Last week I followed some advice from a good friend and left town for several days…all alone. My purpose was to rest, try to get rid of a 7 week cough, hear from God, pray through all the stuff we’re asking God to do this Fall, drill down on upcoming sermons, gear up for our staff advance later this month, listen to other preachers, read some of the books I’ve bought and neglected over the last 3 months, and think through some ideas for my first book, which I’m finally getting (kind of) serious about writing.

Thanks to my friend Bill, I stayed in a sweet crib on the best street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, near my old stomping grounds. Holly came down for a night because I knew I’d have withdrawals and start getting depressed if she didn’t, thus defeating the purpose of my time away.

I was talking to one of my friends about how hard it was going to be for me to scale back on preaching and time in the office in the month of June. I like what he said back:
Watch out July.
Amen.

Don’t Look at Your Feet

I ran cross-country in high school. We did pretty well too - we won 3 state championships in a row my sophomore, junior and senior year. And then, after I graduated, the team went on to win the next 8 years in a row. And when a team builds a dynasty like that, it’s much more than good running - it can only be because of good coaching. Our coach, Coach Johnson, who is now in his 80’s, spent the better 3/4 of his life coaching high school track and cross country - so when he gave running advice, it tended to be in our best interest to listen.

He’d tell us things like make sure our arms swung by our sides, not across our chest, so we could breath better. He’d tell us to run with our feet landing directly beneath us for a smoother stride. But the best advice he ever gave me was to never look at my feet…which is pretty funny considering that running is all about your feet. His point though, was not that your feet weren’t important, but when you focused on them, you lost sight of the race.  He said run with your head up, always looking ahead on the course. When you look at your feet, you begin to self-critique - you think of how tired your legs are or how you’re not really that great of a runner and maybe this race just wasn’t your race. And once you break down mentally in your running, you might as well just cash in your chips.

And it wasn’t until years later that I saw this advice move from a running tip to life analogy. For most of us, its really easy to be critical of yourself - how much better you could be, and how there are always people who are better than you at what you do - whether it’s your job or your relationships or whatever.

As the graphic designer at Elevation, it¹s so easy for me to be hard on myself as I try to bring the vision Pastor Steven has been given to life. I’ll look down, see how unworthy I am to do what I do, but then it hits me - the race is so much bigger than me. It’s not about my feet. The vision goes beyond my ability and my agenda and if I lose sight of that, my work, and my general mindset will start to tank. But when I look up, and look out and see where I am, and see where God has placed me in life - not for my ability, but for his purpose - I just run better. Just watch out for shin splints, because I have no idea how to fix those things.

-Ryan Hollingsworth, Graphic Designer

“Die to the dream of being a success and live to be a blessing…”

I heard Pastor Matthew Barnett say this a year ago.  I never forgot it.  That may not even be the exact quote, but I’m pretty sure I nailed the main idea.  Now if only I could put it into practice.

Too much of our (ok, I don’t know about you, but at least my) time and energy is invested in our ambition to arrive.  To make it.  To prove “them” wrong.  To prove myself competent.

For pastors, this success is often defined by an attendance number.  Our self worth is subtly wrapped up in “how many ya runnin?”.
WARNING: when you arrive at that magic number, whatever it may be, it automatically increases, and the game starts over.  You’ll just find yourself running to another gate to catch the next flight to temporary fulfillment.

For parents, this success sometimes takes the form our kids’ accomplishments.  Instead of raising them to be a blessing to their generation, we raise them to be impressive to our neighbors.  What a shame!  Right behaviors, wrong motivations.

Let your dream of succeeding fall to the ground.  Let it die.  The seeds of that dead dream will eventually produce a non-perishable harvest.  Chances are you’ll stay hungry for the some of same things (higher numbers, well-behaved children, whatever…).  But you’ll want them for the right reasons.

Holly says I don’t post personal stuff enough.  Everything’s too serious around here.
Here’s me trying to do better:

The other day, someone gave me a necklace with a fish on it.
I gave it to Elijah, and told him it was a whale necklace.  (He’s fascinated with whales.  I mean, really obsessed.)
A few weeks later, Elijah put the necklace around Graham’s neck and made this ceremonial announcement:
“Here you go Graham.  You da King of the Whales.”

