I was helping lead the training for the Ecclesia Network Church Planters Training Week in Richmond, VA. My good friend Bob Hyatt was leading one of the sessions “Keeping Heart Til the End” – an extremely important session for church planters to learn about. In fact, I think it may be the most important session offered last week. In the training manual, Bob listed some devastating and deeply sobering statistics about pastors. As he was teaching, I sat in the back of the room stunned at what I was hearing and reading. I took a picture of one of the pages in the manual that listed some devastating statistics and posted it to Facebook.

Immediately, people began responding. Some were heavy-hearted. Some were shocked. Several asked for a list of stats from the whole page. Others asked for the source of these statistics.

After the session, I asked Bob about the source of the statistics and he sent me to this valuable site as a great resource. There are also other statistics at the beginning of the brief intro video for Kairos Partnerships.

With such heart-sinking stats, what is to be done? What do pastors need – and more specifically, what does your pastor need to help change these numbers?

First, your pastor needs your prayers. When was the last time you prayed for them? When was the last time you prayed for them consistently and with commitment over a long period of time? If you do nothing else, start there. Pray.

Second, your pastor needs the opportunity to share how they are really doing – and know that they won’t be punished for it. Your pastor needs to space to take off the Superman cape and be accepted as a person first and a pastor second (or third or fourth or fifth on the list).

Third, your pastor needs rest. Can you encourage your elders to make sure your pastors have time to rest, to play and to spend time with their families?

Fourth, your pastor needs friends – both inside and outside of your church. Encourage your pastor to spend time with friends (even if they are out of state). Give them time, space and permission to do that – and not feel guilty about it.

Fifth, your pastor needs counseling. Yep, your pastor is screwed up. All pastors are sinners – and God wants to do His work in them, too. Pastors need to protect their hearts, for it is the spring from which life flows (see Proverbs 4). If a major league pitcher’s throwing arm goes, he’s forced to retire. If your pastor’s heart goes, they are done. Encourage your pastor to seek out a wise, God-seeking counselor — and go regularly.

If you are an elder, set aside part of the church budget for this to be covered so your pastor doesn’t have to pay for this out of their own pocket. Think about it this way: We take our car in for a tune-up. Why wouldn’t we take our hearts in when they have so much more value and significance in life? I speak from experience when I say this: its valuable and necessary.

A healthy pastor and a healthy church are closely related. Encourage healthy environments where your pastor can be healthy. And encourage your pastor to be healthy because it will lead to a healthy church. 

Rick Warren speaks to pastors about the importance of avoiding the comparison trap. Wise words.

Cool or creepy: would you want to swim in this pool? 

Killing unlimited data plans are reaping in billions for phone carriers

Are you glad that CEOs are tweeting? Others are.

As a church planter, this book looks interesting and poignant. 

David Brooks writes about the changing face and the coming tsunami of the college campus. 

Jo Saxton on the importance of persons of peace

Good thoughts – and self-reflective questions – on effective leadership

5 rules to follow when meeting with a mentor

The rise of Muslims and the decline of Baptists in Orlando? Yep. 

Ever thought about getting a tattoo in Hebrew? Make sure you read this site first!

10 things your commencement speaker won’t tell you. Now, this is my kind of commencement speech!

What makes leaders interesting

Ever heard of the free app Pocket. I absolute love it. Anyone else use it?

Ben Sternke on why its hard to invest in exponential growth 

Mark Batterson on the link between Church and Place

For the next several Fridays I’ll post an excerpt of a prayer by Nouwen from the book, along with a question for reflection.

Dear God,

I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!

Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold onto?

Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?

Please help me to gradually open my hands to discover that I am not what I own,

But what you want to give me.

And what you want to give me is love – unconditional, everlasting love.

Amen.

[Q]: What am I holding tightly in my clenched fist?

