Trust me, your team wants to know where they stand, how they are doing, what protocols are rigid,  and what the primary objective is. People crave clarity.  They are looking for someone to rise up with a clarion call that they can follow into battle. So find your voice and be crystal clear.

An adage I think about often is, “don’t communicate so you’ll be understood, communicate so that it’s impossible to be misunderstood.”

I know, I know. This goes against all wise counsel. Every sermon you have ever heard about the sabbath; and all the leadership blogs you have read about how if you don’t guard your day off you don’t love Jesus are probably coming to your mind about now.

I totally agree with all of that, as a rule. There is nothing spiritual or profitable about being a workaholic. Psalm 127:2 straight up says we should not run in the red but should rest. I get it. None of us keep the world spinning, or the sun rising. We don’t need to stay up all-night-every-night working.

But I have met people who are so dogmatic and almost Pharisaical (you know I get 6 points for dropping that word) about their day off not being disrupted…not ever, and are rigid about the rule. They will walk out the door at 5pm and not one minute afterwards, whether the job is done or not. Their day off is sacred and their schedule is set in stone, no matter what is going on; they will only expend the agreed-upon amount of energy and no more. That’s fine and the desire to not burnout is a good one. But it’s not realistic to think that greatness can be achieved without extraordinary effort being called for at times.

Nothing sweet is ever achieved without sweat. Occasionally exceptional times will come along where you have to go above and beyond the call of duty. There will be short seasons that require extra effort to punch through to a next level God is calling you to, to complete a project, or go through a door that has been opened. And you will need to kick it into high gear and give it all you’ve got.

The good news is that a rule is still a rule even if there are exceptions. The trick is not allowing that to become the new normal. If it does, it’s not an exception anymore, it’s the rule and if you keep it up for long something will inevitably suffer–your marriage, your kids, or your sanity.

What I have learned (through trial and error) is to see these seasons coming before I’m in the midst of them and to prayerfully accept them, with my wife’s blessing. If you do that, no one is blindsided and you can plan a recovery as a part of the process. So if a unique project is going to have you pulling 13 hour work days for a week and a half you can take three days off at the end and not just plunge back into reality and grind it out.

It helps me to think of these unique times as interval training. Yes, it might be crazy right now but this is a sprint, it’s supposed to be above the normal craziness. It’s time to go all out. Soon I will be drinking a gatorade, catching my breath and getting back into the usual flow. The secret isn’t living a life that’s never crazy, it’s making sure that when things do get crazy you make time for recovery.

I think that is a haunting lesson for anyone who is passionately pursuing any dream. Failure, as trying as it can be, is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Success can actually be worse. This is true in ministry and in business. You can get so big and so successful that as an organization you are no longer lit by the same fire you once had. You have to fight to retain the original passion you had when you were starting out.

There are two things that we have been intentional about doing at fresh life, as we have grown, to keep us on mission and fight the forces of entropy. One is being careful to remember our history. This is vital. New hires and those who join later on need to understand what they are a part of or they will take the sacrifices paid early on for granted. The second is to make sure that the core values that lead to the success in the first place are instilled afresh, again and again, so that they are not forsaken.

A while back a friend of mine, Pastor Steven Furtick from Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, gave me a book that really opened my eyes to seeing the need for these things to be specifically nailed down and not allowed to remain nebulous. The book is called The Orange Code: How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause (you can buy it here). That and the book Onward by Howard Schultz (link) are two phenomenal resources for any leader looking to create clarity in their organizational culture.

One things for sure, it’s a war you must wage if you want to continue to hear the music. It doesn’t happen on accident.

Check out this video where I explain what’s unique about the culture at fresh life to our church.

“A store manager’s job is not to oversee millions of customer’s transactions a week, but one transaction millions of times a week.”

This hit me hard when I read it. Typically pastors and church staffs speak about church attendance as a number. we ask, “what was attendance this weekend?” Whether the answer is 648, 2,042 or 199 the idea is that so many hundreds or thousands of spiritual transactions were facilitated this weekend. True. But to each of those individuals there was only one experience–their own.

I told our team that every single person who arrives at a campus has their own experience. Their individual time finding a parking spot, getting greeted, finding a seat, discovering where to check in their kids. It doesn’t matter if the greeters were super friendly to the 148 people that came in before them, if they weren’t greeted they assume that is how it normally is. They don’t know that the bathrooms aren’t normally this messy, but they were stuck in a stall with no toilet paper and that is not a good time. They don’t care that the last 1,242 people who tried to download our podcast found it updated on time, they just know it wasn’t there when they tried to listen. All they know about is their own experience.

We have to lead focused on the big picture, but we must also keep the small picture in mind. Don’t let the size of your ministry allow you to gloss over the small details that matter dearly to the individual. It takes practice, but it is a very helpful exercise to focus on the individual perspective and to shrink your focus.

Here is the rest of the quote from Howard Schultz.

“…The only number that matters is one. One cup. One customer. One partner. One experience at a time. We had to get back to what mattered most.”

