You can get away with a lot in the minor leagues. A little slow off the line? No problem. So is everyone else. Can’t dribble with your left hand? No worries. Neither can your defender. Occasionally caught napping in the dugout? So what? There aren’t any TV cameras at a minor league ballgame.

But in the pros? Yeah. The bar? Higher. The pressure? Immeasurable. The competition? Scary. Your weaknesses?

Obvious.

Visible.

Exposed.

(like one of those dreams where you’re out in public in your undies…yeah, you have them, too).

One of the best pieces of advice I got before my buddy Nathan and I launched City Community Church was “deal with your crap.” All the issues and brokenness you were able to keep hidden from others (and even yourself) will come screaming to the surface when you jump to the big leagues. Boy was that good advice.

Saul, the first king of Israel, had some crap he never dealt with. Some see these verses as a sign of humility. To me, they scream of unfaced insecurity. An early sign of the disastrous future that was in store.

“But I’m ONLY a Benjamite, from the SMALLEST of Israel’s tribes, and from the MOST INSIGNIFICANT clan in the tribe at that. WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME like this? (1 Samuel 9:21 MSG)

Classic self-protection. A sign of rot at the core. And this crap that was never dealt with would torment King Saul, ravage his closest relationships, destroy his kingdom, and ultimately end his life.

Tragic.

Avoidable.

Courage. Honesty. Vulnerability. Relationship. True community. All these things could have helped King Saul expose his raging insecurities. And repentance and accountability could have healed them.

Yet many seem to think they can just jump to the next level, head to the pros, and skip over shoveling the crap. The next level doesn’t fix you, it exposes you.

Marriages, business partnerships, even church pulpits (honestly, especially church pulpits) are full of people hiding from their stuff. Ignoring their brokenness. Running from their pain. And leaving a holocaust in their wake.

The next level will always expose. It’s inevitable.

But dealing with your crap is hard. It costs. Sometimes more than we think we can pay. But the bill for hiding our junk will come due. And it may have eternal consequences (and not just for you).

Repentance is liberating. Grace is free. Admitting we’re broken is the expensive part.

Is it time to deal with your crap?

I love to see people dream.  To use their imagination.  To create things that don’t yet exist.  To watch someone rise to their passion and purpose is exhilarating, and to play even a small role in releasing that potential is intoxicating.

But what if I’m drawing that stream out of a polluted well?

One of the dangers I personally face as a spiritual leader is creating and communicating via isogesis. Now there’s a fun theological word.  Isogesis refers to starting with a specific belief, and then searching (typically Scripture) for evidence to support my already pre-determined supposition.

This can be a dangerous way to approach God because it starts with me and then makes a vain attempt to bring Him into the equation.

A lot of us dream that way, too.  And as you can see from this passage of Scripture, I can be a dangerous origin.

“What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.  And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” (James 4:1-3 NLT)

I’m messed up. And while the things that naturally reside inside of me are undoubtedly part of my God-design, they’re also polluted with misguided motivation and selfish agendas.  With sin.  My dreams need redemption right along with the rest of me.

Jesus calls us to repentance, to realignment with Him. And not just as a one-time event, but a daily surrender.  Then my imagination begins to emerge from a healthy well.  My dreams naturally become sourced by God and I stop desperately seeking a “blessing” for things that originated with me.

So what about you?  Do you dreams emerge from The Source, or are you “isogeting?” Starting with you and desperately hoping God will come along for the ride?

Tough one for me.  But that’s the problem with dreaming.

Most of us are oblivious to what lives inside of us.  We live in slow motion, in monotonous routine, because somewhere deep in our souls we don’t believe we have influence, that we matter, that the world has any need for the things that we allow to lay dormant inside of us.

We’re in a culture inundated with inspiration, self-help books, mind-stimulating podcasts and messages, more self-esteem builders and delivery methods than any time in all of history.  Yet I’m convinced that most of us fight feelings of worthlessness and mediocrity more than we realize or are willing to admit.  We’re blind to our own potential.

