a vision of failure & hope

Yesterday I wore a hat to a Sunday morning church service.

As well as I can remember, it was the first time ever.

I’m usually self-conscious about stuff like that. Not because I have a problem with hats in a church building, but rather because I don’t want to offend someone in our multi-generational congregation. Because the 5 services we have on Sunday morning bring a confluence of cultures, I’ve generally decided to play it “safe” and dress “Southern-church-boy-neutral,” which means nice pants (and perhaps, occasionally, nice jeans) and a button up or polo. 

So now you know. I’m done playing games. I’m not setting out to offend anybody, but I am going to be myself. And if that means wearing a trendy hat with my jeans and polo, that’s what it means. 

I’m done playing games. I’m done playing church. I thought I was done a few years ago, but I may have been lying to myself (and you). But no more. No more games, no more pandering, no more Pansy.

I want to love our people. 
I want to be passionate.
I want to be competitive. When I played sports, I took a challenge personally. Now I just get self-conscious.
I want to recommit to follow Jesus. Daily.

Here’s where my soul is changing:

-Our competition is not other churches. I’ve only been in Dallas 6 months and somehow I’ve allowed myself to fall prey to this Southern, “Christian” culture. I’ve spent 6 months stressing (not always overtly) about how we’re going to “beat” other churches in the area. It’s amazing how fast I stopped being myself and succumbed to this….crap…..

-We can’t be afraid of failure of conflict. I’m going to stop stressing over what I can’t control. We need to start seeking Jesus and working towards creating the future we need to become. We need the Holy Spirit’s power. There’s going to be conflict, and opposition, and hard times. Change is never easy. Change means going back down the mountain and fighting through the valley and working your butt off to go up another mountain. Securing our position on the same mountain or climbing higher will just lead to the same old stuff. I will stop backing down unnecessarily. 

-Change is coming. Amen? 
We need the power of the Holy Spirit. If we can give ourself to Jesus and let the Spirit guide us, then we’ll emerge & organize the right way: naturally & on our own (organically). We need to stop talking about how to “do ministry” better and start talking about how we can follow Jesus better (or live better lives). Structure must come later. We need to be better leaders who strengthen others and network better. We need more connections and even more, we need those connections to be growing in strength. 

Will you join me?

What’s your Flywheel?

Do you know what this is?

It’s a Spinning Wheel. 

It’s also what my boss, Laura (the director of Young Adult ministry), brought in today as an illustration for our Young Adult Community/Ministry. Let me break it down for you, for it is GENIUS.

That really big wheel is called the Flywheel. It’s the major component of the Spinning wheel, the part that all other parts work hard to make work well. And when it works well, it produces fabric using thread. It has several working parts, most noticeably the foot-pedal at the bottom.

So check this:
-the working parts all contribute to the Flywheel’s successfulness.
-when working in harmony, the Flywheel is incredibly efficient at producing the proper product.
-the Spinning Wheel takes something raw and single, then it weaves it into something connected and beautiful.  

 The question on Laura’s mind: What’s our Flywheel?

What’s that one component to our ministry that’s most essential to helping us do our mission (being Jesus where we live, work, and play)? What’s that one component that all other components resource and move? What’s that component that the pedal (leadership: lay and paid) pours everything into making it work efficiently and successfully?

What’s your Flywheel?

adventures 006: I sure have made a lot of enemies…

editor’s note: I’ve had two major disasters pertaining to leadership in my short life. They were both my fault and, though I’m not proud of them, I won’t avoid them or pretend that they didn’t happen. This is the pseudo-story of one of those experiences…

Why am I sitting here? 

I glance around the room and I see lots of emotions on the faces of people I used to just call friends: anger, disappointment, sorrow. Should I now call them enemies? I don’t want to. I also don’t have a clue what’s going on, why I’m sitting in this chair in this room around this table, or what I did to deserve this.

Fingers are being pointed, names are being called, and people’s faiths are being slandered. It’s like a middle-school theater practice gone terribly wrong.