I proudly present to you, in his first concert appearance, the King of the Whales.
I love my boys.

Every leadership style has a downside.  You’ve got to choose yours, and I’ve got to choose mine.

For example, say you are a leader who places a high value on harmony, honor, spiritual authority, etc.  You may find that you have trouble soliciting honest feedback from those you lead, because they don’t want to even flirt with being disrespectful or overly negative.
On the other hand, if you create a culture of everybody speak your mind at all times/everyone has an equal say, you may struggle when people abuse the system.  Individuals may become fixated on their agendas or entrenched in their opinions.  This can make it very difficult to rally the team quickly around a unified vision.

Another example: If your leadership style is very hands-off, it can nurture a culture of empowerment.  People will hopefully ascend to higher levels of leadership because you aren’t squelching their gift by micromanaging.
The downside of this approach: a hands-off leadership approach can leave a lot of room for vision misalignment.  The leader may get blindsided one day by how far things have drifted from the original vision.

In a perfect world, we would keep ourselves dead in the center of each of these extremes, embodying the best of both worlds.  In the real world, the balance is a struggle.
You’ve got to choose your downside, be aware of its implications, and do your best to minimize the liabilities.

Here’s the best way I can describe the current evolution I’m experiencing as a preacher.

My motivation in selecting series, topics, passages, and applications seems to be morphing fundamentally. In my first 2 years as a pastor, I may have given too much weight to what I thought people needed to hear about. I was (and still am) heavily influenced by the consideration of felt needs when deciding what to preach about.
I am charged to apply the Word of God to contemporary cultural concerns in a relevant way, to discern the times, yada yada, you know the drill.

But lately, the focus of my message prep is shifting.
I’m giving more attention to what I believe God wants to say
than what I think people need to hear.

And you know what? If my primary question in preparing a message is:
What does God want to say to Elevation Church this week?
we’ll kill both birds with one stone. What God wants to say will always be exactly what people need to hear. I’ll always bat 1000!
If I approach it the other way around, it’s hit and miss. What I think people need to hear is much too subjective. What God wants to say is always on point.

This is elementary-so basic that I’m almost embarrassed to blog about it. Kind of a which came first the chicken or the egg sort of discussion.
But you’d be surprised how much this subtle shift in my approach changes the process of preparing to preach the Word of God.
Because what God wants to say is what people need to hear. Every single time.

June Spending Fast

Pastor came to me a few months ago with the crazy idea of going on a spending fast for a month. Well we’re really doing it. We have entered into the month of June with the hopes and dreams of not spending a dime. Well…not exactly. We have, however, taken up all credit cards and given strict instruction that there will be no reimbursements for the month.

Don’t worry, we’re not going to have the power cut off or get evicted and everybody is still getting paid. What we are doing is going back to our roots. We moved to Charlotte to plant Elevation Church with no money and no sense. We didn’t turn in receipts because we didn’t write a check out of the checking account until we bought our first sound system.

We were scrappy and had to be creative to make things happen. God has blessed Elevation and we want to remain blessable. We aren’t reacting to any over spending issues. In fact, we just finished a financial review and things are good. We are simply trying to take some of the newer staff back to the beginning and remind some longer tenured staff what it was like to have a shoestring budget and a big dream.

We’ve always run it pretty tight at Elevation. We had over 900 people coming to the church before we made our 3rd full time hire- myself. Here are a few of the details of how we are conducting the June spending fast: No meals will be covered by the church. We are going on our Staff Advance in June (we never retreat) and we are splitting gas, paying for our own hotel rooms, and having to look at the prices on the menu at the restaurant because it is every man for himself. Volunteer appreciation will be done with hand-written notes and not Starbucks cards. And we are using credit card points to buy gas cards.

This is also a season to strengthen our stakes and plan better. Anything needed for our Sunday worship experiences had to be ordered before June 1st. We aren’t lowering the standards on Sunday just requiring the staff to plan ahead and learn to get out in front.

Don’t be confused, the spending fast has very little to do with saving money. In the end it is likely that we will not save a dime. The operating expenses we are fasting from actually make a very small portion of the budget and many things were purchased ahead of time.

In the end, we may make June our “no spending” month every year. It will show our staff where we came from and require them to plan ahead. It will also keep them from taking God’s blessings for granted.