We’ve ingested, perhaps even subliminally, our personality-driven culture (definitely prevalent here in America, but becoming a reality in all areas of the developed world).  We all want to be rock stars (yeah, I see you playing air guitar in your office to those old Journey tracks you just downloaded from iTunes).

Our approach to life proves our underlying belief that if we’re not gifted in something that gets noticed by the masses, then we’re really not gifted at all.  And in this new age of technology and a flattening globe, our self-defined value is becoming tied to things like blog subscriptions and Twitter followers.

And because we can’t determine how to influence thousands, we choose to influence…no one.

In risk of turning this into just another self-help post, you really do have something of value to add to the world. You were created to make a difference in someone else’s life.  You just may not believe it.  You may have to dig a little deeper to find it.

Don’t confuse creative capacity with artistry. Just because you’re not a singer, a painter, a writer, a front-of-the-room communicator doesn’t mean you don’t have amazing creative potential to offer to the world.  In fact, just because you’re an artist doesn’t mean you’re creative.  I know plenty of artists who are just cheap copies and phony imitations of others.

So what has God placed inside of you that needs to come out? To be expressed?  To find life and breathe life?  You may never be globally known, play a stadium gig, or write a best-seller.  But will you cheat the world of the innovative capacity you were created to bring forth? What if the very thing you have to offer could drastically change one person’s life, but you never pursue it?  What if you choose to give in to your own insecurities?  To believe that only mass influence is real influence?

What do you need to risk?  To release?  To create?  To invest?  Will you live the adventure or just play it safe?  Don’t be blind to your own potential.  The possibilities are endless, but you have to realize what’s inside of you that just might need to come out.

There’s always an underlying motivation driving the birth of something new.  A felt need, a discontent, frustration, passion…a desire to be different, to add something new to the conversation.  There are lots of churches out there trying to be different, trying to grasp the direction of the culture and speak to it, us included.  So over the last decade or so we’ve seen a wide-spread shift to implement expressive changes like contemporary music, casual dress, social networking, you name it.  We could easily compile a very long list.

And much of what we do at City Community Church would be reflected in that list:  our musicians are cutting edge, we’re all over Twitter and Facebook, and if I needed a tie for some unexplainable, cruel and heinous reason, I’d probably have to make a trip to Goodwill to pick one up (I’m firmly convinced neckties are a result of the fallout of original sin).

But those things are window dressing.  We can very easily fall victim to changing the outward expression without really dealing with the core of our motivations and worldview.  That’s the hard painful work most of us choose to avoid.

So what drives City Community Church?  What’s our motivation?  Why did we start this grand experiment?  I’ll at least share our hope:  It’s in how we want to see people.

Let me tell you a dirty little secret.  I believe in Jesus, I’m creative, I’m passionate, I’m motivated…and I’m innately and hopelessly selfish (and so are you…sorry).  It would be so easy for my buddy Nathan and I to leverage our influence and entrepreneurial capacity to turn CityCom into a pathway to fulfilling our own personal dreams, and to simply see the people around us as commodities in that pursuit.  If I’m being completely honest (shhhh…come real close…I have to whisper) a lot of churches do exist simply to fulfill their own organizational agendas or those of their leader.  No one would admit it, but it’s true.  It’s human nature, it can sneak in subtly, and we all have to guard against it.

So as we launch City Community Church, our deepest desire is to unearth the unbelievable, untapped, uncultivated God-imparted possibilities that reside inside of everyday individuals.  We want to be curators of people potential.  And not just so we have musicians to staff Sunday services, workers for the children’s ministries, and ushers to collect the offering.  It’s not that those things aren’t valid (or needed), they’re just not our ultimate definition of success.  We don’t just want to mobilize your Sunday, we want to empower your Monday.

