Class picture

Originally uploaded by dvwrd4@aol.com

This past Tuesday (June 9, 2009) an exceptional group of people completed the “48 Days To The Work You Love” workshop. They were vibrant and overflowing with ideas on how to be successful, not only for themselves but also for each other. There was an allegiance formed that I believe will continue long beyond the course timeframe.

Although I was the one facilitating/teaching this class, I was thoroughly motivated in a personal way by the enthusiasm and “can do” spirit demonstrated by this group of people. Based on the feedback from the class, they felt the same.

Some of the comments from the class were:
“I think it really pointed me in the right direction…”
“the lessons caused me to take a look inside myself”
“challenged me to know myself and deposit success in areas”
“Great group interaction.”

Of course there was also some excellent feedback about suggested changes that I look forward to implementing in the future. I am blessed to have been able to get to know each of the people who participated in this workshop. An old quotation came to mind concerning this group of people..

You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him find it within himself. Galileo Galilei

More pictures

Clowns and leadership.   http://www.48days.net/profiles/blogs/clowns-and-leadership

What do you think of Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren as the minister to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration on January 20^th? 

Many of Obama’s supporters are upset over the choice.  Warren is an evangelical minister with too many

conservative views for some of Obama’s supporters. 

I believe the uproar speaks to a fundamental consideration of what kind of issue is appropriate for church involvement.  Personally it seems we try too often to separate our spiritual lives from the rest of our lives.  Go to church on Sunday but adopt a different perspective in the business environment on Monday.

In the book Loving Monday, John Beckett provides a practical guide for Christian professionals to see our work as God sees it – integrating our faith and secular work so that we can view business as a true service to God.  For churches to be successful in carrying the Bible message out, we should integrate our whole lives.

What do you think?

If you’re interested in topics and tools related to the success of your church or how to make your life relevant within your church, please be sure to subscribe.  

I recently read of a church secetary who embezzled funds from the church for an on-going period of time. That type of thing can be devestating to a church family and take years for them to recover. While I don’t know the specifics of this case, it could very well be that this was “allowed” to occur because the church did not have the proper procedures in place.

Many churches don’t have specified benevolence guidelines in place. Did you know that if you don’t follow proper procedures that a church could potentially lose their tax exempt status? That can be serious! Minimally, without guidelines, confusion and re-work can occur if the proper guidelines are not utilized.

The benevolence guidelines don’t have to be complex. Something simple can save time, add efficiency, and prevent misuse. I have used a rather simple format with churches in the past.  E-mail me at dvwrd@aol.com , subscribe to updates by e-mail, or leave a comment requesting them and I’ll be glad to send you a copy for free.

In response to the economic tough times our church, www.hollandparkcoc.org, decided to focus on “Being the Church … Hope in Tough Times”.  Instead of retreating and pulling up the drawbridges we decided to react in a “God way” and boldly reach out.

Our senior minister, Jeff Payne, has structured a series of lessons on helping people deal with the emotional and financial crises happening today.   We created financial help small groups to aid people in dealing with monetary issues, and we’ve also set up a small group focused on counseling to assist with emotional and relational issues.  Finally, we created the Hope Fund to aid families.  This past Sunday we raised over $40,000 in a special contribution designated for families in need, both within our congregation and the surrounding community.  God gives hope.  It’s been my priviledge to be part of the staff in putting this response together.

I do.  I haven’t always loved Mondays, but I’ve recently come to see my life as a complete “whole” as opposed to compartmentalizing life into work, family, ministry, etc.  Several experiences and some good books (Loving Monday by John Beckett, No More Mondays by Dan Miller, and 48 Days To The Work You Love by Dan Miller) have helped me see things differently. 

Many workers today are dissaatisfied with their work environment.  They perceive it as drudgery.  This is evident by the many commercials, popular songs, and Dilber cartoons that portray work and the business atmosphere as something painful and to be viewed with great cynicism.  Without really giving it much thought, most of us would probably quickly agree.  But, why is work viewed in this manner?  Did God intend it to be this way?  Obviously not – In Ephesians 6:5 God indicates a higher purpose in our service to earthly masters.  We are to serve them in sincerity as we would serve Christ.  So, again, why do many view work with such negativity?  In my opinion, an even more important question is how can religion today help employees to love Mondays?  This is a contemporary topic that I believe that many churches haven’t even begun to know how to solve.

In a future blog post I plan to add some more to this topic and provide some answers based on some summarization of the good books that I mention above.

An excellent book for all areas of leadership, particularly for church leaders, is The Peace Maker: A Biblical Guide To Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande.

In The Peacemaker, Sande provides practical methods for Christians to apply biblical teachings to the everyday conflicts they run into in the course of their lives.   Conflict is defined as the “difference in opinion or purpose that frustrates someone’s goals or desires.”  The primary focus of the book is on how God can help us as individuals to throw off worldly ideas about conflict and become a biblical peacemaker.  Sande’s fundamental reason for providing these principles is that he believes that conflict hinders our ability to bring others to Christ and impedes our walk together in Christian fellowship.  He states that “when believers are bitterly embroiled in disagreement or coldly estranged from one another, few people will pay attention when we try and talk with them about the reconciling love of Jesus Christ”.  

