We asked Colin if Mom should go on another plane ride.

His only response…”Don’t Like It”

We asked him, “Can Dada go on another plane ride?”

“Yeah” (with enthusiasm)

It’s clear who’s the “B” team in this household

As previously mentioned, it was me with the kids for 4 days or so while my wife was out of town.  We had a great time and had some classic moments.

I was most worried about my 2 year old son who is a momma’s boy.  But his only two tantrums involved butter and pancakes.  He loves butter and loves pancakes.  He was really bothered that the butter was melting on hot pancakes and thus no longer visible.  Those situations were only resolved by me putting extra butter so he could touch it and hold the pancake up to his face so he could make out with all the butter.  Four days with a two-year old and if that’s my only bump in the rode I’ll take it!   I now call him butter boy.

Morgan, my almost 5 year old daughter, takes on a more maternal role for sure which is helpful as she continually reminded me of things that I was supposed to be doing.  It was like having a little living parenting book for what to do while mom is gone.

She’s showing me that she’s too quick for her own good though.  We were at a food court while doing some shopping over the weekend and I asked her to get up and walk 10 feet away to get a bunch of napkins because Colin was making his typical mess.  She responded, “I don’t think I should do that because I don’t want people to think that I don’t have parents.” She’s developing her manipulation skills which is always an encouraging site…she inherited the lawyer gene that was passed from my grandfather to my mom to me and now it’s taking root in a 4th generation.

Last week my wife was carrying a box up the stairs to our place and Colin stumbled briefly as he often does because of his tendency to try to walk sideways or backwards. It wasn’t really a fall and it was more whining and wanting to be held while my wife was trying to get everybody up the stairs.  Morgan then stopped my wife and said, “Mom, family is more important than that box!” She’s becoming quite the presence in our household…doesn’t miss much.

She turns 5 in a couple days which is just amazing to think about.  Anyway, I had a great time playing Mr. Mom and hanging with the kids.  We dominated Costco together, got dominated together by a McDonalds play area, had a couple ice cream and movie nights, and had a hysterical time at the flower shop getting some flowers for momma to take to the airport.

The posts have slowed down for me of late.  It’s been a season of high travel, several bouts of sickness, and most recently watching my kids for the last four days while my wife was at the Synergy Conference in Orlando.

While I can’t provide a book review, ministry insight, or even a family picture today I’ll leave you with this beauty for your edification.  There’s just so much in this short article that left me in awe.  It makes me appreciate the era of internet journalism.

I hope to return soon with more refined reflections

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,588369,00.html

Feel free to pass on your own reactions to this story if you have a helpful insight

“When the spine of identity is well-established, it is possible to risk relating in depth to those who are different from the self.”

- James W. Fowler, Weaving the New Creation: Stages of Faith and the Public Church (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 156;  referenced in What Color is Your God? by James & Lillian Breckinridge

In the Christian world there is much attention to identity as it relates to what would be called positional truth.  And that’s important, but there’s aspects to identity that are just as important to explore for self and others.  Perhaps part of why most of today’s faith communities lack depth is because there is a lack of attention to what truly makes each person who they are?  Can we really be affirming of God’s creation in humanity without being willing to affirm the influences that shape identity, and thus spirituality?

What do you think?  Do you think identity is appropriately addressed in your context or community?  What’s your response to Fowler’s comment?

“Nobody grows up in Florida, unless they’re an orange.”

I saw a movie again a couple weeks ago  – Music and Lyrics, one of those romantic comedy ones.  This line jumped out at me and was humorous to me.  Hugh Grant says it to the love interest as she is stating that she needs to grow up and stop chasing dreams so she’s going to go to Florida to work and grow up.

This was funny to me because I was about to go to Florida, site of my organization’s headquarters, for a week of meetings as some organizational restructuring was getting rolled out.   If applied in this context as the center of my ministry’s organizational life, the one-liner taps into that typical suspicion people get amidst organizational change.

