thoughts
Have you ever seen someone who is passionate about something? What drove their passion or did their passion drive them? Have you ever seen someone who was not passionate about what they were doing? In a team setting this unpassionate drive eventually infilitrates the team and tears it down, especially if you are the unpassionate leader. If passion drives a leader, how then does a leader stay focused without letting passion take over him or her? What is passion? These are all questions that leaders should be able to address because it pushes us towards the vision that God has cast.
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Pagan Christianity offers up many exciting thoughts on what it means to be an organic church but at the same time, the book is somewhat discouraging. While I believe Frank Viola is dead on, at least close, about the history of our Church practices and their pagan roots, I have to sit back and sort through what seems to be a very useful work written in a spirit of anger. I personally do not believe the book was written in a spirit of anger but unfortunately this is the way that it comes across.
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What will we do with our last breath? Will we be able to demonstrate undconditional love. Will we be able to demonstrate God’s love towards all? That’s my wish. I hope and pray that my very last breath will bring honor and glory to God and that yours may also.
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Can you imagine what would happen if a group of people with untold resources, passion and energy started asking the question, “How do we hear the cry of the oppressed?”. What if they were actually willing to wade into the cultural, economic, racial, global and personal issues involved without fear, with the confidence that no matter how painful, messy and volatile it got, Jesus would guide them the whole way? You’d have some church on your hands. Rob Bell.
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Life is not about toning down and repressing your God-given life force. It’s about channelling it and focusing it and turning it loose on something beautiful. Rob Bell. Sex God.
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“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This definition of synergy is packed and offers excellent insight for community. Communities are made up of parts. There are communities that are made up of “parts” but also there are communities that are a “whole”. The “whole” is greater than the parts. More importantly the “whole” is greater than the “sum of its parts.”
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Leadership is a complex process of influence. Leaders should have the ability to influence in the four different proxemics that Edward Hall identifies. These four spaces (proxemics) consist of public space, social space, personal space and intimate space. Leaders have the ability to influence people in each of these four spaces. Over time they will have influenced in each of these areas. Influence is key to leadership and we must have an understanding of it.
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Defining a working definition of integrity is important for leaders. Too many times leaders have been fake or become fake and this cripples the effectiveness of an organization. Being transparent means we have nothing to hide. Think of integrity as transparency. We can all probably think of a leader that has hidden something and eventually this something surfaced and destroyed their integrity and momentum.
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Ron Martoia’s Static supplements what Kinnaman writes about in unChristian. Kinnaman addressed six issues of the Christian faith, one of them being too sheltered. Martoia addresses the sheltered/exclusiveness issue through what he calls static.
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What I thought was going to be an extremely rough day has turned into revival at the very least and is more noteworthy for the transformational shaping of my life that has happened today. My schedule started with the Hope Center in Lexington from 8:00-11:30am, class from 1-5pm at Asbury Seminary and a HSM retreat from 6:30pm to 12:00am at Bluegrass Christian Camp. I feared that I was going to be so drained that I would not get anything out of it. Once again I learned that it is not about me but what God can do through me, how much He loves me and the interesting things he does to show us that.
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Warren Bennis writes that vision, passion and integrity are caracteristics that set apart true leaders from others. I chose to briefly delve into the topic of integrity earlier. I approach vision different than Bennis does because as a christian leader I realize that God has already cast the vision and that he has given me responsibility in casting it towards others and pursuing it through mission.
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The essence of being a Christian Leader is living a life of “God must Increase, I must decrease”. In a world of competition the afore mentioned statement would get us no where, not at least normally. As a Christian leader though, we as leaders have a purpose of pointing people to God and to do this we must get out of the way and decrease that God may increase through us.
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This leaf with THANK YOU LORD FOR YOUR ART, moved me in a way that I have never experienced. I have appreciated God’s creation since I became a Christian, but never have I been more moved by God’s creation than when one of His daughters worshipped God because of His creation and wrote this on a maple leaf. I had to edit the picture some because it was taken with my blackberry but I still think it gets the message across.
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Joseph Myers argues organic order leads to sustainability in his book Organic Community. The premise of the book is “creating a place where people naturally connect.” Myers argues that organic community creates these spaces better than master planning. He compellingly advocates moving from a programmer mentality to an environmentalist mentality in order to create healthy community.
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I find myself somewhat stunned and confused at the moment. In the last year, God has really been, how should I say this: re-shaping me. My beliefs, my values, my theology and a host of other areas in my life have been destroyed by the context in which I live. Destroyed not in the sense of broken but destroyed in the sense of a re-building that is taking place. An emerging faith is taking hold in my life.
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This is one of my favorite songs. It is a very prayerful song. It should be the prayer of every believer. Here is what the song means to me
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