Monthly Summary for September

4 Steps to get Past Your Limitations
Getting past the limitations we put on ourselves...

My "Tweets" from Randy Hahn's GIC Sermon
"How awesome would it be for God to look at us and think that we look just like Him while we reflect His greatness!"

Running Past Your Limitations
"The best pace is a suicide pace, and today is a good day to die." (Prefontaine)

Twelve Marks of a Great Leader
My attempt at crowd-sourcing leadership...

When the Alarm Sounds in Your Life
A very funny story of an alarm in the middle of the night...

Prayer and The Circle Maker
My first highlights from Mark Batterson's "The Circle Maker"

Wrecked - Getting Messed Up In a Good Way

I was privileged to get a pre-release of Jeff Goin's new book Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into Your Comfortable Life. In exchange for the sneak peek, I was asked to write a review. 


Very Good Stuff
I'll go ahead and confess, I'm not sure if I can do that effectively. The book has so much great content, that to attempt to whittle it down into a summary may not do it justice. I have a different approach that I want to use. Before I do share, let me set the stage with this simple overview.


Wrecked will make you pause and look back over your life at the moments when your life collided with the world and in those moments, your eyes were opened to a new perspective. More than likely, those experiences altered the direction of your life. Jeff attempts to help us understand those experiences and how the people around us respond to their own Wrecked moments.

Let God Mess You Up!

Have you ever had your life wrecked? You were going along fine then the something happened that you weren't expecting and it caused a big "crash." The one thing I know about getting wrecked is that it comes when you least expect it and you have to make a life-altering decision. And this is important because "our lives will be the sum total of our decisions" (Andy Stanley). It happened to me when I was in college.


"Our lives will be the sum total of our decisions." - Andy Stanley (Click Here to Tweet)

I was attending a conference hosted by Campus Crusade for Christ. I don't remember a lot of details about the conference. I could not tell you who the musical artist was or who any of the speakers were. What I do remember is that during a break, I had a very significant conversation with God. Not an audible conversation, but a moment where it seemed there was no one in the auditorium but the two of us although we were surrounded by hundreds of college students. 

Sometimes You Have to Pick Up the Broom

I went to my local McDonalds recently and was encouraged by an unexpected site. I saw the owner (not the manager) out in the parking lot with a broom, sweeping up trash. I commented, "Now that's leadership at its finest." She just chuckled.


She's a real neat lady. I met her a few years ago as I happened to be there one day eating and she was out in the dining area, get this, wiping down tables. (I think she has a handle on Servant Leadership.) In that exchange, I commented on how hard her team was always working. She wasted no time letting me know what she thought about her team.

Are You Cheating?

I'm sort of an unusual bird when it comes to running with an iPod. Where most people listen to up-tempo music to help keep their pace strong, I choose a much different genre. I like to listen to podcasts that range from ministers to marketing. It's just another way I can continue to grow as an individual. One of my favorites is Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA. His dad is Charles Stanley, the popular pastor of First Baptist Atlanta.


Recently, as I was on a run, my iPod finished the podcast it was playing and rolled right into the next one which was Andy's popular sermon, "Choosing to Cheat." This was a pleasant surprise as I had heard him mention this sermon (and book) on a previous Leadership Podcast and that he had re-branded it as "When Work and Family Collide: Keeping Your Job from Cheating Your Family ." It had been a while since I heard this sermon, so I was anxious to get refreshed.

New You Suggestion - Bible Reading Plan [Video]

As you are looking ahead to a new you in the new year, reading the Bible more may be on your list or part of your "2012 - Year in Review" letter. If so, I wanted to share something I've been doing in this area for a while now. In fact, I help produce a video that explains it and allows you to look in on a group following this method...enjoy! (Click the link below...)


A Different Way to Read the Bible! [Video]


Photo Source: http://soulation.org/breakfastreading/?p=1769

How to Help Your Kids be Successful, Part 3

(This is part 3 of How to Help Your Kids be Successful. Here are links to the previous post: Part 1 / Part 2. In order to conclude this series of posts, this one will be a little lengthy.)


The book, Different Children Different Needs (see below) was an instrumental tool in guiding us to explore how God wired our three children. Through a series of observational questions, we were able to identify where each child landed on Dr. Boyd's spectrum. It turns out that the genetic code is different in each child. I'll unfold this in birth-order.


Taylor was our firstborn. She was our trial-and-error child. Fortunately, we used another resource that really helped direct our path as first-time parents (see the link below for Baby Wise.)  As I eluded to earlier, she is our "life is a party" child. Everything to her is an experience full of inward and outward emotions. She smiles and laughs a lot. Part of the identifiable traits for her personality is expressiveness. Not only with emotions, but in other areas as well.

When she was two years old, she loved puzzles. She would just sit in the floor and work puzzles. One would think how fortunate we were to have a child that would find a spot, sit still and occupy themselves with something like puzzles. This would be accurate were it not for the fact that in her concentration, she uttered this LOUD humming noise. We never had to wonder where she was...we just traced down the buzz.


