Mark Conner's Space

Lachlan Macquarie Internship: Developing Leaders in Public Policy

From Lyle Shelton, Chief of Staff at the Australian Christian Lobby ...

LYLE: Someone once said if you are unhappy with your leaders, start working on their replacements.

While Australia does have some fine political leaders, there is not too much disagreement that principled public leadership is in short supply. Just when we thought we could not get any more cynical about politicians, our Prime Minister reneged on her pokie promise to Andrew Wilke. 

Knowing our nation faces a crisis of leadership, five years ago ACL embarked on a long-term program to start developing tomorrow’s. Last week the fifth annual Compass Summer Conference was held in Brisbane with more than 70 young people on the program. Compass seeks to inspire Christian young people in tertiary study towards a greater understanding of their faith and how it applies to whatever vocation they might later pursue. While Compass is now a separate entity pursuing an exciting expanded brief, the Summer Conference continues to be run in association with ACL.

In addition to Compass, ACL last year commenced the Lachlan Macquarie Internship – a 13 week live-in program for people with post-graduate degrees with a passion for politics, public policy, the media or law.

Compass and LMI are long term initiatives but in the mean time we must require of our elected leaders – on both sides of the political fence – that they work to restore trust in what will be a long road ahead to restore trust in public leadership.

MARK: Jesus gave his followers a Great Commission and a Cultural Mandate. We have been given a geographical and ethnic challenge to take the good news of Jesus to every people group across the earth. We have also been given a social challenge to influence every strata of society (our kosmos or world), which includes business, arts and entertainment, education, family and government. No doubt, we need more followers of Christ to influence the political realm. Could that be you?

When You're Feeling Overwhelmed by Your Workload

Michael Hyatt has an excellent BLOG packed full of practical advice. Here is part of his recent post on what to do when you're feeling overwhelmed with your workload, which I'm sure we all experience from time totime.

MICHAEL: Here are six things you can do to cope. Trust me, I am preaching to myself!

1. Acknowledge you can’t do it all. The idea that you will eventually get caught up is a myth. It’s impossible. You have more work than you can reasonably expect to get done. And unfortunately, your workload is not static. Even now, while you are reading this post, your inbox is filling up with fresh new tasks.

2. Accept the fact some things won’t get done at all. This flows from the first item. You have to make peace with the fact that you must leave some things undone—for the sake of your own sanity.

3. Practice workload triage. On the battlefield, medics have to decide where to apply their limited resources. They can’t help everyone. According to Dictionary.com, triageis the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors.”

Some patients will survive without medical care. Some won’t survive even if they have medical care. Triage means ignoring these two groups and focusing on those that will only survive with medical care. You must know which things you can safely ignore and which things demand your intervention.

4. Categorize your tasks by priority. In my view, this is the one thing missing from David Allen’s system. It assumes all tasks are equal. Or to say it another way, you can only decide a task’s relative priority in the moment.This doesn’t work for me. I end up with scores of tasks I must review every day. My eyes glaze over, and I fall prey to what Charles Ummel calls the Tyranny of the Urgent.

Instead, I like the Franklin-Covey method of assigning a priority tag to each task:

A—urgent and important

B—important but not urgent

C—urgent but not important

D—not urgent or important

I personally categorize each task with one of these tags. At the beginning of each day, I focus on my A’s first. If I get those done, I move to the B’s, then the C’s.

Kids in Church

For a bit of a laugh ...

3-year-old Reese: "Our Father, Who does art in heaven. Harold is His name. Amen.' 

A little boy was overheard praying: "Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it. I'm having a real good time like I am." 

After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong. Finally, the boy replied, "That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, 
and I wanted to stay with you guys." 

One particular four-year-old prayed, "And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets." 

A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they were on the way to church service, "And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?" One bright little girl replied, "Because people are sleeping." 

A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. "If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.' Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, 'Ryan , you be Jesus!' 

A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year-old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore where a seagull lay dead in the sand. "Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked. "He died and went to Heaven," the Dad replied. The boy thought a moment and then said, "Did God throw him back down?" 

