I Hope You Had a Great Mother’s Day

To all the moms who get up early to make lunches and check backpacks, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms with teens who love you but don’t know how to show it so it comes off more like disdain or disinterest, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who read to your kids every day, help them with homework, pay for tutors and still have a child who struggles in school, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who spend more time behind the wheel of your car than a taxi cab driver just to get your kids from point a to point b and then do it again because they forgot something, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who play ridiculous games with your children and don’t ever seem to get bored, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who did everything right during pregnancy and still lost your child, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who changed more diapers last week than there are stars in the sky (or at least it feels that way), I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who work a full-time job plus do all the mom stuff and fall into bed exhausted at night…alone…I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who know there isn’t enough money yet still do what they can to create that special ‘backyard vacation’ so the kids feel valued, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who have three or four little ones who all are extremely needy and yet you still find a way to make yourself beautiful and put a smile on your face, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who lost a child way too soon through a car accident or terrible illness or some other tragedy, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who are able to magically juggle school, sports, church, PTA, homework, family activities and more, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To all the moms who want to give up, but don’t, I hope you had a great Mother’s Day.

To my mom, to my wife’s mom, to the mother of my children, to the tremendous mom’s I work with every day, I hope you all had a great Mother’s Day.

McGoldrick Family Fund

Since 1989, Patrick & Dena McGoldrick have spent their lives helping teens, most recently at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Roseville, MI. Literally thousands of students have been impacted in Kentucky, Illinois and Michigan because of their ministry.

On December 5, 2011, Patrick was diagnosed with ALS. This is a life-ending disease for which there is no cure. A few people live many years with ALS, but most do not. Patrick’s disease is progressing quickly—and his ability to speak is becoming more difficult each day. In April, he preached his last message at his church, and they will soon be going on disability as they deal with the realities of this terrible disease.

Patrick and Dena have lived generous lives, giving of themselves to help others. Patrick has a small life insurance policy which will pay for basic living needs for Dena, but will not be near enough to cover college costs that are coming around the corner (Paige begins in August, and Parker begins a year later). There are also some big expenses likely coming as they face the future, such as: an accessible vehicle, chair lifts, ramps to get in the house and more.

The family and friends of the McGoldrick’s have started a fund that will be used entirely for the McGoldrick family. This is primarily a college fund for Paige and Parker–but it may also be used for some of these larger expenses related to his disease.

The integrity of the funds will be overseen by: Me (Dena is my sister), Tim Wright (from Calvary Baptist in Covington, KY) and Dave Kaynor (from Cornerstone Baptist in Roseville, MI). If you have any questions, please send me an email, or speak with either of these other men.

You can link to the donation page by clicking the button below. Every size gift matters–thank you for whatever you can do.

Stalk People Before You Hire Them

Facebook. Twitter. Tumblr. Instagram. Blogs.

These social networking tools (and scores of others) have changed everything about hiring staff, finding volunteers and leading people. Why? Because everything you’ve posted, tweeted, commented, emailed, sent—it’s all out there. Seth Godin says it this way: “Google never forgets.”

A report from the University of Evansville seems to back this. They found that more and more employers are turning to the internet to screen applicants. The study determined that employers were able to determine with a “surprising level of accuracy” personality traits and indicators that could predict future job performance.

It’s worked for us. Before we hire people, we unapologetically research them on Facebook and Twitter and other sites. We have discontinued our talks with potential staff members because of their online persona. We have ignored applications because of what we’ve found on their Facebook page. We’ve also fired people based on what we have found online.

I would recommend doing some simple searches before you hire staff or select high level volunteers. Here are some things to observe:

• Look through all of their picture albums. You will learn much about a person by the pictures they take and believe are worthy of posting.
• Read their posts to see how they think.
• Click on articles they link to find out what they find interesting.
• See if they talk about their spouse or kids. (Note: If they talk only about their kids and never about their spouse, that could be a sign of marital trouble).
• See if you can find how they react to people with whom they have a disagreement. Are they kind or critical? Do they treat people online the way you would want them to treat your leaders in person?
• See what they think is funny. Is it always crass and bordering on inappropriate? If so, that probably is a reflection of their heart.
• Find out about their interests. What movies do they like? What books do they read? Where do they like to vacation? What do they do when they have free time?

You might say, “That borders on stalking!”