Leading organizational change is hard stuff man.  There has to be some serious conceptual work, solid organizational thought, strategic AND authentic communication, compassion and sympathy for those experiencing change, and ultimately a strong resolve and security to handle the backlash.

From what I can tell the process wasn’t perfect and the roll out wasn’t either, but I’m encouraged by where we’re going.  The bottom line is that there were some overdue structural changes that aim to make a significant effort to empower previously marginalized groups and make it easier to partner with those needed to get the job done.  So props to them.  There is growing up that happens in Florida outside of oranges

This week I’ve been at some organizational meetings and they integrated into the program a trip to Cirque de Solei’s La Nouba at Orlando’s Downtown Disney.  Some of the show and elements were integrated into some of the organizational discussions and it was a fun group thing to do.

I’ll confess..I nodded off a couple times during it, but that could be a combination of jet lag and all-day meetings.  Or it could be that I don’t find dudes in body suites contorting their bodies in unnatural ways very inspiring.

There were a few acts that were pretty amazing and it brings to mind both how much talent the various people were as well as how hard they had to work day in day out to translate that talent to a form of artistry.  It’s similar to many of the Olympic athletes as well.

There’s times I ride some of the talent I have, but the results always are better when my hard work is matching or exceeding the talent level.  Unprepared talent starts to look like non-talent after a while.  Prepared talent ends up looking like “gifting.”

In my ministry right now, it is conference season.   There’s student conferences, there’s staff conferences, there’s leadership conferences, and that doesn’t even get into the fun conferences offered out in the greater world beyond.

I am on staff with Epic Movement, which is a part of the larger ministry/organization Campus Crusade for Christ.  There are so many conferences that there is a tongue in cheek phrase used by many when conference fatigue sets in and the organization is referred to as “Campus Crusade for Conferences.”

For a long time I’ve struggled with this – not that people would revert to a clever play on words to express some of the reality of what they’re feeling, but that people would be in a position where they would even be feeling that reality at all.

There are immense value to many conferences.  On the local level, just like in many other ministry settings there is immense value to getting students out of their daily ruts and routines to be in some sacred space and community to hear the voice of God and consider what track their lives are on.  It’s the organizational side which presents some of the tensions.

One thing a national ministry like ours doesn’t have to deal with like many locally based ministries like most churches is that of geography.  In this case we function like an organization.  But we’re a ministry that is driven by trust and relationships and a measure of community that doesn’t exist in a corporate context.  The only way the relational context can be nurtured is through in person opportunities to build trust and relational capital.   So conferences are the default territory for trainings, leadership communication, alignment, and change initiatives.

To some degree, this cannot be changed.  I was reminded last week that there is a power in face time that just cannot be duplicated in other ways.   Ministry effectiveness is really dependent on trusting relationships on many levels and in many places.  But is there any hope?

I can’t see if there’s hope or not because I can’t speak to how the powers that be see this issue, but there is a lot of reason for hope based on new technologies.  More than ever, we need to consider different ways of doing things.  Video conferencing and other mediums offer alternatives to expensive and time consuming conferences to minimize some of the fatigue when there is so much going on.

Ultimately, there are new ways to do what conferences have traditionally done in some areas or venues.  We sometimes need to be bold enough to let go of some traditional venues to try them out.  But the only way people do not get burned out is if those higher on up continue to think about how to create a healthy and sustainable culture that values consistency and stability on the local level.  Perhaps this would lead to the elimination of some conferences.  It might lead to a new model of how conferences seek to be effective so that they are maximized.

Here’s my personal philosophy of conferences with my own context in view:

1. Eliminate any of them that can even remotely have their objectives met in an online context or distance format.  If you can do it without forcing people to travel and spend time away from their family and context, then you should.  If you’re doing it because it’s always been done or because it’s a source of income then you’re behind the times and contributing to oppression by conference.
2. Make sure you have enough in person opportunities with people you need to partner with or lead to build trust and nurture an authentic and trustworthy ethos in your context.
3. If there is a conference that has been deemed a priority, its leadership/planners better make the most of it.  A lot of people have different approaches to scheduling an organizational summit or conference, but over half the time I end up bummed out because the unique opportunities offered by being in person are wasted.  One tip I’ll throw out there that I picked up about 5 or 6 years ago – if trust is the most valued commodity among leaders spread out geographically, then the approach or program of the conference needs to reflect that.
4. If you don’t HAVE to go, then don’t.  By “have to” I mean either someone is making you or it would violate your commitment to stewarding your leadership role to take a pass on it.

