Little Things

Little things become big things. It is such an obvious observation that I hesitate to mention it. Little children grow up. Little trees become giant towers. Little beginnings often become significant legacies.

Most things are designed to grow. When something doesn’t grow, we automatically search for the reason. This is the nature of things. This is true with living things, but it is also true with problems.

Have you noticed that little problems often become big ones when they are left to themselves? A friend recently shared with me that he ignored a small problem in his car, telling himself it was too expensive to deal with at the moment. Now he’s paying five times that amount in repairs when that little thing became a big thing.

The Apostle Paul said, “A little bit of yeast works its way through the whole dough.” Bakers know that you don’t need to add much yeast, because by its very nature yeast affects everything it comes in contact with. It’s like a single drop of food coloring in a pitcher of water — in just moments the whole pitcher blooms in color.

A local farmer told me about a time he was irrigating. He couldn’t figure out where his water was going. The trees should have been standing in a foot of water, but they weren’t. As he poked around in the mud to try and find out why, suddenly the ground caved underneath him and carried him down the hill. Fortunately he was all right and he found his water. A little gopher hole had carried it away to a patch of sand where it had quickly been sucked down.

A small engine leak, an unpaid bill, a relationship that is just a little off kilter— all are small things, but they can turn into huge things if ignored for too long. Deal with it now and you save yourself pain and expense later. It’s up to you.

So what have you been ignoring and just hoping that by doing so it will go away? Perhaps it’s time to take your medicine so that you don’t have to swallow the whole bottle later.

The pastors in Kings County all know the power of little things. Jesus said that if you have faith as little as a mustard seed, you can move mountains. If you need encouragement to deal with the little things in your life, you’ll find it in the churches throughout our great county.

Leadercast 2015 Notes

This year's Leadercast was excellent. Here's my highlights.

Andy Stanley

Bold Leadership Myths

• Bold leadership is reserved for bold people. 
• Bold leadership is reserved for fearless people. All the fearless people are dead.
• Bold leadership requires a specific gift or talent.
• Bold leadership is for the ultra-smart or ultra-intelligent.

Best pictures of bold leadership: A middle school girl in pursuit of an iPhone!

Characteristics of Bold Leadership

• Clarity
• Focus
• Stubbornness
• Resourceful

Definition: Bold leadership is clarity around and an unreasonable commitment to what should be.

Examples: Mom who corrected her son in Baltimore. Man who invented Mathnasium. Howard Schultz and Starbucks.

All of us have the potential, when we trip over that thing, idea or product that needs to change, for bold leadership once we discover what that thing is!

Bold leaders refuse to be cowed by how.

You can how a great idea to death! Instead say, “wow!” not “how?” The how question is a bad habit. We first go to, “How much will it cost?” or “How will we do it?"

Two Breadcrumb Questions to Discover Your Wow Idea

1. What do I believe is impossible to do in my field…but if it could be done, would fundamentally change my business?” — Joes Barker, Paradigms
   Even if you are not the person or company that has the breakthrough idea, when you hear about somebody else coming up with an answer to this questions, you need to be the first in line to embrace the breakthrough idea even if it is not your idea.
   
2. What breaks my heart? What would I like people to line up and thank me for when I am an old lady/man?
   
   World Vision. Habitat for Humanity. TOMS.
   
   Nehemiah — “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down.”
   Do not let your calendar or your organization conspire against you if you have focused on that one idea. Do not let go of that one thing. 

Rorke Denver

Bravery

The counterpoint to bravery is fear. The response to fear is always to face it. You must inoculate yourself.

• Limit your field of view and you will see more.
  
  Sniper lingo — deconstruct the hillside and break it into manageable chunks. Otherwise you will see nothing.
  
• Make bold corrections. Little shifts equal little results. Bold corrections equal bold results.
  
• Bravery doesn’t have to be a solo experience. It is a team sport.
  
• Choose the size/type of your bag wisely. What are you taking home? What are you carrying with you?
  
• Find your harmonic gate. Find the rhythm that God intended for you.
  
• Lean into the pain. Do not avoid it. Recognize that pain is a growth opportunity.

Malala Yousafzai

World’s Youngest Nobel Peace Prize Winner 

Peyton Manning

Anyone who waits for someone else to make the change becomes a follower. Everyone has faced major decisions with much riding on the outcome. The bigger the decisions, the fiercer the conversation with yourself needs to be. It requires as much courage as it does confidence to look yourself in the mirror and actually act on the facts that come out of that fierce conversation.

Game Changers

1. Learn to thrive on being uncomfortable! This means being prepared, but it also means pushing yourself into awkward and difficult situations.
2. Devote yourself to intense preparation. 
3. Invest in a coach. It doesn’t matter how seasoned any of us are, everyone can benefit from a coach. We all need someone who has the capacity to point out what works, but more importantly what doesn’t work. 
4. Find a way to instill trust in others. 
5. Think about drawing a new baseline for yourself and for your organization. Figure out what you can and cannot do and adjust. Life changes, you get older, the organization changes — you have to figure out how to keep moving forward and keep being successful. Don’t just rely on what worked yesterday. You have to figure out what works today!
6. Become a master observer. You must be willing to stop and look. The simple process of focusing on the issues and putting the pieces together. 
7. Set goals that contribute to the team’s overall performance, not just your own.

Seth Godin

If we care enough, we should be brave enough!

Everyone holds a little bit back. Everyone tends to copy everyone else.

The only way to truly make art, to truly be unique, to truly make a change happen, we must be ALL IN.

We can be prepared, but we will never be ready, because our work is always “too soon."

Change has a twin sister named tension. We have all been trained to avoid tension!

5 Concepts of the Bravery of Our Future

1. Tension. Ella Fitzgerald put on an integrated show of music just to create tension.
2. Obsession. 
3. Connection.

Ed Catmull

Don’t focus on the ideas. Focus on the dynamic of the team. A bad team will destroy any goo idea. A good team will take a poor idea and make it better or throw it out.

Rudy Guliani

1. You have to have strong beliefs. You have to know what you believe in. The people who succeed have strong beliefs.
2. To be a leader you have to be an optimist. Make yourself a problem solver. Don’t get beaten down by problems so much that you can’t get out of the problem. Every problem has an ability to make it less severe if not a solution.
3. You have to put fear in its place. Let it be a motivator to work harder and do a better job.
4. You must prepare relentlessly. Prepare, prepare, prepare.
5. Never believe it is about you, it is about the team. The team gets the job done. 
6. You must communicate. You have to be able to get your ideas out to people. 

Modesty Guidelines

Michael Hyatt in his great blog writes that he and his wife outlined four principles for their daughters as they were growing up. Modesty is no longer something that is generally understood or appreciated in our body (and booty) worshipping culture.

I believe these four points would also be useful as guidelines for anyone who is on our platform at church! We've had to send more than one person home from the worship team when we realized that their blouse was too low or their skirt was too high!

Without further ado, here they are: “Four Guidelines for Modesty”:

1. If you have trouble getting into it or out of it, it is probably not modest.
2. If you have to be careful when you sit down or bend over, it is probably not modest.
3. If people look at any part of your body before looking at your face, it is probably not modest.
4. If you can see your most private body parts or an outline of those parts under the fabric, it is probably not modest.

 For more, check out Michael Hyatt's blog.