Building healthy leadership teams and cultures is one of the most important tasks we engage in as leaders. In this unique podcast, Pete and Rich share how understanding genograms has served as a powerful tool to create a healthy, transformational, team culture at New Life over the last twenty years. Click below to watch the video or the link to listen to the audio file. LISTEN HERE Save Save
One of our greatest temptations as leaders is to want to be more, have more, or do more than God has given us. We discard the gift of God’s limits and take charge. We try to do things only God can do and attempt to fix people and situations only God can fix. This has consistently been my greatest spiritual challenge. When we cross over the line of God’s limits, symptoms such as the following surface: anger, tiredness, anxiety, frustration, judgmentalism, a lack of compassion, and discontentment. When we go beyond our limits, we end up in the Evil One’s territory and the consequences are severe. (Consider Genesis 3). Our loving union with God is disrupted and, like Adam, we end up hiding behind our over-activity. When we let go and surrender to God’s limits, however, we meet Him in surprising ways. I recently implemented a new practice that has served me to prayerfully. Read more.
Changed people change the world. EHS is the fruit of 20 years of wrestling with the problem of superficial discipleship. Over the years, we have seen its power in transforming lives, time and time again. Click on the image below to view some stories of the impact EHS is having in peoples lives: We believe the EHS Course is a powerful discipleship model that goes deep beneath the surface of people’s lives and results in long-term missional impact in the world. People are so changed they can’t help but change the world around them. And so we are committed to offering the best training, equipping and resources possible to empower you as a pastor or church leader to immerse yourself in bringing this radical discipleship model to your church. We invite you to consider these exceptional opportunities as you prayerfully plan your church discipleship pathway this fall: Live Training: How to Lead the. Read more.
The conversation with Geri Scazzero continues in this second segment of The Leader’s Spouse podcast. In this podcast, Geri shares candidly: The hazardous “second hand smoke” experienced by a leader’s spouse Overfunctioning and God’s invitation to quit overfunctioning as a gift of love and maturity for others and yourself Living your one unrepeatable God-given life To read more, see The Emotionally Healthy Woman. Click below to watch the video or the link to listen to the audio file. LISTEN HERE
On Monday I begin a three-week vacation. Part of that will include not blogging, tweeting, or posting on Facebook and Instagram. Why? To Honor Sabbatical Rest. I prefer to frame vacations as sabbaticals from the Lord, a gift to let the soil of one’s soul get replenished by stopping our work, resting, delighting, and contemplating Him. A good part of my work now includes social media engagement. So I will stop and let it rest. To Respect My Vulnerabilities. I like Sherry Turkle’s point that “laptops and smartphones are not things to remove. They are facts of life and part of our creative lives. The goal is to use them with greater intention. We are faced with technologies to which we are extremely vulnerable and we don’t always respect that fact.” Is it possible to be addicted to social media? I think so. (Not all researchers agree.) Disconnecting will be good for my soul.. Read more.
I like to read more broadly than usual in the summer months to stretch me and to open up doors for God to speak in unexpected ways. The following are my top 10 picks for the first half of 2016: 1. Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age – Sheryl Turkle I consider this the most important leadership book I’ve read so far this year because of the implications of her research on how digital technology is impacting our culture. I find myself returning to her insights in discussions on building community, discipleship, preaching, and developing next generation leaders. Click here to read the blog I wrote on this book. 2. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi At the age of 36, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. A brilliant neurosurgeon and excellent writer, he records for us, with penetrating insight and clarity, his process of. Read more.
