What Did You Think of My Book?

A few years ago, one of my favorite professors gave me a signed copy of his new book. Yesterday, I finally pulled it off the shelf and started reading.

Which could potentially save me from an extremely embarrassing situation. I mean, what if I had run into my prof during the time between him sending me the book and now? What could have been one of his first questions to me: “What did you think of my book?”

“Um, er, gulp, mmmmm….”

Of course, I’m only pulling it out now because it deals specifically with a topic I’ll be teaching about in February (Prophecy, in case you’re curious).

Now here’s the thing. How would you feel if you get to Heaven and run into Malachi. “What did you think of my book?” He asks.

“Um, er, gulp, mmmmm…” you reply.

Or, even worse, you’re talking with God. “What did you think of that book I gave you? The one I inspired so you’d know Me better and be better equipped to live in the universe I created?”

“Um, er, gulp, mmmmm…”

Don’t you think, if you’ve never read The Book--all of it, front to back--2010 would be a good year to finally pull the whole thing off the shelf and get to reading?

I mean, “Um, er, gulp, mmmmm…” isn’t an answer any author wants to hear—especially not the Author.


If you’re ready to start, there are a number of great reading plans here, here, and here. Or, if you want a plan on paper instead of online, we have a plan I developed available on the info table at church (and if you live out of the area, let me know and I'll email it to you).

Hold the Line

Sometimes, life just sucks.

And it seems like the suck-y-est times come on the heels of the biggest victories.

One reason for that is that God needs to prepare us for the next challenge—and training is never fun.

But I was talking to a local pastor this week who pointed out another reason.

See, every victory we have is a defeat for our enemy. In a sense, we’ve taken ground from him—and he wants to take it back. Whether the victory was a new commitment to follow Christ, a sudden ability to conquer a bad habit (read: “sin”), or a new ministry opportunity we decide to accept, Satan wants us to surrender that territory back to him. So he comes at us guns blazing.

Which should actually encourage us during the discouraging times. I mean, if we weren’t getting victories, wouldn’t Satan just leave us alone? And if God didn’t have bigger challenges in store for us in the future, would He focus on training us now?

Maybe that’s why Paul insists we “be thankful in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) and “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). We can be thankful for the victories Satan’s trying to overturn, and rejoice in the challenges God’s preparing us for.

Even when life sucks.

Organized Chaos 2

Last week, I wrote about the importance of structure and organization in advancing God’s Kingdom, concluding by saying, “That’s why 2010 is really going to be about tightening our focus and building our organizational structure so we’re more ready than ever to do what God is calling us to do.” (To read the complete blog post, click here.)

And of course, the organized people followed up the blog with an extremely annoying question: How?

I guess maybe I could lead the organizational charge—as soon as I figure out a way to ditch the title “The King of Chaos.”

Or in their spare time, the existing staff could take up the challenge. (That loud noise you heard was Nancy crashing into her desk as she fell over laughing at the thought of “spare time.”)

We could hire a staff person to tackle our organizational challenges. (And that noise was coffee shooting out of JJ’s nose as he tried to figure out where in the budget we’d find the money for that.)

Maybe we could locate all the naturally organized people we already have and sic them on the problem. Except, of course, that we tried that. We found some of the organizers—but we weren’t even structured well enough to get them, well, organized.

So, what’s left? How about a consultant? A highly trained, experienced person with years of experience, who we could never afford to hire for real, but who would agree to help us out for about a third what he charges his corporate clients.

Now that’s an answer we can live with. And so, starting early next year, Bud Wrenn (who led our highly successful Vision2Reality conference) will be coming down about three times a month to help guide our church from disorganized chaos to, well, organized chaos. (The man’s not a miracle worker).

Will it take a lot of our time and focus? Yes. Will it be expensive? A little.

But not nearly as expensive as missing out on the opportunities God has for us because we weren’t organized enough to respond to them.

Organized Chaos

Church Math. That’s the title Tony Morgan gave a recent blog post. And one of his computations really caught my eye:

“fewer constraints = less creativity”

At first a few people (including me) thought he’d typed it wrong. “You mean ‘more constraints = less creativity’.” But Tony insisted that he meant what he typed.

I could think of two reasons he might have said it.

One, when people have limited resources they are forced to be more creative. Our church has been a poster child for that truth.

Another reason, though, is that creativity needs constraints. I’ve said since we started the church that the only way for us to succeed is for the King of Chaos (that’d be me) to surround himself with organized people.

But we don’t just need organized people; we need organization. We need structure.

Structure enables people to plug into ministries easily, get trained, and feel confident they are being productive and helping advance God’s Kingdom.

Structure enables people to focus on tasks (including creative tasks) with fewer distractions.

Structure allows people to work toward a destination instead of worrying about what the destination is (or if it even exists).

Structure lets people work at ministries knowing that that when an assignment is completed, someone else is ready to build on what been done instead of tearing it down because it was the wrong assignment in the first place.

Structure gives people the great assurance that what they’re doing is a key component in the process of doing great things for God.

That’s why 2010 is really going to be about tightening our focus and building our organizational structure so we’re more ready than ever to do what God is calling us to do.