Sande further believes that disagreements actually provide us an opportunity.  As godly stewards we are not to manage our lives for our own benefit, but we are to look out for our master’s interests.  God gives us a management opportunity with each conflict to be peacemakers and turn conflict into good as we strengthen relationships and make our lives a testimony to the love and power of Jesus Christ.  Conflict should be seen as an occasion to glorify God, serve others, and grow to become more like Christ.  While not duplicated here, Sande provides an excellent model, “The Slippery Slope”, for representing the various responses to conflict made up of escape responses (focusing on me), peacemaking responses (focusing on us), and attack responses (focusing on you).    God loves peace and He commands us to respond to conflict in a peacemaking manner and Sande’s book helps us understand how to do that.

The primary arrangement of the book centers on what he calls the “Four G’s” for handling conflict, which are:

1.  Glorify God – bring honor to Him as I seek to please Him in conflict

2.  Get the log out of your eye – face our own contributions to conflict before we focus on others

3.  Gently restore – help others, as we serve them, to see their contribution to conflict

4.  Go and be reconciled – a consistent commitment to restore and forgive in conflict

Each of these topics is covered in depth in various chapters in the book and the key points are summarized briefly below.   I found this layout of the book made it easy to read and understand and quite enjoyable.

The first “G” is to glorify God.  We glorify Him by trusting Him, obeying Him, imitating Him, and acknowledging Him.   God’s highest purpose for me is not to make me comfortable, wealthy, or happy.  It is not even to save me.  His plan is to conform me to the likeness of His son.  Conflict is a tool that He uses in bringing about His purpose.  As we worry less about going through conflict and focus more on growing through conflict, God will bless us more and we will grow in Christ’s image. 

Second, the next “G” is to get the log out of our own eye.  In this we are seeking to answer the question, “How can I show Jesus’ work in me by taking responsibility for my contribution to conflict?”   Jesus teaches us in Matthew 7:3-5 that before we talk to others about their faults that we should first face up to our own faults.  In considering our faults, we may have attitude issues and behavior issues that need correcting.   Attitude issues are those that involve our feelings towards another and our need to ensure that we are not overly sensitive or dwell on what others have done to us.  Sande provides a lot of helpful information, but it essentially boils down to seeking to treat others as God treats us.   Behavior issues involve the heart and our need to change our heart as we grow to deal with conflict.   Fights and quarrels come from our desires that battle within us (James 4:1) and our human inclination to fulfill our own desires.  However, as we confess, repent, and seek to change our hearts so that we respond to conflict as God would respond, He will help us change our hearts and subsequently we can see clearly to help others change their heart (the third “G”).

The third “G” concerns gently restoring others as we help them to see their contribution to the conflict.  It is vitally important to see that as we seek to point out others’ faults and help them recognize their contribution to the conflict and take responsibility for changing their attitudes and behavior  that we are seeking to serve them in love.   Done this way it can be an avenue for strengthening relationships, serving other people, and bringing praise to God.  Again, Mr. Sande gives a lot of practical methods for how to do this, but the underlying purpose is a theme of restoration, not confrontation. 

The fourth and final “G” is to go and be reconciled.    To go and be reconciled is about demonstrating the forgiveness of God and encouraging a reasonable solution to the conflict that exists.   As Sande states “Christians are the most forgiven people in the world, therefore we should be the most forgiving people in the world”.   Forgiveness is neither a feeling, nor forgetting, nor excusing, but it is a decision (with God’s strength) of releasing of the person who has wronged us from the penalty of being separated from us.  This is how God forgives us by releasing us from the direct liability of suffering punishment or penalty because Jesus took our debt on Himself.  The theme of reconciliation is about giving the repentant person an opportunity to demonstrate repentance and again regain your trust.  Ken Sande also teaches that as we serve others in being reconciled we will be looking to their interests via the PAUSE acronym (Prepare, Affirm relationships, Understand interests, Search for creative solutions, Evaluate options objectively and reasonably). 

Ken Sande concludes the book with the Peacemaker’s Pledge which states:

As people reconciled to God by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we believe that we are called to respond to conflict in a way that is remarkably different from the way the world deals with conflict.  We also believe that conflict provides opportunities to glorify God, serve other people, and grow to be like Christ.  Therefore, in response to God’s love and in reliance on His grace, we commit ourselves to responding to conflict according to the following principles.

·         Glorify God

·         Get the log out of your own eye

·         Gently restore

·         Go and be reconciled

Sande did an excellent job of calling Christians to serve God as they deal with conflict, and he did it in a realistic method of putting faith in action.  I found that he did this while providing it in an easy to read format.  In the context of organizational communication, this book provides an important fundamental in the need for effective communication within a church or secular business.  Implementing the processes of peacemaking for churches are very effective and life changing.  I’ve used them repeatedly to much success in my personal life.