Half an hour ago I got a phone call from a friend, a young lady who serves on a leadership team that I’m in charge of. She told me I needed to get up to the Baptist Student Union building, that there was a “meeting” going on and that it pertained to me in a lot of ways (“pertained” is a bit strong–the entire meeting wasn’t about me, but I was seen as a culprit of the events that led to this meeting). Now, under the scrutiny of a dizzying array of accusations, 10 of us sit in cushy office chairs that surround a large, beautiful, polished oak table in the middle of the ministry center’s board room; though the room also doubles as a “library” if you’re interested on literature to evangelize in Korean or commentary sets from the 1950s.

Let me step aside and speak to the situation. Several months ago, at the end of my sophomore year, I was appointed to lead a ministry team for our campus ministry. This particular team, known as “Ministry Events,” is in charge of planning and executing the major events and conference-type activities our ministry puts on throughout the year. The year before I had served on the same committee as a “leader” but I wasn’t the team leader. Apparently I had performed admirably enough on the team that I would be fit to be an appropriate person to take the lead. Rather than contributing, I would now be helping a team of 5-6 others contribute. Am I really cut out for this?

[Back in the room] One guy tells me, with no shortage of words, that I don’t care about evangelism. Another one calls me “one of the pretty people,” an angry alternative dude’s way of saying I am the representation of all that’s wrong with cultural Christianity in the American South. I’m selfish and power-hungry, my commitment to Christianity and this ministry is completely self-serving. Or so I’m told.  

It’s probably more justified than I care to admit.

A few months back we had just finished the process of planning and pulling off our biggest event of the year, the back-to-school weekend where we welcomed in hundreds of shiny, new Baptist students into the life of our ministry. Everything went extremely well, programmatically speaking. The weekend went off as flawlessly as possible (for a lay-led event), and the general consensus was that it was one of the best ones people had ever seen.
How did my “team” feel about it? I thought they were happy. But you be the judge:
A week or two later, our campus minister called me into his office. Here’s what he said: “Petey, you can be a strong leader and plan some great events, but you may find yourself blazing a path and then one day look back and realize you’ve hurt everyone’s feelings and no one’s following you” (verbatim–by the way, thanks Mike Ball–some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten). 
What did I do? I ignored it, of course. Not intentionally–I processed it–but it would take an astronomical failure for it to really sink in and kick my tail.

Which brings us back to the fateful meeting. Do I care about evangelism? Of course. Maybe. If that means other people do it. Why are we so caught up in evangelism, anyways? There’s an “evangelism team.” There’s an “outreach team.” We aren’t either of those things. Our stated purpose is to plan and execute the big events, and that’s what we’re going to do. If these chumps want to bicker about silly things, they can go ahead. I’m out of here. Evangelism becomes the focal point of the conversation, and that’s mainly because the other people in the room (a lot of them on my team) are a little edgy, the kind of Jesus freaks you stay away from because they might try to convert the waitress at the restaurant where you’re eating lunch. One guy says “We need to be like Paul. Paul was on fire!” Which causes me to snipe back “Paul wasn’t on fire, he was faithful!” (this may be theologically accurate…however, it was spoken more out of me being a jerk than trying to be true). At this point I leave the room, climb into my CR-V, and drive home as pissed off and determined as ever to be right. 

The rest of my time spent leading this team stays in this kind of tension. A couple of months prior, I had hopes of being the campus ministry president during my senior year. It’s pretty clear from the failure of this experiment that a 600-800 student ministry isn’t about to be dropped in my lap to be the lead disciple-maker and example-setter.  

This is where I’ve found myself in trouble when it comes to leadership roles. As a leader in a secondary role, I usually gain popularity and favor because I work hard for people and I get along well with everyone. More than anything I just want to serve people and love on others. What made me a successful leader before hand? I built good relationships, cared about people and the mission, and worked hard. What caused me to suck after being given a bigger title? I neglected people’s hearts, cared far more about the mission than about people, and generally delegated hard work to others…though I was ever-ready to do the kind of work that got applause (which is actually the reason why all the tension from the boardroom story blew up).

A few years ago we started down this path in Oregon, but my beautiful, smart wife helped keep me humble and bust my chops. I don’t think I’ve become a great leader, but I’ve learned to put people first regardless of my “position.” Jesus says we’ll make enemies, but it will be because of our love for people. I don’t want to make enemies because I’ve used and hurt people. I want to love people.