And you’d be exactly right. Stalking. Creeping. Whatever you want to call it…do it! Our work is way too important to chance getting someone on the team who has character flaws we don’t know about. Anything that is put online is for public consumption. And it would be ridiculous not to do the fullest possible research.

If you were buying a used car, and they offered to give you the full historical report of every mechanical issue or accident the car has experienced—you would do it! You would want to know what you are getting when you buy that car. If it is true when buying a car, it should be true when hiring team members and lending the entire credibility of the church behind their leadership.

Oh, and it probably goes without saying, but make sure you are also smart online. You might be ticked at the church you last worked at—but you’d do well not to air that online.  Like Godin says, “Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.”

Do you actually need to change your hiring practice so you begin cyber-stalking potential staff members?

Is there something you need to change about your personal online practices so it doesn’t jeopardize a future opportunity?

Shawn Lovejoy: “Why Are So Many Church Leaders Falling?”

This is a guest blog post written by Shawn Lovejoy, a pastor and Christian leader whom I trust and who has become a great friend.

My good friends Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research and Todd Wilson of the Exponential Network conducted research in 2010 that only confirmed what I have sensed and seen for years. Their research showed that most pastors don’t feel “successful” in their ministries. In their research, most pastors admitted to struggling with

• the battle to overcome pride and drivenness;
• loneliness and isolation;
• mistrust;
• lack of rest;
• maintaining joy.

The question I’ve been asking is very simple: Why? Why are so many pastors and ministry leaders falling? Why are they so vulnerable? Why are they so unfulfilled? Lonely? Insecure? Burned out? Discouraged? Depressed? Why are so many not seeing the fruit they hoped they would see? What is wrong with pastors?

I have wrestled with this. I have prayed over this. I have talked with many ministry leaders who are winning, some who are losing, and many who are struggling. Here’s my basic conclusion: the main reason so many of us are struggling stems from our basic definition of success. Our root problem is that we have exchanged God’s definition of success for our own. We have begun to measure success the way the world does.

To reclaim the calling, purpose, and joy that put us in our ministries, we simply can not measure our success by the size of our crowds, buildings, or budgets…at least we should not. If we do, it will cost us. It has cost me. I’ve seen these false measures of success wreak havoc in my own heart, mind, ministry, and marriage. Thank God, He redeemed me from measuring things the way the world does before it was too late.

Today, my life, ministry, and family are better because of it. I’m still tempted daily…but by His grace and power, I am winning. I want God to use my story and my learnings in working with other pastors to redeem the stories of thousands of pastors around the world.

Together, we must together rediscover “The Measure of Our Success.” That measure is found in, and only in, our relationship with Jesus Christ. In Him and through Him we find our destiny, purpose, clarify our real calling, and begin to measure what really matters.

Today, would you be willing to ask: “Jesus, what really matters to you?” Go ahead. Ask Him the question. If you will, and then be quiet enough for long enough, He will speak to you. Read back through the Gospels with these lenses. Before you know it, you will have a new agenda for your life. You will find a new sense of calling and fulfillment in your ministry. You’ll rediscover “The Measure of Our Success.”

Shawn Lovejoy is the lead pastor of Mountain Lake Church and author of The Measure of our Success–just released last week and available on Amazon. I already have it…I encourage you to get it too!

We Recently Emerged from a Five-Year Winter.

I live in northern Indiana near the shores of Lake Michigan. Winter begins in early November and typically doesn’t let up until late March. It’s five months of howling winds and snowy roads. The weather systems come across from Chicago, pick up moisture off the relatively warm waters of the lake and dump it as snow on our walks and driveways. Last year over 110” of snow landed in our front yards.

I enjoy living in a place where there are four very distinct seasons. But winter gets extremely long. By early March, I’m usually wondering why I decided to live in such a place. Everything is dead, and the beauty of the white snow has long ago lost its appeal. The roads are dirty, yards are matted down, a season’s worth of trash blows in the wind, curbs are torn up from the constant beating by the snow plows and streets are full of potholes from the cyclical freezing and thawing.

The thing that is particularly hard about March is that you can begin to smell spring, but it’s still several weeks away. You know it’s coming, but you still have to get up every day and look at the ugliness that winter left behind.

Yes, sometimes winter is way too harsh. And way too long.

We recently emerged from a harsh winter as a church. It was longer than five months. In fact, looking back, it was a five-year winter.

This long winter included a beating on church finances with a terrible recession and local unemployment among the highest in the country. At its worst, one out of every five people in our congregation no longer had a job.

