Job descriptions (part 1)

Image source: referenceborbusiness.com

While I was at a conference today, I had an interesting conversation with a lady about her company. She owns a music school and has recently started having to hire employees. She doesn’t have much experience with people management, so she asked me a few questions. One of them had to do with how close she should be to her employees.

She is a people person so, naturally, she enjoys relationship building. And she has an employee that has used that as an excuse to not respect her as the boss. It’s not that the employee is evil… it’s just that this other person didn’t follow through on an assigned task and it left the owner looking unprepared, and very frustrated.

When she asked me what she could do, I encouraged her to spell out her expectations for each employee and position – basically, I encouraged her to come up with job descriptions for each employee.

Snowflakes

Today we took the kids across the border to France for a grocery shopping/day trip.  While I packed the bags of groceries into the van (lots of American and American-ish stuff), Emma was amazed at how cool the snowflakes looked on the window.  It was still cold, so they hadn't melted off yet.  And each one looked so perfect!

It got me thinking about God's creativity.  Every snowflake is different (and there were a bunch of them falling today).  How strange that God would "waste" His creativity on something as insignificant as snowflakes.  Yet He does it with a flair!

We are also unique... each of us has unique fingerprints & retinas -- even in the case of biological twins -- and DNA!  Not only are you different from every other person alive (nearly 7 billion people), you are different from every other person ever to walk the face of this planet.  God made you special!  He created you on purpose, for a purpose!

Not only do we each have a unique purpose, but we also have a unique way in which we connect with God.  Of course, there are the normal ways: praise & worship, Bible reading, prayer, solitude, etc.  But since we're one-of-a-kind creations, we are to have a one-of-a-kind relationship with God.  I encourage you to spend some time this week asking God to reveal your uniqueness to you... and how He has designed your one-of-a-kind relationship with Him to be.

New Year's resolutions and the quick fix

We've added an article about New Year's resolutions and quick fixes to our website. Here's a teaser:

“Should old acquaintance be forgot, la la, la la la la…”(No one really knows the words to Auld Lang Syne anyway!) It’s that time of year again. Time to make the old New Year’s Resolutions. I wonder if I can remember last year’s resolutions… hmmm… Oh yeah: “Spend more time with my family”. Well, I did pretty good on that one. What about “Lose some weight”? Not so good… I gained a few pounds. What else? Uhhh… let’s see… umm… err… OK, I admit it: I can’t even remember most of them!

The point is this: we often make these resolutions quite flippantly. It’s not as if we don’t mean them when we make them. It’s just that we lack the follow through to complete them...

You can read the entire article by clicking here.

Antidote to Stagnation

Image source: pieria.co.uk

I watched Wall-E with the kids tonight.  I wasn’t too impressed with the movie, but the Special Features (Behind the Scenes, etc) were awesome!  Although everything on the Bonus DVD was (of course) carefully scripted, I was amazed at the number of times they talked about taking risks.

At one point, one of the producers mentioned that the Pixar team begins to ask questions if you don’t “fall off your bicycle.”  They ask questions such as, “Are you not taking enough risks?”  They feel that is the only way to avoid stagnation.

Think about that… the expectation that you will make some mistakes along the way.  They consider failure to be a valuable part of the process – something to be expected, not something to be feared.
What does this mean to us as we lead or serve on teams?

• We have to make our teams safe places for people to take risks… places where (acceptable) risk, and “failing forward” is celebrated.
• We have to lead our teams into thinking out of the box… this is often done by change of environment (place, time, structure, etc).
• We have to be willing to take risks ourselves.  This requires that we deal with our insecurities and limitations - often a leader’s worst fear!

We can’t expect yesterday’s methods to reach today’s culture.  Oh that we would keep this in mind… especially as we lead organizations whose mission is attempting to direct a lost world toward Jesus Christ.

The Purpose of Christmas

I wrote an article entitled The Purpose of Christmas a few years ago... and thought you might enjoy it.  Here's a little teaser...