Having an ear to the ground can alert you to “wow” moments that are happening that you aren’t aware of but you should be encouraging. Things that employees are doing that blow customers away that you can make a more wide spread behavior. Or maybe you will find out that some small thing you have in place is actually doing the exact opposite of what you want it to. Feedback could allow for a small tweak that could make a huge difference.

An openness to feedback will allow you to see your team or organization or church through a new set of eyes. This even applies to individuals. One of the ways to grow is to have people in your life that can speak into your life when they see things that are keeping you from growing. We all have a way of being blind to our own weaknesses. Honest evaluation can be a majorly valuable tool.

The key is to know what feedback to take seriously and what input to ignore altogether. If you listen to the wrong feedback you could find yourself compromising where you shouldn’t. For example, if you have recently given your life to Christ and the negative feedback is pouring in from people you used to party with, you are going to want to ignore their contribution. The same applies to business. Perhaps some people very vocally complain about your sky-high prices and you are tempted to add cheaper items to the menu. But if you are going for a boutique vibe, diluting your higher-end price point could be a mistake and weaken what sets you apart. Pleasing the wrong people could keep you from reaching the right people.

Start by accepting the fact that no one can please everyone. You have got to identify who you are trying to impact, isolate their input and reject all others.

In my world, I am open to hearing feedback from all sorts of different people, but I filter it through the grid of who I am trying to reach. If I hear complaints from someone who comes to freshlife for the first time and thinks that the music was too loud and they didn’t like stuff we did because that’s not how it was in their last church, I’m not phased. The feedback that I key into is the person who writes and tells me they haven’t been to a religious service in 20 years but their life was rocked by their experience and they didn’t even know church could be like this. I want to encourage and foster stories like that. So I care very much about the fact that they were invited by a friend, heard our radio station and were intrigued by the name of the series.

To be blunt, I don’t care if a person who is already saved doesn’t like it. If they are already going to heaven, they are good. They can just go to another church and I am more than fine with that. The person who isn’t going to any church is the one whose head I want to get in to. In order to reach the right people I am willing to not please the wrong people.

If you know who or what you are targeting you can practice selective hearing when you listen to what people say about your organization and not find yourself deviating from your primary objective. Define success and then pursue it wholeheartedly.

Here is what it said:
YOU.
HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOR 10 YEARS.

Now, as I read that I immediately thought, “No, I haven’t… I must have been given the wrong cup. There is probably a seasoned conservation activist somewhere who is gonna be so mad when he finds out I have his drink.” But then I noticed what was written immediately below…

Everything we do, you do. Buy our coffee and good things happen. Take Starbucks 10-year partnership with CI in making things better for farmers and the planet…It makes a difference. Just like you do. Congratulations, you.

Brilliant. I have been buying coffee from them for over ten years and what this cup was saying is that I am not just a customer, I’m a partner in the mission that they are on. I have never personally met a single coffee bean farmer but I am making a difference, because me and the mermaid are on the same team. I gotta admit, it felt pretty darn good.

As I sat there sipping my coffee and congratulating myself on all the great things I was accomplishing around the world by doing so, I thought of a conversation that I had the night before. I had bumped into someone around town who goes to freshlife. After we met, he shook my hand and told me, “you guys are doing a great job,” and then he went on for a bit about all the great things that me and my team were doing for the Lord, and how he prays for us and how pumped he is to be here. I listened until he was done and then congratulated him right back. He looked a bit surprised by that. But he had just told me that he prays and that he serves, I reminded him of this. I asked if he gives to the church as well and he said that he does. I shook his hand once more and then rephrased the compliment he had given me just moments ago, telling him, “We’re doing a great job!”

I want those who are a part of freshlife to understand what Starbucks knows to convey. Everything we do, they do. As we stand as one behind the God-given vision we are pursuing; we are partners together in all that we accomplish. No matter what your role is on the team, you are a part of the uprising. Congratulations, you.

One of a leader’s most important responsibilities is to continually foster this sense of unity and ownership in their organizational culture.

The themes of: culture, vision casting, implementing systems, brand and identity, communication and maintaining momentum get my blood pumping and fill my moleskines up time and time again. God has revealed flaws in my leadership skills through books written by bank presidents and heads of software companies just as He has through books written by pastors and Christian leaders.

I just finished reading Transforming Church in Rural America by Shannon O’Dell and am currently reading Church Planter by Darrin Patrick and What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and I have gone through another half-dozen or more on the subject this year.

But, hands down, the best leadership book I have ever read is the book of Nehemiah. Yesterday I wrapped up an 18 week long study through this Old Testament book and from beginning to end I was blown away by the leadership lessons it contains. Long before Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Fred Smith or Henry Ford, Nehemiah was someone who took on a project big enough to change the world and though many thought he was crazy, that was exactly what happened–he changed the world. He took radical steps to live out the dream that God put in his heart, regardless of the cost or consequences, and never gave up.

He looked at the world and didn’t see what was, he saw what could be. And when he spoke of the future he saw others followed him there. Not because he had a great plan (though he did) but because he had a great vision. He inspired people. And he drew out the best in them, pushed them to be all that God had called them to be and empowered them to do all that God had called them to do. In fact, I think his building up of the people around him was potentially a greater accomplishment than the walls that he is remembered for building.