As she grew older, she moved from puzzles to drawing. It was about this time that we discovered the DCDC book. The basis for Dr. Boyd's book was that once a parent had an inkling of the gifts, abilities and personality traits their child has, they should explore those areas further. Not with the notion that their child is the next prodigy, but to allow them to develop their natural, gifted abilities. Taylor's kindergarten teacher recognized her ability to draw very well and suggested art lessons. We jumped on the idea.

The photo to the right reveals Taylor's ability. As you can see, she really has a gift. It was apparent early on that she has a flair for expressive art. Along the way to the present day she has been an award-winning dancer, won public speaking contests and has won championships with teammates in Competitive Cheer and Cross-Country. We simply discovered that she thrives in environments where she can engage with others and outwardly express who she is on the inside through art (dance, drawing, and speaking.)


Logan has the honor of being the "middle child."

How to Help Your Kids be Successful, Part 2

(This is the second installment of a series of post on how my wife and I sought to develop our children's gifts and abilities that are enabling them to fulfill their God-given potential.  You may want to go back and read How to Help Your Kids be Successful.)

As a young dad early in my parenting days, I made it a discipline to listen to the wisdom of those who were already raising children. Two observations that seemed to be consistent were: "Enjoy your children as much as you can because they grow up so fast" and "You will be amazed at how two children who come from the same parents and live in the same home will be absolute opposite of each other." This last bit of wisdom proved to be 100% true in our home.


Our firstborn was the "life is a party" child. I picked up on this when I entered my bathroom one night to see her as a three-year-old standing on a step giving her mom an enthusiastic rendition of "Jesus Loves the Little Children" without one stitch of clothing. Yep! This one was going to enjoy life.


When her sister came along, I fully expected another version of our first child. Apparently, the wisdom I had gleaned from others had escaped my mind and I was in for an eye-opening experience. Where our first child appeared to be the life of the party, our second one was the party planner. She was the organizer, server and cleaner all in one. We should have used "Detail" as her middle name.


A few years later, their brother came along. Just the mere fact that he's a boy says enough. He's all boy...there's no confusion on that part. Yet, he has his own outlook on life and strangely enough, he fits somewhere in the middle between his sisters.


So here I was in my own Behavioral Science laboratory, trying to figure out "the way they should go."

Between the Lines: "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" Chapter 1

I try to be disciplined in my reading. Seldom do I read without a pen in my hand. I write all over the books I read. A friend of mine once "loaned" me a book to read only to force me to buy him a new copy because I marked it up pretty good.

I'm currently reading, "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" by Mark Batterson. As I have begun to read, I have found pearl after pearl of challenging thoughts that I am compelled to share with others. Often, I will "tweet" it or post it to my Facebook page in an attempt to share the thought with like-minded people. However with this book, there's too much information and not enough space (< 140 characters) to share it effectively.

So, I've turned to here. I want to post some of the nuggets that I find here for the random reader. I hope they make you think as they have challenged me to do the same.

• "God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time...The right place often seems like the wrong place, and the right time often seems like the wrong time."
• "God is in the resume'-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities. But those opportunities often come disguised as man-eating lions."
• "Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. Those who simply run away from sin are half-Christians. Our calling is much higher than simply running away from what's wrong. We're called to chase lions."
• "When we don't have the guts to step out in faith and chase lions, then God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him."
• "What sets lion chasers apart isn't the outcome. It's the courage to chase God-sized dreams. Lion chasers don't let their fears or doubts keep them from doing what God has called them to do."
• "Spiritual maturity is seeing and seizing God-ordained opportunities. Think of every opportunity as God's gift to you. What you do with those opportunities is your gift to God. I'm absolutely convinced that our greatest regrets in life will be missed opportunities."

Between the Line: It's Your Ship...Family version

I was working on a project recently and remembered something I read in "It's Your Ship" by Captain Michael Abrashoff. This is a great leadership book describing how he took the worst ship in the Navy and made it the first ship in the Navy.

I pulled it off the shelf and started my search for the particular content I needed and then decided to glance back over my "underlines," the content that had made me think when I read the book the first time. Some of these are so good, that I wanted to share them here on the blog. (You'll probably see more in the future.) As you read these thoughts, please don't dismiss them as business or leadership jargon. You can easily make the transition to your family by replacing the words "crew", "leader", "organization", and "company" with the words like "kids", "parent" and "family."

• All leaders (parents) have the challenge of getting the most out of our crews (kids), which depends on three variables: the leader's (parent's) needs, the organization's (family's) atmosphere, and the crew's (kid's) potential competence.

• Leaders (parents) must free their subordinates (children) to fulfill their talents to the utmost. However, most obstacles that limit people's potential are set in motion by the leader (parent) and are rooted in his or her own fears, ego needs, and unproductive habits.

• Show me an organization (family) in which employees (children) take ownership, and I will show you one that beats its competitors (opposition).