Welcome back to the Bloggers Book Study. Today, we'll talk about Bill Hybel's book, Axiom, chapters 9 to 16.

9 THE FAIR EXCHANGE VALUE

1 Timothy 5, which says, “workers deserve their wages,” or are worthy of their due.5

Leaders often want maximum results, maximum effort, and maximum hours, regardless what a “fair exchange” would warrant. Christian organizations have often fallen prey to this mindset as well. Some are simply being exploitive, while others are undercapitalized and struggle to attain the fair exchange value at all.

10 THE VALUE OF A GOOD IDEA

Leaders traffic in idea creation. The best leaders are ferociously disciplined about seeking them out and incredibly committed to stewarding them well. In order to land one good idea—one breakthrough idea that will kick your organization's activity into high gear—you have to allow for hundreds or even thousands of mediocre ideas. After all, if your big aha is number seventy-eight, you'll never discover it unless you discipline yourself and your team to think through numbers one through seventy-seven.

Great leaders also know which people should be invited to idea-generation meetings in the first place. They know who will work hard and show up with long lists and who will not. And they try to make the meetings themselves a ball!

Once a really good idea surfaces, you have to be a fanatic about stewarding it well. Great leaders keep a pad of paper and a pen by their bed so that ideas will be captured and not forgotten.

11 BUILD A BOILER FUND

Years ago, families that owned businesses in Chicago found that when they ran too close to the financial edge, a big piece of machinery in their factory, such as the boiler, would decide to give way. Having no reserves to draw on, they couldn't afford to fix it, which meant they couldn't keep the plant running and would be forced to go out of business. Chicago folks started saying, “We need to have a boiler fund and keep pouring money into it, because someday when we least expect it, the boiler is gonna bust!”

Sadly, some of the finest ministries the world has ever known have had to lay off their staffs, shut their doors, and sell their facilities. Mismanagement was the cause of many organizational funerals. And to get even more specific, quite often a naive notion of “profit” played a particularly ruinous role. Every ministry, including the local church, must be profitable.

If you and I really believe that the local church is the hope of the world, then I believe we should do everything in our power to make sure that, at least from a financial perspective, the ministry can thrive well into the future.

12 TAKE A FLYER

Meaning, take risks, take a chance.

if your setting could stand a few sparks of God-ordained excitement: Take a flyer! It will keep you young, build your faith, and perhaps yield the breakthrough you need.

13 VISION LEAKS

Some leaders believe that if they fill people's vision buckets all the way to the top one time, those buckets will stay full forever. But the truth is, people's buckets have holes of varying sizes in their bottoms. As a result, vision leaks out.

When you can tell it's time for a vision refill, use every communication means available to you to repaint the picture of the future that fills everybody with passion. And then take it a step further by reporting progress on the vision's achievement. Trust me, when you wrap a little real-life proof around the accomplishment of your church's vision and show that the dream really is coming true, the fog will start to clear and people's heads will start to nod. “Oh yeah!” they'll suddenly remember. “I get it! I get it! This is what we're about! This is why we exist as a church.”

Ask key staff, “How full is your vision bucket these days?” Ask volunteers, “Do you sense progress around here toward our vision?” Ask members of your congregation, “Which part of our church's vision is the most meaningful to you?” Get a gauge on how full buckets are around you, leader, and then get busy topping them off.

14 VALUES NEED HEAT

Many leaders gaze longingly at other organizations and wonder how values like innovation and teamwork and excellence became so prevalent there. They would pay huge sums of money to transport those values to their own organization, but they know deep down that it doesn't work that way. Anytime you see God-honoring values being lived out genuinely and consistently, it's fair to assume that a leader decided to identify a handful of values and put a Bunsen burner underneath them. Every time she or he taught about the value or publicly praised someone for living that value out, it was like raising the temperature of that burner. Perseverance. Compassion. Servanthood. Generosity. Whatever the value, if it's alive and well in a local church today, it's not by accident. It's only there because of intentional, committed, dedicated effort. When you heat up a value, you help people change states. Want to jolt people out of business as usual? Heat up innovation. Want to untangle confusion? Heat up clarity. Want to eradicate miserliness? Heat up generosity! New “states” elicit new attitudes, new aptitudes, and new actions. It's not rocket science. It's just plain chemistry. Which is a lot about heat.

