Be A Water Walker: What we can learn from Peter

Read when you have time to reflect and hear Jesus Christ's word for you.

Read time: 15 min's

A recap of me struggling to hear God's voice, hearing it, and being profoundly challenged and spoken to. I trust that there is something He would have for you as well.

Do you ever really stress about making the "right" decision about something? Not the kind of decision where you know God doesn't have a preference for you. This is the kind of decision where you know that God does have a preference and you just can't quite nail down what it is.  This was me the night before and morning of a conference I recently attended. It wasn't a huge decision, but I knew there was one "perfect" choice God wanted me to make. You see, I had to choose which seminar i was going to attend. That's it, nothing crazy, nothing extravagant, just choose one seminar from 5 choices.

I had it nailed down to two choices that I assumed/felt I should take. 

• Option 1 was a great place to network with great church leaders and innovators
• Option 2 was a great environment to interact with missional church leaders doing "church" a little differently.
• Option 3 close my eyes, spin around, point at a door and enter. (not my favorite)

So, with the hallways empty, everyone had entered their chosen seminar and I still had no peace. I did the most rationale thing I could think of. Walk into each room and see if it "felt" right. I started walking toward option #1, and knew before I got to the door it was wrong. Walked to option #2, stepped inside, nope felt wrong.  Feeling frustrated, and still praying why God just won't tell me where to go, I opened my brochure and looked at the faces of the seminar presenters, saw a smiling face and said, "I like his face, I'm going to go listen to him." That guy was Herbert Cooper, and God used him to speak to me, challenge me, and allow me to be utterly overwhelmed by the Spirit. It was incredible, as Herbert started talking, I was awash in emotion and knew I was where He would have me. I wanted to share my notes from that seminar, trusting that He as something for you as well.

NOTES: 5 Lessons About Getting Out of the Boat

"Get out of the boat. Peter was a change maker"

Read Matthew 14:25-33 first.

1. Don't be influenced by the crowd. Listen to Christ's voice and not the crowds voice. The bible says all the disciples were afraid and fearful. You can just imagine the disciples saying, "don't do it. you can't".  Are there people in your life saying similar things? Yet Christ says, "Peter, get out of the boat". You can't worry about being popular. The crowds live in he boat. Leaders are outside of the boat. Leadership can be lonely, because the crowds aren't ouside the boat. Be a water walker. 
2. It requires radical faith to step out of the boat. If you're going to get out of the boat it will require radical faith. Imagine this: It was night time, waves , dark and they see someone walking on the water. Scripture says the disciples were scared. They thought it was a ghost an apparition, spirit coming towards them. Peter says, "if it's you Lord tell me to come." Peter recognizes Christ's voice and gets out of the boat. Radical faith is developed through radical relationship with Jesus Christ. What calls Peter to get out of the boat? Jesus did, and Peter knew and recognized his voice and obeyed immediately. 

• As leaders, followers of Christ, we can't afford to be lukewarm, distant from God. As leaders, or stronger people of faith, we don't usually struggle with good decision vs. bad decisions. No, more often than not, as leaders we struggle with good decisions and good decision. Distinguishing between two good decisions is to know Jesus voice. To have a radical faith.    

Sub Point: 3 keys to develop a radical relationship with Jesus Christ.  

•  Pray. Are you spending consistent, intentional time praying, talking to, hearing God's voice. This takes time. There is no way around this, you need to take time to pray and that means you need to sacrifice something else to do it. For me that means less tv or activities in the evening so that I can get up earlier to spend time in prayer.
• Read and memorize the bible. Honestly, this is very hard for me. If anyone has a good way of doing this please let me know. Again, this takes consistent time and reflection. I have never done this well, but am starting and trying to intentionally do this. Psalm 119:11. Matt 4:4-10 (interesting that the devil knows the word and twists it)
• Be consistent with reading your bible and participating in the church community. Spend time in His word and spend time in community with other believers.  I mention both because its easy to think you dont need the church if you are in the word or vice versa. I often see people, and myself choose one over the other. The reality is we need both. We have to know His voice. that is he key. 

     3.  Realize there will be trouble. When we venture out, their will be trouble. Peter has just heard the voice             of Jesus takes some steps and starts to sink. You can hear Jesus voice, be In His will and still have                     trouble. Trouble is just part of venturing out and starting something new. 

     4.   Remember to quickly refocus on Jesus. As soon as Peter "begins" to sink Peter calls out to Jesus. As                  soon you face adversity quickly refocus on Jesus. Just like Peter, it usually doesn't                                            work out just like you think it will. Just like Peter get your eyes off of people and refocus on Jesus. 

     5.   Recognize that miracles happen outside the boat! The only way Peter could experienced the miracle was            that he had to get out of the boat. Notice that the other disciples got to rejoice, got to be excited, and              share in the miracle, but they never got to walk on water by themselves. Miracles happen outside the              boat.

