The desires of my heart.

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:4 (New International Version)

A while back the Lord dealt with me about that passage. It was as if He were saying He would delight in showering me with His favor, and I was to begin to speak openly and specifically about the things that would be 

        (a) in line with His character and will for my life and 

        (b) things that would bring me delight.

Being very resistant to the kind of Theology that promotes "name it and claim it" I was very cautious. I have tried to keep the desires list to things I could rationalize as "ministry tools" or some other spiritual use. It began with a new computer. My old Mac G3 was feeling a little sluggish next to the G4's and G5's, so I asked the Lord to provide a way to get an new machine. 3 weeks later I walked out of the Apple Store with the top-of-the-line PowerBook G4 on which I am writing this. It IS a ministry tool, as I use it for study, church management and last week (when the Mac G5 we use for projecting elements of our services had problems) we drove the tech aspects of our service with it.

There have been other things, but the latest was today. 

Our church parking lot is badly pocked with potholes to the point of embarrassment. We priced out a total resurfacing: about $10,000.  No way we could squeeze that out of our limited budget.  It became one of those back-burner, low priority wishes, but I added it to the desires of my heart list.  Today I heard commotion and looked out the office window. We are located on a divided highway, with two lanes in each direction, and the two lanes closest to our entry were covered with huge trucks and workmen. I walked out to see what was going on and learned that they were doing some kind of paving patch job by ripping up a lane at a time and resurfacing it. I spoke to the crew and asked how long they would be working there (two days) and made sure they would leave a clear entrance and exit for people coming for appointments at the church. I went and unlocked the restrooms for the workmen, and told the supervisor. He shook my hand, said "Thanks Pastor. Praise the Lord." I joked with him, "When I first looked out the window, I got all excited… I thought somebody was here to pave my parking lot!"  As I started to walk away, he said "Hey, Pastor; when we finish this afternoon, if we have material left-over at the end of the day, would it be okay if we dumped it on the parking lot and patched the holes? Otherwise we'll have to haul it to the landfill."  I told him if he did that, he'd be my very best friend in the whole wide world -- today.  When they completed the lane they were working on, this huge truck backed in our lot and dumped a load of hot asphalt… guys starting spreading it around and then a guy on a big asphalt roller smoothed it all out, leaving a huge problem area of our parking lot smooth and pothole free! 

The supervisor came by and shook my hand before he left, thanking ME for the hospitality (??) and asked if they could park their big trucks and equipment in the lot overnight. Of COURSE they could!  As he left, he said they would repeat the process tomorrow, using their left-over materials to patch the lot.

God is amazing and awesome. The desires of my heart.

What kind are you?

At a training session last week Paul Leroue, who has put his faith to work in Fortune 500 companies such as Reebok and in nonprofit ministry as COO of Youth for Christ USA, taught me a lot about leadership styles.

During one section of the morning he dealt with the concept of 

Four Quadrant Leadership.

While all of us have elements of each of the four in our makeup, we tend to have one dominant and one secondary characteristic style of leadership. I believe a well-balanced church needs some people dominant in each of the four areas in leadership

                

• Heroic Leadership: 

   Vision Oriented, Passion and energy are key drivers, Focus and personal drive, Motivated more by the future state than the present situation. 

   VISION CASTING: Where are we going?

• Heart Leadership: 

   Relationally oriented, Community is critically important, Passion Driven, Love/Care/Nurturing is part of their make-up,  Meaning and Purpose are important

   VISION CASTING: Why are we going there?

• Head Leadership: 

   Structure, Policy, Guidelines/Rules, Analytical thinking ability, Disciplined approach in everything, Planning orientation

   VISION CASTING: What is the specific plan for getting there?

• Hands Leadership: 

  Gets things done, Drives others to get things done, Accomplishes tasks for satisfaction, Timeline oriented, Evaluates others purely by their ability to get things done.

   VISION CASTING: What part do I play?

In our weekly Pastoral Staff Meeting we spent some time identifying our own dominant and secondary quadrants, and how they interacted with people from the other quadrants. 

For example, following a church meeting 50 chairs must be stacked and stored. The HANDS leader sets immediately to work stacking chairs and recruiting chair stackers. The HEAD leader gets frustrated because there seems to be no organized stacking system or plan. The HEROIC leader doesn't care about the chair stacking, because he is thinking about the day when there will be 500 chairs to stack. The HEART leader is not stacking chairs -- he is over in the corner listening to someone who had their feeling hurt and needs encouragement.  

HANDS is frustrated with HEART because heart is not working on the task at hand. HEART can't figure how HANDS can be stacking chairs when it is obvious that there's something more important needing attention -- a hurting person. HEAD is going crazy over the random, chaotic stacking with no plan. HEROIC sees the whole chair stacking exercise as just training for bigger and better things in the future, and keeps talking about what a great 'problem' it will be to stack and store hundreds of chairs.

My staff and I identified that I am HEROIC dominant and HEART secondary.  What kind are you?

The performance aspect.

It's the ugly secret of those who prepare and plan the worship service. The thing we all hate to admit, hate to discuss, is the performance aspect of presenting the truth of the Christian message each Sunday.

"Not at MY church!" you say?

You mean your pastor doesn't study and prepare his sermons? He or she doesn't have at least some rudimentary outline or notes to keep the message coherent and on track?  That's a performance aspect --- the desire to make sure that sermon does not detract or distract from the underlying message and purpose.

The musicians practice. They rehearse the keys for each song, endings, transitions… perhaps vocal solos, all because they want to give their best and they don't want to take the focus off of the message of the music.

Last week our Sunday service was, if you'll excuse the use of the term, magical.  By that, I mean that everything fell into perfect order in regards to the performance aspect of the service.  The musicians and vocalists were well-rehearsed, yet allowed the presentation of the music to flow with the Spirit of God.  The musical synergy that happens when things just click is amazing.  Every player performed above their skill level, and the result was "chicken-skin" (the Hawaii term for 'goose-bumps'.)

We showed a video-clip about those who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and then received an offering to send as aid.  Over $700.  The sermon, which I struggled to compose, seemed to flow with anointing.

It was a total "God thing" and as I reflected upon the service (as I often do) to analyze what could have been done to make the day more effective and meaningful, I found it hard to identify very much we could have done differently.

We do perform, in the best sense of that word, and then ask God to anoint and bless with results that honor Him.