Leaders must figure out what values they believe should be manifested in their organizations. And then put them over the flame of a Bunsen burner by teaching on those values, underscoring them with Scripture, enforcing them, and making heroes out of the people who are living them out. Over time, sufficiently hot values will utterly define your culture.

15 THE DANGERS OF INCREMENTALISM

You know you've ingested a little incrementalism when innovation is no longer welcomed in your environment. Blue-sky days? “Aw, they're a thing of the past.” Taking a few flyers? “We don't even let the youth department do that anymore!” The biggest financial dream is a 3 percent increase over last year's income, because anything more than that would be going out on a wild limb of faith. Very slowly, and quite subtly, you find yourself increasingly satisfied with nothing more than incremental growth. And from there, things really start to go downhill.

the normal attrition rate for most churches is about 10 percent each year. That means you can be doing everything flawlessly—producing awe-inspiring worship services; effectively pointing people to faith and growing them up into dedicated followers of Christ; joyfully serving those who are poor; graciously providing shelter for those who are homeless; diligently caring for orphans and widows—and because of elderly people dying, career transitions, and people moving to new neighborhoods alone, you'll lose ten out of every hundred attenders each year. Toss in the shutdown of a manufacturing plant in your community, and that attrition rate could double.

Incremental thinking, incremental planning, incremental prayers—it's the kiss of death. Don't fall for it.

16 SIX-BY-SIX EXECUTION

Plan your top 6 priorities and develop a plan on how you will have those priorities achieved in 6 weeks.

Most leaders don't have the luxury of having only one ball to carry, but they know trying to juggle sixteen is an impossible feat. My teammates agreed that six seemed a reasonable compromise and were thrilled to finally have a streamlined set of goals to operate against. For twelve months straight, they did exactly that, emailing me their priorities one six-week chunk at a time.

Tomorrow, make sure you visit Barby's blog for axioms 17 to 24.

The Power of the Next-Action Decision

I have to admit, on a personal note, that this episode hit close to home. David Allen describes how more effective we can be in getting things done if we ask ourselves or others who work with us a very simple question: "What's the next action?" Often even the simplest things are stuck because we haven’t made a final decision yet about the next action. Any task, either big or small, has to be started at some point. Imagine you need to see your doctor about that knee of yours that's bothering you when you play tennis or go out for a run. As important as the task is, you can't just decide to show up at your doctor's office. Let's back track a little. In order to see your doctor, you must have an appointment. In order to have an appointment you need to make one by picking up the phone and calling your doctor's office. At this moment, that is your next action: Dial your doctor's phone number. Did you notice how many steps had to be tracked back before we actually got to the real next action on this project? That’s typical. Most people have many things just like that on their lists. We often procrastinate because we see the task as too big and hard to accomplish; it requires too much work.

Key points:

- It’s just the few seconds of focused thinking that most people have not yet done about most of their tasks.

- No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step toward solution. Do something.

- We quit when something is missing, but we’re not sure what it is exactly.

- It’s really the smartest people who have the highest number of undecided things in their lives and on their lists. Bright, creative, sensitive and intelligent people have the capability of freaking out faster and more dramatically than anyone else.

-in your next meeting with anyone, you end the conversation with the question, “So what’s the next action here?” Then notice what happens.

- You are either attracted or repelled by the things on your lists; there isn’t any neutral territory. You are either positively drawn toward completing the action or reluctant to think about what it is and resistant to getting involved in it. Often it’s simply the next-action decision that makes the difference between the two extremes.

So there you have it, always ask yourself "What's the next action?" and you will see how things start to get done. And by the way, I gave my doctor's office a call and made an appointment. What is the next action in that big project that's sitting on your desk with no progress?

Want to catch up?
- Chapters 1 & 2 at Genie's
- Chapters 3 & 4 at Yoel's
- Chapters 5 & 6 at iStacie's
- Chapters 7 & 8 at Marcy's

It's my turn to review chapters 9 & 10 for Francis Chan's Crazy Love. I gotta say this has to be one of my favorite reads this summer. I've enjoyed it a lot and learned from it tons.

