Glorious Mud

I didn't always work for the church. I consider myself, in many ways, the accidental pastor. I set out to become a high school English teacher who would move into administration. Well, kind of. I didn't really set out to do anything - but that is another story. But I did land in education and I spent 17 years working with kids or with those who work with kids - as a teacher (public and private), a board member, and a principal. During this time, I worked mostly with employees, not volunteers. There are advantages to leading employees - they pretty much have to perform in order to receive a pay check. There is an internal, intrinsic motivation to move the organization toward success - "If I don't do my job, I will lose my job." There was also a freedom to lead in that environment because there was a stated agreement - you are being paid to do your job and I am being paid to make sure you are doing it well. If I push you to improve in that environment, it i...

I was leafing through one of my old notebooks today (one of the tedious benefits of unpacking after a move - I have had to look at everything I haven't thrown away and evaluate it again before stuffing it in a box or on a shelf where it won't be looked again for the next five years). This notebook was a loose, unintentional chronicle of my early days with the Journey. (Not the point of this post - but what a great ride the last three years have been. I have been destroyed and rebuilt by the gospel in ways I could never have imagined four years ago - Thank you Father God!) Now the point of this post: I took notes from my first Leadership Summit in 2006. I had not read Courageous Leadership and was still pridefully disdainful of all things "seeker friendly" and "Willow." I have since repented. I take notes in a strange way, I suppose - I doodle more than manuscript. And I found in my notes a picture of a bucket with a crack with a simple phrase: Vision L...

A good friend and gifted pastor, Jonathan McIntosh, recently launched a new web endeavor called ReThink Mission. JMac is one of the most missionally minded dudes I know and he has incredible insight into how to engage culture for the advancement of the gospel. So, do yourself a favor, and visit his new website. He is updating it daily and is landing some killer interviews and insightful topics. If you are a church planter, church leader, wannabe church planter or leader, take some time and read it. Rethink Mission

I gave a message at the Journey Metro East a couple months ago about men, women, and dating. I spoke from 1 Peter 3 and sought to reverse engineer what the Bible has to say about successful marriages and apply it to dating (since the Bible is completely silent on the issue of dating). I try to prepare every message with God's help (and if it weren't for him, I would have nothing of worth to offer - ever), but even so God doesn't tell me the topics to preach on very often. That said, this was one of those sermons that I had to preach. I wasn't planning to - I had a great sermon on what it meant to be the covenant people of God ready to go - it was already outlined and submitted to the Journey teaching team for pre-preaching discussion. I was pretty happy with myself - for once, I was ahead of the game. Then one morning, about a week before delivering that sermon, I woke up in a fog having a conversation with myself. The words followed me up out of mists of slumberland...

I recently read an article in the New Yorker called "How David Beats Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell. I found it fascinating and highly recommend it - you can find it here . The Article The article uses the experiences of the shepherd boy David, a middle school girls' basketball coach named Vivek Ranadivé, Laurence of Arabia, Rick Patino, and others to show that the "Davids" of the world - the underdogs - can actually have a distinct advantage in competition of conflict if they focus more on effort than skill - more time looking for unconventional approaches than by playing the game as it is normally played. The premise of the article is that underdogs actually win most of the time when they approach the conflict on their own terms, unconstrained by conventional expectations. Many times, as in the case of the middle school girls' basketball that used a vigorous full court press the entire game, the strategies are not illegal or immoral - they are simply unco...

Lauren, my wonderful bride of almost 20 years, has been keeping an occasional blog - and recently posted her thoughts on our son's first communion (on Good Friday at our evening service). It was the highlight of my year - Lauren's thoughts can be found here . themizels.blogspot.com

I was reading Scott Thomas's blog on The Ten Qualifications of a Church Planter over at Acts29 blogs - and wanted to pass it along to you as an excellent resource. A few sentences in his opening paragraphs caught me: Every church leader should be able to spot a church planter and then send him to plant as soon as he is ready. The problem I am seeing is that we are so desperate for good men that we are not sending them into the field. We take warriors and make them into administrative clerks. He followed up later with this: We prefer the men in our church to be mules. A mule does not act like a jackass and they are able to carry larger loads and endure longer than a horse. They are tamer than a jackass but do not seem to want to run like a stallion. I think many pastors prefer a mule to a stallion. Stallions are designed to run and not be penned up in a stable. We are generally afraid of stallions because we are afraid of our own masculinity, our leadership, and our "importanc...