Lost jobs meant lower offerings, which meant we had to eliminate several staff positions and cut hours of many others.

The hard winter also included strained relationships. In fact, for much of this time, I wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye with my closest partner in ministry. It was killing me, and it was hurting the church.

I’ve spent hours thinking through the reasons for our long winter. Why did it happen? Why couldn’t we avoid it? After 20 years of growth and vitality and life—why did the harshness of winter come so strong and stay so long? I can’t blame the recession entirely. Many churches went through the same thing and yet were thriving. I can’t blame the people around me. Anyone who visits knows we have one of the best teams on the planet.

I believe the long, hard winter can be blamed on one thing only: As a team, we lost the clarity of our vision.

For our entire history, we were accustomed to having a laser-focused vision that the entire church would rally around. But with the economic realities and relational strain, the vision began to leak. We found ourselves floundering with little sense of where we were heading or how we were going to get there.

It was bizarre, really, as I’m a student of vision. I’ve seen the power of vision, both in history books and in my own experience. I’ve helped hundreds of church leaders define and refine their vision. I’ve seen the power of a clear and compelling vision do the impossible and bring a nearly dead organization to life and strength. I’m surrounded by other leaders who also know the power of vision clarity. And yet, somehow, we couldn’t pull it together. We lost our vision…

Excerpt from Vision: Lost and Found, available today on Amazon.

“I Don’t Think I Can Trust a God Who Would Give Someone ALS”

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about those words. They came early this month from Ed Dobson as he sat in my living room after sharing his heart at our church. We were gathered with Patrick & Dena and our families–and these two men, both dealing with life-ending illnesses, were talking about God’s sovereignty.

That is when Ed said, “I don’t think I can trust a God who would give someone ALS.” He said the exact words I was thinking as I watched these two men struggle to talk, struggle to get up and down off the sofa, and struggle to eat.

There is a popular Christian song by Matt Redman called, “Blessed Be Your Name.” I like the song, but I hate the part that says, “You give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.” I hate it because I don’t believe it. And I haven’t been able to sing it since Patrick was diagnosed with ALS.

I was looking through my blog archives yesterday, and found that I wrote about the song six years ago in November 2006:

While we were singing, I looked over at my kids. And I wondered, if one of them were taken, could I sing, “You give and take away, Lord blessed be Your name”?

Jim Miller was sitting in the row behind me. Earlier this year he lost his wife of over 50 years. If that happened to me, could I sing, “You give and take away, Lord blessed be Your name”?

I looked up at the stage and began thinking of two of my dearest friends who were taken out of my life two years ago last month. They didn’t die, but they might as well have. One day they were part of my life and the next day they were gone. I remembered how long it took me to be able to sing, “You give and take away, Lord blessed be Your name.”

I think about losing my parents, my sister, my brother, my loving wife, or a good friend. I actually think about it alot, it’s probably my greatest fear. I don’t wonder about God’s sustaining grace or worry about the afterlife. I just hate the concept of death and don’t want to lose those that I love. I supposed that is true of all of us to some degree.

When I say I don’t believe that part of the song, I realize I’m saying that I don’t believe a direct quote from the Bible (Job 1:21). But those were words spoken by Job, not God, and they were expressing his feelings. I respect that, but I just don’t think the story or the Bible supports the accuracy of his words. It seems clear to me that God allowed all these bad things to happen to Job. He is sovereign and is in control, and Satan clearly had to get permission to mess with Job. But God did not cause them.

What kind of God would intentionally send children to their death through poverty and sickness? What kind of God would send a rapist into the home of a woman to terrorize her for hours? What kind of God would devise a plan in the hearts of men to fly jetliners into buildings filled with men, women and children?

I realize that “His ways are not our ways” and that He is an infinite God. And I put my faith in that God. I don’t need to have answers here on earth. I believe He will provide the grace to face anything that happens. I believe His love becomes more evident when we are facing difficulties (Romand 8:35-39). And I believe His purposes are eternal.

But I do not, and I cannot, believe that my God would intentionally give someone a horrendous disease.

And so I shall continue to remain silent when those words are sung around me.

Pride is So Subtle

From the Archives–A blog post I wrote in September 2007…

I watched for a few minutes as two guys circled the car considering their options. I was going to drive on home but needed gas anyway, so I pulled over to a pump where I could lurk from behind my car.

