Anyone who has been around me recently and heard me talk about what I’m reading has certainly heard me talk about Seth Godin.  I think this guy is one of the best and smartest author’s on marketing, getting your message out and in general being a change agent.  So many applications for what he talks about.

In his latest book Linchpin he tackles what it takes for you to be indispensable in your “world.”  If I may, here’s my two bullet point summary of what he says:

• • • • • Get really good at something you love;
        • Offer it as a gift to those around you.

I absolutely loved this book and encourage anyone wanting to make a difference in their world to devour it.  It’s not about pursuing an income.  It’s about offering what you have to the world.  And often only after you have done this can you make an income from that.  But first you have to offer yourself.

He writes that you were not born to be average.  You were brainwashed into believing that being average is how you are supposed to be to get by.  Not so in the world we live in today.  Being remarkable is how you must live.

I’ll let his words be the conclusion to this post.

“We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care.  We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point.  Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference.”

Go read it.

I recently read this fabulous book that basically addresses how to overcome the blocks and obstacles to creating.  Here’s my take on what it says:

There is something inside each of us, what Steven Pressfield calls “The Resistance,” that does not want you to be creative.  It’s that inner voice that says you can always work on that project tomorrow.  It’s anything that gets you to stop or delay creating.  And by creating I mean any creative endeavor: writing, art, starting a business, starting a new project, etc.

The best thing he said about overcoming The Resistance:  create on a schedule.  Sit down every day, every other day, whatever you decide and don’t let anything stop you from working on what you know you need to work on.

I know, it’s common sense, but he is so right that there does seem to be this resistance in each of us to doing creating anything.

In this creating time, it doesn’t matter if what you create is good or will ever be used.  The point is to create.  There is something inherently good in the creative process that feeds your creative capacity.

So to start sampling this I have carved out 2 4 hour blocks to do nothing other than write/work on planning for the “big” projects.  They are at the exact same times each week so I know I can count on them.  The amazing thing is that I am finding myself with more time than I anticipated.

In this time I really try not to worry about quality.  I just write what I need to write and evaluate its uses later.

What works for you in your creative endeavors?

This book by Dan Allender is a revolutionary approach to leadership.  I know that the book has been out a few years but somehow I missed it.  Or perhaps I could say that I read it at exactly the time in my life when I needed to read it.  The premise of the book is simply that God favors leaders who make the most of the power that comes from brokenness.

This is not to say that strenghs don’t play a part.  They do.  In Allender’s words:

“Our calling  is often shaped as much by our weaknesses as by our strengths. We tend to run with our strengths and avoid those people and tasks that expose our weaknesses. But the story of God is not a saga of human potential; it is the revelation of the kindness and passion of the Father who seeks and redeems sinners. Therefore our strengths may help us with certain tasks and opportunities, but it is our frailty and sin that make known the glory of God’s story (150).”

As a leader I know the temptation to “act like you have it together” and not reveal weakness or struggle.  There is danger in doing so:  lose respect of others or some choosing to leverage it against you.  Yet I’m seeing that there is a greater danger if you don’t: miss out on God’s power working through you first and foremost.

Allender suggests there are four realities to embrace to be broken:

1. I am never sufficiently good, wise, or gifted to make things work;

2. My failures will harm others, the process, and myself, no matter how hard I try to avoid failure;

3. The greatest harm I can do is to try to limit the damage I cause by not participating, by quitting, or by pushing for control;

4. Calling out for help from God and others is the deepest confession of humility.

Our “limp” at the end of the day is there to deflect the glory to God and get it off of ourselves.  After all, look at the damage we do when we hog the spotlight: trying to control situations, bullying others into “our” way, not being receptive to God’s still small voice, building a better kingdom for myself instead of building God’s kingdom, etc.

Allender challenges leaders to embrace Paul’s title of himself as the “chief of sinners.”  When this is accepted and lived out God is positioned in our lives in such a way that there is no doubt he has been at work.

If you are interested in the notes I took from this book you can find them here.  It’s the best leadership book I’ve read all year, maybe all decade.

In Donald Miller’s latest book “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” Don (because we are on first name basis) learns what makes a great story and ironically ends up learning what makes an even greater life.  So many of the ingredients for a great story help make a greater life.  There are ingredients such as conflict, memories and resolution.  The most powerful ingredient that the best stories have is what writers call the “inciting incident.”  This is a doorway that a character walks through in which there is no turning back.  It is the pivotal decision or incident that happens that changes everything for the character.

In reflecting on this story device, it is a powerful metaphor for our own life.  We each have inciting incidences that we can point to.

A decision that changed your life forever.

An event that irrevocably changed you.

