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Zondervan 24-Hour Ebook Flash Sale

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Zondervan is doing an incredible ebook flash sale this week. Each day, one ebook will be on sale for $1.99.

What’s Best Next will be on sale Thursday.

The other books are

  • Nabeel Qureshi’s Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (for $2.99; all others are $1.99) on Monday
  • Tim Challies’ The Next Story (revised) on Tuesday
  • Mike Horton’s Ordinary on Wednesday
  • What’s Best Next on Thursday
  • Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge’s A God-Sized Vision on Friday
  • Timothy Paul Jones and Daniel Montgomery’s Proof: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace on Saturday

Here’s the link to the sale, and spread the word!

Theodore Roosevelt: In Praise of the Strenuous Life

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In 1899, a few months after becoming governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt gave the speech “In Praise of the Strenuous Life.” It remained one of his most popular, and has excellent things to say that are affirmed by the biblical doctrine of vocation. Here is how it starts:

In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself, and from his sons, shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole.

Read the whole thing (it’s short). And you can find more helpful resources on vocation at MondayChurch.org.

Dorothy Sayers: Clamor to be Engaged in Work Worth Doing

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Sometimes, Dorothy Sayers sounds like Seth Godin. Here’s what she says in her superb essay “Why Work?,” referring to one of the main implications of the view of work she has just outlined:

A fourth consequence is that we should fight tooth and nail, not for mere employment, but for the quality of the work that we had to do. We should clamor to be engaged on work that was worth doing, and in which we can take pride.

The worker would demand that the stuff he helped to turn out should be good stuff….

There would be protests and strikes — not only about pay and conditions, but about the quality of the work demanded and the honesty, beauty, and usefulness of the goods produced. The greatest insult which a commercial age has offered to the worker has been to rob him of all interest in the end-product of the work and to force him to dedicate his life to making badly things which were not worth making.

Fast forwarding about 70 years, I think Sayers would agree whole-heartedly with the vision for work Godin outlines on his blog and books, especially Linchpin: 

In bestsellers such as Purple Cow and Tribes, Seth Godin taught readers how to make remarkable products and spread powerful ideas. But this book is about you-your choices, your future, and your potential to make a huge difference in whatever field you choose.

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there’s a third team, the linchpins. These people figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.

Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations. They may not be famous but they’re indispensable. And in today’s world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.

As Godin writes, “Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.”

Join Me in Atlanta this Thursday for the One2 Conference on Faith and Work

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I’m excited to be speaking at the One2 Conference in Atlanta this Thursday. The vision for these events is amazing and just what we need when it comes to the faith and work discussion. Here it is in a nutshell:

ONE2 is a one-night event for students and recent graduates who want to do meaningful work that honors God and serves the world.

These events are not like a traditional conference where most of the time consists of teaching. Instead, in addition to the teaching (two 20-minute TED-like talks), there is also table discussions and Q&A. The aim is to create a space for 18-25 year-olds to talk about the intersection of faith and work.

So if you are a student or recent graduate, come to ONE2 Atlanta this Thursday and learn more about how your faith integrates with your work. The other keynote speaker will be Tyler Reagin, executive director of Catalyst, who I can’t wait to hear.

You can register at the website, as well as learn more about ONE2 in general, discover some of the resources they recommend, and read their blog. And here’s a short video trailer on the conference:

Four Meeting Practices that Distinguish Top Leadership Teams

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This is a guest post by Ryan T. Hartwig and Warren Bird, authors of Teams that Thrive: Five Disciplines of Collaborative Church Leadership, which is out today.

Certainly meeting advice is ubiquitous; our goal is not to repeat that here. Instead, we just want to report the meeting practices that differentiated thriving teams from underperforming teams in our recent study of nearly 150 church leadership teams. As you read what follows, notice what’s missing: the number of meetings or the number of hours spent in meetings. Thus it appears that “too many meetings” or “too much time spent in meetings” aren’t the scapegoats for poor team performance. Our data shows that there are many different ways to do effective meetings, but a few key practices make a great difference.

1. Teams do more than formally “meet” together. They collaborate continuously.

On top teams, meeting times don’t bound their teamwork. Instead, senior leadership teamwork is ongoing, not just occurring during meetings. In fact, we found that meeting informally for more than one hour per week was a contributing factor to differences between top and mediocre teams.

Two key strategies best enable continuous teamwork. The first is to fight like crazy against overwork and busyness. The second strategy is to develop office environments where it is easy for team members to bump into one another. Shared conference rooms and break rooms, stocked fridges, shared administrative support staff members and offices in close proximity to one another encourage team members to frequently bump into one another, creating additional opportunities to continue the team’s important work outside of the boardroom. This active engagement carries over in the boardroom as well.

2. Meeting agendas are distributed to all team members, preferably at least one day in advance.

Distributing meaningful agendas is so powerful for several reasons. First, it forces the meeting facilitator to spend time planning out the priorities and flow of the meeting beforehand, to an extent that it can be shared with others. Second, it informs all participants of the meeting’s purpose and content, which enables each participant to come prepared. Third, it provides structure to the meeting that encourages the team to stay on task and focused throughout the meeting.