[ht: Los Angeles Times]

Since starting Kairos Partnerships, I’ve had the privilege of working with pastors, church planters and leaders in various denominations: American Baptists of New Jersey. The Mid-Atlantic District of the Church of the Nazarene. Baptist General Association of Virginia. Mennonite churches. A bishop from the Church of England. I serve on an advisory team for a Presbyterian (PCA) church planting network – and I hosted a regional event with a Presbyterian (PCUSA) church. I’m coaching pastors in various denominations. I helped facilitate the Fresh Expressions National Gathering this spring, which included over 400 people – with 21 different denominations representing. This week I’m helping with training for church planters, most are non-denominational plants. I will get a chance to spend time with my Episcopalian priest friend this week. He always challenges me and encourages me greatly.

I have never interacted as regularly with various Christian denominations as I have in the past six months. I’ve learned very significant lessons and been reminded of important realities in these interactions.

1. I’m thankful for the diversity of expression within the Body of Christ. After numerous interactions I find myself whispering, thank you God for interactions like this. I find that each denomination brings its own set of priorities, gifts, contributions, strengths and emphases. It’s great to see these strengths come out.

2. My view of God expands. In the various expressions of worship, theology and teaching, they bring out elements of God. When this happens collectively, I experience the reality of God’s bigness and, at times, it leaves me in awe.

3. It keeps me humble. Interacting with various denominations oftentimes makes me the minority (which, as a white Ameircan male, is a good thing for me to experience from time to time) and takes me out of my comfort zone. This forces me to step back, observe, listen, learn and appropriately question why I do what I do and why I believe what I believe. This also keeps me from getting in a rut or believing that only my ‘tribe’ is the only one. It’s worth remembering that Lutherans and Baptists and Presbyterians and Nazarenes and Assemblies of God and Mennonites will be enjoying God’s presence in heaven one day (if that offends you, might I suggest it be time for you to do some reflecting on the nature of God’s heart – and probably yours, too). It also reminds me of Augustine’s famous quote: “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.” 

4. We can’t do effective ministry without a deep dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Despite all of our polity and structure and history and funding and vision (as great as they are), it will still fall short. A deepening dependance upon the Spirit to guide us is absolutely essential. A non-negotiable. Without it, we are wasting our time. Fortunately, as I am in these settings, I hear conversation laced with a ever-deepening expectation the Spirit will be on the move.

5. Collaboration is the name of the game. Linking arms and working with other churches and denominations is the nature of the kingdom. No one church or denomination is going to reach their city or zip code for Christ. It will take every church working together to see Christ’s name elevated and advanced for His glory and purpose. It reminds me of a quote from the NBA legend Larry Bird who said, “I don’t care who gets the credit, as long as my team is winning.”

I hope I learn more lessons and am reminded of more realities in the coming weeks and months.

Here are 15 ridiculously practical ways to create engaging presentation slides.