A wife invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said, "Would you like to say the blessing?" "I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied. "Just say what you hear Mommy say," the wife answered. The daughter bowed her head and said, "Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?" 

2011 Leadership Book Awards

They say that "leaders are readers" and "readers are leaders." Without doubt, each of us can only give out what we have inside. We fill our inner world through prayer and reflection on God's Word, through meditation and grappling with our own thoughts, but we are especially aided by engaging with others. Books are a terrific way to stimulate your thinking and help you engage with a wide variety of relevant issues.

Leadership Journal is an excellent Christian magazine for leaders in every sphere of society. They recently released their list of book awards for 2011. If you're looking for some new books to read, their list is definitely worth a look.

Click here to access it.

WORD and SPIRIT

A few thoughts from my prayer journal this morning ...

WORD and SPIRIT, Mark. These are your two legs for walking on. EVERY DAY, soak in My WORD and My SPIRIT. Allow them BOTH to saturate your soul - your mind, will, and emotions. In doing so, you will become STRONG in Spirit. Your inner world will develop a strength and resistance that will be much greater than the pressures increasing in your outer world. 

One without the other will cause you to be ineffective and will lead to imbalance, immobilizing your forward progress and movement. EXCEL in both aspects of your daily practices. Increase your uptake and download in BOTH the WORD and the SPIRIT. Double it ... and you'll know a tangible breakthrough in every aspect of your life. 

Life is lived INSIDE OUT. Pour IN to your heart, your spirit, your mind, and your inner world ... MUCH MORE of the WORD and MUCH MORE of the SPIRIT. You CANNOT survive without doing so, especially in the days and years to come. You cannot GIVE what you do not first RECEIVE. HEAR then SPEAK. SEE then ACT. Breathe IN ... then breathe OUT my Spirit and my life. 

NOW IS THE TIME! TODAY is the DAY of your VISITATION. DON'T MISS IT! 

JESUS is passing by. Reach out and touch the hem of his garment. Allow His virtue to flow into your life. Touch Him and let Him touch you. 

SYNC with heaven's server. Download messages from God. Send him your requests (he will read them and respond in his time and way). Converse with him. Ask for attachments and links to strategic places. Ask for his Word to be automatically 'pushed' into your heart and mind. Stay 'connected' at all times throughout the day.

I pray this will be an encouragement to you as it as to me.

 

10 Trends in Multi-Site Church Ministry

A few years ago, CityLife Church embarked on becoming a multi-site church. It has been an exciting journey and we have been encoruraged by the people God has helped us reach and the many people who have had new opportunities to step up into ministry and serving roles. 

Jim Tomberlin is an expert on what multisite churches are talking about these days. Recently he noted 10 trends in multi-site in the USA. 

The multisite model continues to grow in its acceptance as a legitimate and effective vehicle for outreach, volunteer mobilization, leadership development and regional impact with more than 3,000 expressions of multisite church across North America. Even though 50 percent of megachurches have multiple campuses and another 20 percent are thinking about it, the multisite movement has outgrown the megachurch movement. Each multisite church has a unique church-print but there are some common trends and buzzwords emerging from them as we enter 2012.

1. Mergers. This is the next big thing on the church scene, and though not exclusive to multisite churches, these mission-driven mergers are being propelled by multisite churches. Look this year for the first book ever published on church mergers, Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, co-authored by Warren Bird and me. It will be released this April by Jossey-Bass.

2. Small Groups. Regardless what you call them—life groups, home groups, neighborhood groups, missional communities—small groups are big and an essential complement to multiple campuses.

3. Community Transformation. Church leaders are focusing less on church growth and more on serving their local communities through multiple campuses and collaboration with other like-minded local churches, ministries and organizations.

Reflections on Jesus' Model Prayer

Jesus taught his disciples to pray using this simple but powerful model prayer:

Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. 

May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us today the food we need

And forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

[If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.] (Matt.6:9-15).

We are to avoid vain or empty repetitious prayers like the pagans use.