These are just my opinions that border on light convictions.  Ultimately we’re responsible for stewarding our lives and callings, but sometimes it would really help if our organizations and we as leaders would help us out by vigilantly continuing to evaluate all of these venues in light of some of the overall values and the long-term view in mind.  A failure to do so is to shape culture in a direction that works against the human condition.  Ultimately Christ as the object of our service and work can be undermined by incessant activity.

Time are a-changing and we need to change to so that we always remain driven by values and stewardship as opposed to merely goals and tasks.  People in other ministry contexts might not understand the tensions inherent in a para-church organization.  The organizational side and the sacred community side make for a difficult blend at times.  But those in contexts like mine need to be vigilant on this front to steward both the culture within the organization and its witness and reputation to those outside the organization.

For those in my ministry – curious what your thoughts are on this?  Do you have a different philosophy?  Have you ever considered the need to have a personal philosophy of conferences?

I decided about a year ago that this year I was going to do something out of the ordinary to bring a greater focus to celebrating Christ’s death and resurrection on Easter.  As a follower of Christ with the background I have sometimes the passion week and the sufferings of Christ are under-emphasized and I’ve wanted to move towards a more significant experience and practice.  I decided I was going to participate in lent and give something up that would cause me to feel daily my dependence upon something other than me.

If you know me, there’s not much secret as to what I am most physically dependent with a borderline addiction and that would be soda, diet coke in particular.  So a few weeks ago after considering the power diet coke has over me, I felt like this was the thing to die to for the coming season.

I’m in day 3 of my particular fast and here’s a couple observations.  I miss diet coke badly.  I think about it all the time.  I have had a couple rounds of caffeine headaches which I’m managing with an occasional coffee (which I don’t really like that much).  In fact, if there’s a commercial or tv show and there’s a strategically placed can for advertising purposes – I’m hypersensitive to it.  Olympics – I see every sign and every ad for diet coke as if I was a savant.  I see nothing but that 12 oz. can right now.   As you can see, this is a faith endeavor and you might be thinking I need deliverance from bondage – and that might be true.

Anyway, this process came about because I wanted to have a more holistic and broader reflection on Easter and the passion week and the resurrection this year.  A lot of that comes from having read a couple books over the last couple years from N.T. Wright.

If you’re wanting to specifically do some reflection and reading, one step would be to read one of his more recent books entitled Surprised By Joy: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. As you get closer to Easter itself a great read to go through during the passion week is Christians at the Cross:  Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. You can read a brief chapter each day of passion week leading up to Easter and last year it was very helpful for me in shaping how I experienced that time.

My friend Mike passed on a site that could also be of help if you have a family and are thinking about how to create an environment that is nurturing significant spiritual formation for your children through seasons like this.  It’s worth checking out at:  http://www.modernsacredfamily.com/

Hope this is a meaningful and hopeful season for you.

I don’t plug events too often, but my wife is going to a conference called Synergy in a few weeks that I’m going to plug because I wish I could go too.  But…I get to watch the kids which will be its own challenge and reward.

In some ways it’s built as a “women’s leadership conference”, but it’s been moving much more towards being focused on issues of partnership between men and women in various Kingdom contexts.   There’s a few venues out there looking to encourage and edify Christian women, but there’s not much going on that is seeking to constructively and actively redeem the male and female partnership as it pertains to working and serving together. And there’s definitely not much out there that isn’t driven by theological biases and positions that often end up undermining the image of God instead.

