Author Archive
You can shine like stars in the universe.
"But I'll never get this project completed!"
"Those potholes are so huge – why doesn't someone fill them?"
"I'll never get these books read."
"I don't care for this music…. it's too loud/soft/fast/slow."
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The litany of complaints never ends. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that what you complain about with words but refuse to take action on will never be resolved.
Instead you stew, you vent, you get red-faced. And in the end you look like a clown: your face is discolored, your actions are animated (looks like you're juggling), and you might even shoot steam out of your ears.
Paul once wrote on the subject to the Christians in Philippi, "Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing." -Philippians 2:14-16 NIV
I have learned that merely complaining never fixes anything. I used to be a big complainer – to waitstaff, to 800-number customer service reps, to my friends, to family, etc.
I learned that in all those wasted breaths I accomplished nothing – it was as Shakespeare wrote, "sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Instead of complaining, I choose to make a difference. So where I see injustice – I seek justice. When I am confused I pray for clarity. When I am lost I seek guidance. When I see that something needs to get done – I do it.
Funny thing is – when you become a person of action – you feel healthier because you're doing something about the situation. Others however, get jealous very quickly and say, "What's so special about him?"
The answer is – nothing special. Except for being fed up with being the clown. You can do this – it's easy. Instead of problems focus on solutions.
May you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life!
Linchpin: Seth Godin’s look at art
Seth Godin's Linchpin takes a look at the artist inside of all of us. Nothing short of sparking a revolution in the way we think about our daily lives and work – Godin challenges the reader to become indispensable by engaging our work with passion instead of becoming the dull, monotonous "cogs" in a corporate nightmare.
I'll be completely transparent here: I love Seth Godin's writing/speaking/blog/etc. You may or may not be a fan, but in my view every person who's ever had a dream and not taken the next step (dream to shipping as Godin would say) then you need to run and get this book now. It's a quick read at just under 250 pages and it might just alter your success trajectory for life.
Painting our current grim corporate situation akin to Orwell's dystopian society in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Godin casts a vision for a world where people are paid to do what they are passionate about instead of what they've been trained to do or what they think will generate the most cash for them.
I felt that Godin's perspective was a compromise of Pollan and Levine's Die Broke from several years ago. Pollan and Levine proposed that your job was just a cash-generator, you need not associate yourself or self worth with what you do. Rather jump to the job that pays the most and has the best benefits. Once you've found something better jump, because who you are has little to do with what you do for a living.
Godin, I think, would rather encourage his tribe to jump to something they feel like they are passionate about. He does however make the point that we can find purpose and meaning in our current job – often it is more about our perspective. He strongly encourages the reader to not think of their skills as who they are, because skills can easily be replaced with someone with the same or better skills.
Rather, to become indispensable one must be willing to work within a broken system, not be content with the present, but remain optimistic about the future. Godin tells the reader "we" (meaning all of society) need artists, independent thinkers, and people that realize our primary ability to connect with others is the paramount virtue. Our society has taken the process or system and removed the humanity in an order to provide consistent, cheap, and automated solutions.
In Godin's mind this is the antithesis of progress. The artist creates, gives his gifts away, and goes back to the drawing board to create once again. Sometimes this may be profitable, other times it may be done at a loss, but the end result is art given freely.
Reminds me of another good book by my favorite author, "Freely you have received, freely give."
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Takeaways from “Ignite” by Nelson Searcy
My takeaways from "Ignite" by Nelson Searcy
This is my fourth Searcy book to complete in the past four months: Activate, Launch, Fusion, and now Ignite. His books are easy to read, chock full of practical advice and experience, and they read like I think. I'm a sucker for his books now, I even pre-ordered this one before they stocked them at Amazon.
Searcy is a former pastor at Saddleback Church in California (where Rick Warren is Senior Pastor). His experiences there combined with his practical church planting experiences in NYC create a powerful testimony to focus, vision, and staying intentional.
This book is no different, although everything from cover design to the "feel" of the book had a different feeling than the first three Searcy books I read. Each one of those felt more like a planning manual, whereas Ignite came across as theory more often peppered with a few practical examples.
The power in all of Searcy's works are that he challenges you to localize and not copy verbatim. The books gives great blueprints but each pastor must adapt the plans to fit a particular culture.
Key Takeaways:
- If your church is so great – you ought to regularly be bringing people you know that have no authentic community to come experience community in Christ.
- Evangelism is not a one-time event – sowing the seed wide and far is our job. God is the one who gives the return and harvest.
