Jonathan Herron

Living Out James 1:27

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:
to look after orphans..." - James 1:27 (NIV)

Your heavy is God's easy

I've been chewing on the story of 2 Kings 3 all week.

Rich encouragement for church leaders everywhere:

Verse 7: "Will you go with me to battle against Moab?” And he said, “I will go.  I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.”
Two are stronger than one.  And having fellow leaders and friends who have your back as you walk into battle is priceless.  This story is about three godly leaders uniting to do something big together.

Verse 8: Then he said, “By which way shall we march?”
Jehoram answered, “By the way of the wilderness of Edom.”
You see this over and over again throughout Scripture.  God takes His leaders through the exposed wilderness, not the easy, happy-dappy, cushy route.  Think Moses in the desert, Daniel and the cage of lions, Jesus and the wilderness...

Verse 9:  There was no water for the army
or for the animals that followed them.
Water = Life.  No water, no life.  Humans have zero ability to create either.  Only God can provide both.

Verses 16-18: “Thus says the Lord, ‘I will make this dry streambed full of pools.’  For thus says the Lord, ‘You shall not see wind or rain, but that streambed shall be filled with water, so that you shall drink, you, your livestock, and your animals.’   This is a light thing in the sight of the Lord. He will also give the Moabites into your hand..."
God leads us into desperate places so that we will become desperate for Him!  God's Spirit purposefully leads us into God-sized situations so that we might experience God-sized solutions!

No water?  No battle strategy?  Perfect!  God's got it!

Your heavy is God's easy!

In the middle of a dry, sandy desert with no weather forecast for rain? 
No problem, because Jesus plus nothing equals EVERYTHING! 

I love how Elisha nails God's point to the three kings: "This is a LIGHT thing in the sight of the Lord."  While you and I might be sweating bullets with stomachs twisted in knots as we face the impossible, the Lord of hosts doesn't even have to lift a finger to save the day. 

Christ is mightier than your momentary problem...
and He is FOR you, not against you! 

Your impossibility is a LIGHT thing in God's gaze! 
Why wouldn't you run to your Father for help? 

 

What's Next

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3 Leadership Observations at Disney World

I was recently at Disney World and made some observations:

1.  NO BUGS. 
Even though it's basically surrounded by swamp, everything Disney is bug-free.  No mosquitos. 

And you'd think from the thousands of melting Mickey Mouse ice cream bars in trash cans everyday that there would be flies.  Nope.  I checked.

Its the absence of distractions that enhances the guest's focus on the main thing.  Undistracting Excellence - what a concept!

2.  LARGEST NAVY. 
Water separates all the Disney parks, making boats essential for safety and transportation of guests.  When the park was being developed 40 years ago, did Old Man Disney settle for a measely fleet of boats?  Nope.  He went all Tinkerbell and created the world's fourth-largest navy.  Wowzers.  I love that Disney strategy: Do it right and do it BIG.

3.  SMALL WORLD IS SMALLER.  Magic Kingdom's infamous It's A Small World ride has a unique feature as it showcases robo-kids from around the world: only two tiny American robo's. 

The focus is intentionally put on the visitors experiencing things for the first time.  That's right; it's not about us.  Which is a great paradigm when most of your guests are from other nations. 

Putting outsiders' needs ahead of insiders'. 
That's how the church is supposed to be.

Invitation to a Journey...

"Go!"

Jesus' final charge to His disciples was a task so compelling and so enormous that it is taking over 2,000 years to accomplish.

Always advancing and never retreating.

Bringing explosive, irresistable life to everyone, everywhere.

And we're going to be part of advancing the movement in 2012.

 

Interested?  Want details?  Be among the first to know!

Sign up for the upcoming E-Blast.

Don't worry - this isn't inbox spam.
It's an invitation to a journey...
What I believe will be a compelling
and enormous adventure.

I can't wait to share with you what's ahead...

Phriday is for Photos: Disney World 2011 Edition

Blessed.  Honored.  Blown Away.  Thankful.

That's how I describe our recent all-expenses paid vacation to Disney World.

A generous, unexpected gift from a church.

I promised them photos - here's a sampling.  More on my Flickr.

And here's a pic I snapped at Downtown Disney.
My question: what HAPPENED that caused Disney to create THIS rule?!


 

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Heritage is Built Over Time

I spent most of yesterday with Jeff Forester,
lead pastor of Heritage Church outside Detroit.

Heritage is a great name for a church.

And as a side-note: I loved their worship guy's name - Jimmy Savage. 
Seriously, that's not a stage name, it's his real name. 
Isn't that rockstar awesome?!

Anyhow, Jeff is an experienced visionary with an encouraging heart.  From the outside looking in, Heritage looks like an overnight success story, reaching 1200 every weekend at their recently-opened new building. 

Get this: they completely renovated an old AMC 10-screen theater into a new, Gen X-style worship center.  Fantastic location.  Trust me, it's amazing.

But Jeff will be the first to tell you that Heritage is Built Over Time.

Ministry vibrancy today only came after
15 years of ministry failures and heartaches.

Hearing his church leadership journey was inspiring:
letdowns, false accusations made very publicly, relationships treated as disposable by past friends... Jeff has experienced it all.