We begin with confirming our relationship with God as his children and he as our Father. What an amazing things to be a child of God and to know his love, acceptance, approval, care, security and discipline when needed. May he be set apart of holy or sacred in our lives and in our world.

Pray for God's kingdom (characterised by justice, righteousness, peace and mercy) to come. Then seek to be the answer to this prayer by being an instrument of God's kingdom throughout your day.

Pray for God's will to be done on earth as in heaven - starting with every area of your own life. Think about what God desires and pray for it to come into reality. What could you do today to work for his will to occur in your sphere of influence?

Pray for your own daily needs and those of your family and friends. God cares and will supply the resources you need.

As a reflection of our own experience of forgiveness, forgive those who may have hurt or offended you. Use their offence as a means of showing them Christ's love. This is so vital that Jesus amplifies its importance by an extra comment at the end of the prayer.

We have a very real enemy and there will be tests and temptations. Pray for strength, discernment and wisdom to overcome. 

Some manuscripts add "For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." This doxology was most likely added later (probably based on 1 Chron. 29:11-13). We can finish with praise and worship to God, acknowledging Him as the world's true Lord and giving him our adoration.

Mega-Church Downsizes - Cuts Non-Essential Members

[Below is a news release from Lark News. It's exactly that, a lark - "to engage in spirited fun or merry pranks." Enjoy it. It may also be thought-provoking]

WINSTON-SALEM — Julie and Bob Clark were stunned to receive a letter from their church in July asking them to “participate in the life of the church” — or worship elsewhere. “They basically called us freeloaders,” says Julie. “We were freeloaders,” says Bob.

In a trend that may signal rough times for wallflower Christians, bellwether mega-church Faith Community of Winston-Salem has asked “non-participating members” to stop attending.

“No more Mr. Nice Church,” says the executive pastor, newly hired from Cingular Wireless. “Bigger is not always better. Providing free services indefinitely to complacent Christians is not our mission.”

“Freeloading” Christians were straining the church’s nursery and facility resources and harming the church’s ability to reach the lost, says the pastor. “When your bottom line is saving souls, you get impatient with people who interfere with that goal,” he says.

Faith Community sent polite but firm letters to families who attend church services and “freebie events” but never volunteer, never tithe and do not belong to a small group or other ministry. The church estimates that of its 8,000 regular attendees, only half have volunteered in the past 3 years, and a third have never given to the church.

“Before now, we made people feel comfortable and welcome, and tried to coax them to give a little something in return,” says a staff member. “That’s changed. We’re done being the community nanny.”

Surprisingly, the move to dis-invite people has drawn positive response from men in the community who like the idea of an in-your-face church. “I thought, ‘A church that doesn’t allow wussies — that rocks,’” says Bob Clark, who admires the church more since they told him to get lost. He and Julie are now tithing and volunteering. “We’ve taken our place in church life,” he says.

God's Blessings - the Beatitudes

The Gospel of Matthew records five main teaching discourses from Jesus. Matthew 5-7 is Jesus' call to righteousness, which is about doing the will of God. Jesus is teaching his disciples and the multitudes from the mountain.

Jesus begins with what is commonly called The Beatitudes which are the blessings of God (Matt.5:1-12). The Latin word for "blessed" is beati.  

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.

God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.

God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.

God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.

God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted in the same way. NLT

In pronouncing these blessings, Jesus is not saying "try hard to live like this." He is saying that people who already are like this are in good shape. They should be happy and celebrate because of the work that Jesus is now doing.

These are not timeless truths about how the world is. Mourners often go un-comforted, the meek don't always inherit the earth, and those who long for justice often find it eludes them in this life. This is an upside-down world. But Jesus is bringing good news with the proclamation of his kingdom. No matter what our condition, God is on the move. A new covenant is about to be put in place. New promises are being made. God's kingdom is near. We can enter it and live under it's rule right here, right now. That's good news.

Devotional Bible Reading

Every year, we encourage our church to read through the Bible. There are a variety of reading programs available online. This year we will read through the New Testament, as well as the books of Psalms and Proverbs. Click here for the complete reading program. 