Chapter 9 - Who Really Lives That Way?

Francis tells the stories of a group of people who were determined to live a radical lifestyle surrenedered to God and his love. They are powerful. I will mention them here but I encourage you to read them in the book, pray for their lives (some of these people are still alive, some already finished their race), and be challenged by them.

Nathan Barlow - A medical doctor helping people treat poor patients with mossy foot in rural districts in Ethiopia. He gave his life to help this people and in the end, made a big difference in that country. Read more about him at mossyfoot.com

Simpson Rebbavarapu - An orphan in poor India, his mother attempted to finish her pregnancy by abortion but God showed his powerful hand and Simpson survived. Now as an adult, he has founded an orphanage to take care of other poor kids and he also has a ministry that brings God's word to iliterate villages through audio Bibles. Check out beumin.org for more information.

Jamie Lang - at age 23, she flew to Tanzania on a misionary trip. There she met Juno, a small mal-nutritioned baby. Juno's mother was too sick with AIDS so Jamie decided to adopt him. Now Juno is 5, a healthy boy. Jamie is now married and has a little daughter. Her entire family has decided to move to Tanzania to make a difference in that part of the world.

Marva J. Dawn - A life long scholar, teacher and author, she wrote the book Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society. All the profits of her books go to charities like Stand With Africa: A Campaign of Hope, which supports african churches and communities as they withstand AIDS, banish hunger and build peace.

Rich Mullins - A musician, singer and songwriter, Rich wrote many songs covered by other christian artists. Songs like: Awesome God and Step by Step. He decided to live a radical lifestyle for Christ and taught music at a Navajo reservation in Arizona. He died in 1997.

Rings - An old man who lives out of his old pickup truck. He spends all of his pension money buying food for homeless people.

Rachel Saint - A missionary in South America, she spent her life witnessing about Jesus to the very dangerous Waorani Indians of Ecuador.

George Mueller - He dedicated his life to the poor orphans roaming the streets of Bristol, England. By the end of his life, over 10,000 orphans had ben taken care of by one of his orphanage homes.

Brother Yun - He preached the gospel in China, got arrested 30 times for doing so. He dedicated his life to bringing awareness of the need of God behind the Great Wall.

Shane Clairbourne - author of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane has dedicated his life to talk about all those in need in different parts of the world. Visit him at www.thesimpleway.org

The Robinson Family - A family dedicated to preparing a good breakfast for homeless people on Christmas morning.

Susan Diego - After traveling to Uganda, she decided to speak at women conferences back home in the United States.

Lucy - A former prostitute, lives a modest life but the door to her house is always open to any girls who are stuck in the world of prostitution.

Cornerstone Community Church - They assign half of their budget to be given away to those in need, believing that they need to "love your neighbor as yourself".

Chapter 10 - The Crux of The Matter

You might be asking yourself: "What in the world does this mean for me?" The first church responded with immediate action: repentance, baptism, selling possessions, sharing the gospel. We respond with words like Amen, Convicting sermon, Great book ... and then are paralyzed as we try to decipher what God wants of our lives. Annie Dillard once said, "How we live our days is ... how we live our lives."  Should you put your house on the market today and downsize? Maybe. Should you quit your job? Maybe. Or perhaps God wants you to work harder at your job and be His witness there. Does He want you to move to another city or another country? Maybe. Perhaps He wants you to stay put and open your eyes to the needs of your neighbors.

"Is this the most loving way to do life? Am I loving my neighbor and my God by living where I live, by driving what I drive, by talking how I talk?." Consider and actually live as though each person you come into contact with is Christ.

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. -1 Corinthians 12:4-7

Francis wrote this book because much of our talk doesn't match our lives. We say things like, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," and "Trust in the Lord with all your heart." Then we live and plan like we don't believe God even exists. We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine even if God doesn't come through. But true faith means holding nothing back. It means putting every hope in God's fidelity to His promises.