He walked through 15 years of bumps and bruises in the church world wilderness before his family finally arrived at their promised land, Heritage.

You see, God allows church leaders to walk through misunderstandings, sheep bites, and criticisms to prepare you for what He has lined up ahead.

In Jeff's case, leading a then 5-year-old church plant of 240 people
toward greater vibrancy and health.

God's not done with you yet. 

Heritage is built over time.

So persevere. 

It's part of His refining process.

Just ask Jeff.

Book Notes: Switch - How to Change Things When Change is Hard

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
just became one of my Top 5 leadership books.

You.  Need.  To.  Read.  This.

 

Look who else is.

Here are some of the insights I underlined along the way:

• What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

• Psychology 101: Brain has 2 independent systems at work at all times:
  Emotional (instinctively feels pain & pleasure)
  and Rational (deliberates, analyzes, looks to future).
  Emotional side is an Elephant and rational side is it's Rider.

• Changes often fail because the Rider can't keep the Elephant on the road long enough to reach the destination.

• The Elephant is the one who gets things done. Much of our daily behavior is more automatic then supervised, and that's a good thing because the supervised behavior is the hard stuff. It's draining and exhaustible.

• Change is hard because people wear themselves out. If things are to change, you have to engage the Elephant.

• If you reach someone's Rider but not their Elephant, they will have direction without motivation.

• What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.

• All change requires three things:
  Direct the Rider (provide crystal-clear direction),
  Motivate the Elephant (what looks like laziness is often exhaustion),
  and Shape the Path (it's not a people problem, it's a situation problem).

 

Direct the Rider by:

• Finding the Bright Spots -
  Reject analysis paralysis by focusing less on problems and instead on any bright spots!  Bright spots provide not only direction for the Rider but hope and motivation for the Elephant.

• Archaeology is true but useless. 
  Instead, ask, "What's working right now and how can we do more of it?"

• Script the Critical Moves -
  Too many options, even good ones, can freeze us and make us retreat.  The more options the Rider is offered, the more exhausted the Rider gets.  Decision paralysis deters people.

• Change = new choices = creates uncertainty. 
  Ambiguity is exhausting to the Rider; uncertainty makes the Elephant anxious.

• Inertia and decision paralysis will conspire to keep people doing things the old way.  To spark movement in a new direction, you need to provide crystal-clear guidance.

• Point to the Destination -
  When you describe a compelling destination, you're helping to correct one of the Rider's greatest weaknesses - the tendency to get lost in analysis.

 

Motivate the Elephant by:

• Finding the Feeling - Influence emotions, not just thought.

• Change is NOT: Analyze - Think - Change. 
  
  Change is: See - Feel - Change!

• "We can change behavior in a short television ad.  We don't do it with information.  We do it with identity."

• When people fail to change, it's not usually because of an understanding problem.  Smokers understand that cigarettes are unhealthy, but they don't quit...

• Shrinking the Change -
  People find it more motivating to be partly finished with a longer journey than to be at the starting gate of a shorter one.  That's why the conventional wisdom is that you don't publicly announce a fund-raising campaign for a charity until you've already got 50% of the money in the bag.  After all, who wants to give the first $100 to a $1 MILLION fund-raising campaign?!

• The Elephant within us is easily demoralized - - it needs reassurance.
  You need to lower the bar.

• You need quick wins to get fired up.

• When you engineer early successes, what you're really doing is engineering hope.  Hope is precious to a change effort. 
  It's Elephant fuel!

• Growing Your People -
  Everything can look like a failure in the middle.

• Failing is often the best way to learn, and because of that, early failure is a kind of necessary investment.

 

Shape the Path by:

• Right behaviors do not evolve naturally!

• Tweak the Environment - this is about making the right behaviors a little bit easier and the wrong behaviors a little bit harder.

• What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. 
  You've got some control over the situation.

• If you change the path, you'll change the behavior.

• Building Habits -
  Because we instinctively try to fit in with our peer groups,
  behavior is contagious.

• Why are habits so important? 
  They are, in essence, behavioral autopilot.

• The value of action triggers reside in the fact that we are preloading a decision.

• The hard question for a leader is not how to form habits but which habits to encourage.

• The habit should serve the mission!!

• Checklists simply make big screwups less likely; they provide insurance against overconfidence.

• People fear checklists because they see them as dehumanizing... 
  Well, if that's true, grab a pilot's checklist and try your luck with a 747.

• Rally the Herd -
  In ambiguous situations, we all look to others for cues about how to behave.

• Behavior is contagious!

• In situations where your herd has embraced the right behavior,
  publicize it.

 

More resources from the Heath Brothers:

•  Made to Stick pdf

• Switch framework pdf

Steve Jobs on Failure and Creativity

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me.  The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.  It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." - Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Quick Hits

• Blessed. Disney World all last week - a generous, unexpected gift from a church wanting to love on our family, celebrating Little J's bday!  Photos soon.

• Traveled through Chicago over the weekend.  I love consulting with churches!

• My post-Disney-World-tan is fading.  

• “Strive to understand before you critique. Is it possible that you may not have as full a view as you like to believe you do?” - @ryanmeeks

• Finished EntreLeadership.  Now reading Dude Perfect's new book,
Go Big

• Be sure to sign up for our new Email Updates.  Good stuff is coming.  Promise.