that God has positioned us in a place of indescribable promise. To everyone who is a part of what God's doing through and in LHC, thank you for your prayers, your service, your excitement, your giving, your inviting friends--everything that you do to make your church a healthy, vibrant, and welcoming community of Christ.

One of My Favorite Days

This morning was a mile marker day for the LHC family. First, AGAIN, what an amazing job from Mark Groutas and his team leading us in worship. It was a monster day of genuine worship. (And that was after having spent all week leading worship for our Middle School Beach Week in Alabama!)

Second, it was such a blessing to have Ben Young preach in our house for the first time in the history of LHC. Ben is such a gifted, unique communicator of God's Word, and he led us through a truly wonder-full story of grace from his own life parallel to the biblical account of Nicodemus (John 3, 7, & 19). If you missed it, you owe it to yourself to watch the online version when it becomes available on Monday.

As if that wasn't enough, LHC Downtown had another preview service this morning at the Austin Music Hall. Since Ben was preaching at the mother ship, I got to be downtown for a little while, and it was awesome. Campus Pastor Chad Zunker and his team have put us in as healthy and strong a position as we could possibly be four weeks out from the Sept. 7 launch of LHC Downtown.

God has given us the opportunity of a lifetime to launch this new ministry in a place and at a time that none of us could have orchestrated. What a blessing for us all to get to pray, work, give, and serve to fully realize the vision God has called us to fulfill.

Follow Through This Weekend

This weekend, I'm continuing the series ALL ACCESS with a message entitled "Sound Check". Part of my sermon prep included watching the DVD of Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones rock-umentary Shine a Light. Now, Mick and the boys have been doing their thing for a while. But, WHOA! They really are amazing at what they do. It's an impressive film of an amazing group. But I digress...

This weekend's message is all about spiritual growth. For the last two weeks, we've looked at the very beginnings of a faith journey, but this week we're going to really get into HOW we grow and mature in the Christian faith. It's a fascinating combination of individual and community responsibility. And, honestly, it's one in which we as a church are stepping up our game this fall. So, make it a point to be there and to bring someone with you this weekend. You'll be challenged, encouraged, and equipped to take your faith to the next level.

Believe me, too, when I tell you that you will not want to miss the creative conclusion to the message that our team has prepared. They have definitely taken it to the next level.

Spur Leadership Conference

We are less than 2 months away from one of the most exciting ministry opportunities that God has ever put in our path as a church. On Thursday, Oct. 2 we will host the first SPUR LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE. This one-day event is designed to serve those who lead in any arena, whether in the marketplace or in ministry, non-profits or government.

If you lead and influence in any capacity, you need to be a part of the Spur Leadership Conference. One of the primary goals of the conference is to encourage and equip future and potential leaders to begin developing their leadership capacity more intentionally and more purposefully. So, consider bringing with you those members of your team or organization that may not be driving the boat right now but would may prove to be the future heart, brains, and backbone of your group.

For more info and to register, go to WWW.SPURLEADERSHIP.ORG and be a part of serving those who get it done.

Also, Early Registration pricing lasts through August 30th.

ALL ACCESS

I love climbing back into the preaching saddle! This weekend, I'm launching a new message series that we have been praying over, preparing, and working toward for months.

ALL ACCESS is a sermon series that will be (to borrow a phrase) good news for all people. ALL ACCESS is going to explain and explore the miracle and mystery of the Church. The Church is Jesus on Tour. In this world, we are his voice, his hands and feet, his children, his family, his ambassadors--literally, his Body. Literally and spiritually.

We are the Church. Imperfect. Flawed. Sometimes selfish. Sometimes exclusive. And, still, we are the Church. The Body of Christ commissioned, commanded, and empowered by the Son of God to bring hope to this world. To ALL of this world.

All because He is ALL ACCESS.

This weekend, we're going to welcome our good friend Malford Milligan once again. If you've never heard Malford sing...well, just believe me when I tell you, the House will be rockin'.


Use Malford's appearance as an opportunity to invite someone to come with you, to experience God through your church this week. Give them an excuse to come to church with you. IF you'll do that, I promise you they'll encounter God.

One Prayer, Pt. 2

One of the most powerful components of the One Prayer season of ministry is the opportunity we have to play a key role in planting new churches in some of the most remote corners of the world. The locations for these new bodies of Christ are:
*Cambodia
*India
*Sudan
*China

Collectively, those nations are going to be home to 500 new churches. That's 500 new outposts and beachheads for the love and hope of Christ in places where love and hope are desperately needed.

