Category Archives: Leadership

Knowing My Role

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“A religious mentality, characterized by timidity and lack of moral courage has given us today a flabby Christianity, intellectually impoverished, dull, repetitious, and to a great many persons, just plain boresome.  This is peddled as the very faith of our fathers in direct lineal descent  from Christ and the apostles.  We spoon-feed this insipid pabulum to our inquiring youth, and to make it palatable spice it up with carnal amusements snatched from the unbelieving world.  It is easier to entertain than to instruct.  It is easier to follow degenerate public taste than to think for oneself.  So too many of our evangelical leaders let their minds atrophy while they keep their fingers nimble operating religious gimmicks to bring in the curious crowd.”  — A.W. Tozer, 1955

“I’m afraid too many churchgoers today are listening but not learning.  They are spectators, not students.  They are passive, not participating.  Why?  Because we who teach often give them cut flowers that easily fade and wilt, rather than showing them how to grow plants for themselves — to discover firsthand the truth that God has revealed in His Word.” — Howard Hendricks

Each week that I teach the youth at my church I have the temptation to “ease up” a bit on the Bible study and focus on making sure the students are having a good time — that they are enjoying it.  Then I look back on these two quotes and am reminded of my task — I am here to teach the Gospel.  If that is boring to them, then I need to keep teaching it because they obviously are still not getting it!

Ask for what you want.

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Anyone who has ever played a gig with Todd Wright will agree that Todd is not afraid to ask for what he wants.  If he wants me to play louder, he’ll ask for it.  If he wants me to drop out, he’ll tell me.  He doesn’t do it as a power play nor is he rude about it, he just knows what he wants the song to sound like and asks us help make it happen.  As a musician, I love this because I don’t have to guess or try to figure out what is expected of me — it has already been clearly communicated.

There’s a saying that goes “expectations are just resentments waiting to happen.”  If things aren’t going as expected, ask yourself, “did I ask for what I wanted?”

Lessons from the Weekend

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“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”
-St. Francis of Assisi

Weekend of a Lifetime – Recap

I had the pleasure of spending last weekend with 417 high school students from all over Texas and Oklahoma for a program that we (LIFE!, Inc.) host a few times a year called Weekend of a Lifetime (WOAL).  This event is intentionally not a “religious” event, yet we spent the entire weekend preaching the Gospel.

We are not a Christian company (companies don’t have souls) but a requirement to be on staff is that you are a Christian.  We don’t talk about Jesus but we demonstrate His love to every student, sponsor and to one another.  We are simply sowing seeds as we teach leadership skills to teens (and adult sponsors).

This weekend was energizing spiritually (physically exhausting) and has given me valuable insight into teaching, leading and mentoring youth.  It taught me that we can set high expectations for these kids and they will surpass them every time.  It taught me that youth are capable of understanding deep and meaningful truths and that they are capable of applying them to their own lives.  It has also taught me that youth need guidance, direction and a lot of encouragement to do so.  That is my role as a leader of youth — to guide, direct and encourage.


How to open a door…

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While reading another book (I can’t seem to read one at a time) I found myself drifting off in thought and ended up with this statement: “What I do today will open or close doors for me in the future.”  I was reading a chapter titled “Inspiring a Shared Vision” in Kouzes and Posner’s book “The Leadership Challenge”.  It’s a great book even if you’re not interested in leadership.  By the way, you are;  you just might not know it yet. :-)

The day I decided to start running again in April, I opened the door to the level of fitness I have today.  If you run, you’ve heard it before;  “Oh, I could NEVER run that far” or “I can’t even run ONE mile” as if to say that runners were born with super-human abilities that enable them to do things the “average” person cannot.  If you don’t run, I’m probably talking about you. ;-) That day I opened the door to running my first 10k in August.  That day, and every day since, I have been gradually opening (and sometimes closing) the door to running my first half-marathon in December and my first marathon in February.

Every day I have to make a decision, “Do I want to run Boston or not?”  I never really phrase it that way;  it usually sounds like “Am I going to run today?  Am I going to make sure I eat enough today?”  I’ve started to see that running doesn’t have to be my obsession to reach my seemingly impossible goals.  I just have to make some trade-offs.  Instead of sleeping in, what if I went for a run?  What if I went for a run instead of spending the evening watching TV and surfing the net?  Those little trade-offs (which will eventually develop into habits) will start to add up to some serious mileage which in turn will open the door to more satisfying finishes on race day and eventually take me all the way to Boston… and beyond?

Kouzes and Posner quote Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard who says “the human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.”  I’ve tried to get into running before with marginal results.  I focused on what I had done in high school and college, but never really thought about where I wanted to go.  This resulted in half-hearted efforts which lasted a few weeks.  Now, with my eyes on a seemingly unrealistic goal, I’ve run farther and faster than I ever have before and have the motivation to continue to climb this mountain.  Ziglar says “the only way to coast is downhill.”  What are your goals?  What are your dreams?  What do you want to be when you grow up?  YOU get to play an active role in shaping your future!  What are you doing today that will open doors for you in the future?  What are you doing today that is closing the door on a dream or a goal?

Oh, and I set a new 5k PR today!  I ran the Tyler Half/5k today which makes me 6 for 6 on running a race every month.  It wasn’t my goal of 21 minutes, but at 22:43 22:38, (waiting on the official results) I was just quick enough to sneak in a second place finish for my age group.