1. Ask yourself if your presentation actually needs slides. Slides can be helpful with your presentation, but not always essential. Remember, the purpose of your slides is to compliment your presentation, not compete with it. If it helps to enhance, bring clarity to and engage with your listeners more than without having one, go for it. But if its adding complexity, confusion and unnecessary information that is unhelpful, resist the temptation to have one just to have one.
2. Adhere to the 10-20-30 rule. Watch this video by Guy Kawasaki talking about this rule. NOTE: Since Guy is speaking about presentations to venture capitalists, your context may be a bit different, but the point is still the same. Say more by showing fewer slides. Divide the time you’ve planned to teach by 2: you have the number of slides you should not excede in your presentation. For example, if your preaching/teaching is scheduled for 30 minutes, refuse to use more than 15 slides. To see the worst powerpoint slides ever created, click to see these contest winners. 
3. Pick a clear, simple and easily readable font – and use it throughout the entire presentation. Don’t get too cute with fonts. They are fun, but should be selected carefully. Helvetica is a conservative, but solid pick. So is Baghdad. I personally like Century Gothic. And unless you are presenting to children under the age of 10, please refrain from using Comic Sans font at all costs. The world thanks you for your cooperation..
4. Advance to the next slide after you have said your point, not before. If you put your slide up beforehand, they won’t listen what you are saying, but if you wait 5 seconds or so after you have made your point, chances are high that your listeners will both listen to you and read your slide.
5. Use images. Don’t be all text. We live in an image-based culture. Straight text can be overwhelming and tiring for the listener. If you happen to be preaching on, say, Philippians, show a map where Philippi is located or show the present-day ruins of Philippi or the currency that was used during that time. All of these things help support what you are saying to engage the listeners even further. Here’s a challenge: in your next presentation, see if you can make all (or almost all) slides images – with a few words
6. Refuse to use animations. Animations were big in the 90′s but not now. There are better resources out there than clip art. Say it with me now: “I will refuse to use Clip Art ever again…”
7. Use photographs. If you enjoy taking photographs, include them if they fit. If you know of others who are gifted at photography, ask them for permission to use some of their photos. Black and white photographs work well in presentation slides.
8. Ask good questions. A great slide can be a question that prompts the listener to think more deeply – even after you are finished presenting.
9. Make your slides look simple, clean, fresh and stark. Think like Apple. When things are crisp, simple and uncluttered, its memorable. Some of my favorite slides are black background with white Century Gothic font where I might bold a word or two as way of highlighting its importance. Refuse to use a lot of words and images. It confuses your message. If your listeners are listening to you and looking at the screen, it makes it difficult for them to retain what you are saying.
10. Whatever you do, don’t read the slides for your listeners. They know how to read. If you want to provide that much content, give them a copy of your notes before or after your presentation. Since people read faster than you can talk, chances are high that they are already ahead of you if you are reading your slides out loud to them.
11. Ask others for help. If you aren’t tech savvy, chances are you know someone (a friend, a neighbor, someone in your church, etc) who can help you. They may absolutely love doing this. Just don’t be afraid to ask. It may also involve them in the process in a way that makes them feel valued and a part of what you are doing, especially if you are presenting/teaching/preaching with them in the audience. You can also ask others for non-sugar-coated feedback beforehand to see if it fits with the content and style of your message.
12. If you are speaking/presenting in a location you are unfamiliar with, plan ahead. Ask your host what equipment is available and communicate your tech needs. Email your presentation slides ahead of time or arrive early with plenty of time to see if the slides are working correctly. Also, bring a thumb drive with your slides on it as well for back up. Just in case.
13. If someone else is advancing your slides, print out an extra copy of your notes, make notes and highlights in red noting the different slides and give it to the media/tech person. This will help them know exactly what slides to advance to – and when in your presentation. They will thank you for eliminating a lot of questions, confusion and stress in their world
14. Check out these other great resources. If you are serious about making your presentations the best they can be, I high recommend you check out the book Slideology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte and the well developed website Presentation Zen.
15. After your presentation is finished, thank the person who advanced your slides. You may be up front doing your thing, but behind the scenes there are people working hard for you to present what you are presenting. Make sure you thank them (and whoever was controlling your mic as well).

If anyone would like to see slides from a few presentations I’ve given recently, email me and I’ll share a few.

[Q]: What else would you add to the list of practical helps?

Hello Jesus

If you’ll excuse me

If I may be so bold

I thought I might tell you

that sometimes you downright frustrate me.

 

It’s not that I don’t like you or anything

its just that no matter how hard

I try to understand you

many times I walk away confused

perplexed

overwhelmed. 

 

So many questions,

So few answers. 

It seems the more I ask

The more I am left empty-handed

 

It’s not that I can write you off

and ignore your overwhelmingly evident

presence in the cosmos. 

You care for me. 

I know it. 

You love me. 

I feel it. 

It’s just that sometimes I feel

like you are playing some sort of

grand game of hide-and-seek.

I always seek.

And you always hide. 

 

And right when I think I have you figured out

you go and touch lepers

and tick off the religious leaders

and sympathize with adulterers

and kill 5,000 pigs off of hillside

to save one crazed man

and curse fig trees that don’t produce -

even if they are not in season. 

