Developing People

A phrase I use often around our church is "each person needs a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy--someone who mentors you, someone who encourages you, and someone you are coaching."

One of the values we are in the process of embedding in our leadership community is that "you are not done leading until you have developed your replacement."

I enjoyed the following thoughts from a Pastor in Oklahoma.

Here are ten lessons I’ve learned about developing people:

1. Honest, immediate, and consistent feedback on performance is invaluable.
2. Developing strengths nets a bigger return than developing weaknesses.
3. Developing others takes a ton of time in the early seasons and produces huge results with smaller investments in future seasons.
4. You will see a better ministry return by investing in your star team members than you will by investing in weaker players.
5. You will have to allow people to fail if you want them to improve.
6. Great coaches are great encouragers.
7. If you don’t schedule intentional time for developing others, you aren’t likely to do it.
8. God can use you to pull more out of a person than the person may believe exists.
9. The person you are developing can also help develop you—if you will ask questions and listen.
10. The best people builders develop others to develop others.

Developing People - LifeChurch.tv : swerve

N. T. Wright Takes on Stephen Colbert

While I disagree with much of what N.T. Wright concludes is our responsibility now (I believe a literal Millennial reign will take place before the final, eternal state) in light of the reality of the eternal state, I do appreciate what he says about the future state after the 2nd Resurrection--the fact that we will have our earthly bodies renewed and rejoined with our souls. This is what we called "Conditional Unity" in the Anthropology section of the course I teach called "Maximum Impact."

This 6 minute clip will make you think twice about life after death.

MondayMorningInsight.com > N. T. Wright Takes on Stephen Colbert

The Christian Pop Culture

I just found an interview at Christianity Today that really intrigued me. Apparently there is a humanist Jewish gentleman who has written a book about his perceptions of Christian Pop Culture. This is a good read to help understand the preconceived ideas that many that we are trying to reach actually have of us.

In the interview the author admits one of my pet peeves, namely, there are several "strains" under the label of "Christian" and failing to understand these distinctions will lead to wrong conclusions.

"That is in many ways our fault as non-Christians for not making the effort to make such distinctions. If the awareness is not there, it's partly because these people are often choosing not to identify as Christian in the same way, partly because they don't want to be tarred by that brush. And I think that's unfortunate in many ways because I think what they're doing is very Christian in the best ways, and that by ceding that word to the forces they don't particularly like, they're doing a disservice to the faith."

The link below will take you to the interview.

In Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, Radosh describes his experiences with the Cornerstone Music Festival, Christian comedians, creationist Ken Ham, Bibleman, Ultimate Christian Wrestling, Jay Bakker, and others.

Actually, he concludes, merging pop culture and Jesus isn't as bad as he expected:

The Christian Pop Cultures of Rapture Ready | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction