Scott Cheatham’s Weblog

In his book “The 7 Practices of Effective Ministry”, Andy Stanley asks his readers to start the process outlined in his book by doing one thing: Clarifying the Win. What is it you are shooting for?  What steps do we take to get there.  As a pastor, our church meets quarterly to remind ourselves what business we are in.  I regularly mention it from the pulpit.  We are in the business to create transformed lives.  To use a term coined by pastor and author Nelson Searcy, we track RTL’s or “Radically Transformed Lives”.

It’s easy to get caught up in the daily administrative work that must be done to keep a church moving forward.  It’s easy to create a lot of “busy” work to give yourself and others the impression that you are effectively using your time.  This applies in all areas of work but in the pastorate it can take the form of many little tasks that would be better delegated or those that could be done more efficiently.  This week, two very different people made decisions to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior and thus, began the process of RTL’s.  One is perhaps nearing the end of his life (only God knows) and the other is in the very beginnings of her adult life and is having a child.  Both saw need of a savior and both have now inherited eternal life from the Master and Creator of all things.

To be certain, those mundane tasks must be done.  But as I sat outside on my porch last night and began to consider the week’s events, God used it to bring back a point that I always try to keep front and center.  HIS kingdom is what matters.  While the “other” things have value, if they are not being tweaked to bring about repentance and RTL’s then they need to be scrapped no matter how nice they look and no matter how much they keep us “busy”.  If all my energy isn’t being poured into RTL’s, then I’m wasting my life energy that He gives me.  Even pastors need a re-calibration from time to time.

In your business, as a pastor or otherwise, have you Clarified the Win?  As a Christian serving in the local church (if you are not the pastor), let me ask you…Are you working toward seeing yours and others’ lives changed?  How many RTL’s are you seeing?  While Salvation begins the journey, we are called to disciple and mature in our faith.  In business, we should celebrate the wins in our company.  Even when I worked in radio, our department (On Air) celebrated accoplishments from time to time.  No matter how small it was, it was our time to keep our team together.  In the church, we celebrate as lives are transformed for God’s glory.

If you’ve not taken time lately to “re-calibrate” and find out why it is you are doing what you are doing, now would be a good time to do it or at least make a note to ponder it at your next break!  May God Bless you today.

To build on my repost of Jay Baines’ writing yesterday, I wanted to give you some additional reading on this topic.  Mike St. Pierre at “The Daily Saint” put together a snippet on how to make sure you make time for the Almighty…

As my seminary professors turn over in disgust at this post’s title, I fully acknowledge that (theologically speaking) God is already everywhere.  No need to await His arrival and yet our mindfulness of God is at times lacking.

You can read the rest, including his tips by clicking here!

The reality is many Christians make very little time for God much less those who don’t know Him.  How do we improve?  What can we do?

Delaware Pastor Jay Baines has written a nice, short piece on his personal struggle with learning to get alone with God.  He writes:

…it is, many times, in my own personal office that I allow precious time to evaporate all because of the lack of discipline at the time to make the best choices.  I admit that I am very much a people person and love the busyness and noise of any given day and can feel right at home in large crowds.

You can read the rest of Jay’s thoughts by clicking here.

For many of us, this tension of “busyness” and solitude are a constant battle because our culture tells us solitude equates with laziness.  They have to managed for certain but BOTH are quite necessary.

Ed Young nails it good here. Those of you that visit my Facebook page would have seen this a few days ago. Thought I’d share it here too. It’s worth a watch!

As an add-on to my series last week: “Read to Grow”, I wanted to include some additional links I’ve found in my own blog reading these past few weeks.  You can never have enough information about how to improve in whatever field you find yourself…

• The LifeDev blog has a post this week on “8 Ways Reading Makes You Better At Life”. Good stuff to consider here.
• Simple and to the point, The “Church Crunch” blog has a quick snippet titled “Never Stop Learning”.
• Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose have done a fun little video on their five “must read” books.  This is quite business heavy but it might spur you on in creating your own list as I mentioned in my own series.
• ..and last but not least, I wanted to remind you again of the video series you can pick up on DVD with Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren discussing their classic work: “How To Read A Book”.  This was a series of long lost videos that you now can own on DVD that explain the main thoughts in the book.  A great pickup for under $30.

Enjoy the resources and continue to plug away with your reading lists!

My Latest Tech Toy

In this final installment in my blog series on better reading, I want to focus on some tools that you can use to make your reading more enjoyable and get more reading done faster than you ever realized.