 

You are the so-called Prince of Peace

yet claim that you didn’t come to bring peace

but a sword instead. 

 

Who are you - 

a rabbi of contradiction

a teacher of confusion

the savior of irony

a messenger of mystery?

The disciples couldn’t figure you out 

and neither can I. 

 

And I just wanted to let you know

that sometimes you really confuse me

and frustrate me. 

And yet somehow, I love you anyway. 

And somehow, I know you do the same with me. 

You know I love collecting potential band names. (See entries here, here and here). Here are few more to add to the pile:

• [Your Name] and the J-strokers
• Blank Space Issues
• Unicorn Uniform
• The Barcalounger
• The Good Mix
• Superstructure
• The Jimminy Crickets
• Fairy Circles and the Mother Tree (see here for story)
• Clever Nigerian Scam (based on the emails I get, this one is my favorite)
• T.L.A. (Three Letter Acronym)
• The Muzzle Loaders

By the way, I just found out there is a Twitter feed called Potential Band Names. Click here for time-wasting fun.

So I developed a Time Discernment Team. I need to have other wise people speak into my life in order to be an anchor, a motor and a rudder. I need people to be able to encourage me, challenge me and, at times, give me a flat-out “no” when I need to hear it.

The truth is, I am honored and I enjoy every invitation and opportunity to speak or write or coach or serve in various forms that comes my way through Kairos Partnerships. I’m honored people would ask me to be involved in their lives and ministries – and because of that, I usually respond immediately with an enthusiastic “yes!” without thinking through my schedule. Because of that, its gotten me into trouble more than a few times before. Not that these invitations are bad, but it puts my life (heart, soul, strength and mind) in a wary situation if I am not careful. In addition, I don’t want to neglect my sacred roles and responsibilities as a husband, a daddy, friend and a pastor in our faith community.

I first heard about this idea of a community of discerners from Ed Dobson, a wise, retired pastor in Grand Rapids who now suffers from ALS, when I spent a few days with him a couple of years ago at his home in Michigan. I asked him how he decided what to do with his time, what speaking opportunities and ministry invitations to accept and which to decline. He told me about a group of guys he’d get together with over breakfast where he’d submit these invites to them and they would discern with him what he should do and what he shouldn’t. I thought it was a wise idea. And so, I decided to steal it.

I created a Time Discernment Team to keep me from creating unhealthy rhythms in my life, which for me, is easy to do. Though Kairos Partnerships doesn’t have a board (at least not formally and not yet) this team, in a sense, acts as one. But more than board members, I want them to act as a truth-telling community of people who can speak into my life as friends and brothers and sisters who care more about me than about the future of Kairos Partnerships (though both are interrelated, I know).

This team is made up of a handful of wise individuals (with my wife as the “chairperson of the board” who has veto power at any time). I trust the opinion of each one of them immensely. They are family members, an elder in our church, a friend within the church and a respected pastor/friend outside of our church. Last week I sent them an update on the past few months, a list of the current opportunities I’ve been asked to be a part of and a financial update. I want them to know exactly what I am doing so I don’t drift out to sea or work myself to the bone without even knowing it.

They keep me straight in ways I can’t on my own.

Because I have a tendency to say yes to everything (which ultimately leads to exhaustion and being stressed out) I needed a filter of what I should – and maybe most importantly – should not do. Tom Peters said, “what you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.” He’s right. Putting it differently, Jim Collins wrote in his book Good To Great, we must  learn to say no to the good things in order to say yes to the best things.

There are important questions to be asked – what does Megan think about this? Is this opportunity in line with what you set out to do with Kairos Partnerships? How does this match up with your other current ministry responsibilities? Is this the right time/season to do something like this or should it wait until another time/season? Is this in healthy rhythm? How are your other relationships at the moment?