The two guys circling the car were punks. They had body piercings everywhere, tattoos all over. I’d guess them to be about 20-years old. I’m just staring, amazed, wondering what these idiots were thinking when they tried to jump the curb.

Then I noticed the car model. It was a newer model, luxury car. It was easily a $50k car. Then I got even more disgusted. These punks are driving around in daddy’s car and just messed it up. I even said it to the guy pumping gas next to me who just returned from walking over closer to the crisis: “A couple punks messed up daddy’s car, huh?”

That’s when I started realizing how wrong I was. He replied, “Nope. There are three little kids still in the car and their dad was driving.” I looked past the “punks” and saw a young Hispanic man and his wife, very shook-up, trying to figure out what to do.

These young white “punks” had stopped their car to help the Hispanic man in distress. I’m ashamed to say that stopping to help had never crossed my mind. It was my day-off. I was working in my yard. I was busy. Plus I was consumed by my judgmental thoughts toward the jerks who got themselves in that position. Besides, what could I do? They needed major help. Like a crane or a tow truck.

As I finished pumping, one of the “punks” called out at me. “Hey, can you give us a hand?” They had analyzed the situation and figured with 4 or 5 men they could lift the car off the curb and get this guy on his way. I would never have attempted that or even thought it was possible. But within about 10 minutes, 4 of us (through the very capable leadership of the “punks”) got the Hispanic family on their way. The driver quickly grabbed his wallet and offered to pay the “punks” but they waved him off, got back in their car, and drove away. They didn’t want money or recognition. They were just there to help.

I got back in my car, not feeling good about helping the helpless–but feeling guilty for my quick judgmentalism. I wasn’t happy I could help–I was aware that I would have just watched from behind my car if the “punk” hadn’t called out.

Pride is so subtle. It twists its way through our hearts and makes us less than Jesus-like. I’m just glad that I got to witness Jesus this weekend through the actions of a couple punks.

Proverbs 29:23- “A man’s pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor.”

Patrick’s Last Message

I can’t fully explain what it was like to sit and listen to Patrick McGoldrick deliver what likely was his last message at Cornerstone Baptist–the place he has served for 12 years. Many of you have followed his story, and I’ve heard from scores of you from around the country who are praying for my brother-in-law as he battles ALS. Six months ago, life was good and the future was bright. But life is so fragile, and now each day brings new challenges for Patrick, Dena, Paige and Parker.

Confession–I rarely sit listening to a preacher and wish he would go longer. But last Sunday, I could have listened to Patrick talk all day.

I know you don’t have time to watch this. You have things to do, people to see, places to go.

But let me make a promise to you–if you take an hour to sit and watch Patrick’s message…your life will be touched. You will think differently about your own life and future, and you will be challenged to consider what it really means to trust God.

“No Sex” by Still Trill Christians

A great tune with a positive message. Makes me want to hear more about these guys.

Vision: Lost and Found

UPDATE: Now available on Amazon!

My newest book is at the printer and will be published by the end of the month. There…I said it! I’ve been waiting for months to be able to tell you about this newest project. I can’t fully explain how deep writing is in my DNA, and therefore how exhilarating it is to share it with others. Perhaps it’s like a songwriter who hears her song performed for the first time, or like a mom who carries a child and gets to hold it for the first time, or a preacher who finally gets to communicate his message after weeks of preparation. Whatever it is–writing pulls from the deepest parts of my being and gives me a voice to thoughts that are jumbled when coming through my lips.

This book, called Vision: Lost and Found is the story of Granger, especially in recent years, as we’ve gone through some ups and downs.

I asked a friend to review the book for me as I was finishing the writing. She is a businesswoman, not a church professional, so I especially appreciated her words:

I found the story to be compelling, incredibly raw, and painfully honest.

If I would have had the time to read it in one sitting, I would have.

The story rolls off the page easily and I found myself celebrating the Early Years, grieving during The Big Jolt and The Funk, and rejoicing during The Recovery and shaping of The Vision.

I was surprised by the parallels between the Granger story and our own business story…I’m guessing many businesses will be able to easily relate to your story at some level and be inspired by the many elements represented: commitment, perseverance, courage, team, timing and vision.

The book is being published as part of the Exponential Resources series. It will be a couple weeks before you can buy a copy. However, if you are attending the Exponential Conference in Orlando next week, you’ll have a chance to get a free copy, thanks to RSI Church Stewardship. They have purchased 1,000 copies to give away at the conference.