So don’t just wait for us.  Our job is to help you uncover your God-birthed vision, not design, create and implement one for you.  Look for us to push, prod, inspire, challenge, and flat out irritate you into becoming all that God created you to be, in the context of the daily life He’s called you to live.  For the record, that starts with Jesus.

Now you know.  Now we’re accountable.  Let’s get to it.

This is an entry from a previous blog I thought was worth re-posting in this new format.  Love to create some dialog around this topic.  What do you think?

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to play golf with the principal of Ben Davis High School. Not only is BD one of the largest high schools in Indiana, it is also my alma mater (purple and white class of ’92 baby!). Ben Davis is a quality institution and really a hub of life and culture on the west side of Indianapolis. So as much as I wanted to make the day just about golf, the spiritual leader in me had to utilize the opportunity to explore the mind of this man who daily interacts with thousands of students that represent the future of this community.

“What is the biggest challenge you see for our city through the lives of your students?” I asked. The dialog didn’t last long but it was amazingly insightful. The answer: loss of hope. “Many of these kids do not see a future for themselves beyond high school,” he said. “When they look out past year 12 there’s simply nothing there.” When hope for the future is gone we begin to live for the moment, or worse yet, we stop living altogether.

The imagination is the birthplace of creativity, but loss of hope kills the imagination. Reality swallows potential and dreams shrivel. And when dreams die, imagination disappears; creativity becomes non-existent, and life loses purpose.

Vision is the birthplace of hope.
Hope is the fuel of imagination.
Imagination is the seed of creativity.
And creativity is the breath of life.

The very first expression we see of God in His Word is as the Creator. “God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature.” (Gen. 1:27 MSG). Creativity is a signal that the very nature of God resides in us. I firmly believe that The Church should be the most creative entity on planet earth! So why is that rarely true?

Because churches drift. We lose focus. Vision becomes blurry and hope begins to die. Our imaginations grow cobwebs and creativity for the future gives way to memories of the past. We become just like those high school students that see no picture for their lives beyond senior year. God’s church and God’s people, the hope of the world, becomes lifeless and predictable. Hardly a picture that rightly represents the everlasting God of the universe. So what do we do?

Vision is everything. If you are a community leader, creative leader, church leader, a mom or dad (if anyone is following you in any way), clear and compelling vision must be your mantra. When you look out beyond tomorrow for your life, your community, your church, your family, whatever you lead…what do you see? What picture has God painted on your heart? Share it!  Again, and again, and again, and again.  That vision becomes the birthplace of hope that will lead to unbridled imagination and creativity. It will lead to life.

Evil isn’t a horror flick.  But when most of us hear the word evil, we naturally think of Freddy, Jason, Halloween, Hitler, or other grotesquely wicked expressions.  What is evil?  The Bible isn’t a dictionary, cleanly spelling out tight and concise definitions for our informational consumption.  But if we look at the whole of Scripture we get a picture of what evil is truly all about (and it may hit a little closer to home than you think).

I’d like to offer my own working definition for your thoughtful analysis:

Evil is simply satisfying self at the detriment of others.

At it’s worst, evil expresses itself in violence, murder, oppression, injustice, and other vile outflows.  It’s easy to see in fascist warlords, death-row inmates, and global genocide.  But what about the husband who lies to his wife about working late so he can hang out with his buddies at the local pub?  The business woman who quietly threatens her peers in order to manipulate her way into a promotion?  Even the spiritual leader who tarnishes the reputation of others to keep from having his own failures exposed?  Evil?  Jesus said it originates in the heart, not in the act. (Matthew 5)

It starts with simple, seemingly innocent, yet foolish decisions born out of temptation, fear, or insecurity.  Then left unchecked, our consciences become seared until inflicting pain or even destroying others becomes easy, even justified, all in the name of pleasing or protecting self.  That, my friends, is evil.  The scary thing?  The potential resides in each and every one of us, not just communist dictators.