Do you have a some sort of Time Discernment Team – a group of people, formal or informal, who can speak into your life, regardless of what you do for a living, in order to encourage you to live healthy rhythms? Who speaks into your rhythms to make sure they are healthy and focused and that helps you stay out of the weeds?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Todd Henry’s book The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice. For those of us who work as “creatives” (i.e. add value rather than build a product) I recommend this book. It’s fantastically insightful and ridiculously practical. (I think just about the only thing I didn’t like about the book was the misleading subtitle…) There are too many good nuggets of wisdom to recount in one post, but I want to mention one element I’ve utilized often since I read it.

Todd encourages the reader to create a Someday/Maybe list. When I first read this, I read it pessimistically (i.e. people that put things off all the time, saying “someday I’ll….” or “maybe I get around to doing…” It becomes an excuse – and ultimately people never around to actually doing what they said they would).

But instead, the author was stating it in a helpful way. The truth is you can’t do everything you want to right now for various reasons (energy, season of life, lack of finances, its not the right opportunity, the idea needs maturation, etc). If you tried to do everything right now you want to do, you’d fail miserably. But recording ideas, goals, brainstorming or dreams as a long-term goal to see accomplished can be positive and necessary.

I like this notion a lot. Last week I sat down and wrote in my journal, “Someday/maybe I will…” and spent 30 minutes writing down things that have been rolling around in the back of my head for quite some time. It’s not a to-do list, its not a pipe dream, its not a bucket list (although that can be incredibly beneficial) and its not a list of New Year’s Resolutions either. It’s much better and nobler than that.

It felt good to get these someday/maybes onto paper. It felt different looking at them written on the page. It gave me some mental space in my brain I needed, but also got the hamster wheel turning in some good directions as well.

Consider taking out a piece of paper and spending 30 minutes finishing the sentence: “Someday/maybe I will…” 

How might you answer that question? 

A few mornings ago I was at the gym.

While I was pounding away on the elliptical machine, I watched a middle-aged man in front of me on a stationary bike. After 30 minutes of sweat-induced activity, he got off the bike, threw a towel over his shoulder and walked to the men’s locker room.

It got me thinking how often the Church in North America is like that. Lots of activity, but little movement. Will Willimon said, ”we have hundreds of congregations, thousands, without any discernable mission other than the care and comfort of their members.” Sad, but true. We sweat a lot and work hard, but we haven’t moved (by the way, this could also be said about my workout on the elliptical). Sure, a workout on the stationary bike assists in developing endurance and ultimately promotes good physical health – a good thing for sure – but doing this will always lack any real movement to go somewhere. It’s just not the same as getting on your own bike and going for a good 20-mile ride. Nobody gets off a stationary bike and concludes that the experience was an epic adventure worthy of telling friends and family.

I don’t mean to be harsh or pessimistic. But this was the thought at 7:30 in the morning last Wednesday.

But there is another metaphor that is much more hopeful.

This past Sunday our church decided to have a pot luck after our gathering. I know a lot of churches do every church does pot lucks, but for us, we ramped it up a bit. Since we meet in the gym of a Boys & Girls Club, we decided to arrange the entire gym for our worship gathering as we would if we were holding a banquet. Instead of our typical set up, we worshipped around several rectangular tables with eight chairs at each. The purposes of this set up were equally theological, relational and practical. 

And after worship, there was eating.

I imagine a healthy metaphor for the Church is a pot luck. Everyone brings something prepared with care. We’ve spent time working on something and we bring it with the intention of sharing with the entire community.

We don’t just show up; we contribute. Regardless of its value, we give of ourselves to others. But we also come with the expectation to receive. We don’t just serve, either; we enjoy with others.

Pot lucks require ownership, where you’re forced to get involved – in the preparing and in the eating. Others are doing the same, preparing a dish to share. We all have a part.

Nobody comes empty-handed and nobody leaves empty-stomached. In all of our different dishes and sides we’ve shared, we enjoy eating and being together.

What part do you play in the pot luck?