Apple

Just finished some of my Apple training. My brain is still recuperating.....

Change

News Ticker: New job at Apple, working out almost daily, eating right, living life.

It's always so hard for me to blog. I have so much to say, and so much is required to say it all, that I feel I couldn't possibly have the time to write it all. Hence the news ticker! :P

Anyways, the biggest news in my life is my career change. I am taking the step back into corporate America, with many lessons learned from my stint in self employment. It'll be a very challenging next season, but I look forward to it with an anticipation I haven't felt in years, if ever.

I've also been working out almost daily with one of my roommates. How great it is to have a support structure! How great it is to feel parts of my body I haven't felt since I was a child! How great it is to have a mood elevating practice does not include some sort of drug!

Living in community has been a great help for all these. I've been eating healthier as well. Trying to make better choices. I may start to take it one step further and track my diet and make changes, but that's a lot of work! :P

Living life? Well, yeah, I'm trying. I don't want to be a slave to my own self-pity any more. I don't want to loaf around the house for weeks at a time because I think I'm not good enough to do anything worth doing, or too afraid to make mistakes. I want to live life, boldly, and fear free. I want to make mistakes, and learn. We have such little time on this earth, might as well make some use of it.

Image by gilad of Deviantart.com

Willow Creek Leadership Summit - Day 1

These are my raw, unprocessed notes:

Buzzwords: sector, redemptive, facilitate, microwave wisdom, cast vision

Bill Hybels

Session 1

Questions for making decisions

1. What does the Bible have to say about this?

2. What would smart advisors advise?

3. P/G/E - What does the pain or gain of past experiences teach you?

4. Does the spirit prompt you?

After asking these questions, make a trial decision.  Spend some time imagining that you have already made the decision.  Does it bring life and peace?  Does it bring worry and anxiety?

Develop personal proverbs or axioms.   This condenses the process of decision making and develops a language for your culture.

Some of Bill Hybel's Axioms:

Create motion for the sake of motion.  If motion is not intentionally created, people will stagnate.

Leaders call fouls.  Call people out when they do something inappropriate, and be prepared to call yourself out.

Take a flier.  Take a calculated risk.  Sometimes you just need to do something crazy to get the juices going.

This is church.  Church isn't about programs and organizations and Sunday morning, church is about one-on-one, life bringing discussion; church is about raising each others kids; church is about taking care of those in your community that are in need.

Gary Haugen

Leads International Justice Mission, addressing human rights abuses all over the world.

What is leadership that matters to God?

Are Jesus and I really interested in the same things?

We are God's plan for justice in the world, and he has no other plan.  We are the proof to the world that God is good.  We are the body of Christ, this implies that we are to do what we know God wants to do in the world, this is what it means to give up our lives for God as living sacrifices.

Biblical injustice is the abuse of power to take from people the good things God intended for them.

How do we lead when the going seems helpless/scary/hard?

Helpless?  Despair comes when we look at what we do not have the capacity to do, hope comes when we look at infinite power and love of God, and trust that he will do regardless of our capacity.

Scary?  Jesus did not come to make us safe, but to free us to be brave.

Hard?  Take your strengths on a more demanding climb.

1. Choose not to be safe.

2. Choose deep spiritual health.

3. Choose to seek excellence.

4.  Choose to seize the joy.

I don't want us to be devoted to prayer and the acts of the early church just because they were.  We shouldn't create structure for structure's sake.  I want us to be devoted to prayer because without it we will surely fail.

Seize the joy - I have been processing this for a while.  It should make us laugh every day that God uses such broken, goofy people to fulfill his purpose.

Daily prayers:

1. God, have mercy.

2. God, fill me with your joy.

3. God, I want to walk in step with the spirit.

How to fill the hole of leadership:

1. Where is there real need?

2. Can I add value?

3. Is anyone else already doing something about it?

And then, persevere!