This is the kind of focused, intentional, and uniting work that would not be possible without technology bringing together over 1,100 churches representing more than 736,000 people in weekly church participation.

What is your One Prayer for the Bride of Christ?

www.SpurLeaders.org Goes LIVE

Thanks to Jon Jennings and his team, we are actually a day EARLY in launching the Spur Leaders website. The first post offers a sample of where this resource is coming from and where we're headed with it. The most significant offering you'll find there is the vision for Spur Leaders.

Obviously, the main event for this year is the SPUR LEADERS CONFERENCE, coming to Austin on Thurs., Oct. 2. Beginning today, registration is open. In fact, we have already received our first registration--even before the announcement that the site was active.


QUESTION: To help you as a leader, what topic or message would you most want a conference speaker to deliver to your team?

Health-o-meter

Since before Day One of LHC, we have always known our mission was not to be a big church, but to be a healthy one. Of course, because we are located in a metropolitan area of >1.3 million people, if we are healthy, we will grow in size.

But, there are other metrics for the health of a church. The challenge is to identify the right ones and measure accordingly. Some of these objective measurables are readily apparent:
The # of people stepping into faith in Christ for the first time.
The # of people getting baptized as a statement of faith.
The # of people regularly tithing
The growth of existing ministries and/or birth of new ministries (or eliminating of ineffective ministries)
Some of the subjective measurables are equally important. They're just much tougher to evaluate accurately because they transcend quantifying:
The worship climate of a congregation
The working environment of the staff
Spiritual Development of the congreation
This last one is the one that I think is the stickiest to evaluate. How do you determine "spiritual development" when it is personal and universal, individual and communal, as well as mysterious and obvious?

What criteria would you suggest in evaluating the spiritual development of a particular church?

Happy Birthday(s)

This morning represents an incredible confluence of time in our lives. Yesterday, our kids turned 13 and 11 years old respectively. Usually, when people find out they share the same birthday, the first question is, "Did y'all plan that?!"--to which I reply, "Yes. That's just how organized Julie and I are."

It's an incredible time to be a dad. Emily and Joseph are both becoming more and more who God created them to be, and we are really enjoying the process of parenting. We certainly have our moments just like every family, but we're finding that a relentless commitment to honesty and love, coupled with a non-negotiable respect for God-honoring authority in our home helps everything else.

And, it was 10 years ago this morning that Julie and I were getting up and getting ready for the very first service at Lake Hill Church. Under the watchful gaze of a papier mache Chinese New Year Dragon that was hanging in the Forest Trail Elementary School cafetorium, 15 of us set up chairs, sound system, and a coffee station and waited with baited breath to see who would show up.

We're going to celebrate God's goodness throughout these 10 years and where that's propelling us in an incredible service on Oct. 21. But, I'll be posting thoughts and ideas about it here between now and then (and probably beyond 10.21).

Just like with Emily & Joseph, it's an incredible time to be a pastor. LHC is becoming more and more who God is calling us to be. We're doing more and more of what he wants us to do. And, just like in a family, a relentless commitment to honesty and love and flowing in God's authority throughout the church helps everything else.

It's almost like God knew that when he set up the world.

That's Why

Yesterday, all through our services, Lake Hills Church reminded me why we do what we do:
1. Over 300 people moved into our 9am service to make room in the later services for guests. Thank you so much for being that kind of church and keeping it going over the next few weeks.
2. During the singing part of worship, the rafters were ringing with people's voices praising God with everything they had.
3. Mark Groutas and his team were just on in a big way.
4. Our ViP's (Vision-in-Person) stepped up in a monster way to create a welcoming, joyful environment for everyone who stepped on our campus.
5. Matt Williams and his team in Sunday Morning LIVE hosted more than 260 middle schoolers at their back to school kick-off.
6. Brent & Sarah Davis led worship and teaching for 841 children and workers.
7. Jon Jennings and his tech and communications team created a worship experience that led us into the presence of God and clearly communicated who God is--and that was AFTER they crafted an incredible marketing effort to let people know what God's doing and inviting them to be a part of it.
8. Hundreds of husbands/wives were biblically challenged to see their marriages as a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and take their game to the H-N-L.
9. The joy and the excitement of God was all over the place.

The numbers only matter because they represent real people who matter to God. And THAT is why we do what we do.

The Most Spiritually Mature Thing

Mark Groutas, LHC's Worship Pastor, was telling me about his workout program earlier this week. His trainer Scott Hennig insists that his training regimen always be moving toward a specific, measurable goal. Whether it's to dunk a basketball, create core strength to improve posture, drop weight, add strength--whatever it is, it has to be identifiable and measurable.