Earlier this week, we spent time talking briefly about how to organize a reading list around books you’ll enjoy, ones that will challenge you, and ones that will grow you in your areas of need.  We also talked about how we can interact with books to make them more enjoyable.  How we can take notes, ask questions, organize great thoughts, and draw up action plans to apply what we’ve read.  There’s so much great information out there but none of it will benefit you if  you do not plan to get more books into your life.  

One way to do this is by expanding your horizons in reading.  Audio books are now more available and easier to use than ever before.  I remember just a few years ago that I would never pick up an audio version of a book just because it was clumsy to carry with you anywhere and you needed a cassette player or portable CD player to listen to them.  Books were few and most people want to travel light.  Enter the world of MP3 players.  Yes, iPods are all the rage but really all the iPods are nothing more than proprietary MP3 players that cost a lot for the bling.  I wanted something inexpensive that I would carry with me anywhere so I started a few years ago with a half-gig MP3 player that I bought at a tech store.  My youngest daughter inherited that when I upgraded to a 1-gig player that I wrote about less than a year ago.  I recently moved that player into service at the church I pastor playing music prior to worship.  Just a few weeks ago, I purchased an iPod Touch lookalike made by Sylvania.  As you can see by the picture at right, it has the same features, comes with 4-gigs of built in flash memory and is expandable with a micro SD-card (I have a spare 2-gig card that I am moving  over from my old player to make is a 6-gig model).  I bought this player for $50 at a local Big Lots and couldn’t be happier with it.  It’s loaded with several of my favorite music albums but also has 8 different audio books on it as of this writing.  I can take it with me anywhere.

The point is, you can take an 8-cd audio book with you with no clunky baggage to carry and listen to it while you walk at the park, while you shop for groceries, in the car while you drive, and at night when your eyes are tired and you just want to chill with a cup of coffee or tea and relax.  My strategy is to pick up the audio version of books that I would likely not read given my limited amount of time to commit to the task.  Many business books on management, leadership, dealing with people, and finances are all good candidates for audio books for me.  In the last two years, I’ve read about 30% more books than I would have if I had not used an audio book.  Many people will like this option because they can be doing other things while listening.

Another way (which is a bit costlier) to increase your reading is to purchase an eReader book device and read eBooks.  Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader are the big players here.  I’ve written about these two elsewhere on this blog but for the purposes of this article, it’s sufficient to say that either will help you in your endeavor to read more.  Both devices are slim and lightweight, easy to carry, and hold a charge for a long period of time.  I like to travel as minimalist as possible so for me, being able to put my Sony Reader in my over the shoulder man-bag with my bible, notepad, and MP3 player makes perfect sense.  I’ve not even begun to tap the memory capacity of my Sony Reader and already have over 60 books on it.  Can you imagine carrying THAT load around everywhere?  The key point here is that if you have your reader device handy and it’s easy to take with you, you’ll read more in those smaller windows of space like when you’re eating a quick lunch, waiting at the auto shop or doctor’s office, when you have a few minutes to kill waiting for a late appointment, or when you have a few minutes down time in your home between dinner and washing the dishes!  All of those little windows add up and in time, you’ll see that you can get more reading done but the idea is to have the tools at your disposal or you won’t use them and your reading will slow down.

One final thought I have is with cost.  Books are expensive.  The ebook market has helped by reducing the cost of books and also by its nature, the cost to store them in your home.  Audio books, though small on their CD’s, can even be reduced to a simple online download to further reduce clutter and storage in your home.  In the last year I’ve sold off many of my hardback books, something I thought I would NEVER do.  But the reality is that I could use the space in my office for other things and by meticulously selling these books off, I’ve reduced my storage space and given myself a budget to buy my favorites in ebook form.  I’ve already removed one bookshelf from my office and I plan to remove two more by the end of 2010.  So there is a cost benefit to buying digital books be it audio or ebook form.  Another old friend is also available and that is your local public library.  I’m blessed to have a great library consortium and most books I want to read I can check out.  Audio books are plentiful now too and usually only require me to request them in advance so they can be delivered to my library of choice.  I’ve probably checked out over 30 audio books in the last 18 months or so and I have two on hold today!  These cost you nothing other than the investment of your time to go get them and take them back.  Used bookstores also have value when you can’t find an out of print book anywhere else.  I still will pick up the odd paper book from time to time when it’s one I really want and I know it’s out of print.  Online bookstores makes finding volumes like this easier than ever before.