The change could be for better or for worse.

My question is, “Can you create an inciting incident for your own life?”  The reason to do so being that it forces a change that is necessary in your life.

I think the answer is yes.

For example, you want to change your health.  An inciting incident could be as simple as telling 3 friends you are going to start jogging.  Additionally you give these 3 friends permission to ask you how you are doing.  Now this may not change your life, but for sure there’s no going back.  You can keep your commitment or you can look like a slacker to your friends.  I’m sure they will still love you if you are a slacker but who wants to be thought of as that.  A little intentional inciting incident can make all the difference.

Or let’s say you long for a career change.  What about filling out that admission form and jumping into a class?  I know people who are content with an F but I’m going to assume if you are reading this you are not one of them and being in a class will actually motivate you.

What about spiritual growth?  Ask for some accountability from your community group.  Ask a friend to meet you for coffee for 6 weeks in a row just to pray.  The key is that it has to be something in which YOU will find it hard to go back out on.  Making a promise to yourself really won’t cut it.  Making a promise to someone else AND doing some kind of action in the right direction may just do it.

An inciting incident for me a couple years ago was filling out the application and paying the $90.00 to run the Chicago Marathon AND then recruiting a veteran marathon runner to be my partner.  It wasn’t one thing.  It was all those things that became the doorway through which I couldn’t go back.  Of course, you can say that I could have dropped out and in theory I could have, but I didn’t.  And that for me is why it is an inciting incident.  It was the combination of those things that put me “all in.”

So do you want to write a better story?  Introduce an inciting incident into your life and see what happens?

I have to start by saying I haven’t read a Max Lucado book in about a decade.  I always enjoyed the ones I read, but I have to say they started sound a lot of like.  I felt like I was reading mostly the same thing over and over.  I think this had to do more with the writer’s style than content.  With Fearless, I began reading and instantly could hear Lucado’s voice behind.  That’s a good thing, but not necessarily a great thing.

Having said that, this is a book that is full of great Biblical wisdom for growing fearless in our life.  I love the title because it is something I aspire to be.  The subtitle of the book gives the point of the book: “Imagine your life without fear.”  Specifically Lucado looks at the fear of:

• Not mattering;
• Disappointing God;
• Running out;
• Not protecting my kids;
• Overwhelming challenges;
• Worst-case scenarios;
• Violence;
• the coming Winter;
• Life’s Final moments;
• What’s next;
• That God’s not real;
• Global calamity
• God getting out of my box.

With practical application and insightful wisdom Lucado tackles each of these fears.  Essentially you could say there is something int he book for everyone.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t or hasn’t wrestled with one of these fears.

Here’s some quotes to chew on:

It’s not the absence of storms that sets us apart. It’s whom we discover in the storm: an unstirred Christ (8).

Fear corrodes our confidence in God’s goodnes (9).

Fear may fill our world, but it doesn’t haven’t fill our hearts. It will always knock on the door. Just don’t invite it in for dinner, and for heaven’s sake don’t offer it a bed for the night (13).

Jesus loves us too much to leave us in doubt about his grace (37).

Putting your worries into words disrobes them (85).

A healthy church is where fear goes to die (87).

God owns it all. God shares it all (109).

With trademark Lucado style, you get a shotgun blast of wisdom that is poignant, timely, quotable, but not necessarily in depth.  If you are looking to explore any one fear in depth you will be frustrated, but if you are looking for a primer on a wide range of fears we face and how to face them with faith-filled courage then you have found the right source.

For me the book was a good reminder of the promises we have in Christ to face “all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

When I started Mark Steele’s newest book Christianish: What if we’re not really following Jesus at all? my first thought was that I had read it all before.  I love the Steelehouse Podcast (Mark’s podcast with co-host Jeff Huston on finding God in pop culture) and loved Half-Life/Die Already so I was expecting great things.  And great things did I find, just a little later than I expected.

With trade mark humor Mark shares about his experiences that tend to always have a “messy ending” and then shares insight from those experiences on how often what we call “following Jesus” is really more akin to following ourselves.  The first third of the book may have sounded familiar from other stuff I have read, but the final two-thirds was worth the price of the book.

Here are some quotes that capture the essence of the book:

We say we live in pursuit of holiness, but we only pursue it in the areas of our lives that our circle of community frowns upon (57).

In speaking of Jesus when he was tempted by Satan: He didn’t just weigh the options Satan presented Him. He weighed the optiosn tha tSatan did not present Him (61).

If we identify sin in someone else, we feel an urge to lead teh conversation with that. We attack wrongness first as if that is the measure of Christlikeness when in actuality we aren’t giving a lot of thought as to how Jesus would respond (105).