- 1 out of 4 people will respond positively to a first invite to church. 3 out of 4 respond positively when asked just one more time!
- Stretch and release is a reality. Big days force a sense of urgency followed by a recoup period of time, much like exercise.
- Easter is a big day – but we can open other opportunities throughout the year that are easy to invite people to and give them a reason to attend church on a specific day.
- The pastor sets the evangelistic temperature of the church through his personal passion for reaching the lost and unchurched.
- Only about 5% of Christians have the gift of direct one-on-one evangelism. There must be a renewed emphasis on John 1:42 evangelism of people bringing others to the feet of Jesus.
- Churches often face growth barriers at the 65, 125, 250, 500, 1000 and 2500 size.
- Prayer and fasting are absolutely essential for a church to reach the unchurched.
- When your church begins to make progress for the Kingdom of God, that's when the devil will unleash his worst attacks. Never give up.
- "God's Kingdom has never been and will never be built on a foundation of complacency"
- It is the Pastor's job to keep the church focused outward because the natural humanistic tendency is to slip to becoming increasingly inward focused.
My takeaways from Creating Community (Andy Stanley)
My takeaways from Creating Community (Andy Stanley)
- We must push people to get in groups. The alternative is "disconnected, isolated, lonely people…not a viable option."
- Group experiences across the church need to be predictable – not in boring but in what their purpose is, how they will meet, etc.
- Clarify the "wins" for groups
- Strive for 100% participation
- There are easily identifiable levels of relationship in a church.
- Stanley uses the metaphor of a foyer (guest), living room (friend), to kitchen (family) to identify the different levels.
- Our opportunity as the church is to help people discover the power of each relationship in community.
- We must be directional about helping bridge each gap. What is a specific step that will help them make the jump?
- Good intention is not enough.
- Be honest with people up front as to what groups are NOT about: i.e. not a social club, meditation group, support group, or an expert group.
- The primary purpose of groups is simple: social fellowship, Bible study, and prayer.
- Through implementing a process to the groups system, Stanley's church has seen 90% involvement in small groups.
Connecting the concentric circles with social media
Rick Warren introduced an idea several years ago in his book "Purpose Driven Church". The concentric circles represented the influence and relationships of a community in this order:
- Community
- Crowd
- Congregation
- Committed
- Core
It provides a handy framework for understanding influence and commitment among the people in any given church environment. I began thinking recently about the use of social media and the context within which they operate for pastors and churches.
To me the correlation between technologies goes something like this:
- Community = mass media (radio, tv, youtube)
- Crowd = Twitter
- Congregation = facebook
- Committed = email/phone
- Core = face to face / coffee
Community is a larger body that pretty much allows one-way communication or limited two-way. Community has been traditionally fostered through mass media and now perhaps some narrowcast media as well. At Coffee Creek we implement a weekly podcast and our media team produces a vimeo video that is available 24×7 for streaming on the internet.
The crowd is a smaller group that raises it's hand and says – I'd like to know more. Twitter facilitates this sort of relationship with a feedback channel through retweets and direct messages. With twitter I send updates on service themes, topics, and links to resources that fit our current theme or teaching series. This is a natural occurrence as I read, highlight, and copy the thoughts into 140 characters or less. follow @clarkfrailey on twitter
Next a congregational relationship is a little bit closer in that I know your kids names and care what you might have done over the holidays. facebook facilitates a closer connection by sharing photos, videos, and more posts of a more personal nature that engages a conversation (via comments). Our Coffee Creek facebook fan page allows us a level of more personal connection to a smaller group of people that have expressed an interest in knowing what's going on around Coffee Creek.
The committed group is a tighter group that expresses a desire to be on the "inside track" – to me communication in email and by text/phone provide this group a deeper connection with volume of content and ability to ask questions and receive responses. At Coffee Creek we send a weekly email update with little text and big pictures that link back to website pages for further info or registration forms as appropriate. MailChimp is an excellent and reasonable service for sending regular emails to targeted mailing lists.
The final group, the "core" is the group that probably deserves to be communicated with regularly (monthly/weekly) in face to face conversations, coffee meetings, and brainstorm sessions. It's hard for me to envision how this group could maintain the direction and unity necessary for a core if they did not have some significant face time outside of social media.
One major upside of social media to me is that crowd, congregation, and committed prior to this technology were largely omitted from these channels of communication (outside of a newsletter or special mailing). Social media allows an extra layer of connection that should strengthen the bonds of all levels of relationship
About
Clark Frailey is a husband, father, and Lead Pastor of Coffee Creek Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma.
clarkfrailey.com
