Red Dawn in the Pacific

I have always admired the red dawn.
I look for it when I travel internationally and as I power across time
zones.

This time I got to see it with my son as we winged it to Hawaii. We have been talking about it for days leading up to the trip. His eyes were wide-opened as I explained a very red early morning as we rounded the globe.

And now we have seen it ... together.

Route 66

This will be a great soundtrack for one of our roadtrips!

Thanks to the team from Cars!

Click below

R-O-C-K in the USA - John Mellencamp

Today is the day we fly out to the US! You beauty!!

Here is a great theme song for one of our legs - a road trip from las vegas to San Francisco!

Over to you, John Mellencamp!

The Wonder Years - March 2006 "It's Time" Media Clip

When we started Westlife Church we did monthly preview or "entree" services ... to give people a "taste" of what the church would look like.

This is one of the first media clips we did - a combo of inspirational and arial footage of Greater Springfield and a good dose of Shannon Noll. Some people were so moved that they believed the song was written for the launch of Westlife.

I had a teary moment watching it recently... when I thought about how many lives have been touched in 4 years!

Click below.

Creative Leadership - Steve Penny

I came across another great Steve Penny b log post recently.

The challenge of life is to grow your leadership gift.

I believe that every person created in the image of God is born with a leadership gift. To develop this gift to serve your generation is the real challenge of life.

There are three qualities that need to be developed to see our leadership influence increase.

1. Future scope
This is the ability to see into the future and focus on the dreams God has put within you.Your future is not in tomorrow but in the next level above you. You can live your future today by chosing to pay the price to go to the next level.The next level is always within our reach. To go up requires three things. You must look up – reach up & give up.Remember – to go up you have to give up.

2. Future planning
Good leaders do not wait for life to come to them, they are always planning ahead. Proactive leadership always initiates and activates rather than waiting to see what eventuates.Do today what you want to enjoy tomorrow. Good harvests come from planning to plant – not planning to reap. Plan to sow today and your harvests will come naturally into your life.

3. Future friends
You must choose your friends with the future in mind. Commit to people who want to go and grow with you in life.Influence those around you to keep reaching higher. Be the catalyst for growth in your group. Take a leadership role in dealing with attitudes and actions that limit your progress together. The mark of good leaders is the number of people they take with them to the next level.

Drawing of Me Sick - Priceless

I just love this drawing that my boy did for me when I was recently in hospital.

The kids have never seen me sick like that - so it was a bit of a shock.

This drawing just made my day!

Sin Deterrant and Faith Accelerant – Mark Batterson

I came across another great Mark Batterson blog post recently.

I know of no greater sin deterrent and faith accelerant than simply reading the Bible on a daily basis.

There is no substitute. There is no shortcut.

Of course, it takes more than reading.

The Bible wasn't just meant to be read. It was meant to be meditated. Reading without meditating is like eating without digesting. We don't absorb all the nutrients.

May God give us a ravenous appetite for His word.

Reading results in one-dimensional knowledge.
Meditating results in two-dimensional revelation.
Obedience results in three-dimensional faith.

Read it. Meditate on it. Live it out.

A Different Kind of Sunday - This Sunday

The Wonder Years - Meet our Urban Pioneers - August 2004

I came across this great newspaper article recently while filing some materials.

What a blast from the past.

And here we are 5 years later... with a foundation laid, lives changed, and community influence.

Do You Worry? - J John

I recently got this from J John. I am sure you will enjoy this!

Did you know that most people’s anxiety is focused and preoccupied with
40% of things that will never happen,
30% of things relating to the past that can’t be changed,
12% of things relating to other people’s criticism, which is generally untrue,
and 10% of things relating to health, which often gets worse with stress and negative thinking.

Only 8% of the time do they worry about real concerns that will need to be faced. So, if only about 8% of all the issues in our lives really turn out to be ‘something’ why is it that we spend so much time worrying and being highly anxious and stressed about all the rest?

I read a story about Arthur Rank, who decided to do all his worrying on one day each week. He chose Wednesdays. When anything happened that gave him anxiety and annoyed him, he would write it down, put it in his ‘worry box’ and forget about it until the following Wednesday. The interesting thing was that, on the following Wednesday when he opened his worry box, he found that most of the things that had disturbed him the past six days were no longer issues of concern. So it would have been useless to have worried about them in the first place.

Of course, there are important things going on in our lives that we do need to take seriously. However, if we spend most of our time worrying about the inconsequential, we won’t have time to focus on matters of consequence. When we are so concerned about the things that we can’t do anything about, we have a tendency to miss things which are really important and then we have no time and energy left to deal with them.

The question of worry and anxiety raises the issue of our faith and trust in God. Does God know? Does God care? Is our God sovereign? Can we trust God?

Did Jesus himself not say, in Matthew 6:25-30:
"I tell you not to worry about everyday life - whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?"

I heard about a woman who couldn’t sleep at night because she worried that her home would be burgled. One night, her husband heard a noise in the house, so he went downstairs to investigate. When he got there, he found a burglar. He immediately said, ‘Come upstairs and meet my wife. She’s been waiting ten years to meet you.’

A real burglar can steal from us once. Worry can steal from us night after night, for many years. Worry not only steals our sleep, it also steals our health and our ability to cope with life productively.

And what about people who constantly obsess about their weight? It’s all very well being health-conscious, but should we think about what we eat to such an extent that there’s no room in our heads to think of anything else? Elephants live longer than people, maybe because they never worry about trying to lose weight!

Maybe we should take the following verse like medication three times a day - morning, noon and night - to remind us to renew our minds:

‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4:6-7).

Larger Than Life!

Jill did these photos up of me recently on a program she downloaded.

I really like them.

Authentic Leadership Development - Shamira and Eilamb

I am enjoying ploughing through a a great leadership article that Nick emailed me. He is currently in Malaysia on holidays... and catching up on his course reading!

The paper is Authentic Leadership Development by Shamira and Eilamb

Here is the abstract ...

Abstract
In this paper, we first develop the concepts of authentic leaders, authentic leadership, and authentic leader development. We suggest a definition of authentic leaders, which is based on the leader’s self-concept: his or her self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, self-concordance, and person-role merger, and on the extent to which the leader’s self-concept is expressed in his or her behavior.

Following, we offer a life-story approach to the development of authentic leaders. We argue that authentic leadership rests heavily on the self-relevant meanings the leader attaches to his or her life experiences, and these meanings are captured in the leader’s life-story. We suggest that self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, and person-role merger are derived from the life-story.

Therefore, the construction of a life-story is a major element in the development of authentic leaders. We further argue that the life-story provides followers with a major source of information on which to base their judgments about the leader’s authenticity.

We conclude by drawing some practical implications from this approach and presenting suggestions for further research.


Here are some more bits n pieces as I read on.

We suggest that the main defining characteristics of authentic leaders are:

1. Authentic leaders do not fake their leadership. They do not pretend to be leaders just because
they are in a leadership position, for instance as a result of an appointment to a management
position.

2. Relatedly, authentic leaders do not take on a leadership role or engage in leadership activities for status, honor or other personal rewards. Rather, they lead from a conviction.

3. Authentic leaders are originals, not copies.

4. Authentic leaders are leaders whose actions are based on their values and convictions.

Lead on!!