I know a lot of people that don’t like delegating… sometimes I am in that group!

But delegating is a lot more than just pushing work around, trying to equalize the piles amongst workers.  It is the single best way I know to ensure that coaching situations develop amongst team members.

The key to turning delegation into coaching opportunities is twofold:

1. The clarity of the delegation - when tasks or assignments are delegated, there MUST be a clear understanding of what specifically must be done, by when, how it is to be reported, and why the task is important.  (Tell them WHAT, tell them WHY, and tell them HOW.) The clarity of the task delegation is what enables…
2. Concise followup - Coaching opportunities arise as the delegated task is followed up.  Was it done on time?  According to communicated standards?  To the appropriate level of quality?  Great conversations happen during this followup like “Hey - great work.  But in order to better accomplish X, let’s tweak Y like this… do you see how that works a little better?” or “Ok - we talked about doing X… do you feel like that has been done according to the parameters we discussed?  If not, what can we do to improve it?”.

Because delegation, by definition, creates opportunities to clarify the performance expectations, the vision, and the alignment of the task to the mission of the church (or any organizaton) it is by far the single best creator of coaching opportunites that exists in a normal work relationship.  But the coach MUST make sure to follow up quickly, clearly, and concisely in order to gain those invaluable coaching opportunites.  Somtimes coaches shy away from consie followup because they don’t want to be perceived as confronting, because the conversation may seem “hard”, or because it is simply easier to do it yourself!  Don’t do it!  Invest in your team… use the delegated task as an opportunity to pour into them!

Here are some of the books I am reading over the summer…

Erwin Mcmanus’ new one Wide Awake… just starting it!  I’ll probably reviewing this one in depth… but it looks good!

John Eldgrede’s latest book Walking With God is a good read on a new subject for him (kind of).  How to slowdown and listen to God.  Written in John’s signature style, this is definitely worth your time.

Finding Our Way Again - Brian McLaren - this author has written more books that have deeply impacted me than probably any other author in the last few years.  This work is a great “ancient-future” approach to spiritual practices, and one that is kicking off a series of similar books over the next two years by other authors.

The Disciple Making Church - Bill Hill is one of my favorite authors on discipleship.  This is a good read, not as good in my opinion as the Disciple Making Pastor (below), but is good as a follow-up read to DMP.  This would be a great book for church groups to be led through if they are investigating discipleship thinking and systems.

The Disciple Making Pastor - Bill’s best book in my opinion.  Vision casting discipleship as an organic process that happens outside of prorgrams and classes (almost in a meta-environment sense) this book challenges the thinking of every church leader about how well we are accomplishing the mission of the church… to make disciples.

This kind of story makes me sick…

Traffic slows - people gape and stare - as three teenage boys in Cleveland beat a homeless man to death.  Nobody gets out of their cars to intervene.

A friend I had coffee with yesterday said that he was raised to understand a gentlemen was someone who could defend himself and those weaker than himself.  Amen.  I can’t believe that there wasn’t ONE able bodied man in all of those passing vehicles.  Why didn’t anyone, when witnessing this brutal beating, get out of their car and DO something?

We have become a nation of watchers… afraid to intervene.  What if I get hurt?  What if I get sued?  Where are the police? (It’s their job)  All the while a man is being beaten to death!  Any man who witnessed that event and did nothing should be ashamed.

Watch the news coverage here.

I saw this Car while working at one of my favorite St. Arbucks… a 1958 Bentley that this man (he was camera shy - didn’t want to be in the pic) and his father rebuilt by hand.  Now THAT is a cool ride.

This has to be the cheesiest name in the history of web apps… GooToDo.  But it sure does work.

This cloud-based software, created by Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy (a great read on time management in the digital age), was designed to compliment Gmail (really any email client) to help keep inbox zero a reality by moving tasks out of your inbox and onto a task list seamlessly.

GooToDo works through your email.  If I email a delegation request to someone (i.e. “Please do this by Tuesday”) and CC or BCC “Wednesday@gootodo.com”, then that task and the person’s name get added to Wednesday’s task list.  The email prefix can be “3days@”, “July7@”, or “Tomorrow@”… basically anything you can think of!  Any tasks not complete that day roll over to the next.  GooToDo also lets me drap and drop the arrangement of tasks with the day, and export the list off of the web in a variety of formats.

I have been playing with GooToDo for a few days, and already I can see the strength of this app is the integration with normal email.  A simple CC/BCC adds tasks to your GooToDo list effortlessly, with all the forwarded detail you could want.  It also is purposely designed to be used by knowledge workers who utilize the GTD (Getting Things Done) workflow process by David Allen.  And, according to the principles of GTD, any email that you can’t delete immediately or complete in 2 minutes or less can be emailed to Gootodo and converted into a task with a due date. Empty Inbox becomes the rule, not the exception - hooray!

GooToDo does cost $3 a month, but I am still using the 30 day free trial, which caps you at 10 new tasks a day.  So far, this is proving a great tool (and I think it will replace Sandy… who I am afraid I will be firing soon!)

