The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, by Scot McKnight (Zondervan, 2011).  Defining the gospel has become a battleground between warring theologies. Is the gospel primarily about justification by faith, the kingdom of God, or the restoration of all things?  McKnight’s offering here is an important (game changing?) contribution to the discussion. McKnight begins at First Corinthians 15 and fleshes out the contours of the gospel: The story of Israel (shorthand for God’s self-revelation throughout the OT) brought to completion in the story of Jesus.  This is the gospel that Paul preached, and Peter (McKnight walks us through their “gospeling” in Acts).  In fact, this is the gospel that Jesus preached: Himself – and ultimately His own death and resurrection – as the fulfillment of God’s work in Israel.  McKnight calls to repentance the contemporary church, which often sees the gospel only in terms of salvation (four spiritual laws).  This truncates a rightful understanding of God’s work in history.  McKnight’s contribution to the gospel debate is a must-read.  A+

Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul, by Howard Schultz (Rodale, 2011).  “Onward” documents Starbucks fall from glory and the second coming of Howard Schultz – Starbucks’ first CEO, who returned to his position after stepping down from daily operations nearly seven years prior. Whether or not one is a Starbucks devotee, “Onward” is well-told and packed with great business acumen and leadership insights. B+

Don’t Waste Your Life, by John Piper (Crossway, 2010). “Don’t Waste Your Life” is a manifesto for gospel-centered living. Piper clearly and passionately explains the basis for Christian joy: the glory of God. When one lives for God’s glory, he or she finds life’s deepest joy and purpose. Piper unpacks this profound truth in relationship to suffering, vocation, risk, mission, and much more. Piper offers an invaluable service to the church: understanding the glory of God in light of the cross – the “blazing center of the glory of God” – as it informs one’s daily life as followers of Jesus. Very helpful. A+

How about you?  What are you reading?  Any recommendations?

Many leaders fail to passionately celebrate the accomplished goals of their team or business or church. It seems that they are never satisfied and are focused on the minor flaws rather than exuberantly enjoying the positive advances with the team. Too many leaders lack the passion that inspires others to invest fully for the vision of the organizaton.

1. Leadership is sometimes shaking the opposing coach’s hand too hard.
2. Leadership is cheering every baptism.
3. Leadership is crying at weddings.
4. Leadership is getting donuts and coffee for the set-up team.
5. Leadership is getting on your knees to look a child in the eyes.
6. Leadership is celebrating a church launch.
7. Leadership is sending a timely card of thanks for a job well done.
8. Leadership is dying for the good of others.
9. Leadership is running to the empty tomb to see for yourself.
10. Leadership is restoring discouraged men back into ministry after denying Christ 3 times.
11. Leadership is leaving your disciples with a task so compelling and so enormous that it is taking over 2,000 years to accomplish.
12. Leadership is doing things that not everyone understands.

Lead with passion and celebrate with your team–even if you occasionally over celebrate.

Love it!  Read more here.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters, by Tim Keller (Dutton, 2009). The human heart is an idol factory, argues Keller (invoking Calvin). Often times idols are truly good things that we seek to fashion into god-things. Interlacing biblical stories and contemporary culture with stinging insight, Keller unpacks the power of idols such as money, sex, and power in our society and our personal lives. He masterfully draws us back to the gospel, however, demonstrating how only Christ can truly fulfill these deepest longings. Keller’s examination of idolatry also includes a short comparison of “surface idols” and “deep idols” – a three page (pp. 64-66) summary that alone is worth the price of admission. A great read on several levels. A+

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins (Harper Collins, 2001). Good is the enemy of great.  Great organizations are not characterized by charismatic leaders, product trends, or media hype.  Rather, great organizations are doggedly disciplined around what Collins terms a “hedgehog concept” – the singular intersection of what an organization is passionate about, what an organization can be best in the world at, and the economic engine of an organization.  Once an organization understands its “hedgehog concept,” greatness means discipline: disciplined leadership making disciplined decisions in the context of its “hedgehog concept” – resulting in a disciplined culture.  This sort of determination isn’t the result of training, but of recruiting.  The “who” of an organization must take priority over its “what” – or as Collins says “who first, then what.”  Good to Great is an engaging and thoroughly interesting read. Although the research is in the context of the business world, it is readily applicable both individually and in other organizational contexts.  A+

The Smell of Sin: And the Fresh Air of Grace, by Don Everts (Intervarsity, 2003).  Sin stinks. Really!  But we often see sin more casually.  Maybe we imagine it like a giant carnival.  True, there are some weird carnies to avoid, but you can also have time of your life!  Or maybe we imagine sin like breaking some dusty old rule in the classroom of life.  Yeah, so, I’m passing notes and throwing paper airplanes, but what’s the big deal?  Well, despite our perceptions, Jesus uses some very powerful – even grotesque – images when talking about the seriousness of sin: a 2×4 splitting your face, sawing off body parts, plucking out your eye.  Everts walks his readers through some of Jesus’ descriptions of sin, reminding us of the thick stench that sin leaves behind.  B

Read anything good recently?  Any recommendations?