Hopefully, I’ve given you some thoughts to energize your reading this summer and beyond.  Have you put a list together?  Do you know what you want to read next week?  Do you want that in traditional book, ebook, or audio form?  Do you have an inexpensive audio player to make it easier to get to your books?  Spend some time this weekend answering these questions, make your list, head to the bookstore or library (or online), and get reading!  It will be the best thing you ever do for your personal growth.

How can you grow in your knowledge and skill by reading books? On Monday, I shared with you some ideas for putting together a reading list for the summer and shared briefly the idea of note taking and interacting with a book.  But HOW do we do this?  My personal hero in the reading for growth category is a man by the name of Mortimer Adler.  Adler and Charles Van Doren were the authors of the classic work “How to Read a Book” which is still available today.  In the book, the authors distill the essence of reading for growth and how one should undertake this endeavor.  I’ll not regurgitate the text here but suffice it to say the book is a gold mine of reading competence.  Why this type of learning isn’t taught in our public schools I will never know.

To be certain, you must also read books for pure enjoyment.  Not all reading has to be taxing to your brain.  A good mystery, thriller, or comedy is always needed in your reading plan.  I drop these in from time to time but the majority of my reading is focused on growing as a pastor, leader, husband, and father.  It is there I draw nearly 90% of my reading material. So what do I do to interact with a book? How do audio and electronic books change my plans?  I’ll attempt to be brief but here goes:

When I’m reading for growth, I start by surveying the book.  I gloss over the table of contents, review the chapters, briefly look over the end pages and then see what the authors closed the book with.  In general, their closing thoughts summarize their hope for what it is you draw from the reading.  This gives you a “base” to draw from as you begin to see how chapters build on one another.  This is a very simple step and one I go through with most reading before I elect to purchase a book.

After a brief (less than 20-30 minute) survey, I read the introduction and credits to see what others are going to say about this book.  If there are blank end pages in the book, I generally prepare one with my initial thoughts of what I hope to glean from this text.  As I read, I underline and make notes in the text designed to give me ideas to review.  If it is something I REALLY want to explore, I make a note of it in the end pages and review it further after I’ve finished the book and am conducting a post reading review.  Many times, a thought you note will have a related “in text” note that refers to other books that the author consulted.  If it’s worth it, I make note of these and add them to a future “review to read” list the next time I’m in a library or book store.

If I’m using digital work, like an audio book or ebook on my Sony Reader, I use a small digital recorder in place of my pencil and end pages.  I will stop and leave myself a brief voice clip in the digital recorder to review later.  The idea here is to capture thoughts however you must do it.  Else a great thought will get left behind in the pages of the book and a post reading review will have less of an impact.

Another technique I employ is the use of “glyphs” or special notation symbols that I recognize in my own little world.  These glyphs can mean anything from “A Great Idea!” to “Not worth exploring”.  On another end page, I collect these “glyph” thoughts by page number and add them to each glyph I put on the end page.  Thus “great ideas” are collected and I can review them by page number at the end of the book.  Some glyphs challenge me to develop an action plan to execute to employ an idea shared in the book.  If so, then I can make such a plan part of my productivity work at the end of my week when I’m arranging my time for the coming seven days.  With an ebook or audio book, it’s a bit harder to organize the glyphs but a makeshift system can be made with a notecard and/or voice recorder noting the pages and “types” of headings you want to use.  My Sony reader ebook has a feature that lets me “dog ear” pages in my book as I read to I can use this method to catalog any specific notes I take.

Sometimes I question the text if I disagree with a conclusion and leave myself a note to review the ideas in other works perhaps cited by the author or ones I can find on sites like Shelfari.  These questions also become a valuable part of the text when I’m done.  This method was best summarized by others as the “SQ3R” method.  I’ve adapted it to my own reading style but essentially, the nuts and bolts of what I do can be found there.

When I’m done with a book, I let it settle for a few days before I go back to review it.  Briefly, my review encompasses going over my “glyphs” pages, putting together an action plan to challenge any questions I may have asked of the book, and applying the ideas I found most helpful.  How I do this varies but in short, this is how I review a book.  There are many other tools I can employ but I think you get the idea.

This is not something you pick up quickly.  In fact, it took me years to employ this method successfully over time.  Once again, reading for growth is a discipline and you get better the more you do it.  If you feel overwhelmed with what I’ve shared here, simply take the time to review one of these ideas and incorporate it into your reading.  The next time, add another idea.  However you do it, take the time to interact with your books.  It will change the way you read forever.

