So I’m at Chipotle today having lunch with my wife and I started reading the article on her ice tea cup. I’m not making this up. Chipotle puts little inspirational articles on their soft drink cups and the article on her cup was about Wes Jackson, President of the Land Institute. You can read about the Land Institute if  you want to by following the link embedded in the name, but what caught my attention was the statement attributed to Wes Jackson that went something like this...”if what you call your “life’s work” can be finished before you die, then you are thinking too small.”  It grabbed my attention.

I immediately re-translated it into “die before your done.” I’m asking God to give me a vision big enough, that, not only can I not do it without Him, but I can’t even finish it in my lifetime. I want a God given dream so significant that in order for it to become a reality I will have to pass it on to others. Such a mindset forces me to lean more toward developing others and away from building everything around my own expertise. It helps me to be patient and build good processes that produce effectiveness over time instead of going for the quick splash. It makes me think about the long term consequences of every action I take and protects me from cutting corners for easy applause.

This, I believe, is the fundamental mindset of a pastor who grows a church planting movement. Instead of finishing what they start, they are starting things they can’t possibly finish! They deliberately plant spiritual, organizational and leadership seeds that ensure that the best days are yet to come even after he/she is gone.

Die before you’re done. Start things you can’t possibly finish!

Pretty good stuff. I’m going to “selah” on that for a while…and then I’m heading back to Chipotle to read another cup!

I’m on a plane circling Houston right now. We’re traveling at about 500 miles per hour, circling a planet that is spinning at about 800 miles per hour while orbiting the Sun at about 65,000 miles per hour which is part of a solar system hurtling through space at 62,000 miles per hour. Everything moves. And it’s a wonder my head is not spinning!

Churches move. They are made up of people who are dynamically interacting with God and each other…coming, going, transferring, marrying, divorcing, birthing, burying, obeying, sinning, quitting, starting, hoping, dying. Churches never stop moving.

Healthy leaders move. Leaders who stop moving aren’t leading anymore.

A powerful leadership prayer might be “Lord, help me know how to move with You today.”

A lot of the writing I do on this blog is based on an assumption that I always have in mind, but probably don’t reference enough.

Here it is: Apart from Me you can do nothing.

Everything I write about planning and strategizing and researching and doing is based solidly on the understanding that Jesus is building His Church. Effectively starting new churches to reach lost people is a supernatural endeavor that is doomed to failure apart from His miraculous anointing. Without the empowerment of the Spirit, all of our plans, strategies, knowledge and actions will simply result in well crafted social clubs devoid of any power. We have enough of those already.

So pray. Then plan, strategize, research and act.

Then pray again.

And again…