3. Meeting agendas are not solely developed by the lead pastor.

Top teams get the whole team involved in setting the agenda. While most senior team meetings were convened and facilitated by either the senior pastor or executive pastor, top teams offered opportunities for other team members to shape the team’s agenda.

This input can be offered in a few different ways. First, meeting conveners can directly ask team members for items to include on the agenda several days prior to the meeting. Second, conveners can offer a standing invitation to send agenda items. Third, conveners can develop the agenda in such a way that a place to discuss the typical issues is slated on the agenda each week.

For instance, each week an agenda may have a slot for “personnel issues,” during which each team member is invited to broach discussions or to bring a decision to the group regarding personnel matters. To make this option work, however, conveners must create space for team members to bring up and discuss important issues, rather than overwhelm the meeting time with other agenda items.

4. Agendas clearly delineate the work for the meeting.

For top teams, the agenda is thoughtfully developed enough to truly guide the team’s discussion and progress through the meeting, rather than agendas that are so vague and routine that no one pays attention to them. Such agendas include:

  • implicit or explicit time periods for each agenda item
  • intentionally ordered items, often leaving the most important discussion items in the middle of the agenda
  • consistent format so that participants know what you expect in each meeting and can find necessary information quickly
  • enough detail to discourage participants from wondering what is coming later in the meeting

Agendas provide a forum to capture what has been decided during the meeting, individual expectations for followup and a framework to develop the agenda for the next team meeting.

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Excerpted with permission from chapter 12 of Teams That Thrive: Five Disciplines of Collaborative Church Leadership by Ryan T. Hartwig and Warren Bird, InterVarsity Press, 2015. Visit www.TeamsThatThriveBook.com for the book itself, exercises, and other tools to help your team.

Go Slow to Go Fast

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From Executive Intelligence, quoting Irene Rosenfeld, former CEO of Frito-Lay:

Because we know speed is of the essence, too often we immediately start moving without first taking the time to think about what we’re trying to accomplish.

There are hundreds of stories about this. Everyone is trying to act quickly, but too often they run out to solve a problem without fully understanding what problem they are trying to solve. This creates a lot of organizational angst which slows things down and leads to all sorts of issues regarding job satisfaction and work-life balance.

Destroying the Success Ethic

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There is still sometimes in the church today the thinking that success is a sign that a person is following God well, and difficulty and adversity are signs that they are likely doing something wrong.

While following God’s commands often leads to success, sometimes (due to injustice in the world) it leads to hardship and the opposite of earthly success. Hence, we cannot evaluate whether God is blessing someone simply by their outward success and circumstances. We have to look at character and obedience.

Here are some incredible quotes from some of the greatest theologians in church history on this matter, from Leland Ryken’s book Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure:

Puritan Thomas Watson: “True godliness is usually attended with persecution.”

Puritan Richard Baxter: “Take heed that you judge not of God’s love, or of your happiness or misery, by your riches or poverty, prosperity or adversity.”

Luther: It is “utterly nonsensical” the “delusion” that if someone “has good fortune, wealth, and health, …God is dwelling there.”

Samuel Willard: “As riches are not evidences of God’s love, so neither is poverty of his anger or hatred.”

Thomas Hooker: “Afflictions are no argument of God’s displeasure…but the ensign of grace and goodness.”

Paul Helm on the Call to the Ministry

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From my notes on his book The Callings: The Gospel in the World:

The call to the ministry is extraordinary, not in the sense that it is miraculous or accompanied by visions, but because “by it a man is taken out of many of the routine commitments of daily life.” Specifically, “he ought to be freed from the need to earn his daily living in order to give himself exclusively to the word of God (1 Tim 5:17).”

It also is extraordinary in that it arises out of the ordinary. A person generally will carry on a normal calling, and “it is when he is inwardly constrained to preach the gospel, and his gifts — his ability to handle Scripture, to preach, to give leadership — are recognized by the church, that his inward call becomes outwardly ratified. It is as these inward and outward circumstances combined that a man has a warrant for leaving his regular calling and attempting to obtain a position of pastoral oversight.”

The Gospel-Centered Business

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From Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work:

The gospel-centered business would have a discernible vision for serving the customer in some unique way, a lack of adversarial relationships and exploitation, an extremely strong emphasis on excellence and product quality, and an ethical environment that goes ‘all the way down’ to the bottom of the organizational chart and to the realities of daily behavior, even when high ethics mean a loss of margin.

In the business animated by the gospel worldview, profit is simply one of many important bottom lines.

Keller nails it here. It is also very interesting that his statement that profit should be only one of many bottom lines syncs up with the research of Jim Collins. In the landmark book Built to Last, Collins’ research shows that the most profitable companies actually don’t put profit first — they put the customer and the mission first.

This doesn’t mean they don’t seek profit (just as Keller isn’t saying not to seek profit). Rather, it’s that they realize that profit is not the point. Making a contribution and serving the customer is. You have to do this in a profitable way, but ironically, Collins’ research shows, you will be more profitable when you pursue more than profit rather than just profit. 

And so here we see that the nature of a gospel-centered business is very much in line with what the best business research is showing as well. Common grace and the gospel are allies, not opponents.