What is this Bloggers Book Study non-sense? Find out more about it here.

Want to catch up?

-Chapters 1 & 2 by Heredes
-Chapter 3 by Barby Ward
-Chapter 4 by Mauricio Tinoco
-Chapter 5 by LeadHerShip

When are leaders at their best?

You might say:

- When they are performing the functions of leadership.
- When they exhibit character.
- When they are working in tandem with God.

Even though all those statements are true, the bottom line is that leaders are at their very best when they are raising up leaders around them. Or put another way, leaders are at their best when they are creating a leadership culture.

When we see a leader whose radar wand is spinning around to locate an emerging leader, or when I watch an older leader investing time and energy to coach and empower a younger leader, then we are seeing leadership at its very best and we must make this one of our highest priorities, because only leaders can develop other leaders and create a leadership culture and only leaders can multiply the leadership impact by raising up additional leaders. When a leader develops not only his or her own leadership potential, but draws out the leadership potential of scores of other leaders as well, the kingdom impact from one life is multiplied exponentially. It produces far more fruit than any single leadership achievement could have.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT REQUIRES A VISION
Developing leaders is something that never happens accidentally. It only happens when some leader has a white-hot vision for it. In high-speed, high-intensity organizations — AKA your local church — leadership development will always slip to the bottom of the agenda unless mature leaders force it to the top. Imagine how strong a church would be if it had a deep bench of competent leaders in every area of its ministry, from small groups to children’s ministry to spiritual formation. That will only happen if leaders shape a compelling vision. The next challenge is to come up with a strategy for turning that vision into reality.

SOMEONE SPOTTED OUR POTENTIAL
How is it that you wound up becoming a leader? At some point in your past, somebody noticed something in your wiring pattern that you probably didn’t even know was there. Putting a hand on your shoulder, that person said, “I think you could be a leader.” That is the way you were “spotted” to lead. Now you need to be the spotter. Does my age matter? Can I lead people that are older than me? Leadership is more a function of ability than age. You provide competent leadership and people of any age will follow your direction.

SOMEONE INVESTED IN US
Maybe the person who first saw leadership potential in us also developed us, or maybe someone else along the way actually did the developmental work. But we were poured on at some point, we got to where we are today because someone built into us, coached us, and showed us how to lead. All effective leaders can point back to someone who sacrificed time and energy to grow them up as leaders. The gift those people gave us is something we should never take for granted. We need to remember and to honor the people who made these priceless investments in our leadership development. Then we need to let those memories motivate us to play the same role in another leader’s life.

SOMEONE TRUSTED US WITH RESPONSIBILITY
Someone took a risk and said, “Here’s the leadership baton. I think you’re ready to run with it. Here’s a job. I believe you can do it. Here’s a position. I’m confident you can fill it.” Leaders don’t become leaders until someone actually puts a baton of responsibility in their hand and says, “Go!”

Qualities To Look For in Emerging Leaders

1. INFLUENCE
Potential leaders always have a natural ability to influence others. Even if they have no conscious intention of leading people, they automatically exert influence.

2. CHARACTER
Lots of people with influence lack the character to use that influence constructively. Once you spot someone with influence, try to discern whether he or she has the honesty, the humility, the stability, the teachability, and the integrity to steward that influence well. Also look for evidence of a sincere walk with God.

3. PEOPLE SKILLS
This can be defined as sensitivity to the thoughts and the feelings of others, and the ability to listen —really listen — to the ideas of others. Leaders with people skills genuinely care for other people, who view others as more than a means to an end.

4. DRIVE
People that are action-oriented and comfortable taking initiative. Good leaders make things happen. People who have so much energy that they energize others without even trying. Always be on the look out for people with the necessary drive to abound in the work of the Lord. 1 Corinthians 15:58. “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.”

5. INTELLIGENCE

This doesn’t mean high SAT scores or a sheepskin from an Ivy League university, it means mental quickness. You should look for people with street smarts, with the kind of mental savvy required to process lots of information, sift through it, consider all the options, and generally make the right decision. You should also look for someone with an eager, curious mind who can learn and grow over the long haul.

