For the last few years, I have taken part in the Chick-fil-A Leadercast. A unique group of leaders have come together to host this simulcast in our own community. We have a great cross-section of church leaders, educational leaders, and business leaders coming together to learn leadership lessons. This year, it’s on May 10th and will be held at the Crossroads Institute in Galax. For more information and to buy tickets, please visit the Crossroads website. This is a great event, and we have a great time together. Check out the video below for a sample of what you will see.

On Tuesday November 14th, I’ll be facilitating a leadership meeting at The Crossroads Institute. I’ll be taking a group through Andy Stanley’s excellent DVD study on Becoming a Great Staff. This is a great opportunity for pastors, business leaders, and local civic and educational leaders to come together and learn from each other.

We’ll meet at 11:30am at The Higher Education Center for the Crossroads Institute. It is located at 208 Cranberry Road in Galax, and lunch will be available for $5 a plate. If you know of anyone else who might be interested in attending, encourage them to call 276-236-0391 or email registration@crossroadsva.org to register.

Here is more information for the workshop.

What makes a great team or a great staff? What causes people to look at your organization and think, “Now there’s a team that knows how to work together”? The answers to these questions are found in one simple habit that every leader and organization can embrace immediately.

Together, we will go through a video session by Andy Stanley who will help explain how to build a culture of trust in your organization. Using real-life examples, he uncovers several best practices (and several not-so-great practices) for becoming a great team.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Don’t Judge Me.”  Unfortunately, as a pastor I have heard this statement a few times over the years. Usually, it is when I am trying to talk with someone who claims to be a follower of Christ, but is living contrary to the commands of Christ. So where does this phrase come from, and are people using it correctly?

First, the phrase comes from Scripture in Matthew 7:1. “Judge not, that you be not judged.” So does this mean that we should keep quiet and never say anything to another believer who is struggling with sin? Of course not! It’s important to not take a verse out of context and use it incorrectly. So here’s a few things to take into account.

Truth and Grace

I recently shared in our church the importance of having both truth and grace when we share with others. Jesus is our example of this as shown in John 1:14. Here is a good way to think about it.

In a previous post I shared

• Grace means that I will love you no matter what.
• Truth means that I will be honest with you no matter what.

Grace without truth is Christianity without a backbone.
Truth without grace is Christianity without a heart.

It is not always easy to bring up a concern with a friend, but if we love them and want to help them be faithful to Christ, we must be able to spur one another towards love and good deeds as Hebrews 10:24 tells us, by pointing out the sin that they might not see in their life.

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This is my word for the day. I was having a conversation with my wife last week and I used the word frenetic to describe our pace of life lately. After arguing with me that it was not a word, I looked it up just to make sure and found the definition.

Fast and energetic in a rather wild and uncontrolled way: “a frenetic pace of activity”.

That seems to describe the last few weeks for us. Between my responsibilities at church, my classwork for the seminary classes I’m taking, raising three kids, and everything else I’m involved in, this has been a busy time. I seem to go through stages in life where everything hits at one time and I over-commit. That’s why the blog has been neglected a little lately.

It’s a challenge to abide in Christ when you become too busy. We have a rhythm of life where we must balance abiding in Christ and being fruitful. I’m doing a lot of good things right now, but sometimes the good can keep me from doing what is best. Here’s a question that I come back to when I think about my rhythm in life.

Am I working from rest, or resting from work?

There is a huge difference between the two. In the Bible, our rest is considered an act of worship. Honoring the Sabbath is even part of the ten commandments. God calls those who don’t work, lazy, but He calls those who don’t rest, disobedient.  I’ve been too busy lately, so I’m looking at my schedule to see what can be cut out. Rest is important, and if I am to abide in Christ and be fruitful, I need to have a healthy rhythm of life.

Frenetic may indeed be a word, but it is not one that should regularly describe our lives.

I had the honor of speaking at a fund-raising dinner for the Boy Scouts this week. I received my Eagle Scout award back in 1991, and Scouting was a big part of my teenage years. I loved the hiking and camping, and was even able to go backpacking in New Mexico at Philmont two times. In thinking through what I learned from scouting, I remembered one experience from my freshman engineering class.

I had good grades and was blessed to have a major university scholarship to Virginia Tech. I was in a special scholarship section of my freshman engineering class with a bunch of people that were smarter than me. The professor went through a series of questions about our backgrounds. He asked how many straight A students, how many perfect scores on SAT, how many valedictorians, and finally how many Eagle Scouts were in the class. Over half the class raised their hands and shared that they were Eagle Scouts and I realized that scouting had prepared me to be a leader. That one incident gave me the confidence that I belonged.

This week at the dinner, I shared some of the leadership lessons I learned from scouting. These have helped shape me into the leader that I am, so I wanted to share these lessons with you. I learned …

• The importance of discipline – There are constant goals you are working towards, and it takes discipline  to meet the requirements. You can’t quit until you reach your goal.
• The importance of working together – When you are backpacking, you have to work together and learn to get along with the people you are with. You learn a lot about conflict resolution and teamwork.
• The importance of responsibility – When teaching younger scouts or leading the group, you learn the importance of taking responsibility.
• The importance of being prepared – You never know what to expect, so you learn to always be prepared.
• The importance of ingenuity – Scouting teaches you how to be a problem solver. It’s a skill that defined my career as an engineer, and it definitely helps me in ministry as well.
• The importance of worship – You can’t help but worship when you see God’s beautiful creation. Hiking through pristine mountains teaches you to slow down and simply worship God.
• The importance of service – You learn how to serve others. The Scout Oath teaches you to “help other people at all times”

Scouting is so much more than hiking and camping, because it is a place where young leaders are developed.