If something moves us, we want to be a part of it – and we want to be noticed as a part of it – and we want to be an important part of it immediately without process, training, or rehearsal. To this end we continue to stick people in places where they either fail or flail (129).

As a Christian culture we have grown morbidly obese: craving little pleasures, paybacks, and accolades to our heroic emotional efforts. Wanting recompense or fame and wanting it now in the way that we define. When we do not receive this desired prize, we usually buy, borrow, or take it anyway – because we decided a long time ago that we deserve it. In so doing, we take what does not belong to us, and then blame God that it didn’t make us feel any better (172).

For all of us the action of following Christ must eventually leave the world of “what am I going to get out of this” and permanently transition into the world of “how am I going to give through this (175).”

We are dodging the lengthier routes that welcome others into our healing. But that should become our new path (274).

Christianish came at the perfect time in my life with much needed laughter AND a kick in the pants.  Without abandoning the idea of “church” and without harsh unwarranted judgement, Mark delivers a dose of wit and wisdom to Christ-followers intent on actually following Jesus, not their personal version of Him.

I recently read The Monkey and the Fish by Dave Gibbons. In it he talked about 3 questions that have been a filter for deciding direction for him personally and for the church he leads. They are:

1.  Who is my neighbor?

2. What’s my pain?

3. What is in my hand?

Who is my neighbor? is a question related to Luke 10:25-37.  Through this parable Jesus teaches that our “neighbor” are those who are around us but very different than us.

What’s my pain? is a question about personal brokenness and passion.  What are you most passionate about?  What pain in your past has been a catalyst for passion?

What is in my hand? is a question about the gifts, skill and interests God has given you.  It’s about using what God has given you to work towards His mission.

These may be 3 of the most powerful questions I’ve ever considered.

What do you think?

There’s a conversation in the church world surrounding the issue of being attractional and/or incarnational.  Attractional is by far the most dominant way of doing church.  This is where Sunday morning is the main event.  This method mostly works from the philosophy that “if you build it, they will come.” It’s not the only thing, but it is the main thing that is offered to attract non-believers.

The other approach that is being purported as the truly Biblical way of church is the incarnational approach.  This approach is harder to define in general because there are a wide variety of examples and philosphies.  The Tangible Kingdom is an effort to describe how faith communities can be birthed out of simply “doing life with people.”

Disclaimer:  Those descriptions are oversimplifications, but for the sake of brevity they’ll have to work at this point.

Here’s some quotes from the book with some thoughts to come tomorrow:

“Lost” in ancient times meant something to be treasured, worth looking for, but just missing.  “Very different from our moern-day meaning of being clueless, spiritually stupid, or arrogantly anti-God (40).”

“In the name of ‘getting someone saved,’ we have primarily focused on communicating a message of truth to the world.  There’s nothing wrong with that, except that we’ve prioritized the verbals over the nonverbals, the message over the method, that is to say, the proclamation over the posture (41).”

“If people aren’t asking about their lives, then we haven’t postured oru faith well enought or long enough (42).”

The missionary as an advocate:
“To be an advocate means that when people are in need, they know that we’ll be on their team, and that we’ll be there whenever they need us, for just about anything (43).”

“The friend who can be silent with us ina moment of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares (44).”

“We must remember that people will always be interested in good news if it is observable (66).”

“The best and most natural way to win someone’s heart is to model a way of life that’s attractive to them (78).”

“What you give your leadership to will always grow (104).”

“Since we know that most Sojourners don’t wake up Sunday morning looking for a good sermon, we’ve decided to put our enrgy, efforts, and focus into the incarnational aspects of our church instead of the presentational aspects (105).”

“We simply want to show that this structure of attractional church makes it very hard to communicate, show, or create a place of belonging where the whole gospel can be discovered.  It’s not a matter of the heart; it’s simply that the structure limits missionality and the ability to be incarnational as a community (105).”

“Pastors should provide only what the followers of Christ can’t get on their own (111).”

“Today, if we met someone who loved Jesus but didn’t know he was God, I doubt we would call that person a Christian, let alone use them in ministry. Yet Jesus did.  I submit that for the entire time the disciples were with Jesus, they were what we would now call ‘Sojourners’: spiritually disoriented God seekers (119).”

“In order for us to change the incorrect assumptions that people have about God and his followers, we’ve got to get to the point where they consider us one of them (125).”

“It’s about replacing personal or Christian activities with time spent building relationships with people in the surrounding culture (127).”

Quoting Henri Nouwen:
“I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own and let them know with words, handshakes and hugs that you do not simply like them – but truly love them (145).”