Tag Archives: passion

The Tackle

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It’s been more than 30yrs, but I still remember one tackle. I was in elementary school and my parents were moving me from the YMCA football league to the City league. These kids were older and bigger. I was a little scared, but also knew that I was good. (Well, I thought I was.) It was my first day of practice and in spite of my nerves, I had something to prove. They put me in as a Defensive End and told me that my job was to make sure the ball didn’t get outside of me.

The quarterback got the ball and started running my way. I recognized it as the “Option” and saw him pitch to the running back. With 3 blockers coming right toward me, I could make out one leg on the runner. My heightened awareness caused everything to go into slow mo. I could see one tiny hole to thread the needle of defenders and I went straight to it. This wasn’t just a tackle during practice. I was earning my place on the team. It was important. I got him and more importantly, it caught the attention of my new coach.

I wonder if this is what we are all longing for? Singular purpose. Focus. Heightened awareness. A higher purpose for the mundane things we do each day. There were no distractions for me that day – well, not in that moment. Nothing could have taken me away from that moment. I was passionately pursuing that tackle and wouldn’t have noticed if a two-headed purple alligator had crawled onto the field.

Is there something that makes you get lost in the moment? Anything that stirs your passions so much that nothing distracts you?

The older I get, I must admit that the number of things that distract me has probably increased. My children command my attention and my bride deserves it, but I’m certainly guilty of not “hearing” them. When I’m with them, I find myself thinking about work or other things. When I’m at work, my mind is at home. I wonder how life would be different if I could truly just “be” wherever I actually am? Could I develop the kind of focus that allowed me to make that tackle in my regular, everyday activities? Somehow, I think Jesus may have been this way – completely present in every moment. The people He was with always seemed to think He was completely in tune with them. He always “heard” them. I wanna be like Jesus. Present. Focused. Passionate. Attentive. Loving.

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Good Personal Vision Questions

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Church UniqueJust thought I’d repost these questions from Will Mancini (Church Unique) & Tom Harper

These are things we should all think about every now and then.

As you think about your personal vision…

  • What one thing bothers you most about the world?
  • If you knew you couldn’t fail, what one thing would you pursue for God?
  • What do you tend to pray for the most?
  • What gives you energy?
  • What have you secretly believed you would be really good at if only you were given a chance?
  • What do others say that you are good at? That you are not good at? (Have you asked lately?)
  • What projects or accomplishments, though probably unnoticed by others, created a deep sense of satisfaction on your life’s journey? What projects or accomplishments from grade school years, high school, college and early career?
  • What would you want people saying about you at your funeral? State three words that reflect “who you were.” State three words that reflect “what you accomplished.”
  • Who are your heroes? Why do you admire them? Who have you wanted to emulate or spend time with but have not been able to?
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Carry Your Cross Cartoon

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This is a fun little cartoon that I received as an e-mail. Wish I knew who wrote/illustrated it originally so I could give them credit for it. Luke 9:23; Matthew 16:24; and Mark 8:34 all tell of Jesus’ call for us to deny ourselves, carry our crosses, and follow Him. It’s too bad we want our crosses to be “light.” Matt Redman wrote a song (Way of the Cross on the album The Friendship and the Fear) with a lyric that says, “I’ve crafted myself a more comfortable cross.” Anyway, this cartoon reminded me of all of this stuff.

Just click the first pic and then you’ll be able to click through the rest with the arrows.

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Story as a Guide

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story1If your life were made into a movie, would you want to go see it?

That was the tag line for a video series I just watched by Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz) called “Let Story Guide You – Life is a Story. Make Yours Count.”

It really resonated with me.

Using Biblical examples, Donald Miller describes the power of story for teaching and influencing others.

He suggests that most American Christians have been allowing others to write the stories that they live in and encourages them to write our own stories.

Every good story has four elements -

1. A good protagonist/hero/lead character,

2. a risky mission/worthy objective,

3. a conflict,

4. and a resolution.

After watching, I wondered if most of us have been so concerned about protecting our families from the conflict that we have forfeited our mission and purpose? The problem is that if we don’t have a good mission/purpose, then our story is not one that most people would want to watch – it’s a boring story if the mission isn’t important enough to require sacrifice and effort. Miller relates it to watching a movie about a guy who is trying to buy a Volvo – not a very worthy mission.