On Friday, I will conclude this series with some time-saving ideas to increase the time in your day for reading.  I hope you’ve enjoyed my thoughts on t

It doesn't matter how fast you read - just READ!

What books to do you plan to read this summer  for your personal growth? Summer is a great time to pick up the hobby of reading good books.  I’ve loved reading since I was kid and these days, I plan my reading so that I always have a good book ready when I have time.  This week, I want to spend some time talking about the discipline of reading and share some ideas from my years of experience that might help you to be a more involved and informed reader.  I’m no expert but I have gleaned some great ideas from others that I have used to effectively help me pick better books, read MORE books than I thought I ever could, and also apply what I’ve read to my life and work situation.

Pastor and Author Nelson Searcy advocates reading 40-to-50 books a year in his well done audio resource “Planning A One Year Personal Growth Plan” and I agree that is a good goal to shoot for.  But HOW do you do it?  Many reading this want to increase their reading I’m sure but when it comes time to do it, they wind up spinning their wheels and reading a book or two each year and never really feel satisfied with their effort.  So for this first part of my 3-part series, let’s look at how we can organize and plan to read more.  I promise you it will be painless.

Steve Leveen, in his book “The Little Guide to Your Well Read Life” suggests a tool to organize your bookshelves for reading.  Without being too wordy, the system basically allows you to organize your shelves by books you are planning to read, those you have read, and those you will review again after reading.  You might ask “why review?” and that I will discuss later this week.  For now, let’s just look at your plan.  Digital tools like the excellent “Shelfari” social networking site allow you to set up virtual shelves on your computer if you are space hindered in your home.  I have several shelves set up on my Shelfari site for books on my “wish list” that I want to read, those I am currently reading, and those I have read and reviewed.  Shelfari is like Facebook for bibliophiles but it is very easy to use.  The key is for you to HAVE A PLAN.  Whatever you choose to use, organize a reading list for your personal growth and then stick to it.

What should I read?  It really depends on your interests and where you want to grow in the coming months.  As a pastor, I want to continually be growing in my spiritual walk so I plan my reading by including books on Theology, Philosophy, and of course my daily Bible Reading.  As a leader, I want to grow in those areas so I include many books in that genre both Christian and Secular.  There is much to be gained from great business leaders like Ram Charan, David Allen, Ken Blanchard, and Peter Senge.  The key is when you begin to review, take notes, and apply the books to your life, then you can find ways to make the text applicable to your life situation.

Once you have your areas of interest written down, then organize a list.  Ask others who read what they are reading.  Check out the reading suggestions on sites like Shelfari.  Another good idea is to find a book of reading lists that you can review to make some initial selections.  I reviewed one by Eugene Peterson and there are many others out there depending on your interests.  Once you have some suggestions, pick a few and begin your journey.  It doesn’t have to be expensive either as many libraries carry these books and these days, you can go online to larger library cooperatives in your region an reserve the books ahead of time to check out.

In the end, your reading success or failure will be a result of your prior planning.  Plan well and you will greatly enjoy the endeavor.  Plan poorly and you will still be spinning your wheels a year from now.  As I stated, summer is good time to get into the habit of reading.  You can take it slower, enjoy your time in books, and increase your intake of good reading heading into the fall.

Wednesday in Part Two, I will discuss ways you can take notes, interact with, and apply the books that you are reading.  Until then, get planning!

Yikes! A Large Man Coming From the Water!

This week I had the pleasure of speaking with an old friend of mine who works in youth ministry on a bivocational basis.  He is currently looking for a job as many are in this current economic climate.  As we were talking, he related a story to me about a recent discussion he had with two large churches (1000 or more in weekend attendance) about positions they were looking to fill.  In both cases, the positions were in youth ministry and were full time.  For brevity’s sake, the conversations were pretty much the same.  They had advertised the available position but what my friend said next floored me.  In one case, the church had received over 500 resumes.  In the other church’s case, it was well over 350.  850+ resumes for two positions in churches less than 90 miles apart.  Really?

I wondered aloud to my friend: “How many of those people truly were ‘called’ to that job and how many were looking to pad their resumes?”  He didn’t have a good answer but we both knew the inevitable conclusion.  In both cases, the “personnel” committees had to review these resumes and started by culling out those who had less than five years experience.  They then pulled only those who had graduate degrees (a B.A. wasn’t enough!) and they still had over 100 resumes each for their positions.