I gave in. What was I thinking? My wife asked (begged) me to go shopping with her on the day after Thanksgiving.  My answer?  Ok, sure.  What was I thinking?!?!  I hate shopping!  Even worse, I had agreed to go with her on the busiest shopping day of the year.  The only reason I can come up with is that if she went, I would be at home alone with all three kids ALL DAY LONG!  Oh well…
What I experienced last Friday was UGLY!  People were pushing, adults were fighting over toys & parking spaces (we saw two guys almost get in a fist fight over a parking space), and sales people were rude.  Honestly, it wasn’t all bad.  There were some people that seemed to have some perspective, but not many we ran into.
A bright spot in our day was when we were seated in a restaurant next to a new mom & her baby.  It just so happened that since our sitter was kind of young, we had our baby with us too.  She and Robin struck up a conversation and it wasn’t long before our conversation turned to spiritual things.  She was feeling guilty and alone (as an unwed mother).  We were able to share about Christ’s love and we invited her to visit our church.  It was a total God-ordained appointment.
Anyway, the whole consumer-driven, commercialized theme of the holiday shopping rush always seems to frustrate me.  I keep asking myself, “Don’t they get it?”  I mean… do they really think that’s what Christmas is all about?  If we look at the Christmas story from its original source, the Bible, we can determine the true meaning of Christmas.  Let’s look at it.  There are two biblical accounts to look at, Matthew 1:18-2:19 and Luke 1:5-2:40.

To read it online, click here.

The wise use of influence

I have been reading through the Old Testament again.  As I read the story of Hezekiah yesterday, I came across these verses:

2Ch 30:1, 5-6
(1)  Then Hezekiah invited all of Israel and Judah, with personal letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, to come to The Temple of GOD in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover to Israel's God...
(5)  and they sent out the invitation from one end of the country to the other, from Beersheba in the south to Dan in the north: "Come and celebrate the Passover to Israel's God in Jerusalem." No one living had ever celebrated it properly.
(6)  The king gave the orders, and the couriers delivered the invitations from the king and his leaders throughout Israel and Judah...

Here we see the king of the nation of Judah (which was divided from the nation of Israel at this time).  He decided that he (and his nation) would return to God wholeheartedly.  That in itself if a lot to try to accomplish, since his father had boarded up the Temple of God in Jerusalem.

He was zealous to draw Israel back to its roots as well.  And so he decided to use his god-given influence wisely: He called the people of Israel to return to God along with the people of Judah. (Notice how he referred to God as "Israel's God.")  He sent messengers all throughout the nation of Israel, encouraging them to join him in celebrating the Passover feast, something that had not been done since Solomon's time.

It made me think about our lives.  Everyday people leverage influence in the business world, school, society, etc.  They use it to get ahead in the world, to win acclaim for themselves or their cause.

Here we see a man that leveraged his influence to bring people back to their God.  He wasn't ashamed or afraid to call for a response in people over which he had no authority.  And although it wasn't totally successful, it did make a difference.

We need to pray for wisdom in the use of the influence God gives each one of us.  And that we'll make wise choices that increase this influence.

I'm home!!!

My USA fundraising trip was crazy, but amazing! In three weeks I traveled a little over 17,500 miles, counting 14 flights. I spoke in 15 services and did 3 leadership training sessions. The coolest part was that I was able to pray with four students to give their hearts to Christ.

Now I'm back home and trying to ease back into the Central European Time Zone. It hasn't been pretty so far, but sometimes that's the way it goes. I have one week of down time with my family before heading to Frankfurt (Oder), Germany for four days to do evangelistic school and street outreach, as well as leadership training and a service for the host church. For an updated ministry schedule, check out our website: www.perrinministries.org.

I wanted to thank all of you that supported this trip with your finances and prayers. We continue to be amazed at our partners and friends... You're helping us change the spiritual landscape of a planet!