He goes on to describe a friend who had a troubled daughter. She was involved in drugs and had a boyfriend that her father did not approve of. After a long talk, his friend (the girl’s father) realized that there were two stories being offered to his daughter. She could live in the exciting, on the edge story with her boyfriend where she felt loved and accepted, or she could live in the story she was finding at home where things were sort of boring and she was ignored by her parents who seemed to be fighting all the time. Once he came to this realization, he decided to write a better story for his family. At a family meeting, he announced that together they would raise money for a $20,000 orphanage in Mexico. Conflict ensued since he hadn’t warned his wife. With the new story being offered, his daughter was intrigued enough to start searching for ways to raise money on-line. Within two weeks, she had broken things off with the boyfriend and was focusing her attention on getting outside of herself to raise money and serve that little village.

I wonder if this is why men hate church so much. I mean. . .think about the story offered to men by the church. It’s a story where the heros are the little old men who have been “faithful” to the church by sitting in their pews for 40 years. Where’s the adventure? Passion? Like most families, the church has been so concerned with protecting itself, that it has lost it’s purpose, it’s mission. What if the church was everything God had called it to be? A place where people are willing to sacrifice everything to take the Gospel to a hurting and dying world. Now that’s passion. That’s a story that men want to be a part of. That’s a story worth dying for.

What story will be told by your life? Will you live in God’s story or allow the world to write it for you? Is your life story a page-turner? Are you a strong protagonist/hero? Is your mission/purpose worthy of dying for? Is there sufficient conflict to make a great story? (Jesus says, we will be persecuted if we follow Him, so we should have conflict.) Are you hanging on to the promise of Scripture for resolution?

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Lessons from a Juggler

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RootI have a friend, Jonathan Root, who is a professional juggler/comedian. His team has 5 International Championship Titles and 3 World Records. You can check him out at www.rootberry.net. Recently, we’ve been having a conversation on facebook about leadership and juggling. I just thought I’d share some of our conversations with you guys here. Although most of the ideas expressed here are his, I’ve marked specific things he said in blue. The rest is just my ramblings about it all.

I started out asking him the basic question, “How is juggling like leadership?”  Here’s his answer:

Jonathan Root
9:16am Feb 26th
Juggling is not like leadership. Juggling is a means to entertain people. I use juggling to draw and keep peoples attention. Then I use the juggling and comedy to relate to them. A pastor, a speaker and entertainer (in this case a juggler) are all trying to effectively communicate with their audience. If you cannot communicate with your audience then your message will be ineffective. And the message we bring is the message of salvation so we cannot (afford to) be ineffective in communicating our message. This has probably led you to more questions so feel free to ask.
Root
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As our discussion got deeper, it became clear that he is passionate about communicating the gospel effectively – much like a pastor or Christian leader.

Here are some of the main lessons I learned in our conversations.
1. Juggling and leadership are all about practice. “Focused practice
make an excellent juggler. Trying the same tricks over and over till
you hit them every time is an art.” In leadership, I’d have to say that the same is true. The more you lead, the better you become. The difficult thing is that a true leader is seeking to do something like it’s never been done before, while a juggler is trying to be consistent about doing the same thing over and over.  Still, even in a new situation, all of our past experiences or practice helps to guide our decisions as we lead. Practice is all about developing skills.

2. Like leadership, in juggling it is critical to not watch the ball hit your hands, but to watch a ball until it
starts to fall then you know where to put your hand. In leadership, this is similar to the way that a true leader watches culture and the movement of God so that he can lead others to place themselves in the right place to serve Him. Watching the ball until it starts to drop is all about vision.

3. Professional juggling requires attention to details like directions to venues, time management for making flights, and constant improvement/development of your show. Otherwise, you’ll eventually burn enough bridges that you won’t be able to book anything. I wonder how many churches have found themselves in this place? It seems that our culture feels pretty “burned” by the church and I’m not sure it’s completely fair to them, but it’s still true none-the-less. It’s important for the Christian leader to seek constant improvement/development of the people (the church) too. Leaders must be managers too.

4. There is something called a “squeeze” in juggling where two balls end up landing in the same hand at the same time. These are not done very often because they are so difficult, but according to Jonathan, “you have to want to do them.” There are a lot of things in the church that we like to avoid. When a true leader’s vision requires a “squeeze,” he goes for it. No matter what the difficulty, like Moses, he finds the courage to follow God through the Red Sea’s parted walls of water. God saves us through the “squeezes” not from them.

5. Juggling is an art. The best leaders in juggling are the guys who are good at putting it all together – Routining the juggling, mixing in
comedy and having it all relate to the audience so they laugh and clap. In those moments the audience experiences more than just juggling. There is a sort of “art” to leadership too – when everything comes together under the right leader there is something that can’t really be defined – something that transcends the task at hand – something that goes beyond the vision. True leadership “feels” God’s timing and transcends our humanity.

By the way, here’s a clip of Jonathan and his friend Bill from their shows.


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