Bill George

Session 3: Finding Your True North

Are we doing all we can to be a light?

Authentic leaders - be genuine, be yourself.

Leadership is responsibility

Leadership is not about followers, it's about empowering people to step up and lead.

Align, empower, serve, collaborate

Developing Leaders

1. Understand the purpose of their leadership (calling)

2. Gain self awareness - get out and do, get feedback, introspection

3. Have values and integrity

4. Follow intrinsic motivations, strengths, and talents

5. Build a support team

6. Lead an integrated life - don't worry as much about balance, but make sure that you are the same person in every area

Wendy Kopp

Session 3: Stand Up and Lead

It's easy to be a leader when you deeply believe in what you are doing

Impact does come from well managed, strategically operated organizations

Cast your vision and then:

Be purposeful - maximize your time

Be relentless - towards your vision

John Burke

Session 4: Leading in New Cultural Realities

What kind of soil do we need for the people we are leading?  It is a leaders job to cultivate the soil for people.

What would it look like to create the right environment for God to move in people?  Does it provide room for broken people?

Soil needs grace giving acceptance.

Soil needs authentic confessing community.

Stay connected, fruit happens.

Spiritual leadership is getting people to stay connected together.

Efrem Smith

Session 4: Leading in New Cultural Realities

Culture is expression, one must engage the culture we live in.

We must be willing to lead multinationally and multiculturally

If you cannot love across racial/cultural lines, you are going to have a hard time leading

Pot luck idea - bring a meal that represents your upbringing

Praise

To the glory of God that one would leave so touched his soul would show on his cheek.

Fasting

I just finished reading the Fast chapter in Celebration of Discipline and it has inspired me to make fasting a discipline in my life.  God has been opening my eyes recently as to how much I am driven by and a slave to my appetites.  Consequently, I am completely controlled and consumed by that which I attempt to satisfy my appetites with.  This will not do!  The appetites of the flesh are directly contrary to the appetites of the spirit and therefore must not be allowed my energy.

The Plan:

Step 1.

Weekly liquid fasts, or partial fasts.  This means that during the set time of fast, fruit/vegetable juices, milk/honey can be consumed.  This will ease the body into the discipline.  I will do this on Wednesdays, starting at noon, and going for a 24 hour period of time ending on Thursday at noon.  Do this for four weeks.

Step 2.

Weekly water fasts.  No food, no juices, only water may be consumed during the fasts.  Same amount of time.  Do this for four weeks.

Step 3.

Weekly water fasts.  Same as prior step, but for a 36 hour period of time.  Start Wednesday at noon, continue until Thursday at midnight.  Do this for four weeks.

Step 4.

At this point I will process where to go.  I may try to add a monthly three day fast.  We'll see where the spirit leads.

Remember, break fasts with fruits and vegetables!

Live Life

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I took a shower with the lights off, which usually helps me sleep. This interesting series of events lead me to discover that light shines out of the drain in the floor. More importantly, I felt inspired to write these words:

I would rather die young, having lived a rich and full life, than to reach the age of expectancy having never have lived.

To expand:

I believe that Jesus has set us free to live our lives, not to spend them petrified to move, knowing that to move is to break the law (make mistakes). This conclusion presumes that one understand the severity of their brokenness, or rather, that one walks with the understand that one cannot possibly comprehend the full extent of their brokenness. Once true humility is reached, that is, once one comes face-to-face with the inevitable comprehension that they are indeed not perfect and that they indeed have not the power or ability to change themselves (regardless of the number of good deeds one uses to make up for said imperfection), one is now free to turn from a life of inward focus to a life as God intended. For did not God create Adam in shame (naked) but leave him free to live so focused on life that he did not realize his nakedness until, through the eating of the fruit, his eyes were turned towards himself? And has not the story of man always been a struggle on the part of He who loves us to refocus our eyes outwards? Therefore, it is an act of worship to spend time in deep, heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for every blessing of God.