My hope is that you will take the necessary steps to deepen your walk with Christ. To have a radical faith so that you can hear His voice clearly. So that choosing between two good choices is not difficult because you hear and recognize His voice clearly. I pray that when He calls that we would both step boldly out of the boat. That when we begin to sink, we would refocus quickly on His face. That we would not look to the crowd, but instead Jesus Christ in all we do so that He may be glorified, lifted up and given all glory on heaven and earth. Where is He calling you to step out of the boat....?

Loving the journey...

Simple Church: Chapter 9 - Change or Die

Such an ominous title to the last chapter of Simple Church. This is Chapter 9 of the group blogging project on the book Simple Church. You can read more about this blogging tour by clicking here.

Chapter 9 brings it all together and clarifies some of the realities people and churches will face as they move toward being "simple."

Change is always difficult to some degree. Ch. 9 points out that the more established and complex a church, the bigger "growing" pains associated with the simplifying process. Let me start by saying that I work for an established church. A church that has served faithfully and effectively for 80+ years.  We also have a degree of complexity to our process. We are however much better, but still on the journey. Our lead team and church started the process towards "simplifying" almost a year ago. Because chapter 9 gives a recap of the process already covered by other guest bloggers I thought it would be great to share part of our own journey and then make some observations of the process so far.

1. Clarity.When we started the process we first listed al the statements and documents we had created over the years. Let me list a few of the steps we were communicating

• A Vision Statement
• Mission Statement
• 11 Core Values
• 5 Life Marks
• Statement of Faith
• 4 Types of Ministry Envirionmenst
• 5 Types of Community Environements

2. Movement.

While we obviously still have our Statement of Faith along with our Vision and Mission statements, we have now begin to only verbalize our simple process. Our Vision and Mission Statements inform the simple process that everyone is starting to memorize and live out. The rest of the statements are no longer used.

Click here to view our simple process and our key programs along the process. For us this helps define the key church wide program for each phase of our "simple" process as mentioned under "Movement" in chapter 9.

3 & 4 - Alignment and Focus

We are currently in the midst of Alignment and Focus. We have created a "starting point" class that is 90 mins in length and explains who we are, who we are not. In essence we explain our "simple" process. We have also created a brief survey to highlight a potential next step for each person according to what we "offer" in and through each step. We are still in the process of "Focusing."  There have been many hard conversations of what does and does not fit. It's amazing how creative we can be trying to make things fit.

Some Observations

Chapter nine discusses the two options for change. Quickly vs. Incremental. We have obviously chosen the incremental approach. To be honest, our change strategy was never discussed in detail. I believe if it is not discussed and decided on ahead of time whether to move "quickly" or "incrementally", you will default to an incremental approach. For us this has been good so far, but I can say that it is much more difficult to stay on track for the long haul. I find that what can easily happen is a church completes steps one and two and then begins to think they have "arrived." So in regards to an incremental approach I would encourage the creation of a Gantt chart that marks specific deadlines when decisions need to be discussed and decided upon. Let's face it, most pastors, and people in general, have a hard time cutting out good programs. Its easy choosing between bad and good ideas, but choosing between "good" and "good" is difficult on many levels. Which brings up another point.

Rainer and Geiger bring up a great reminder. Moving from complexity toward simplicity goes hand in hand with being good at many things and excellent at nothing. In my experience perhaps the hardest thing for a team and specifically the lead pastor will be to clearly verbalized what the church is not about or will not do, no matter how "good" it may be. Make sure your lead pastor is comfortable with verbalizing not just what your church is about, but also what it is not about. In my own context i appreciate the vulnerability and willingness by our Sr. Pastor to have the frank discussions.

Some Questions.

1. What do think will be or has been the biggest obstacle for your church in moving toward simple?

2. Would you advocate for quick or incremental change?

3. Is your senior pastor on board with the process? Especially in larger contexts where programming is mostly handled by an adults ministry team this can be overlooked.

4. The bottom line in becoming simple as per Chapter 9 is "get there as fast as you can but not faster." While I agree with the statement I think it is also easy to use this as a permission granting statement to move incrementally. I think that most organizations can innovate and change much quicker than many leaders would choose to believe. (but that's just my 2 cents. :) )

I would love to read about your experience and thoughts.

Loving the journey,

dh

Something more personal...

by kean kellySomething a little more personal today.

I feel bad, ashamed, and sad that I just plain old chose to miss "it" yesterday.

The Story

There is this sweet older lady named Josie. Josie is my grandmas neighbour in her condo building. Josie has a kind, gentle and plain old friendly personality. Over the last years our family has gotten to know her and she has loved on our kids.

Yesterday I was supposed to go visit Josie on my way home. It was a long day, I was tired, I just wanted a shower and supper. I even had this conversation in the car with God as I'm driving home from work. It went like this, "Lord, I just want a hot shower and some rest. You know the busy day I had, I'll go visit her tomorrow." I didn't "hear" anything else, assumed we were good, and grabbed a hot shower at the Y and went home to a nice relaxed evening.