Three of our key leaders are gone right now; they’ve been on home assignment (furlough) since December.  It wasn’t planned that they’d all be gone at the same time… but life happens. One of these leaders is something of a project manager, handling the organization of events and special projects.  She also does a lot of other intangibles, following through on a lot of details that would otherwise falls through the cracks!  Another of these leaders handles the organization and communications for our short-term teams and interns.  The third leader oversees the pastoral care of our team, organizing our team fellowships, prayer days, and other ways to build-up our team.  [By the way, I look forward to joyfully welcoming them back very soon!]

As you might imagine, the absence of these leaders has created some real gaps!  Unfortunately, I’ve been filling those gaps.  So, as a result of my own mistakes (whether from a lack of planning, lack of communication, or love of control), I’m overextended and overcommitted.  In short, I’m unfocused.

In my role as leader, I love to start fires – fanning into flame the gifts of God in our team and the passions of teammates.  Over these few months, however, I don’t feel like I’ve stirred up enough fires!  As leader, I love to dream.  I’ve been called to lead out in front of our team, to help the team envision and work towards a brighter tomorrow for the good of refugees in Greece and the glory of God.  Swamped by administrative needs, though, I feel that my mind has been more focused on today than on envisioning a better tomorrow.  And most significantly in my heart, I love to preach the gospel.  I believe that my primary gifting is to teach and preach the gospel, but I haven’t been able to focus on teaching.  In fact, for this (hopefully short) season, I’ve had to put aside many of my regular teaching times… and those few times that I’ve been able to teach, I haven’t had the energy and imagination that the Word of God deserves.  This frustrates me and saddens me.  Needless to say, I’m praying for patience; I’m praying for God’s timing (for the next teaching opportunities); I’m praying for focus.

Now, despite my tone above, don’t worry about me.  I’m not down and depressed, because God is doing great things! But in the midst of this very real excitement, there is also frustration.  I often share the excitement; I don’t talk enough about my frustrations.  I felt like revealing something from that side today.  Can you relate?

Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels (Tullian Tchividjian; Crossway 2010).   Pastor Tullian moves artfully through the book of Jonah, pointing out gospel landmarks and Jesus-sightings along the way.  Surprised by Grace is moving and powerful as it reminds us that it’s grace all the way down – God’s unthinkable grace to Jonah; His scandalous grace to the Ninevehites; God’s amazing grace to you and me;  His immeasurable grace both to reckless rule-breakers and legalistic rule-makers.  Wherever we are, we are people in need of God’s grace!   A heart-stirring reminder that we are all in need of the gospel.  My grade: A

Leaders Who Last (David Kraft; Crossway 2010).  According to some research, only 30% of Christian leaders finish well (that is, they don’t leave ministry because of moral failure, burnout, apathy, or the like).  Kraft’s work here offers some basic principles on Christian leadership that lasts.  In three sections, Leaders that Last examines the foundations of leadership, the formation of a leader, and the fruitfulness of a leader.  A good read on why leadership matters and how to make it count.  My grade: B+

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of the Leaderless Organization (Brafman and Beckstrom; Portfolio 2008).  A really interesting read on organizational structure and leadership. Traditional organizations are often hierarchical and authoritarian.  Like spiders, if you cut off a leg (or department), it’s weakened; if you cut off it’s head (leader/board), and it’s dead.  Other organizations, however, resemble a starfish, which reproduce a new leg when one is severed (and in fact the severed leg becomes a new starfish!).  These organizations are decentralized.  Rather than organized around structural authority, starfish organizations share a common ideology and a common DNA (core values) which reproduce along relational networks and is often the work of a catalyst – a movement maker who gets things started, and then gets out of the way, rejecting any authoritarian role.  A lot of interesting examples here.  If you’re interested in leadership and organizational life, it’s a fascinating read.  My grade: A

Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement (Dave and Jon Ferguson; Zondervan 2010) – A how-to manual for starting a missional church movement, Exponential offers a practical guide for reproducing leaders, churches, and networks of churches. Reproduction must be an intentional and systematic effort built into the DNA of a church. Relying on their experiences at Community Christian Church and NewThing, the Ferguson brothers provide an inspiring and useful examination of what makes movements move.  Inspiring and useful, my grade:  A

[A very quick explanation for the uninitiated: International Teams sends out 1200 missionaries to over 200 teams around the world (in 66 countries, to be exact).  The IT-Canada national office mobilizes and trains missionaries from Canada.  IT has national offices (which mobilize, train, and resource on-field teams) in at least nine countries around the world.  Learn more here.]

I was joined in Elmira by about 15 other team leaders from around the world.  We came from many cultures, representing teams in many different nations… but we all shared two things in common: we love Jesus and we love refugees.  Although scattered across the world, each of our teams is engaged in refugee ministry (or what we affectionately call, RefMin) – loving and serving refugees in the name of Jesus.  In Canada, we spent our mornings in training, learning how to better serve our teams.  We discussed challenges to team life and some strategies for cultivating stronger, healthier ministry teams.  Great content; many thanks to our facilitator Andrew Collins.  Pure gold.  While I’ll have to save the details for another blog post, check out the picture below of one of our training sessions with Andrew.

After a wonderful lunch provided by the amazing crew at IT-Canada each day, we got right back to work.  The afternoons were filled with talk of organizational structure. Again, I’ll spare you the details (for now) but we made some great progress in mapping out our next steps as an organization.  As a network of teams focused on work with refugees, who are we (our vision, values, and other distinctives)?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of our current – and any potential future – structures?  What is our shared DNA as RefMin? We had some great discussions… heavily influenced by The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, an engaging and immensely interesting work on organizational structure and leadership.  My favorite take-away: the values are the organization.  Our influence as a network comes from our shared ideology, not any org chart.

I am very encouraged by what I saw in Canada.  I am excited by what I see God doing in the lives of refugees around the world.  Please continue to pray for International Teams’ ministry among refugees – and specifically our team here in Athens!  Thanks for standing with us!

Andrews Collins teaching on healthy teams.

Our 2010-2011 priorities:

1 – Discipleship – We are passionate about (1) seeing refugees become disciples of Jesus, (2) helping these disciples grow and mature in faith, and (3) preparing them for a lifetime of service and giving.

2 – Team Health – We are passionate about serving together as a team – a healthy team that covenants together in life, worship, and ministry.

3 – Church Engagement – We are passionate about preparing and equipping the Greek evangelical church for witness and service among refugees.

Thanks for your prayers and partnership in God’s work here!  Please continue to pray for our team and leadership as we narrow in on what God would have from us in this ministry year.

If you’re the “find the right people”-type, you are constantly trying to build the right team and then get out of the way. When you have talented people around you, you don’t need to know all the answers. The team generates the ideas, so it’s not all on your shoulders. The right people are as concerned about the mission as you are, so you don’t have to spend time keeping them in line. If something goes wrong and you have a great team, you see it as a systems or communications problem rather than a people problem.

So… any thoughts on moving from “right task” to “right people” leadership?  I’d love to hear your wisdom – whether fully formed or still developing!

And yet, despite these lofty desires, sometimes it’s just easier to sit on the couch.  Sometimes it’s easier to just not stir up any trouble.  I mean, clearly, it’s a whole lot safer to sit quietly rather than put a target on my own back by speaking up against the world.  It’s so much less painful just to blend in rather than live with purpose, with conviction, and with passion.

That’s my struggle.  This is why I found this blog post from Seth Godin so convicting:

Arrogant

This is a fear and a paradox of doing work that’s important.

A fear because so many of us are raised to avoid appearing arrogant. Being called arrogant is a terrible slur, it means that you’re not only a failure, but a poser as well.

It’s a paradox, though, because the confidence and attitude that goes with bringing a new idea into the world (“hey, listen to this,”) is a hair’s breadth away, or at least sometimes it feels that way, from being arrogant.

And so we keep our head down. Better, they say, to be invisible and non-contributing than risk being arrogant.

That feels like a selfish, cowardly cop out to me. Better, I think, to make a difference and run the risk of failing sometimes, of being made fun of, and yes, appearing arrogant. It’s far better than the alternative.