Think Next Now

The third and last installment of “Kids and Christmas.”

Here’s the list of the top ten posts on my blog in the last year! Enjoy!

1. “The Best Gift A Senior Pastor Can Give Their Youth Pastor” Click here.

2. “Do You Want God Or your Idea Of God?” Click here.

3. “Is Church A Business?” Click here.

4. ”Bill Hybels’ Statement Regarding Howard Schultz, Homosexuality, And The Global Leadership Summit” Click here.

5. “Parents Prepping For Post-Camp Students”  Click here.

6. “The Day Netflix Got It Wrong” Click here.

7. “Critics Will Always Criticize” Click here.

8. “Religion Isn’t Worth ****!” Click here.

9. “11 Things I’d Like To See Happen In 2011″ Click here.

10. “Leaving A Legacy” Click here.

Do you have a favorite post from my blog or someone else’s? Post a link in the comment section!

Here comes Week 2 of our Kids and Christmas videos. Definitely a great way to kick off your services!

This year, at Indian Springs, we’re doing a couple things to help make our services more memorable. This is one of the things we’re doing. We had a lot of fun with this. Look for two more of these to come. We’ll release a new one each week through Christmas!

David Summers and Tim Wilgus!

Congratulations guys! Random.org must really like you two! DM me your mailing address and I’ll get those shipped out immediately!

For all those who entered and didn’t win, I’m very sorry! But stick around! Another book giveaway contest starts tomorrow! It’s the month of giving at ThinkNextNow so don’t forget to stop back in!

Merry Christmas!

I’m in the Christmas spirit. It’s the first of December and I’m going to give some great books away all month!

This week, I’m giving away two copies of Dave Ramsey’s new book, Entreleadership!

Why this book? Because I’ve been reading it and it’s one book that absolutely needs to be on your shelf! It is jam-packed with leadership wisdom, and I believe in what Dave Ramsey is doing.

Also, if you’re not listening to the Entreleadership Podcast, you are losing out on some solid content and great interviews from leaders in the trenches!

If you want to be entered to win Dave’s new book, ‘Entreleadership,’ you just have to do two things before Thursday, December 8 at noon:

1. Comment below and tell me your Twitter name and the number one thing you want for Christmas (for fun).

2. Tweet the following: “Hey! @markhcox is giving @DaveRamsey’s new book, ‘Entreleadership’ away! Click here to enter: http://bit.ly/vJ6vkX”

I’ll randomly pick two winners next Thursday at noon. Merry Christmas!

Every six months, I get away for a couple days, hide out in a coffee shop, and take a sledgehammer to our youth ministry.

Sounds excessive, right?

It might not be the way you process things, but it is absolutely necessary for me to abandon my office hours for a few hours, so that I can zoom out and look at what’s really happening. If you’re a fan of Andy Stanley’s writings, he talks about this principle in 7 Practices For Effective Ministry. It’s called, “Work On It, Not Just In It.”

Maybe it’s because, when I clean out a closet, I pull every single thing out, and then put it back where it needs to be, slowly throwing stuff away as I go.

Maybe it’s because I just don’t process things as quickly and efficiently as the rest. But there has to be a moment in your year, in which you sit back, evaluate the current system and its effectiveness. Sometimes, that’s scary, but it’s absolutely vital to the direction of your ministry and to the accomplishment of your goals.

Here’s what it helps me to do, though:
- Cut out the excess fat of the student ministry.
- Re-evaluate (outdated and obsolete) organizational assumptions that once governed our systems.
- Re-acquaint myself with the vision of the student ministry.
- Dream of more relevant and effective methods of accomplishing our vision.
- Set new goals.

I’ve found that if I never pause to re-evaluate, I’ll drift from the vision God has given us. If you want to keep a laser focus, tear it down and start over!

p.s. You HAVE to schedule time to do this, because you will never have time to!

Every Saturday, I see the same tweets from hundreds of people:

- “Well, you can tell who the commentators are rooting for!”
- “Did the other team pay the commentators to say that?”
- “I bet the commentators are wearing the other team’s jersey!”

I understand that you have a vested interest in your team. When someone says something bad about your team, it’s like someone says something bad about your kid. You want to put up a fight.

But let’s be honest: Sometimes, your team plays like crap and you need to own up to it! At some point, you need to stop blaming the refs, commentators and the whole BCS system (even though it’s hard to call it a system).

If your team is going to be standout, then your coaching staff, offense, defense, playbook, and resolve has to be excellent.

Here’s the principle at work here:

If you want the “commentators” to praise “your team,” then your team needs to perform excellently!

I don’t care who you are:
If your team is undefeated, people notice.
If you are loaded with all-stars, people notice.
If you play well every time, people notice.

People don’t notice when:
…you play OK and get OK results..
…you have as many off days as on days.
…you give it your best and you don’t rank. (This isn’t kindergarten! You don’t get a gold star for effort!)

Hopefully, you’ve caught the transferable principle here. Only standout teams get noticed. Only teams that practice hard, perform well, and get results get noticed.

So which side is your team on? Don’t you dare get mad if the commentators are telling the truth.

Work hard.
Change the perspective.
Earn the right to be called number one.

A couple gut check questions for your Monday morning:

1. Do you want to “lead a church” or do the work of the ministry?

2. Are you obedient to the Holy Spirit or are you running a show, starring you?

If you do the things the church does, with the Holy Spirit inside of you, that’s church! Conversely, if you merely “lead a church,” but don’t do things the church does, what are you doing?

What’s the motivation? What’s the purpose? At the end of the day, what are you doing? It’s all in how you view people. Are they your machine? Or is your purpose truly serving people?

Brad Cooper, Student Pastor at Newspring Church said something a few years ago that has never left me:

“This is polluted Christianity. It is not OK, and it is never right, and our aim is not to make much of me making much of Jesus. That’s not Christianity. That’s called pride. The aim is to make His Name famous, and my name less.”

In most conversations, the first thing you start with is identification:

“What’s your name? What do you do?”

Be careful not to confuse the two. Your identity is not found in what you do! To get a glimpse of this concept in the Bible, let’s look to Peter.

First, Jesus met Peter at the sea to call him to be a disciple. As soon as Jesus performs the miracle, Peter falls to his knees in humility. Why did Jesus call Peter? Obviously, because He wanted to. But I think it had something to do with the fact that Peter, at the end of the day, was a humble man who would follow His Master.

Pretty positive, right?
Wait for it.
It’s all uphill from here.

Next, there’s the moment where Peter is invited to walk on water. He gets distracted when he sees the wind and the waves and begins to sink. Immediately, he cries out to Jesus to save him; and immediately Jesus reaches out, grabs him, and rebukes Peter for his lack of faith. Tough moment.

What about the time that Peter rebuked Jesus, right after Jesus gave the whole “You are Peter and on this rock” speech”?! Yep. Jesus responds, “Get behind me, Satan.” Not a good day.