Learn to Shift your focus on Jesus!
What Is Fueling Your Strategy?
Recently, my family went on vacation. We have three growing kids and needed a little bit of extra room for the long drive to Florida, so we rented a van. The entire drive my wife talked about how spacious the van was and that we needed one. I couldn’t help but think about the fuel economy and that our current car gets way better gas mileage. This got me thinking about fuel economy in strategic leadership.
Whether you are leading a church, an organization, a team, an initiative, or a project they all need fuel. Like any good pastor I came up with an acronym to help me explain the F.U.E.L. you need to lead strategically.
Future – Some pastors call this vision and others call this mission. The point is to make sure to communicate a clear and compelling preferred future. Ideally the preferred future inspires or solves a felt need. Without a compelling future then you are just wasting fuel. Your team will often burn out. This can happen when you change the end goal or direction.
Utilities – In this analogy think of your utilities as all the tools and resources you need. Some of the utilities you will need include communication channels, budget, curriculum, sermon material, time, or facilities. When a car doesn’t have enough fuel it won’t make it to its final destination. Leaders must provide the needed resources to make the future happen. Sometimes it means changing priorities or even reallocating resources.
Execution – Effective execution must be broken down into next steps….
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Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Thom Rainer.
Colorado Voters Reject Ban on Abortions after Viability
A majority of Colorado voters rejected a ballot measure which would have banned most abortions after 22 weeks.
According to the latest update on The New York Times, 1,744,953 people, or 58.9%, voted against the initiative and 1,218,589, or 41.1% voted in favor of it.
Proposition 115 would have prohibited abortion “when the probable gestational age of the fetus is at least twenty-two weeks.” Any doctors who performed the procedure would be charged with a misdemeanor and have their medical license suspended for three years. They would have been punished with a fine, but not jail time.
The measure carved out an exception if “the abortion is immediately required to save the life of the pregnant woman.” It went on to specify that this did not apply in cases where the threat was “solely by a psychological or emotional condition.”
Opponents of Proposition 115 painted it as an effort to restrict health care for vulnerable women and spent $9 million to oppose it compared to only $505,488 in spending by supporters of the restrictions. Dusti Gurule, the executive director of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights declared Proposition 115’s defeat as “a victory for every person who has ever been denied an abortion in their home state and had to travel thousands of miles for the medical care they needed.”
Lucy Olena, campaign manager for…
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Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.
Carl Lentz Hillsong firing ‘I was unfaithful in my marriage’
Carl Lentz has broken his silence about his firing from Hillsong East Coast on Wednesday, revealing that he was unfaithful to his wife.
“I did not do an adequate job of protecting my own spirit, refilling my own soul and reaching out for the readily available help that is available,” Lentz admitted in a lengthy Instagram post, along with a photo of his wife, Laura, and their three children.
He added, “When you lead out of an empty place, you make choices that have real and painful consequences.”
“I was unfaithful in my marriage, the most important relationship in my life and held accountable for that. This failure is on me, and me alone and I take full responsibility for my actions,” Lentz continued.
Hillsong’s founder, Pastor Brian Houston, first made the announcement about Lentz’s termination in an email to church staff and members of Hillsong East Coast on Wednesday afternoon.
In a statement sent to The Christian Post by Hillsong, Houston revealed…
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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.
Voters change abortion rights in Louisiana and Colorado: What are you paying attention to today?
While the race for the White House has understandably dominated headlines and the collective attention of the nation since the polls closed on Tuesday, the presidential election was not the only important issue on the ballots.
Largely lost amidst the chaos surrounding swing states were the decisions rendered on abortion in Louisiana and Colorado.
In Louisiana, voters decided by a 62 percent majority to amend the state’s constitution so that it “expressly states the document offers no protections for a right to abortion or the funding of abortion.” The move was made in anticipation of Roe v. Wade possibly being overturned by the Supreme Court, in which case they would be free to limit or even eliminate abortions within state lines.
Colorado voters went the opposite direction as 59 percent rejected a proposition that would have banned abortions beginning at twenty-two weeks of pregnancy. As such, the state remains one of seven in the country that do not place any restrictions on when an abortion can be performed.
The impact you could have
Given the number of issues people voted on across the nation that have largely taken a backseat to the question of who will reside in the oval office for the next four years, it’s understandable if something like the news out of Louisiana and Colorado went relatively unnoticed. To be honest, I was aware of these issues before the election but forgot to check on the results until I saw the story while searching for something else.
As such, they served as a good reminder that the presidential election was not and is not the only important event going on in our country. The world doesn’t stop just because our collective consciousness becomes fixated on one particular event.
So take some time today to ask God to help your attention be more evenly distributed amongst the rest of what’s going on in our world.
Ask him to make you more aware of where he’s working…
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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Denison Forum.
Julie Roys talks faith, reporting, American Christian courage
Journalist Julie Roys said she’ll never forget the moments when she discovered stories of abuse and corruption in the Christian world. But she isn’t bitter when she talks about these experiences and the pressure she’s faced from powerful evangelical leaders, and sometimes even friends, to cease her investigations.
In the past two years, Roys has led Christian investigative journalism in reporting on the sins of American church leaders. After reporting on financial mismanagement at Moody while working there, Moody fired Roys from her job as a radio host.