Josie died at 2 am this morning....

When I heard the news I knew I had blown it.
Thankfully I had the opportunity months ago to share Christ with Josie and answer some of her questions. As far as I know she loved and accepted Christ as her savior.

Sadly, I heard God yesterday and did nothing. Even better, in all my wisdom I let Him know when it would suit me better. (Seriously how idiotic can I be planning His calendar for Him) Have you ever seen that Mastercard commercial where the coach comes into the hockey locker room between periods and the text says "knowing what and when to say it" and the screen shows him saying nothing and the screen then fades to "priceless"? That was my feeling today. Face down,ashamed, feeling somewhat like Isaiah did, a small, small man, hearing the stillness of His rebuke. Thankfully, I know His grace is sufficient, and His passion for me is never ending no matter how undeserved it is.

So today I have two questions for you.

1. Has He asked you to do something that you haven't?
2. If He has rebuked you don't miss it and confess accordingly. Don't miss His passion and desire for you by not hearing and acting on His rebuke. Proverbs 1:23 reminds us by saying, "if you had responded to my rebuke I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you."

I missed it yesterday. I accept His rebuke today. I've confessed today. I'm forgiven today. . I continue to place my trust in Him and long for His heart and His thoughts and the courage to act. I trust you do as well.

4 Steps in Creating Your One Sentence Mission.

What describes you?So yesterday I wrote about my one sentence mission. Or my "OSM." I recommend you take the time to create one for yourself. It's hard, takes time and yes it can change over time. For me, at least, it brings clarity to the here and now.

Often people have asked me, "Where do I start."  Here are my thoughts based on my own journey. I have divided this post into 3 parts.

A - The 4 simple steps I used

B - Further/deeper explanation of the steps

C - Example of the Stephen Covey Mission Statement tool. I copied my results as the example.

Part A

4 steps to creating your own one sentence descriptor (further explanation below)

(If you're in a rush, just do step #3 as a starting point)

1. Know your strengths. Take a personality assessment. (Read about my thoughts on StrengthFinder here)

2. Write down any and all your thoughts about this topic concerning you.

3. Use a tool like Stephen Covey's Mission Statement Builder as a good starting point.. (See my results below)

4. Craft, Reshape, Edit, Finalize, and do it over again.

Part B

Further Explanation on the 4 Steps 

1. I find that personality profiles didn't actually help me in creating my one sentence mission. However they were and continue to be a great creative starting point and reference tool. Your profile helps to explain the "how" you will achieve your OSM.

2. I can't emphasize this enough. For me this process took a long time. Mostly because I was never satisfied with my results and I actually never took enough focused time to put it all together. However I did save virtually any type of descriptive mission statement that piqued my interest. I used Evernote to save all my notes.

3. I didn't do this initially, but think it is a great tool for people to help shape their thoughts and key passions, desires and wants.

4. This is by far the most important step. This takes time and for most lots of it. For me personally it took about 4 edits and revisions, which happened over about 4 months. (Remember I didn't plan specific time for this) However one benefit of me taking so long is that I had more exposure to other creative ideas, experiences, etc.  Going forward I have now created a yearly reminder to review my OSM. If nothing else to serve as a good reminder of what God has called me to do.

So, with all that said please share your OSM and/or your Covey Mission Statement. I love reading the "mission" of others.

Part C 

Example of my results form the Stephen Covey Tool

For kicks, I copied my mission statement as generated by the Covey tool.  I left it in its unedited form so you have an idea of the "product" and what kind of information you would receive and have to edit.

I am at my best when asking questions creating big picture.

I will try to prevent times when i have to be social admin work.

I will enjoy my work by finding employment where I can plan organize lead.

I will find enjoyment in my personal life through read, play sports and spend time anywhere tropical .

I will find opportunities to use my natural talents and gifts such as decision making, planning and leadership.

I can do anything I set my mind to. I will help consult and equip Christ following organizations on how to better lead and make tangible differences in society..

My life's journey is about Jesus Christ and creating environments for people to choose to follow or deny Him.

I will be a person who Darren was authentic, real and influenced millions for Christ..

My most important future contribution to others will be That they are strong followers of Jesus Christ and strong leaders who influence others.

I will stop procrastinating and start working on:

•               spending more time with my family and kids
•               to expand our life experience by living internationally for at least some time

I will strive to incorporate the following attributes into my life:

•               Leader
•               Wisdom
•               Discerning

I will constantly renew myself by focusing on the four dimensions of my life:

•               work out
•               scripture reading
•               spend time vacationing with friends and family
•               spend time reading and with friends

What would you add in the process of creating personal full blown mission statements, like the Stephen Covey one, or simple one sentence missions? If you have one, how did you create it? Also, please share what yours is.

What are you all about?

I've finally written down a one sentence descriptor of God's call on my life.

...create space for authentic relationships and transparent community through which people have the opportunity to encounter and decide how to deal with Jesus Christ.

I'm still in a slightly

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