What do you use in your own devotional time?  Last weekend, Dr. Wayne Cordiero spoke to the Orchard community via video (as part of our One Prayer series) and encouraged us to make our One Prayer “God, Make Us Wise” as he dug into the importance of feeding ourselves on God’s word.

As part of his talk, Wayne talked about the importance of a couple of key tools… journaling and Bible reading plans.  These two tools have been invaluable in my own spiritual journey, so I wanted to make sure to share some of the insights I have found useful regarding these great practices and tools!

I had several people ask me this last weekend what journal I use… of course the best answer is “any journal that you WILL use”!  A $.99 spiral binder, if used regularly is a great approach!  But if you want something more than that, I can recommend the Moleskine (as seen here).  Thin, hardback, with just the right amount of pages, it fits well into a bag or briefcase.  I buy mine at local bookstores.  The other question I was asked was, “What should I write in my journal?”.  Write prayers, thoughts, Bible verses… Wayne gave a great guide with his SOAP acronym this last weekend (Scripture, Observation, Application, and Prayer).  Perosnally, I write everything - all my thoughts, fears, prayers, ideas, and hopes.  I have a cash reward offered in the front of all my journals because if they ever got lost, I’d be lost!

The other really useful tools I have used are Bible reading plans.  Here are several approaches that I have used over the years that all work very well…

Bible Reading Plans

Mobile devices:
Bible Player - For audio learners; it works on the IPod and divides Bible into 365 daily audio readings.
Olive Tree - a version of the NLT Daily Bible for your mobile device, iPhone, Blackberry, or other smartphone

.  Daily readings from the OT, NT, Psalms, and Proverbs.

Bound Books:
The One Year Bible - A devotional Bible with daily readings in OT, NT, Psalms, and Proverbs.
How to Read the Bible Every Day - A small, inexpensive ($3.99 on Amazon) book that lists plans to read through the Bible in one, two, or three years!

Online Plans:
Chronological - Read through the Bible chronologically, in the time order that the events happened.
OT/NT - A daily reading plan to read through the Bible in a year.

What do you use?  I would love to learn from you!  Drop me a line.

I heard Chuck Colson at this year’s Q gathering… he drew the best illustration I have seen yet about the church focusing only on the salvation part of the Gospel and neglecting the Redemption of Creation/Culture.  It is simple - it passes the napkin test (I could draw it at Starbucks on a napkin and people would get it)!  Here it is below:

Because of this interaction, I went back and re-read The Body, now retitled and updated as Being the Body, a book that has been in my library for some years.  Check out this quote from page 275 of the original 1992 edition:

“The first Chrsitians worshipped God and lived as a holy community, conforming their character to the demands of Christ rather than Ceaser.  They didn’t purpose to turn the first-century world upside down.  They did so because of who they were.  This character-oriented perspective is totally foreign to our achievement-oriented society, however, where we look at what people do rather than who they are.  And it goes against everything in our consumer-oriented religious culture, where we pick and choose churches on the basis of fellowship or outreach programs or music or location or convenient parking.  Rarely do we here [Christ-followers] say ‘I dedicded to join this church because of its characer as a holy community.’  Nor do most choose a church on the basis of its capacity to disciple and equip them for ministry.  Yet that should be our first consideration.  If the church is the Body, the holy presence of Christ in the world, its most fundamental task is to build communities of holy character.  And the first priority of those communities is to disciple men and women to [growth] in Christ and then equip them to live their faith in every aspect of life and in every part of the world.”

That’s what I love about churches like The Orchard, and many others… God is awakening something within the Church today!  A relaization that simply belonging to a weakly [sic] class or group, or particiapting in a program, doesn’t necessarily accomplish the church’s primary task of discipleship.  But the combination of intentionality, an awareness of current culture,  a simple approach, and authentic environments, can create world-changing disciples.  I am excited about what God seems to be doing in churches around the world, and right here in the U.S.

I am a self-confessed bibliophile… I have been a voracious reader since I was little.  That is a nice way to say I have a problem… I am addicted to reading

Like all addicts, we bibliophiles have a problem or two… chief amongst them storage!  I have bookshelves on every level of my home crammed with books.  But I always have a hard time remembering how many books I have on a particular subject, or even (I am ashamed to admit this… I really do have a problem) if I own a particular book, or just borrowed it to read from the library or a friend.

I have long searched for a good software solution to my book problem… and finally found it!  I would like to recomend the Delicious Library (right now only for mac - sorry those of you still residing in Gates’ prison :).