In another instance locally in my area of service, a pastor who had left a mega church (averaging 7,000+ in attendance) some four plus years ago recently pulled the plug on a church plant he started (averaging about 400 a week) so he could take a position at a large church up the road from his.  Rumors are flying in both directions and I have my private thoughts as to what led to his leaving but the question I ask is, “Was he really called to plant the church?”  The church plant tried to soldier on after he resigned several weeks back but in the end, elected to close its doors.  Apparently, too much wounding had occurred for the faithful to try to heal.  They felt it better to let the church scatter elsewhere rather than move forward.  Also, a lot of money had been spent and the “lifestyle” of this church required more funds than were coming in after the pastor resigned.

What has been lost with all of this is one vital aspect.  That is one of relationship.  What relationship does the pastor have with his people?  There’s so much more that can be written here and I think I will plan another blog series to address it.  More and more though, I’m seeing the benefits of being simple in design and function.  David Browning’s book on “Deliberate Simplicity” is an eye opener of a book that  spoke to much of what I’ve already been feeling as I see the excesses of the modern church all around me.  A few months back, I had written a series of posts on “How Much Is Too Much?” I’m still trying to find out the answer.  I think the next few years may bring me the answer I’ve been looking for.

Last week, my blogging friend Danny Conn posted a well-thought out critical review of George Barna’s book “Revolution”.  Like it or not, the idea that the local church is changing along with the people it’s trying to reach is a reality.  Conn does a nice job weaving his thoughts into Barna’s.  Both men have good points of view and as I’ve said before, good writing causes you to interact with it and not just passively read it.

This review comes on the heels of some great discussion in the blogosphere about the recently posted article by Michael Spencer titled “The Coming Evangelical Collapse”.  Both the article and the book point to a subtle yet growing change in the Western world towards church, Christianity, and all things tied to them.  While the points both men make can be argued, as we’ve seen from other well known writers like Robert Morgan, a case can be made for the other side of the coin.

In the case of “Revolution”, Conn points to historical changes that we’ve seen over time in the development of churches, denominations, and church polity.  Conn makes a compelling point in his argument that current technological advances now make such changes something that we witness “in progress” as opposed to years ago when the information exchange took much longer and such changes occurred differently because of that.

My take from seeing the church landscape here in the Rocky Mountain West is that the perception of church by the under-30 crowd is vastly different from mine.  Those who are spiritually inclined are quite passionate about what they believe and ARE open to being taught from someone they can respect who will not speak from a “top-down” attitude.  My discussions with this group in coffee shops and bookstores yields some very fruitful discussion but what I’ve witnessed is this group moving from traditional churches to a more “unplugged” setting and at odd times.  One of the most popular churches in our area for this group is a renovated art studio where the church meets on Sunday evenings at 5pm to eat and then worship whenever the meal is done.  They finish around 7:30 or so and then usually wind up at one of the downtown specialty shops for further discussion and fellowship.  When I’ve asked about Sunday mornings and traditional church polity, I’m looked at with a mix of grins, sighs, and smiles.  These folks want none of it.  Leadership is more organic and polity is considered something that a “power” group wants so they can control things.  This group takes their tithes with them elsewhere.  A good case in point can be seen with our local Gideon’s chapter here in North Denver.  These are good men with a heart for God and a passion for sharing the scriptures but their numbers are dwindling and a vast majority of them are in the over 50 crowd.  My worship pastor recently attended their pastor’s appreciation dinner in my place while I was out of town recently and remarked he was the youngest in the crowd by nearly 30 years.

What does all this mean?  Well in 5-10 years, this group will be approaching 40 and in the prime of their lives as I am now.  Churches around me are closing.  Most are “modern” style churches with a variety of musical styles so that’s not the problem as many like to make it.  Is it the teaching or the style?  Is it the service times?  Is to something else?  For me, I love church planting and I love the group I am honored to pastor.  God has blessed us with a passion for the lost and a clear vision of how we want to get there.  However, one thing I’ve learned is being “flexible”.  That doesn’t mean compromise but it does mean thinking outside the box.

I’m with Conn on this one.  I think a great revival can erupt from this.  What it looks like though may be something that those who are of a standard mindset may have to re-think in order to see it.  Is that the “Revolution”?  I don’t know but the next few years will be interesting to see.