This is very much needed today because most men who are even really supportive of empowering women often don’t understand what’s involved in what that actually means. I’m excited that there’s a delegation of almost 30 from my ministry (which is over 1/3 of our whole ministry) that is going to the Synergy conference and several of them are men as well.  I love that there is a groundswell of motivation in Epic to really live out the image of God together in how relate and work together.

If you’re a woman or man and this taps into a felt need for you, check it out.  There’s still time for you to go this year, but there’s always next year as well.

http://www.synergytoday.org/conferences.html

I wanted to follow up one of my last posts to provide some explanation for something that on the face would have been hard to understand and appreciate.  And if you stop by this blog from time to time, I’ll reference Friedman and his thoughts and this is a good distinction to make if you’re new to Friedman or the systems world.

I quoted an Edwin Friedman quote where he was denigrating leadership that preferred empathy over responsibility.  In Friedman’s literature and theory, empathy is toxic – as he defines it.

How can empathy be bad?  After all, it’s one of the five characteristics or character qualities that author Daniel Goleman ascribed to “Emotional Intelligence.”

Friedman’s concept of empathy is equivalent to more of what is often referred to as co-dependence, or the kind of “care” that has no boundaries and in which one person loses their “self” to someone else’s unregulated irresponsibility.  That is the essence of what he deems to be at the heart of society’s struggles and he coins the phenomena “A Failure of Nerve” and wrote a fantastic book by that title, which is a must read.

So Friedman is not against love and compassion, but against behaviors and action that undermines self and responsibility.  And I would add that Friedman’s and Goleman’s thoughts are compatible in that they emphasize self-regulation and responsibility as essential for mature and healthy functioning.

If you want to read more about this train of thought you can click on “Beav’s Bookstore” above and check out the books in the Family and Organizational Systems and Leadership tab.  Or you can download this pdf of some more extended thoughts and writing I’ve done in this area.

Hope that distinction is helpful moving forward.

So it is Super Bowl week and I just heard there is going to a remake or spoof of the “Super Bowl Shuffle” in one of this years Super Bowl commercials starring some of the old school ‘85 Bears.  Mike Singletary and Jimmy Mac are in the mix.  Word is there’s also going to be a Maury Buford sighting as well as Steve Fuller so they were digging deep to find enough Bears that were willing to participate.

Superbowl XX continues to be the greatest Super Bowl of all time and I will honor it by posting the Superbowl Shuffle here for your viewing in case your feeling nostalgic.  If you’ve never seen it, it’s become a classic piece of Sports history…and it’s awesome.

Now, wasn’t that fun? (another reference to another well known piece of Bears Advertising lore – picture Jim McMahon with the shades).

I’d rather watch Superbowl XX again this Sunday instead of this year’s version, but I doubt I could get anyone to watch it with me as a Superbowl alternative.

I am halfway through reading Edwin Friedman’s The Myth of the Shiksa, which was published posthumously a couple of years ago as a collection of essays and lectures from Friedman.

The first essay is a classic entitled, “An Interview with the First Family Counselor.”  What makes this a unique work is that Friedman identifies the First Family Counselor as none other than Satan.  This 30 page essay is really a “Screwtape Letters” from a Family Systems perspective as “Satan” shares his strategies for undermining maturity and increasing anxiety in systems.

At one point “Satan” discloses that “My primary tactic is to get flesh and blood to focus on the wrong information, on data, for example, rather than maturity, or on empathy rather than responsibility, or on self as a category of narcissism rather than a matter of integrity.” (8)

He later adds, “…the more anxious I can make society, the easier it becomes for me to tempt creatures into violating the nature of their being, and that’s when I’ve really got them.” (11)

So what are the important things people should focus on and dwell on?

He writes, “The important categories of the soul (and they are the real bridges to community) are:

1. Knowing what you believe. I mean not only what you live for but what you’d die for.
2. Knowing where you begin and where other people who are important to you end.
3. Being able to preserve your own self, that is, having integrity, in a close relationship.
4. Having horizons that are not limited by what you can actually see.
5. Being able to stay on course when others sabotage you.  By that I mean mustering up the self-regulation not to be reactive to the reactivity of others when you succeed at the above.
6. And, as I said earlier, making your own salvation dependent upon your own functioning rather than on using or saving others.

