Pictures and actions

The council have just released some nice pictures of how they want the city centre to look; you would think the good folk of Stoke on Trent would be delighted with this. Not so I am afraid.

The problem is the council is very good at releasing pictures regarding the regeneration of the city, where they have proven to be less good, in fact quite awful, is in actually delivering real tangible results. Someone commented to me that the only people who make money in this city are the architects who provide the drawings, other than the odd supermarket development we have yet to see the promised investment in the city, indeed while other cities have seen a plethora of development in the last decade or the cranes have been visible by there absence in Stoke on Trent.

Leaving the political ramifications of this to one side there is a lesson here for Church leaders, it is important to not just paint a good picture of were you want to go or what you want to deliver, you have to deliver results.

Seriously I am sick of hearing leaders sprout off about filling football stadiums, how about this that you fill your auditorium first, that you complete that social action project that you have promised to engage in, that you reach in and speak life to that area of need in your city/town/village, that you will develop and nurture your people to help them to become all that they can be in Christ.

Or if you don’t have the capacity to do this stop drawing pictures, telling everyone you
are going to, seriously it’s not just your credibility at stake it has a knock on effect for the rest of the church.

Below are some of the I have learned in 25 years of leadership, and believe me I am still learning, still a work in progress.

1. Be right, remember he is the master builder, make sure your vision comes from the source, to often it is easy to fire arrows into the wall then draw targets around them, in other words don’t try to fit God into your vision it usually falls flat and gets messy
2. Be focused, don’t be distracted, all to easy this one, be get like Nehemiah, go on read it see how tenacious he was about the Project that God had placed in his hands
3. Be real, don’t try to spin it out if it has not happened, be honest with people
4. be prepared, it’s gonna take a lot of hard work and sacrifice and stuff, I always think of Joshua going across the Jordan into the promised land, he still had to fight for it, there was still work to be done, too many leaders think when they receive the vision that’s when the hard work is done, absolutely not it’s only just began. There will also be those who oppose you, sometimes from inside your ranks. Deal with it.

It’s so true that you will never see it till you see it, but it is just as true that words without actions are futile, after all it is the book of acts that outline the growth of the early church not the book of intensions. Pastor, leader, be a doer.

Numbers

Listening to the morning radio show the morning DJ was in an unusually thoughtful mode musing about how watching the Chilean miner emerge from the hole in the ground made him realise they are more than numbers, more than just the 33 that had been heard about for the last 70 days.

These were people, more than that people with back stories, people with dreams and hopes, aspirations. We saw them emerge triumphantly, we saw them greet their families and loved ones, we saw them thanking God for their deliverance. We saw them smile.

They no longer represented numbers, from the moment Florencio emerged from the aptly named phoenix pod that had carried him the 15 min 2000ft journey to the surface to when foreman Luis Urzua was the final miner to reach the surface they became people, guys who had endured awful conditions to emerge victorious, triumphing over adversity.

Church leaders are in the numbers game, OK I know it was trendy a few years ago to say ‘it’s not about the numbers’ but by and large we were lying, trust me having hang around leaders for many years it’s one of the first questions asked, one of the most talked about subjects. To be honest I don’t think we should apologise for this, rather as the 33 have shown us understand that each number actually represents someone, they represent people, more than that people with back stories, people with dreams and hopes, aspirations.

I think that we need to not only embrace the numbers game but realise what it represents, it talks in Acts 17 about understanding in him (Christ) we live move and have our being, behind each number we reach we understand it is about far more than numbers, just like the miners,

Sky news as each miner came out of the ground the number ticker on the bottom of the screen changed, number 7, number 16, number 23 but as well as the number the names Franklin Lobos who had played football for Chile in the 80’s, Mario who had led the rescuers in a rousing cheer, Richard the cool dude sporting a dapper goatee beard.

I pray that God would add another 50 that he would entrust us the leaders with another 50 people, that’s the numbers I ask for but I understand I don’t know the names yet but I will. I don’t know the stories yet but I will.

I like numbers

A wibble but not a wobble

A wibbly wobbly moment

Do you get them?

I think most people do, in fact I think even pastors and great men of God get then, perhaps even Rick Warren gets them.

Most of course would never admit to getting them, not sure about Rick because to be honest that is total speculation

It’s sort of a bit of a mute subject, it sort of exposes us and lets be honest none of us like being exposed or in any way transparent

However yesterday I had one

I was watching the news

They were talking about a new marine census that had been completed and how they had found loads of new life hundreds of miles below the surface of the water, new species that they had never found before.

That was the time it happened

It just sort of got out there

A wibbly wobbly thought

“How could God be real, how could all this life exist, how c an I have faith in God”

Strange how stuff makes you think sometimes

Then I began to realise, the reason for my wibbley wobbley moment was for a second I forgot something.

I had forgotten just how massive and majestic God is, I had somehow brought him done to my level and allowed the word impossible to be transposed onto him.

How foolish

But

It happens, I think there are times when it happens to all of us, the trick is to not smash ourselves up about it or start to ponder aloud what would happen if we only had faith the size of a mustard seed.

No rather how about this

We simple smile and move on, overjoyed at the fact that he is great and wonderful majestic and scary yet compassionate and caring and friendly and forgiving. That paradox that God could be as vast as he is yet as personal as he is. That try as we will we can never get it more than looking through a glass darkly and one day the revelation that is yet to come will blow us away

In the meantime let’s learn from our wibbly wobbly moments and allow faith to win!