She then started her own investigative journalism site, The Roys Report, where she broke stories about allegations of financial malfeasance and bullying by James MacDonald at Harvest Bible Chapel, sexual misconduct allegations against Bill Hybels at Willow Creek, which he denied, and an alleged online sexual relationship involving the late Ravi Zacharias, along with other stories on leadership failures in church life.
“People honestly didn’t want to hear it,” Roys said about the stories she’s uncovered. “It’s like saying something bad about their grandmother. It may be true, but it’s too painful for them to hear it.”
When she talks, Roys chooses her words carefully, but as a writer does, not as a politician does. She wants to say things right.
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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.
9 Reasons Young Church Leaders Want a Mentor
I’ve just recently started my 25th year as a seminary professor. Throughout those years, I’ve seen students and young pastors increasing and almost desperately want a mentor. Here are some reasons why:
- They take ministry responsibilities seriously. They take them so seriously, in fact, that they want a veteran leader to walk with them so they get “it” right.
- They’ve seen other church leaders get hurt in ministry. It’s far too easy to get hurt and remain in that pain when we’re fighting these battles on own—so these young leaders want someone walking with them to keep them focused.
- They see great value in learning about life from older leaders. Even if these young church leaders weren’t leaders, they would still want senior saints to walk beside them. They delight in learning from others.
- The work of ministry can be frightening to them. Ministry is a life-and-death work. We minister to all kinds of people in all kinds of pain—and young leaders want guidance from others.
- They don’t want to do ministry alone. They believe without question that a plurality of leaders is the biblical norm—and that belief pushes them to lean on others. A mentor can be a source of great strength and accountability for them.
- They want to see faith lived out. The reality is that many church leaders have never seen a genuine, on fire, Holy-Spirit believer—but they certainly want to see it. A mentor’s faith can thus become another source of strength and encouragement.
- They have…
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Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Thom Rainer.
Biden Secured Fewer Evangelical Votes Than Hillary Clinton: Poll
A new post-election poll sponsored by the conservative grassroots organization Freedom and Faith Coalition (FFC) found that there was a “record turnout” of faith voters in the 2020 presidential election.
The poll, which was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies under FFC’s commission, was released on Wednesday. Findings show that 81 percent of self-identified evangelicals voted for President Donald Trump, which tied the total he received in 2016. On the other hand, only 14 percent of evangelicals voted for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“Trump’s 81% of the evangelical vote tied his 2016 total, while Biden won the lowest share of the self-identified white evangelical vote ever received by a Democratic presidential nominee,” FFC explained in a statement.
“The post-election survey commissioned by FFC and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies also found that 31 percent of the electorate self-identified as conservative Christians, and these voters cast 87 percent of their ballots for Trump and only 11 percent for Biden.”
While Biden and his campaign sought to gain evangelical voters in the 2020 election, FFC founder and Chairman Ralph Reed told The Christian Post that the reason most evangelicals rejected Biden was because they “are driven by principles,” “values” and “specific public policy positions,” not “partisanship” or…
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Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.
Francis Chan on the ‘number one mistake’ US churches make
Francis Chan has warned that the American Church’s “obsession” with church attendance has led to its current state of division and encouraged the Body of Christ to return to an emphasis on unity and love.
“I really believe there are some serious mistakes we made in the U.S. [that have] led to the church being in the state that it’s in right now: Super divided, and the reputation of evangelical Christians in the U.S. has never been worse,” Chan, the bestselling author and former California megachurch pastor, said during a Zoom meeting with 150 church leaders from all around the world.
“I mean, you just say that word and it’s just like a cringing. It’s just an assumption that it’s some politically driven group that they want nothing to do with. It’s never been this bad.”
According to Chan, the “number one mistake” churches in the U.S. make is being “obsessed with church attendance.”
“We panicked and thought, ‘we’ve got to do everything we can to get as many people as we can there,’” he…
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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.
One reason the polls were wrong: Why the answer is so significant for our national future
We are still waiting for final results from Tuesday’s election, as President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden both have pathways to the White House. As states continue to count votes, legal challenges related to the election loom as well.
While we wait, I’d like to address a question many people are asking: Why were the polls so wrong again? Prior to the election, one poll gave Joe Biden a seventeen-point lead in Wisconsin; yesterday, his lead was 0.6 percent. Another poll had Mr. Biden with a five-point margin in Florida and four points ahead in Ohio; the president won Florida by three points and Ohio by eight.
A political science professor notes, “Whatever the final result, there appears to have been a broad and systematic error in predicting the election outcome.” One explanation is social desirability bias, also known as the “shy voter” theory. It holds that Trump supporters were less likely to tell pollsters their political preferences. To the degree that this is true, it betrays something fundamentally wrong about our nation.
According to a recent survey, 62 percent of Americans say they are afraid to share their political views with others. Clearly, we have crossed a dangerous line of essential civility.
Why my father enlisted in the Army
As I note in my latest website article, our nation is experiencing a season of deep divisiveness. We are angry not just at candidates we oppose, but at their supporters as well.
In years past, national threats unified us. I remember packed churches in the days following 9/11 and my parents’ and grandparents’ stories about American patriotism during the Great Depression and two world wars. When the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, my father volunteered for the Army, a decision that nearly cost him his life. But for the rest of his life, he was proud to have served and proud of the nation he served.
Many hope that our nation can find…
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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Denison Forum.