These are the information categories that count and they totally transcend social science data.” (14-15)

I love reading Friedman’s stuff.  There’s a directness and irreverence that I really am drawn to.   This is a great follow up to A Failure of Nerve.  I would recommend reading A Failure of Nerve first, but this is a great follow up and I’ve enjoyed reading some shorter, more focused essays.

There’s more to come, but what do you think about the above “categories of the soul?”

I first read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed my senior year of college.  Freire is a South American educator and in many ways a theologian.  I was on the verge of graduating in under three years and wasn’t ready to deal with the real world yet so I added a Political Science major to the History major I had almost finished.  I ended up taking classes that at the time were a big thorn in my side, but looking back I seriously under-appreciated some of them – but I’m amazed how some of those classes are the ones I remember the most (at least the ones I showed up for).

I kept Pedagogy of the Oppressed because it had some serious depth to it and I experienced it even then as a hope giving work in political and education theory that was seeking to find ways to liberate people from being marginalized and oppressed by power dynamics expressed throughout culture and society.  I just came across a reference to it in one of the books I’ve been reading by Robert Pazmino dealing with the nature of what is transformational education:

“Transformation is a liberating education that treats learners as subjects, as active agents, and not as objects or passive recipients of the wisdom shared.  Students are thus viewed as active, creative subjects with the capacity to examine critically, interact with, and transform their world.

Transformation is also described as problem-posing education, which encourages freedom for students in cooperative dialogue with the teacher and other students.  In contrast to transformation education is banking or problem-solving education, which imposes knowledge on passive students.  In banking education, the teacher assumes an authoritarian role, prescribing what the students are to learn and how they are to think and behave.”  (Pazmino, pp. 78-79 referencing Freire).

You might read that and write it off as some nice statement about how we should teach and communicate in empowering ways as opposed to static and boring ways.  But think about liberating and transformational education as opposed to banking education as it relates to some of the following areas:  empowering ethnic minorities who are studying, working, or serving in a majority culture context; passing on the Christian faith to the next generation, and raising up leaders who can make a transforming difference in this world.

Teaching and trainings that are controlled by people in power will most likely reinforce the way things have always been done and the status quo unless their is a commitment to releasing some of that power to free others up to contribute as equally significant voices in the community.  Finding ways to truly empower people and help them learn and grow is something we need to think about just as much as what we want them to know.  Otherwise we run the risk of conforming potential leaders into the majority culture’s image and we lose the opportunity to grow and change corporately from new ideas, new perspectives, and perhaps fresh courage and boldness.

It’s worth stating that if your way of doing things resembles “banking,” you’re directly or indirectly perpetuating some deep problems and issues that result in some form of oppression or powerlessness among those under your leadership.  “Bankers” act, lead, and educate as if their voice is the only one that matters.  “Transformational” or problem-posing educators or leaders lead with a pursuit to nurture and empower voices at all levels.

Even the most controlling leaders I’ve ever met never at a heart level would want to intentionally have a silencing and controlling legacy.  So consider a shift from problem-solving to problem-posing in how you get things done.  Think about shifting from banking to transformation.

Executing a lot of this is a different matter, but I’m motivated to keep learning and thinking about how to make sure everything I do has transformation and empowerment as its goal.

What are ways you are choosing transformation over banking in your leadership context?  Do you see other areas where some of these thoughts pertaining to how we teach are evident?  How do you see the execution of a transformational approach being lived out in your context?

So I’ve had major plumbing emergency issues of late.  With the latest edition of California “Storm Watch” I came within 1/4 of an inch of having my living room flooded because water wasn’t draining in our patio right.

Turns out my patio storm drain was flat out busted due to yes – a beer can.  My plumber thinks there’s no way it could have traveled to where it was stuck and somebody must have been pissed off and did on purpose back in the day for some reason.  That was well before we lived here, but we have to deal with it.

