I’ve spent most of today studying, thinking, planning, and learning. As my bud and everyone’s new golden boy leadership guru says…

…man I forgot how much I enjoy digging in God’s Word.

Anyway, I’ve spent some time reading, studying the Word, and listening to some CDs from the first Catalyst conference.

Howard Hendricks opened that first conference five years ago with a powerful challenge for us to take care of the things that really matter. In that message, Dr. Hendricks referred to a poem called “The Night They Burned Shanghai.”

The poem, written as the Japanese were taking over China leading up to World War II, talks a lot about apathy and how we are so busy with what we think are important and crucial matters, while we miss the really important things going on around us. The poem ends with these lines…

And after greetings, Waterman exclaims,
“A fine mess in the Far East, boys and girls,”
And we agree, and we sit down to play.
Tonight they burn Shanghai, and we are safe –
Safe from the world and all its puzzles-safe
From everything except our own contempt.

(Tonight Shanghai is burning,
And we are dying too.
What bomb more surely mortal
Than death inside of you?

For some men die by shrapnel,
And some go down in flames,
But most men perish inch by inch,
In play at little games.)

Life is too short and too precious for us to waste it in piddling little games, activities that take our time, but rob our souls. The slow death of idling the days away is killing too many people. I don’t know how many years or even months or weeks or days I have left.

But God help me invest that time in something that matters!

Andy Stanley talks about courage in his great book The Next Generation Leader. Courage is a necessary but often elusive quality for leaders. It takes courage to take any initiative to move an organization forward from where it is to where it needs to be. Beyond the courage to act, there are three expressions of courage that are absolutely essential…

• The courage to say no. Don’t allow the many good opportunities to divert your attention from the one opportunity that has the greatest potential. If we don’t choose our opportunities carefully, we will dilute our efforts in every endeavor. (p. 70-71)
• Courage to face current reality. When someone refuses to face reality, we call it denial. We say that person is sick. The same is true of organizations. Not surprisingly, organizations in denial are usually led by leaders who are in denial about the current state of affairs. But the truth is that there is very little to show for all the meetings, messages, and mothers’ mornings out. The church is making far more dinners than disciples. And while there is a general awareness that things are not going well, the average church attendee is content to show up once a week, do his time, and pretend that all is fine. Leaders worth following are willing to face and embrace current reality regardless of how discouraging or embarrassing it might be. (p. 71-72)
  
• Courage to dream. Dream no small dreams, for they stir not the hearts of men. (p. 75)

Do I have the courage to face the current realities in my own life? My family? My church? Am I so busy putting on a good game face that I have lost touch with the stark realities of life? Do I have the courage to dream boldly, declare the dream, and move forward to see it come true? Have I limited God’s ability to use me by limiting my own vision and usefulness?

Note to self: No matter how much they protest, and claim that they despise the “white trash rednecks” in your county, chances are, if they have that combination in their Ford pickup truckExplorer – and hang out all night long with the same people they supposedly despise – they are one. Big time!

Note to self, part deux: Google tattoo viagra redneck. Don’t do it. Just don’t do it. Just don’t. Trust me. Just don’t.

Unless you want to find this story. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

I’m almost finished with The Next Generation Leader for the second time, and I’m finding some great stuff that I either missed or didn’t need – or didn’t think I needed – the first time around.

I picked up Howard Hendricks’s Color Outside the Lines at the very first Catalyst conference, and it’s sat on my shelf since then. I was looking for something else this morning, and it caught my attention.

Stay tuned for quotes and other goodies…

Everywhere I go today, I find that people are talking about “authenticity,” about being “real.” It is indeed a prime value that we need to espouse, in the face of so much Pharisaism and self-righteous behavior.

But we need to be sure that our “being real” doesn’t turn into a sorry excuse for doing things that will bring dishonor to the Boss with Whom we apprentice. We need to be careful that our quest for authenticity doesn’t lead us to ignoring or covering up our sin.

Check this challenging little read from over at TheOOZE

Authenticity should not trap us into being blind to sin in our own lives or the lives of those we are in community with.

Our task as Jesus-apprentices is to model our lives after the Master, to walk in truth and love, and to continually be molded and shaped in His image. Being “real” cannot become a justification for living an unexamined and unrepentant lifestyle.

Good food for thought early this Thursday…

Some quotes from An Unstoppable Force…

[Martyrs] didn�t survive, but they died facing the right direction.

�the real tragedy is not that churches are dying but that churches have lost their reason to live.

Unfortunately, for too many people, when the conversation is no longer about them there�s not much left to be said.

Everything you loathe about your current environment or organization was originally somebody�s good idea. At the time it might have been considered revolutionary.
-Andy Stanley, The Next Generation Leader

Some things I found on the way to some other places…

• Life without e-mail?
• Trusting your gut: “when you finally get up there on the bandstand… just wail.”
• “Go” means “go!”
• A whole lotta hype doesn’t mean anything if you can’t deliver when it’s time. (Language alert for some of you.)

It’s been of those kind of days today, and I’m not really sure why…

Running on – running on empty
Running on – running blind
Running on – running into the sun
But I’m running behind
-Jackson Browne, “Running on Empty”

So far in May, this little blog has the 13th (out of 20) highest number of people who have checked out the Cartoon Blog at CartoonChurch.com! Woo hoo!

Hey, give me a break! Everybody needs some reason to celebrate, right?

Seriously, CartoonChurch.com is a neat place that you ought to check out!