It wasn’t all roses and rewards for Nehemiah, it never is for those who will change the world. He knew full well the truth of the statement, if you want to lead you must be willing to bleed. He faced criticism, opposition, danger, and betrayal. And perhaps nothing caused him more pain than the prospect of his greatest accomplishment, the spiritual health of the people he loved, unraveling at the seams as they headed into an uncertain future. But no matter what he faced, he kept the vision God had given him front and center and refused to budge.

I found myself applying principles gleaned from Nehemiah to every area of my life. From the way I lead in my home to the way I lead at fresh life, even the way I write on this blog! The book of Nehemiah was basically just Nehemiah’s blog that God chose to include in the Bible. I am thankful that he took time to write down the things he was learning and living and hope to encourage others by doing the same.

I can’t wait until I get to meet Nehemiah in heaven and thank him for his example. Until then I plan to follow his lead and serve the Lord with a sword in one hand and a shovel in the other!

Here is a snapshot:
While preaching at skull church my mic went out briefly and came back on with some terrible feedback that continued for what seemed like forever. What I didn’t know was that whatever had happened also took out the live radio broadcast. The webcast also crashed at some point in the night as well. And our system that sends txt msg questions, that come to my skulpit, to the screen went down. This weekend, I was supposed to preach the 11 o’clock at the Strand but, due to a series of events, they moved me to the Liberty at the last minute. I was supposed to be piped live into the Strand but they had to resort to a video backup because, for the second time ever, our fiber optic feed freaked out. When the video backup was fired it first came up with only audio before (fortunately) coming on correctly and playing all the way through. Man, just reading that list stresses me out.

Stuff like this makes the hair on the back of my team’s neck stand up. Excellence is something that we value highly. I can’t see how we really have a choice about that. Our mission is to see those who are stranded in sin find life and liberty in Christ. Eternity literally hangs in the balance. Like it or not, that injects importance into everything. We simply don’t have the luxury of dismissing even the smallest detail as being trivial. The stakes are too high. Hell plays for keeps and forever is a long time. Even small things deserve our very best effort.

Coming out of a week like we have had there is definitely the temptation to be upset, to be bummed, to beat ourselves up and only focus on every single thing that went wrong. But we won’t. You can’t live that way. If you do, eventually you will end up in the fetal position under your desk mumbling, “Laces out, Laces out, the Laces were supposed to be facing out...” And that’s not good for anyone. You have to accept that if you are are committed to thinking outside the box and pushing the envelope; there are going to be bad days. Things happen. Computers crash. People make mistakes. That’s life. Deal with it; don’t dwell on it.

Instead you have to learn to focus on all the good that happened in spite of the problems. The people who gave their lives to Christ listening to a message with feedback coming out of the speakers. The fact that people were blessed who were ministered to by the Bible study and felt God as they took communion even though according to our runsheets everything took way too long to come out of the meet and greet. The hundreds and hundreds of people who signed up for small groups even though at two of the services the amazing small group promo video never even played. And above all, the fact that the Word of God cannot be chained! (2 Timothy 2:9)

I think it’s also important to be thankful for the hundreds of services a year that have gone by without major meltdown. All the webcasts that didn’t go whack, all the times the fibre hasn’t failed and the projectors didn’t show the blue screen of death. Thank God for the other thousand times that your mouse didn’t turn into a beach-ball.

I’m not saying that you are supposed to just be ok with things that go wrong. You shouldn’t be. We aren’t. I can assure you there will be meetings where the glitches will be analyzed and assessed. We will ask: Why did this happen? Has it ever happened before? What could have prevented it? Was it human error or just a freak–the devil is in the details– kind of a thing? Do we need to upgrade a system? buy new equipment? Retrain someone? Conduct an exorcism? And we will do our best in the future to learn from our mistakes and move forward. We will pursue perfection and seek after seamlessness. As I said, I believe that the urgency of the gospel requires nothing less than our very best efforts.

But at the end of the day if anything eternal is going to be accomplished it’s not because of us, it’s because of Him. It’s all about Jesus and what He did for us at the place of the skull. In our weaknesses His strength is made perfect. If you keep that in mind, you can keep your eyes set on heaven even in the midst of a technological week from hell.

As time went on I couldn’t shake the thought that something was missing, that our approach was based on an institution, not on what God wanted us to do. After several months of meeting, praying and brainstorming with the pastoral staff we came to the conclusion that the real problem with our youth groups were the youth groups themselves. I mean having them–at all. So we decided to pull the plug. Here’s the story…

I wanted to make sure and chronicle the thinking behind this decision for other pastors and church planters out there. Perhaps some will be inspired by what we are doing and rethink preconceived notions about how youth ministry has to be done; and I’m sure that others will disagree. Regardless, I hope that, at the very least, this can serve to provoke discussion and fresh thinking about how we can most effectively reach the next generation and empower them to make Jesus famous.