Fortunately it doesn’t rain that much, but the water had always been able to drain somewhat through our neighbor’s drain which is positioned about 1 foot from our drain.  But their drain got completely clogged as well.  So there was nowhere for the water to go, but towards my living room.  It got to the point where I started bailing water like I was in a little boat that was being circled by sharks.  I bailed about 100 gallons of water in an hour from my patio and then fortunately the rain stopped and the water slowly started to lower.  Then I got some sandbags and called a plumber.

$1500 later I have a new drain.  This Bud’s for You.

As an aside I almost titled this post “What the Plumber found…” but realized where most people’s minds would go, but had to include it here somewhere.

One of the things that annoyed me to no end about President Obama’s inauguration was how much the media coverage made an intentional effort to repeatedly denounce the past eight years in order to glamorize what the future was going to be with a new Sheriff in town.  It bugged me even more because most of it was unnecessary because of the inherent significance of what that day meant to so many people.

This is not a political post and has nothing to do with who I voted for and why. I bring this up because I thought at the time how it was a classic example of what leaders (and their communities) sometimes do when there is a leadership change.  Many leaders feel compelled to denigrate the past to validate their “chosenness” or greatness or whatever they feel like they need to generate some hope and credibility.  The legacy of previous leaders are thrown under the bus so that leader X can generate an “all-good” feeling about his leadership and the new regime.  It’s like a bulldozer approach to leading change.  You level the house and start over.

Now to be honest…I’ve done this before.  It was a long time ago and I didn’t realize that this was what I was doing or why.  I was young for sure, but really the issue was that I was pretty reactive in my leadership.  I wasn’t able to be secure in what I was leading towards without building up my own sense of wisdom and superior insight at the expense of those who went before me.   The worse I made the inherited conditions out in my own mind, the greater opportunity there was to be significant in my own leadership efforts.  It’s a dangerous leadership illusion.

So I’ve done this before…but it’s also been done to some of my leadership efforts and I’ll tell you this…it really sucks.  It’s a real horrible feeling when you watch stuff you’ve poured your heart and soul into get bulldozed or flushed down the toilet.  Your work and vision can become indirectly the negative example somehow that is to be avoided for the sake of somebody else’s rosy colored vision of the future.

I’m not going to share any bullet points of what leaders should do, but in the last couple of years I have watched a few friends who are leaders or pastors take over significant leadership positions and avoid this great temptation that plagues insecure and reactionary leaders.  I watched from a distance as they affirmed the legacies that they were inheriting, affirmed the people and labor that laid the groundwork for their leadership opportunities, and in general emphasized continuity in the community and mission as opposed to emphasizing discontinuity.

Sometimes discontinuity (i.e. change) needs to be emphasized when there has been a great scandal or moral failure that has undermined the community’s trust to a significant level, but even then there can be a gracious and respectful way of affirming the positive contributions of people that you are following – especially if they had been at it for a long time.  Insecure leaders will be tempted to talk down the past to build themselves up as well as their plans.  It sets almost a kind of Messianic complex.   I really have come to appreciate leaders who are both secure as well as respectful of how they lead change with regard to what they are inheriting.  It’s a cheap short cut to throw others under the bus to build our own sense of importance and significance.  It also exposes much of the underlying character driving the change effort, which no doubt will be exposed over time on a greater level.

If the people we lead are vulnerable to this kind of all good all bad emotional reactivity, then the situation is all the more dangerous.  We’re in a reactionary culture where we are programmed by media to create new heroes just so we can tear them down.  Spiritual and Servant leaders are called to be better than that and demonstrate respect and grace across differences and even in the midst of great disagreement.  All of us leading today need to think about how we lead change – not just as it relates to the strategies and methodologies, but how we live out the Kingdom of God while we do it.  We can be a blessing and build a lot of bridges rather than indirectly curse the past and burn bridges that we don’t need to.

Do you think it’s hard for leaders today to affirm the past and the legacies they inherit?  Do you have any wisdom for leaders who feel tempted to build themselves up in this way?