The seeds of evil rise from dormancy when I pursue a life that revolves around me.  When I refuse to face my junk, my insecurities, my baggage, my self-absorption.  When I avoid accountability and vulnerability to preserve power or position, the slippery slope has begun.  The remedy?  Love.

While evil is willing to hurt or destroy anything and anyone to protect or promote itself, love is just the opposite.  Love willfully sacrifices itself  for the benefit of others, and no One lived that definition better than Jesus Himself.  He’s got the nail scars to prove it.  And He can bring that love to life inside each and everyone of us if we’ll just let Him.

So the question for you and me is this:  have we started our own self-aborbed journey towards evil?  Deal with it now or you may find yourself starring in your own horror flick, with dead bodies all around you to prove it.

The quietness of the house tonight has made me introspective.  I’m pondering more than one unfortunate and sorrowful story of respected spiritual leaders, some of who I know personally, who are not ending well.  Years of effective service drowned in torrents of suspicion, accusation, or slowly found irrelevance.  As a leader who is just starting a new church-planting journey, I’m tempted to point the finger and say “that will never be me.”  But I’m tormented by the unfortunate knowledge of my own humanity.  Why do we hold onto things so long and so tightly?

It’s easy to throw stones when you sit where I am today…literally with nothing.  Nothing but a dream that’s bigger than my reality.  No massive throngs of people listening to me teach, no years of “successful” history to lean back into, no big salary.  When you don’t have much it’s not hard to let it go.  But after 5, 9, 18 years of “sweat equity,” will I still be able to withstand the allure?

Once again, Jesus was the ultimate example.  He personally invested in countless lives, was followed across the countryside by massive crowds, healed the sick and even raised the dead (you know His Twitter feed would have outnumbered even President Obama’s).  And right as His power and influence reached the point of critical mass, as the people were ready to crown Him King…

He died.  He died. He willfully died.

Jesus held everything loosely.  The One who owned it all to begin with never acted as if He owned anything.  I hope the same will be said about me.  I guess only time will tell.

Here’s a hard question.  If you’re a leader (and I dare say all of you are in one way or another), are you driven more by helping those you lead or by impressing them?  Do you view your position through the lens of what you can do for others, or are you addicted to what you need from them?  Leadership is an incredible responsibility, but like a any old drug addict, the role that should be seen as an humble honor can easily become our own personal ego fix.

Pastor, teacher, business owner, mother, mentor, coach, grandfather, community organizer…you name it. Help or impress?  What’s driving you?

An ownership mentality in ministry is a dangerous thing.  Sorry to say but there’s no equity in the Kingdom of God…at least not in this life, and definitely not for you and me.  Part of the purpose of this blog is my own accountability…to write things and share them publicly so that I’m more likely to live them out privately.  As I prepare to partner in the leadership of the launch of City Community Church, I want to go on record now as saying:  the vision may have been co-birthed inside of me, but by no means does it belong to me.

It’s a subtle shift of mindset, yet polar opposite at the same time.  One is selfish, the other selfless.  When I begin to act as if I own my ministry, my church, my leadership, my position, I begin to try and preserve what I have.  It changes the way I teach, the way I treat people, the boundaries I’m willing to push for effectiveness…even my willingness to step away if and when I need to.  Ownership causes me to pull in instead of push out.  To guard instead of release.  To be fear-filled and paranoid instead of faith-filled and courageous.  To play it safe and not to risk.

Ministry is not a career choice, it’s a stewardship.  So my challenge to all of us, whether you’re the full-time pastor of a large church, or the volunteer leader of a soup kitchen…hold it loosely.  It’s not yours.  Now I know you’d never say you have an unhealthy hold on it, but check your heart…check the subtlety of your thinking.  It creeps in unexpected.

Hold onto things loosely enough that whenever God speaks, there’s no hesitation in responding.  Don’t make Him pry it out of your cold, dead fingers.