My job allows me to chat with distinguished seminary professors every week. During one such conversation, I asked the professor what advice he would give to a young student trying to balance school, work, ministry, and family—i.e., me. His response?

“There’s no such thing as balance.”

He went on to explain that if a student were to balance every demanding area of life, he could only give a modicum of attention to each. For example, when you’re at your day job, do you balance it with family and ministry? Would you, while at your desk, be bouncing your child on your knee and inviting church members over for a spiritual talk or Bible study? No, you’re working. While at work, you work.

Instead of balance, this professor commends single-minded focus and devotion to each thing in its time. There will be times when you must skip dinner with your family for the sake of work. Or perhaps, for the sake of a final paper, you’ll be unable to take your kid to the park. Devote yourself to the task at hand, prioritizing it above the others. That is the only way to accomplish anything with excellence.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might . . .” (Eccles. 9:10).

But don’t be mistaken—this philosophy of focus can be taken too far. We need discernment in large measure. You may have a final paper due, but you must carefully discern whether getting an A on that paper is worth missing an important church membership meeting or your kid’s recital. Another professor once told me, “Students need to be willing to say ‘good enough’ at times.” Sometimes a B− is good enough if you need to prioritize something more important. Of course, this is a challenge because your professors will constantly push you to excel—and so they should! But as an adult with many competing responsibilities, it’s your job to examine your life, weigh your responsibilities, and make your decisions.

When do you need to say, “I could spend eight hours on this, but five will have to be good enough”? When do you need to put aside all distraction and dedicate yourself to the task at hand?

So forget the idea of balance. Stop trying to juggle four things at once. Dedicate yourself to what’s in front of you. But know when to say “good enough.”

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Church life is full of meetings, and no doubt you’ve experienced the satisfaction of a well-conducted, efficient meeting that makes an impact. Likewise, you may also have been a part of meetings that leave people confused and aimless.

Like good project management, being organized and prepared will go a long way toward taking your meetings to the next level. Honing the “art of the meeting” can foster results and impact people for Christ. We’ve provided helpful, practical advice about how to get the most out of committees. This article aims to build on that foundation, so take a few minutes to review those first steps! Stop wasting time at church staff meetings with these six steps.  

Open with prayer 
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it bears repeating. God’s grace keeps the church doors open. Through corporate prayer, God invites us into a remarkable, Spirit-fueled fellowship. It’s good for your ministry, good for your church and good for the church staff to pray together before setting into the rest of the work.

Have a leader 
Having a designated leader or first-among-equals at each meeting keeps everyone on track and the business moving. Whether it’s the lead pastor or the ministry head or whether you rotate who runs the meetings each week, without the drive of someone focused on the set objectives it’s harder to get there.

When to set the agenda 
Requiring an agenda is a good idea, but when do you create it, and who does it? Here are a couple of good ways: try setting aside the last 10 minutes of each regular meeting to set the agenda for the next week. This keeps the previous week’s issues from being dropped and removes a task from someone else for the coming week. The designated meeting leader can also take time the day or week before to write the agenda and email it to participants ahead of time. This sets expectations and allows anyone to send a note if something has been left off the agenda. 

... read the rest at umcom.org

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Culture is the water in which we swim.

One day, Fred the Fish was swimming to work. He passed his neighbor who called out “How’s the water today, Fred?” Fred replied, “What the heck is ‘water?’” Company culture is the water we swim in, and savvy managers will not only be able to identify it, but will recognize its importance in the hiring process. When interviewing candidates to fill positions in your company, it’s easy to neglect culture. But if they’re not the right cultural fit, you’ll face unending friction. The best time to gauge culture-fit is during the interview process. Here are five ways to find out if a candidate will integrate into your team with minimal friction: 1. Ask how they handle conflict. Every company, from the owner down to the team leads, has its own way of handling conflict. Some work smoothly with an email to HR, preferring the accountability and formality that qualified conflict-resolvers bring to the table. Others prefer employees to face the conflict directly. Give your candidate a scenario: would they be more direct, or prefer to go through the system? Are they delicate and kind, or do they lean toward bluntness? Finding out how they have handled conflict in the past can be a great indicator if they are going to fit well into your current team. There’s nothing like differing conflict-resolution styles to cause discord in a company! 2. Have them define “teamwork.” There are teams, and then there are teams. Some teams are groups of experts in silos, whose efficiency is reliant on each member being masters in their fields. Other teams are cohesive project-based squads, designed for collaboration and innovation. Does your candidate hold that “iron sharpens iron,” or do they prefer autonomy and room to excel in their area while others focus on theirs? If you hire a factory worker into your squad, you may be in for a rough ride. Asking how their previous employers structured their teams, and whether they enjoyed working in that environment or not, can shed a lot of light on how seamlessly the candidate would integrate into your team. 3. Ask if they want advancement or growth. Some companies want employees who are looking to quickly climb the ladder, and others want employees to dig into their areas and become an unparalleled expert. Which do you want? Which do they want to be? If you’re looking to fast-track a candidate into management, make sure that’s the kind of job they’re looking for. Many organization are built almost completely on vertical growth, and others on expansion. Digging into your candidates job history can help you determine whether they would fit into your culture of growth or advancement.

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Deciding to pursue your DMin requires a lot of consideration. Here are four questions you should ask yourself before going back to school:

1. Do I have the time?
A Doctor of Ministry is a rigorous degree, requiring many hours of study and coursework; it can be difficult to fit this into an already-busy schedule. If you’re working or in ministry full-time, it’s worth considering a distance-education model, like that of Knox Theological Seminary. You’ll better balance your time, without losing inflexible hours sitting in a lecture hall and commuting to and from campus.

2. Am I currently serving in ministry?
Some have described a DMin as a less-rigorous version of a PhD. In reality, this doesn’t hold water; a PhD is a research or academic degree, whereas a DMin is a professional degree. One might compare the DMin to the medical field’s Doctor of Medicine degree, which is designed for surgeons and physicians practicing in their fields. Likewise, a DMin is specifically aimed at those currently serving in ministry, who can practically apply what they’re learning as they study.

... read the rest at https://blog.logos.com/2013/11/4-questions-to-ask-before-pursuing-your-dmin/

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What if the order of the New Testament was on purpose? What if we read the Gospels not as four varying accounts, but as one inspired four-fold Gospel? How would our understanding of the rest of the New Testament change if we read it through the lens of this four-fold Gospel? These questions, posed to me by Dr. Jonathan Pennington, made me stop and think. To illustrate, he drew a helpful illustration for me, about a red Volkswagen.

If you were to go out and buy a red Volkswagen, something remarkable would happen to your perception and observation of other cars around you. You would begin to see, more than ever, many other red Volkswagens. For me, it was a blue ’75 VW Vanagon, but that’s beside the point. I could immediately see what he was getting at: when you saturate yourself in the Gospels and see them as the defining documents of the movement of Jesus followers, you begin to see them echoed and alluded to (not always in direct reference, of course) throughout the rest of the New Testament. The four-fold Gospel is, after all, the biography of Jesus the Messiah, upon whom the rest of the writers put their faith and whose followers they wrote to instruct.

This conversation with Dr. Pennington led me to reevaluate the fervor and depth of my own study of the Gospels, and I realized that I had only begun to skim the surface. That’s why I am excited about theMobile Ed: Studies in the Gospel Bundle (9 courses).

... read the rest a https://blog.logos.com/2014/10/the-gospels-and-red-volkswagens/

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