Last Friday, I along with 3 others from our church attended the Chick-fil-A LeaderCast Simulcast in Carlsbad, NM on the campus of NMSU there. It was a great day of great speakers.

The first speaker of the day was Andy Stanley, founder and pastor of NorthPoint church in Atlanta, GA. Part of his talk was about asking the following 3 questions when needing to make a decision:

1) What would my replacement do? Ask that some day and you might just be surprised at the answer.

2) What would a great leader do?

3) What story do I want to tell? And then he said, "Don't choose anything that will make you a liar for life."

Take a few moments of your busy day and ask yourself those 3 questions. The answers should help you in the decision-making process no matter how big or how small the decision.

Let me know how that goes.

From Seth Godin:
Accept applause, sure, please do.

But when you expect applause, when you do your work in order (and because of) applause, you have sold yourself short. That's because your work is depending on something out of your control. You have given away part of your art. If your work is filled with the hope and longing for applause, it's no longer your work--the dependence on approval has corrupted it, turned it into a process where you are striving for ever more approval.

Who decides if your work is good? When you are at your best, you do. If the work doesn't deliver on its purpose, if the pot you made leaks or the hammer your forged breaks, then you should learn to make a better one. But we don't blame the nail for breaking the hammer or the water for leaking from the pot. They are part of the system, just as the market embracing your product is part of marketing.

"Here, here it is, it's finished."

If it's finished, the applause, the thanks, the gratitude are something else. Something extra and not part of what you created. To play a beautiful song for two people or a thousand is the same song, and the amount of thanks you receive isn't part of that song.

Many people I talk to tell me about how they are into leadership and leadership principles. But John Maxwell, famed leadership guru, once said, "If you think you're a leader and no one is following you, you're just out for a walk."

That's a fairly accurate statement, but I tend to align more closely with this one from Jack Welch, former CEO of GE: "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."

So let me ask you - are you "all about growing others"? If not, what's the hold up, hang up or hurdle you need to get past  to do so?

Just asking . . .

Yesterday, I talked about getting on your bikes, as a family, and going out to ride.

Well, here's an even better reason to do just that. Clif Bar has developed a "2 mile challenge". Not only will you get the health benefits from riding, but for every ride you log with them, you raise $1 for a non-profit that could use the help.

For more details, and to sign up, go here:
http://2milechallenge.com

So if you ride once each week and log it with them, the charity gets $4 in your name and you got to ride! Sounds like a win-win to me. Check it out and let me know how you're doing.

In this day and age of running to meetings, appointments and more, I've had people relate that it's next to impossible to get the family together on the same page to do any sort of activity together. Well, I've got good news for you in one word: Bicycling!

Blow the dust off your bike, lube up the chain a bit, air up the tires and head out for a family ride. Exercise, in the non-conditioned air, with the fam - that's a great thing! And it's fairly inexpensive, once you have the bikes. Make sure you each have a proper helmet, are well hydrated (lots of water), are wearing comfortable clothing, watch for traffic and you're off for an enjoyable time.

Try it out. Let me know how it goes for you.

What do you see in the future of education? Gone are the days when teachers were able to become actually involved in the lives of their students. "Teacher detachment" began in my childhood in Elementary School, rolled on into Jr. High (now Middle School), and continued into High School. For me, there is one, or there may be two teachers who stand out at each step along the way.

College, for me, was delayed until after a time in the military for two reasons: 1) In Jr. High, a group of my teachers and others invited me to a "meeting" with them to explain to me how I would never get into college by continuing the "C" work I was doing. So I decided right then not to go. & 2) my time in the military helped fund college and a graduate degree.

Did you know that MIT is now offering online courses - for FREE!? Check them out here: http://mitx.mit.edu/

And now for the must read:
http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams

From Seth Godin:
Hard to imagine a consultant or investor asking the CMO, "so, what's your telephone strategy?"

We don't have a telephone strategy. The telephone is a tool, a simple medium, and it's only purpose is to connect us to interested human beings.

And then the internet comes along and it's mysterious and suddenly we need an email strategy and a social media strategy and a web strategy and a mobile strategy.

No, we don't.

It's still people. We still have one and only one thing that matters, and it's people.

All of these media are conduits, they are tools that human beings use to waste time or communicate or calculate or engage or learn. Behind each of the tools is a person. Do you have a story to tell that person? An engagement or a benefit to offer them?

Figure out the people part and the technology gets a whole lot simpler.

So what are you doing to make this happen?

We have a group of people in our town who believe the way to reach folk for Jesus is to criticize churches and believers and non-believers alike - and to do so LOUD!

I truly do not believe people are wanting a bigger, better church with more to do and more options. Their lives are busy enough. Many are not even in the market for a church. Some don't even believe they are in need of what the Church has to offer. So we do not have to run around telling people that ours is better or bigger or whatever than theirs. We really are in this thing together.

We are just different than the church down the street. They are just different than the next church. As long as Christ is preached and no heresy is followed, we're in the business of building the kingdom together.

So I believe people just need to be shown that we have the "prescription" to meet the need they might not even know they have deep down within. We need to make who we are well known, and then make it easy to help them make a new decision.

Your thoughts?

I guess Billy Joel was quoting Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, when he sang, "only the good die young." And we thought it was just a catchy and singable tune. If you just a bit familiar with the song, I'll wager it's playing in your head right now.

Check it out below:
"Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come."     Isaiah 57:1 NLT

See it at YouVersion.com:

When did the rift happen?

As I read through biblical history and the Bible I cannot find the definitive point in time when this division happened. As far as I can tell everything - every song sung, every poem written, every deed done falls under the "sacred" category.

So maybe you know - when did we decide to begin classifying stuff as either or secular/sacred rather than both/and sacred?

Ideas?