Maintaining pace and direction

At our services yesterday our Pastor challenged us to FINISH WELL based upon Acts 28. We were all reminded that a poor start does not doom us to a bad finish. Isn’t that a great reminder? As you look back to your first experience teaching or leading a small group, you are probably very grateful that you are doing better now than you were then.

Should the Lord tarry, I hope you are not yet ready to finish. So I would like to offer some encouragement for the middle of the journey.

I heard a consultant once say that most people overestimate what they can do in the short-term and underestimate what they can do in the long-term. The key is to set appropriate goals in the middle of the process.

When I was learning to drive I was taught to fix my eyes on a point down the road because if I looked just in front of the car I would constantly move the steering wheel back and forth to try to stay between the lines. Looking down range smoothed out the ride for everyone in the vehicle.

While in college my roommate ran in the Chicago Marathon, my only contribution was to help prepare a big Pasta dinner the night before so he could “carb load.” That is the closest I ever got to participating in a marathon! I have heard that marathon runners often “hit a wall” in the middle of the race and I have read that the best way to keep going is to pick a point in distance and run for that point, then pick another point and run toward it, and so forth until they reach the finish line.

I believe many teachers/small group leaders want to finish well and hear “well done, my good and faithful servant” but give little attention to mid-course goals. Now that we are in the dead of winter, the end of the education year may seem a long way off. In the short term it is helpful to set a goal for EACH lesson. Ask yourself “What does God want me to accomplish in the 45 minutes we are going to be together this week?” But effective teachers also can communicate sequential goals for the year. i.e. a month from now our group will be able to ….., in 3 months our group will be able to…., etc.

At our church we are committed to “Making More and Better Followers of Christ.” A Better Follower of Christ is one who is fully transformed into the likeness of Christ which is the end goal, but there are intermediate goals. I have prayerfully determined 10 areas that must increase if a person is ever to reach that final goal. Each of our Adult education classes is directed at one of those 10 goals to help make sure we are moving in the right direction at a good pace. (If you are interested in this, check out the last page of this packet.)

What are the goals God would have for you to pursue in the next month? in the next 3 months? Keep up the pace! Keep moving in the right direction!

New Challenges require New Methods

Yesterday I watched a TV program on Secrets of the Secret Service. In this episode they spoke about how new threats have emerged that require new strategies to protect the President. Specifically they mentioned domestic terrorism and access to the sky over the White House (e.g. airplanes and missiles) as threats that have changed in the last 50 years (especially in the last 10 years).

This prompted me to consider what new challenges have emerged that may require new tactics of those who desire to be faithful to the commission given by Jesus to make disciples of all people.

A new challenge that I believe Christian Educators face today is the shrinking attention span of Americans of all ages. We used to schedule around a 9 month academic year (Sept – May), then church curricula was developed for 13-week quarters, then 6-8 week Study guides were written. Now most contemporary churches only do 3-4 week sermon series. In our own classes at SLEFC we have found that attendance drops off after the 3rd or 4th week in our classes.

Those who teach children have found that a 45 minutes class is holds students’ attention best when the lesson plan is divided into 10 minutes blocks.

Week-long “Revivals” or “Crusades” have been replaces with 3-day conferences and one-day events. Event the Friday Night/Saturday Church retreat usually includes a significant percentage of attendees who come late or leave early.

Without the availability of time to thoroughly develop a subject and the reality that many of our students have less Biblical literacy than previous generations, the “deep” subjects are often ignored in the American Evangelical experience.

A second challenge that I believe we face is that many of our students are less teachable because they have already developed strong opinions, even though those opinions may not have been tested beyond the individual’s perspective. Our society has promoted education as the key to success and people want to appear more successful than they actually are, so they pretend to have more understanding than they have truly acquired.

It is not easy to create a THIRST for understanding. The Apostle Paul admits in Philippians 3:12 that he had not yet attained, but was pressing on toward a goal.

Perhaps the best way to inspire thirst in those we lead is to demonstrate it ourselves. Let our students know that we are not experts, but that we are still working hard at gaining new understanding ourselves.