Spiritual growth and development prove much more difficult to measure and evaluate. The religious ditches are littered with people and programs that stripped faith of its mystery and beauty by reducing it to "4 Steps to God," or "7 Habits of Highly Defective Dogma," and on and on...

But, there is an equal number of ditches on the other side of the road littered with people and programs that evade evaluation under the guise of "spiritual authenticity." This bent conveniently hyper-spiritualizes and then ignores the promise that our work will be tested as by fire.

So, how do you measure Christ-likeness? Clearly, no one solution can exhaustively answer that question.

But, how about this for openers: Identify (measure, evaluate, ...) the impact your life is having on people far from God. Jesus said that he abandoned heaven to seek them. IF I'm growing and becoming more like him, I'll orient my life more like he oriented his.

This weekend, I'm kicking off a message series called MARRIAGE TO THE H-N-L~Taking Husbands & Wives to a Hole Nutha Level. It is a prime opportunity to invite someone you know--someone you care about--to discover 2 things:

1. What marriage can be, and
2. How relentlessly and unconditionally God loves them.

The most spiritually mature thing we'll ever do is introduce one more person to the love of God.

Cradle to the Grave Vision

This week, I got one of those rare opportunities to see the wide sweep of God's moving in and through our church. Thursday, I led funeral services for Mrs. Allyne Bunnell who gracefully passed away at the age of 88 years old. And, this morning in our church services, we are celebrating a Parent-Child-Church Dedication in which parents commit to rear their children in God-honoring homes, and the church commits to be a community and resource that supports the parents' ministry to their kids.

Mrs. Bunnell--or, Mimi as she was known--is one of the great blessings in my life. Having grown up in the Southern Baptist tradition, I feel confident that she never imagined to worship in her final years in a church like ours with our band, lights, and video and a pastor who would only wear a suit to her funeral. And, yet, every single time she walked into and out of our doors, she was absolutely beaming and encouraging to me personally. For her, worship wasn't about her. It was about her Lord, and if her great-grandchildren and their parents and grandparents were there worshiping, she would be too. She embodies the radiant beauty of 1 Peter 3.

The Parent-Child-Church Dedication is always an incredible encouragement and stout reminder of the responsibility we have to be a church that kids drag their parents to rather than vice versa. As you look at each life on the stage with their parents, I remember why we do what we do...why we make hard leadership decisions that consider where we need to go rather than where we want to go...how much of God's money to allocate to children's ministries when the whole world seems to be screaming for missions (isn't the whole church a mission?)...what caliber of staff to ensure leads and serves this mission-critical ministry...

I love that in the church we have the opportunity to learn from, to be blessed by, and to work for families from babies to great-grandparents and all points in between. This has to be the greatest job in the world.

"...like men who dream"

Two weeks ago, my wife Julie tuned me in to a passage of scripture that I hadn't known before. The first lines of Psalm 126 go like this:

When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion,
we were like men who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
"The LORD has done great things for them."

Possibly the greatest gift of the time we took this summer to recalibrate personally and spiritually has been the renewed ability to dream. And, because of that, our family, our extended church staff family, is experiencing a recharged capacity for laughter, and music, and joy.

God strengthens the link between dreaming and joy. A God-given dream--vision--is born out of hope, excitement, life, a healthy dose of fear, optimism, blessing, faith...you get the point.

A few reasons why dreaming and laughing gets choked out:
1. We get tired. When we let ourselves get run down physically, emotionally, etc.--especially for an extended period of time--we severely compromise our ability to dream big dreams.
2. We get financially strapped. Lack of money over a long haul can create a survival-mode mentality that becomes a rut. Financial provision is part of who God is. Stacked up against the Red Sea and the Resurrection, funding the dreams He gives is a layup.
3. We listen to the wrong people. Love everyone, but move with movers. There will always be haters. Nehemiah stayed on the wall while the haters called for committee meetings and hurled false accusations against him. Don't waste the time and energy it takes to address their stupidity. Keep a trowel in one hand and a spear in the other, but stay on the wall.
4. We get spiritually dry. The word enthusiasm comes from Greek, en-Theos ~ in God. To even sniff a vision worth chasing, you've got to be en-Theos--in God regularly, through prayer, worship (personal and corporate), and in normal conversation with other movers and dreamers.

Fun. Dreaming. Laughter. That's God-deep.