If you haven't seen this article yet, it's from the guys who wrote "Made to Stick" (a book I highly recommend to any communicator). 

It's about seeing little things that reveal bigger problems.  

Here's the link. Take 5 minutes and read it. You'll thank me later. (Plus, if you like Van Halen, it's a cool insight into their world in the 1980's).  

I enjoy reading books by theorists. Their views on society and cultural changes are extremely helpful. 

Yet here's where we need to be careful. Beware of theorists posing as practitioners. I have no time for a theorist telling me how to run Calvary Fellowship. Why? Because they've never done it. 

Honestly, I sick of guys writing books about how to "do church" who have never actually done it. Or, they pastored a church, left, and then wrote a book about how everything needs to be different. 

With all due respect, It would be a much greater service to the body of Christ if they simply showed us what to do by modeling it for us. 

Unfortunately, that's a lot harder than writing. (Rant over)

I drove by a shopping plaza and I saw several stores that had recently closed. I overheard someone say that all of these stores closing is a sign of the economy. The 2 people talking mentioned how the economy was the villain and the cause of all of our woes and they moved on.  

I stopped to think for a moment and I thought, "The economy isn't the villain. The economy is simply revealing the problem." 

"What's the problem" you ask. It's a bad plan. Let's think about this: 

- It's a bad plan to live off credit, which is what many of these businesses did and when the credit ran dry, their business was over. 

- It's a bad plan to not have a marketing plan that continually drives customers to your store.

- It's a bad plan to think we're always to going to live in the "7 years of plenty". 

Here's the kicker: churches do the same thing. But we can learn the lesson and grow wiser. 

- Get your financial world in order

- Create an outreach strategy that makes sense and won't break the bank.

- Don't overcommit yourself and put the church in a tough financial position

- Budget conservatively. You can always bump up your budget if God blesses above what you expected. 

- Reducing a budget is a lot harder and usually bring casualties. 

The economy has made our lives a little tougher, but if it's forces us to seek God more and put together a better strategy then maybe we should be grateful. 

One of the things that happens to a Pastor of a growing church is people start doing things for you. Staff, leaders and the congregation want to be kind and honor me as the Pastor, so I rarely lift heavy boxes or take out trash. 

Here's the challenge we face as Pastors: we still need to model servanthood. So the other day after church I went and bought the fridge for the new office. I installed it and filled it with delicious drinks for our staff. 

I was happy to do it and I share this story for no other reason than to say that we have to be intentional about being servants. Because if we aren't, others will do all the serving and we'll miss out on the opportunity to serve the Lord by serving others.

Being away for a few days has been great for me and my family. God has given me tons of ideas for tweaking our systems and a few new ideas that will make us more effective. It’s hard to be creative or even to be objective when you’re in the grind. Ronald Heifetz in the his book, “Leadership on the Line” talks about ‘Balcony Time’. This is where you get away for the purpose of getting a big picture perspective of your organization.

Baseball players can’t examine their swing while their in the batter’s box. They have to step away and review some film. They need to look at themselves from an objective position. That’s the power of breaks and getting away for training. It causes us to see our churches from a new perspective.