Soldiers or an Army?

I have spent the last week mulling over a tension that every leader must wrestle with. Is my primary responsibility to the group or to individuals that make up the group?

On one hand, healthy groups are made up of healthy individuals. If the individuals who make up your group are not healthy, then the group can never be healthy. But just because the individuals are healthy does not guarantee that the group will demonstrate corporate health.

In the movie "Saving Private Ryan" an detachment is sent to the Front to find and bring back one particular soldier because his family had already suffered great loss. Often the other soldiers in the detachment ask "why are we risking our lives for this one guy?"

Biblically Jesus told the story of the Good Shepherd who will leave the 99 safe sheep to search for the 1 lost lamb.

Do teachers/small group leaders allow the needs/desires of one participant to dictate the direction of the whole session? Sometimes that is the most compassionate response.

Last week I read Leviticus 13-14 dealing with mildew and skin disease (That's a great way to have inspiring devotions!!). In those chapters the priests were instructed to isolate or quarantine the affected garment or the lame person as a compassionate way of protecting the rest of the community.

As a Pastor I have received the Saturday night late calls to deal with a crisis. Discernment and judgment are essential to determine how much time/energy God wants me to invest in that individual/family in midst of crisis and how much time/energy God wants me to invest in the making sure I am in a proper mindset to accurately handle the Word of Truth for those who will be gathering for worship and instruction.

Part of this answer is having already invested time/energy into OTHER people who can assist during times of crisis so that I can compassionately respond to the emergency and direct the best resources for the individual AND the larger community.

As a teacher/small group leader, I hope you NEVER lose compassion for EACH person who participates in your group. But also realize that your shepherding of the whole group often means that you best demonstrate compassion for an individual by allowing another individual to assist with their crisis so that you provide godly leadership.

I guess I conclude that EACH soldier deserves compassion, but the best compassion possible doesn't always come from the primary leader. The leader has to make sure that compassion is demonstrated, but not necessarily do it himself or herself.

Sometimes the General donates his blood for the private who has been wounded on the battlefield. But the General doesn't have enough blood for everybody but has the responsibility of making sure that enough blood is found and made available to each soldier in his army whenever it is truly needed.

When is Enough Enough?

Bobby Gruenewald of Lifechurch.tv posted this on his blog today.

If I gave you $100,000, could you make your house or apartment excellent?  I imagine that with some careful investments in furniture, paint, etc you could probably do it.  If I then gave you another $500,000, could you make it more excellent?  How about $5 million?  You get the point.

Now, when was it excellent?  After the $100k investment?  The $500k?  Somewhere in-between? Or is it already excellent?

The pursuit of excellence is just that…a pursuit for many and rarely a destination.  In nearly every investment we make (our time, money, etc) we can generally always invest more to make something more excellent.  The big question is “When is the investment enough?”  The good news is that we do have a choice.

Read this post on the cost/excellence and then this one on cost/effectiveness.

When I studied Economics in High School one of the things we learned was the “law of diminishing returns”—there comes a point were the same amount of effort does not continue to bring the same results.

In grade school we were taught to “go over our work” so we could catch our mistakes. In college we learned the value of proof-reading because mispelling (or is that misspelling?) and typographical errors would effect (or is that affect?) our grades.

As teachers/leaders our learners deserve that we put due diligence into our preparation, but there is a point of diminishing return. There is a point where investing more time into editing the words we choose or editing the font of our study guide or cutting out the craft EXACTLY according to the pattern no longer contributes to our effectiveness of “making more and better followers of Jesus Christ.” There comes a point where effectiveness will be better achieved through personal investment in the individual life, than in more preparation of an excellent lesson.

Bobby’s thoughts quoted at the beginning of this post refer to cost. We easily relegate “cost” to the realm of finance. But cost also relates to time and energy. You most likely invest much more time & energy into your learners than you do money. Are you investing that time and energy toward excellence? toward effectiveness?

Can I encourage you today to work smarter, not necessarily work harder?