There is a great benefit in using a devotional format for Bible reading aimed at hearing from God daily and responding to his leading. The goal is not to just ‘get through’ your Bible reading but to allow God’s Word to ‘get in’ to your heart and life, bringing about personal growth and positive change.

As you do your daily reading, consider using the following devotional format:

Scripture – write out a verse or two that speak specifically to you today.

Observation – make a note of what you observe in the text. What was happening back 'there and then'?

Application – write out how God’s Word applies to your life. What does this mean to you 'here and now'?

Prayer – write out a prayer of response to what God has said to you.

You can do this by yourself, with your family, with some friends or as part of your Life Group. As you make your time with God and his Word the priority of your day, you will experience a tangible ‘washing of the Word’ in your heart and life.

P.S. Click here for some other helpful resources.

Barna Group: Top Trends of 2011

The Barna Group recently released a list of trends it has observed during 2011 from its research in the USA. Although Australia is very different ftom America, there are similarities, and the profound influence of America on the world continues. 

Here is the first trend ...

1. The Changing Role of Christianity in America.

This year, Barna Group delved into many subjects of faith and culture in America, including the changing role of faith and Christianity. One of those shifts is the relative unknown nature of Christian leaders. Only Billy Graham, the Pope, Barack Obama and Joel Osteen were mentioned by more than 1 out of 50 adults as the most significant Christian leaders. What’s more, 41% of Americans are unable to identify any individual who they consider to be an influential Christian.

Another way in which Christianity hit the mainstream radar was prominent discussion about hell. This issue sparked so much controversy and vigorous debate in part because America is essentially split down the middle on most issues of universalism and religious pluralism. For example, 43% of Americans said it doesn’t matter what religious faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons; 54% of Americans disagree. Half of Americans (50%) believe that all people are eventually saved or accepted by God no matter what they do, while 40% disagreed. With the nation’s population so divided, expect to see these issue continue to stoke lively conversations.

Despite the fact that Christianity’s role is changing, Barna Group discovered in 2011 that there is a great deal of openness among millions of Americans to overtly supporting Christian business and brands. In fact, nearly half of all adults (including all faith groups) said they would be open to purchasing from a business or brand that operates according to Christian principles.

For faith leaders, one of the most favorable Barna findings of the year was the fact that three-quarters of Americans believe that churches are a positive factor in their communities. Just 1 out of 20 adults believe that the influence of churches is negative. While the most common thing that people look to from churches is addressing poverty, churchgoers as well as unchurched residents look to congregations for a range of things.

Other trends include:

2. Down-sized American dream.

3. Millenials Rethinking Christianity.

4. The Digital Family.

5. Maximising Spiritual Change.

6. Women Making it Alone.

As always, trends provide opportunities for the church and the work of the kingdom. God calls us to be poeple who understand the times that we live in that we might know how to live. May each of us as Christ-followers and each local church continue to serve God and His cause with faith and passion this year. 

Faith for the New Year

Today begins a new year - a new season and a new part of our journey. It's not time to press 'Rewind' then 'Repeat.' It's time to move forward - into new things. Uncharted territory. New horizons. New experiences. We haven't been this way before ... so we must stay in step with the Spirit. We need God's presence to lead and guide us each step of the way. 

Thankfully, God promises to never leave us or forsake us. He is 'Emmanuel' - God with us. 

God has a purpose and a plan for our lives. He has already begun a good work in us and he is committed to finishing it. After all, He is the Alpha, the beginning, and Omega, the end. 

Here are a few of my favourite promises from Scripture:

Jer.29:11. "For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."

Phil.1:6. I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

Our journey is a walk of faith. Faith is complete trust and confidence in God, even when we aren't sure what is going on and what God is up to.

Heb.11:1,6. Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see .. It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

What is God calling you to let go of? What is he asking you to reach out towards? What step of faith does he want you to make this year?

Mark Twain once said, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover!"

Like Abraham, who followed God's call to leave his own country, we are to be people of faith. Let's step out of our comfort zones and engage fully in the adventure of faith that God has for us. It's called LIFE.

May this year be your most exciting and fruitful ever!

God bless.