What's Your Focus?
If you've never read Jim Collins' bestselling leadership book, Good To Great, I highly recommend it. In his book, he tells a story that is very profound and gives us wisdom as we look at our current times in dealing with COVID-19 as leaders. He calls it, "The Stockdale Paradox."
The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in one of the infamous prisoner-of-war camps during the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned for eight years and tortured over twenty times. He lived out the war with no prisoner's rights, no set release date, and no certainty whether he would ever see his family again. His biography describes the depressing hopelessness of his situation. How did he deal with it when he was there and didn’t know the end of the story?
Admiral Stockdale said the ones who did not leave that prison camp alive were the "Optimists." They were the ones who told themselves, "We'll be out by Christmas," and Christmas would come and go. Then they'd say, "We'll be out by Easter," and Easter would come and go. And then by Thanksgiving, then Christmas would come again...and they would eventually die of a broken heart.
But the ones who made it out were the ones who prepared for the most challenging situations that might be forthcoming…and looked at them totally realistically. But always with the awareness that eventually, everything would be good again.
One day we will be on the other side of COVID-19. Our lives may never be the same, but we will prevail, if we keep our eyes on Jesus. Like Admiral Stockdale, be a giver of hope to the ones you are leading. One day, EVERYTHING WILL BE GOOD AGAIN. Remember that the generation before us had to go to war to save our civilization. Now we’re just being asked to sit on our couches to save it! So there’s not much to complain about when you put it all into perspective.
If you've never read Jim Collins' bestselling leadership book, Good To Great, I highly recommend it. In his book, he tells a story that is very profound and gives us wisdom as we look at our current times in dealing with COVID-19 as leaders. He calls it, "The Stockdale Paradox."
The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in one of the infamous prisoner-of-war camps during the Vietnam War. He was imprisoned for eight years and tortured over twenty times. He lived out the war with no prisoner's rights, no set release date, and no certainty whether he would ever see his family again. His biography describes the depressing hopelessness of his situation. How did he deal with it when he was there and didn’t know the end of the story?
Admiral Stockdale said the ones who did not leave that prison camp alive were the "Optimists." They were the ones who told themselves, "We'll be out by Christmas," and Christmas would come and go. Then they'd say, "We'll be out by Easter," and Easter would come and go. And then by Thanksgiving, then Christmas would come again...and they would eventually die of a broken heart.
But the ones who made it out were the ones who prepared for the most challenging situations that might be forthcoming…and looked at them totally realistically. But always with the awareness that eventually, everything would be good again.
One day we will be on the other side of COVID-19. Our lives may never be the same, but we will prevail, if we keep our eyes on Jesus. Like Admiral Stockdale, be a giver of hope to the ones you are leading. One day, EVERYTHING WILL BE GOOD AGAIN. Remember that the generation before us had to go to war to save our civilization. Now we’re just being asked to sit on our couches to save it! So there’s not much to complain about when you put it all into perspective.
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Have you started a fire recently in your youth service? I mean a real fire. If not, this Source will give license to the "closet pyromaniac" hiding inside most of us. My title for the evening was "Consuming Fire," and in all honesty, it will be a night that your teenagers will probably remember for a long time.
The message focuses on God's positive and life-changing process of purification in our lives. It ends with a brief visualization focused around something we don't mention much in youth ministry these days...Hell. So as you share with your students about the "fiery times" we all experience, it will be your honor to give those times some meaning and purpose.
Aren't we really lucky to get to do what we do? We get to partner with Jesus to change teenagers' lives before they reach that nasty, temperamental, hard-to-change status called "adulthood"!
Lovingly still playing with fire,
You'll enjoy this Source, "A Cause Worth Fighting For." So often we preach messages to our students about keeping the future and their God-given destiny in focus in their lives, or we help them to get free from the past issues in their lives. But tonight's Source asked our students, "What cause are you fighting for...RIGHT NOW?"
Without a sense of cause in our lives, it's all too easy to slip into routine and complacency during the day-in, day-out moments. As youth ministers, let's keep before our student's eyes, these pivotal questions: What is going to be part of my signature? What matters to me that counts for eternity? Remember, youth leaders, it's in the daily decisions that lead to our ultimate destiny. So grab this Source and passionately encourage your students to find their cause worth fighting for.
Still fighting for the cause,
The reality is, how each of us choose to spend our time, will ultimately create how each of us choose to spend our life. However, it's all too easy to let our primary focus be inward, thinking of our own personal rights, to ever truly seize the day. But to be able to truly change my behavior, I must first change my perspective.
In this month's Source, "Carpe Diem," I'm challenging our students to seize the day on making some Christ-honoring choices that can set them up with a lifetime of success and happiness. Listen in, as you hear me illustrate the importance of how we spend our lives with some help from a powerful tape measure illustration, four lepers, and a clock ticking away in the background. It's my hope that we all say to the Lord, "Give me your kind of spiritual leprosy...so I don't waste my life spiritually having too much to lose."
Choosing to seize the day,
I LOVE ROCKY MOVIES! All of them! They were big deals in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. But a more recent release, CREED, brings a taste of the Rocky era to today's generation. These movies show us how hard it is to be a CHAMPION, but the focus of the Word of God is not so much that we all be CHAMPIONS...but that we all be CONTENDERS.
It's not always EASY staying in the fight. But Philippians 3:14 reminds us to, "PRESS ON and reach the end goal." In this month's Source, "Creed," I encourage students to KEEP FIGHTING the battles of life that can easily cause us to "throw in the towel."
Lovingly,
If you are over 30, you probably remember exactly where you were on September 11, 2001 when terrorists flew into New York's Twin Towers. I not only remember where I was, but I remember the challenges of leading my youth group through this time. The Bible exhorts us to be leaders who know "the time and the seasons."
In this Youth Leader's Coach resource, I draw from a couple of my favorite leadership books, and key "emotional portals" I learned to focus on during the difficult years after 9-11. Years from now you will be telling people that you were a leader during the COVID-19 pandemic. And, the honest truth is we won't come out of this crisis the same way we entered it. Now is your moment to be Jesus with skin on in the lives of the people you influence.
Lovingly,
