This past weekend at church, I talked about something God taught me years ago: anger is the result of an experience that doesn’t meet our expectation. I’ve yet to find a circumstance where this wasn’t true. My anger is ALWAYS the result of an experience that didn’t meet my expectation. Understanding this principle is very…
Let’s talk about the role of your emotions in your leadership. In my experience, this isn’t something we talk about much as leaders, and when we do, it seems like we often go to extremes: we either talk about trusting our emotions (“trust your instinct”, “trust your gut”, etc.) or trashing them (“what would Spock…
Listen, I know the title of this post might sound calloused, like I’m just glossing over the devastation and death cased by COVID-19. Believe me, I’m not. My dad died because of COVID. There were complicating factors, but in the end, it was really COVID that took his life. I miss him every day, so…
I used to think that pride and arrogance were the same thing. But they aren’t. Don’t get me wrong, they’re very similar. From the outside, it’s pretty hard to tell them apart, and pride can certainly lead to arrogance. But I don’t think they’re the same thing. Recently, I’ve come to understand that arrogance is…
(Yes, the title of this post is a deliberate play on the Capital One campaign!) I’m been thinking about ditching my wallet for a long time. I haven’t really carried cash for years and I only use a couple of cards on a regular basis. Nearly everything else that fills my wallet has just been…
It’s a simple reality that we can easily forget: those places we are most comfortable are precisely the places we’re most likely to be disobedient. Am I comfortable in my marriage because things are going pretty good? I’m probably not listening for God to tell me how to love my spouse better. Am I comfortable in…
I attend a lot of meetings. And the thing is, I don’t mind most of them. I won’t call them a joy, but I wouldn’t call them a “necessary evil” either. The truth is somewhere in the middle. But…there are some meetings that really suck the life out of me. Please don’t hold one of…
Here are the two most important leadership truths I’ve learned since becoming a lead pastor: Culture eats vision for breakfast Vision without strategy creates a culture of apathy Culture eats vision for breakfast I don’t know who said it first, but I’ve heard it many times from different leadership thinkers…and I’ve thought about it constantly over the last…
I’m not the first person to ever say this, and I’m confident that I won’t be the last, but here it is anyway: balance is a myth. More critically, it’s terribly misunderstood. As we talk about it in Christian circles, this elusive thing we call “balance” seems to mean everything in our lives getting equal…
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted here, not because I haven’t been learning lots about leading a mega-church, but just because leading a mega-church is far more demanding and time-consuming than I could have ever anticipated. But as Coletta and I were talking this morning after a workout, I shared something I’ve come…