A Leadership Development Plan of Your Own

PHASE 1: DRAW UP YOUR OWN TOP-FIVE QUALITY LIST
Come up with a list of people you know that have potential as leaders. Get together with your team and come up with an even bigger list. You can be surprised on how your team will spot people you have no idea have potential to lead.

PHASE 2: INVEST IN EMERGING LEADERS
This is the intentional development or training stage. It takes a leader to develop a leader. Leaders learn best from other leaders. For emerging leaders to become seasoned, wise, and effective leaders, they need proximity to and interaction with veteran leaders.

PHASE 3: ENTRUST EMERGING LEADERS WITH RESPONSIBILITY
Make him or her lead something. No one can grow as a leader without the real life challenges of actually leading.
Matthew 10:16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.”

Jesus moved through these three phases as he raised up his disciples and other potential leaders.He selected his disciples carefully. He knew that in the not-too-distant future, he would be handing the leadership of the New Testament church over to them. He had to make sure that he chose people with the potential to assume that responsibility. He:

- Spent time with them.
- Taught them.
- Nurtured them.
- Confronted them.
- Motivated them.
- Rebuked them.
- Inspired them.
- Entrusted them with real ministry responsibility and coached them into effectiveness.

Are you doing all these things to the people you are leading?

When we have identified emerging leaders, and when we have built into them, trained them, and adequately prepared them, then we must entrust these folks with real responsibilities. We as laders live for high-stake challenges! We crave the kind of kingdom goals that make us gasp and gulp.

One of the things that should motivate you as a leader more than anything else is seeing leaders you’ve helped to develop soaring as leaders in the kingdom.

Whatever challenges our churches face in the years ahead, we can face them with confidence, knowing that we were wise enough to invest in the next generation of leaders.We must create leadership cultures. We must identify emerging leaders, invest in them, give them kingdom responsibilities, and coach them into effectiveness.

That will be leadership at its very, very best.

I get to be a part of the Bloggers Book Study starting this week with a cool group of people who I happen to do life with. In the next few weeks, we will be reviewing a set of life and leadership books so I hope you visit me and my fellow bloggers and leave comments with  your thoughts.

I bought a Kindle 2 about 3 months ago. I like it, use it a lot, highlighting and taking notes is so cool, specially when doing book study. But every now and then, I find myself craving the romantisicm of turning a physical paper page or the smell of a brand new book.

Pros: Light weight, environment friendly (no trees are damaged in the production of a Kindle... hopefully), I always carry it in my backpack, capacity for hundreds even thousands of books

Cons: Visually it's not as exciting as holding a physical book, contrast is not the best  (dark gray font against light gray background as opposed to black ink against white paper background).

So eventhough I am loving it and enjoying it, I like it when I have to buy a paperback or hardcover version of a book because it's not available on the Kindle store.

Enjoy.

Jenny Martin (Ana Lucia Cortez)

Ezequiel Fattore (Charlie Pace)

Yoel Torres (Daniel Faraday)

Brian Vasil (Dr Marvin Candle)

Cristian Garcia (Jack Shephard)

Rebecca Pimienta (Juliet Burke)

Olivia Arellano (Polar Bear)

Martin Lalama (Richard Alpert)

Michelle Garcia (Danielle Rousseau)

Kevis Mulchan (Sayid Jarrah)

Miguel Umanzor (Sayid Jarrah) Notice the sharpie'd chest hair.

Annette Mesa (Danielle Rousseau)

Ian Achong (Jin Kwon)

Stacie and Stacey (Steve and Scott)

Roberto Lopez (The Smoke Monster aka Smokie)

Roberto's Boss (Jack Shephard)

Meagan Deneau (Charlie Pace)

Liz Mesa (Kate Austen)

Mau Montaner (Hugo Reyes)

Kody Garcia (Little Ben Linus)

Cristobal Brito (Daniel Faraday)

Ariel Conway (Claire Littleton)

Carlos Garcia (Mikhail Bakunin)

Cristina Rodriguez (Kate Austen)

Who do you think has the best costume?

Any thoughts on refurbished? Good experiences? Bad experiences?