This electronic library displays all of my books, in thumbnail picutres, on a virtual bookshelf.  Adding books is easy - it allows me to scan the ISBN barcode off of the book using a barcode scanner or the iSight camera on my mac, and it automatically adds the book and all relevant information into my library. I can enter notes, create genres… just about anything I need to do.  Then I can create smart lists - called shelves - that will list all books by a particular author or genre.  The software also will print a list of all the books in my library, along with a replacement cost from Amazon, for insurance purposes… a big deal for those of us bibliophiles who have thousands of dollars invested in our libraries.  Also, when I loan a book, the Delicious Library will log the book as checked out, send reminder emails, and calendar a reminder to return the book.  This is a particularly GREAT feature - as I have had MANY books go on permanent loan when friends forget to reutrn them, and then I can’t remember who has my copy of XYZ!

I am not talking about some Mel Gibson, shooter on the grassy knoll type conspiracy…

In a great cover story in the current issue of The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr poses the hypothesis that the internet has greatly impacted our reading habits.  Replacing the ability to read critically and deeply, the google-world creates ancy readers to whom skimming is the ultimate tool in the literacy toolbox.

Don’t get me wrong… the ability to have a literal world of information at my fingertips has changed MY life forever… research for a talk?  Google it.  Looking for a new car?  Carmax.com.  Need to order just about anything?  Amazon.com.

But as information begins to flow in bursts and bytes, I have noticed I have had to intentionally keep my habit of reading deeply sharp.  And my online - always connected - Google app enhanced Blackberry life works against the ability to read critically, analytically, and deeply.  It doesn’t prohibit it, mind you… in fact to be honest Google-life really doesn’t interfere with good reading if I am disciplined enough to regularly engage in the practice.  I just must work that much harder to stay in the habit.

All in all, I wouldn’t trade all that the instant-connect online world has brought me… but I want to keep at least one foot grounded in the deep reading world of literacy as well.

Read the Atlantic article here and some great commentary here.

My mentor is “retiring” later this month… I say retiring, because even though he is leaving the ministry where he has been since 1990, he is probably heading somewhere else to serve.  “I think I have one more left in me Chris…”

I don’t know if I ever wrote about this before, but in 1994 I had a pretty clear view of the world.  I graduated in three years with my B.S. in Law Enforcement from the top rated program in the country.  My remaining scholarship money was paying for a year of graduate school - getting my M.A. in Law Enforcement studying training methodologies for tactical/SWAT teams.  I was trying for the USAKF (the USA Karate Federation, at the time the National Governing Body for traditional martial arts) national team at the top international levels.  And I was leading a successful business training LEOs (law enforcement officers) in arrest control, edged weapons defense… etc.

That is when Charlie Ferguson messed me up.  I had known Charlie since 1991 - the campus pastor for Campus Students for Christ - a Christian campus ministry at WIU.  Charlie was a small town, rural church preacher who had transitioned to leading campus ministry the year before my arrival to campus.  I watched him, quietly, as he interacted with students, fixed broken plumbing in the building, and led this tiny little ministry in the middle of western Illinois farm country.  He never made a headline… never published anything that I know of.  But he was available, and he spoke honestly and authentically.

And he totally messed me up.  In 1995 I was stopped short by a God-appointed series of events that left me challenging my assumptions about what it meant to be successful in life - what it meant to be influential and impactful.  I came to the world-changing realization that Charlie, by quietly impacting individuals, and empowering them to impact others, would have a LOT more influence on this planet, and its people, families, friends, and relationships, than I would by training and teaching LEOs (even if I was training the guys who show up and ’save the day’).  His life of unassuming discipleship - with no publicity, no books or blogs (can you remember a time before email and blogs?!?) or other marketing - was going to impact thousands and thousands of people as each of the people he influenced deeply influenced others.  And so I walked away from my martial arts and law enforcement career and switched from my M.A. in Law Enforcement to an M.Div in seminary.  All due the call of God as expressed through the life of one unassuming, humble man, and the realization of his impact on thousands of people over my lifetime.

And I’ve seen that happen.  The end of this month, a “quiet” going away party is happening for Charlie - not publicized, not really advertised much at all, and hundreds are traveling great distances to show up and say ‘Thanks’.  And I’ve seen it in my life - Charlie was instrumental in my shift from one career field to another 13 years ago.  How many thousands of people have I preached to?  How many people have I interacted with?  Led to Christ?  Counseled?  (And I, relative to many of my contemporaries have accomplished little - I say this in a spirit of humility, but acknowledging the cumulative effect of years.)  All because Charlie spent some time with me, one on one, and influenced my life.  I became convinced then, and am to this day, that when all is said in done, those accomplishments are what will stand the test of time.

I knelt before God in the early part of 1995 and asked him to make my life like Charlie Ferguson’s…  that I would have the opportunity to impact people in the same way… that I could live a life that humble, that influential, and that meaningful.  And to a guy who grew up without a great father-figure, that model of spiritualized manhood served as a guiding beacon in my early years of marriage and fatherhood.

I’m not there yet… but 13 years later, I can still see Charlie’s impact and imprint on my life.  And I often, in my journal, prayers, and daily decisions, remind myself of that world-changing paradiagm I decided to pursue so many years ago; that the impact of One Man, done quietly and rightly, CAN in fact change the world.