Faith and Work News ~ Links to Interesting Articles

• 3 Ways to Make Your Week More Productive. Kevin Lloyd discusses some tips around time management.
• 4 Character Traits of Thriving Employees. Stephen Graves writes about the traits: work ethic, problem solving ability, relational skills and spiritual vitality.
• 4 Leadership Principles to Inspire Star Performance. Dr. Alan Zimmerman writes “Effective leaders get average people to do extraordinary work.”
• 4 TED Talks to Inspire You in Your Work. Here are four videos to inspire you in your work, the first of which I watched with my team and had a good discussion about recently.
• 4 Types of Tone-Deaf Leadership. Eric Geiger writes “There are a plethora of tone-deaf leaders who are out of sync and rhythm with people and their context. They seem deaf to the people and context around them.”
• 4 Ways to Attack a Sense of Entitlement. Eric Geiger writes “A sense of entitlement can greatly harm the culture and the mission of a ministry or organization. A sense of entitlement is corrosive and crushes the collective soul of the team. Those the team is designed to serve become less and less important as self-centeredness reigns. When entitlement spreads, the ministry or organization acts as if it exists for itself instead of for others.”
• 4 Things Leaders Owe Their Followers. Eric Geiger writes “Leaders, we are servants and debtors. We are in debt to the people who follow us.”
• 4 Temptations That Leaders Face. Dan Reiland writes “How you handle your temptation will determine, to a great degree, the effectiveness and longevity of your ministry.”
• 5 Steps to Recovery from a Failure. Ron Edmondson writes that what you do after you fail will determine if – and how well – you recover.
• 5 Things That Are a Total Waste of Time in Leadership. Carey Nieuwhof shares these five items that all leaders will most likely agree are time wasters.
• 5 Leadership Questions with Dan Rockwell. In this episode of the 5 Leadership Questions podcast, Todd Adkins and Barnabas Piper visit with one of my favorite leadership bloggers Dan Rockwell.
• 6 Signs That Silos Exist in Your Organization. Art Rainer writes “When they (silos) do exist, leaders will find themselves struggling to move their organization forward and experience a deteriorating staff morale.”
• 7 of My Biggest Frustrations as a Leader. Ron Edmondson writes “In many ways, I am still learning the secret of being content, but I like continual improvement and think there is usually room to get better in all areas of our life. I think it is true in leadership too.”
• 7 Core Disciplines Needed for a Spiritual Leader. Ron Edmondson writes “All leaders should lead well, but when one claims to be a follower of Christ their leadership reflects on his or her walk with Christ. I have learned personally that leading well requires discipline. It doesn’t happen naturally.”
• 10 Points of Managing Tension in Leadership.  Brad Lomenick shares a few thoughts on tension and the perspective as leaders we should have in managing it.
• 10 Things You Can Do Today to Improve as a Leader. Ron Edmondson writes “Most leaders want to improve. I hear from leaders weekly who want to get better in their role. They want to improve so the organization they lead can improve. As much as leaders desire improvement, many leaders wonder where they should go to grow.”
• 18 Reasons Good Leaders Get Fired. Brian Dodd provides these reasons good leaders get fired in light of the recent firing of Cleveland Cavaliers head coach David Blatt.

• Success is knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your full potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others. John Maxwel
• Intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you. Andy Andrews
• The book of Genesis leaves us with a striking truth – work was part of paradise. Tim Keller
• Dear workaholics: There’s no extra credit for impressing others while losing your family. Burk Parsons
• Servant leadership is love in action. Make a positive difference in someone’s life. Ken Blanchard
• As a leader, the health of your marriage directly affects the impact of your leadership. Michael Hyatt
• Wherever you are, be all there. Live life to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God. Jim Elliot

Faith and Work Book Clubs – Won’t you read along with us?

Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper. Crossway. 192 pages. 2003  

Other than the Bible, this small book by John Piper has had the most influence on my life. It played a key role in my returning to seminary after ten years in 2005. I have read it almost each year since it was published in 2003. Listen to John Piper describe the book in this less than two-minute video.

This week we look at Chapter 9: The Majesty of Christ in Missions and Mercy— A Plea to This Generation

• God does not call us to ease, but to faithful joy. He is closing in on some of you, smiling and with tears in his eyes, knowing how much of himself he is going to show you—and how much it will cost. As I write, I pray that you will not turn away.
• If you have pity for perishing people and a passion for the reputation of Christ, you must care about world missions.
• One of the burdens of this book is to show what life looks like when you believe that you dare not choose between the motives to love people and glorify Christ. They are not separate motives.
• This single passion—to see that Christ be glorified as perishing people become eternally satisfied in him—drives the great global enterprise we call world missions.
• Missions exists because worship doesn’t.
• There can be no weary resignation, no cowardly retreat, and no merciless contentment among Christ’s people while he is disowned among thousands of unreached peoples.
• Those of you who stay—the senders—should keep this remarkable fact in mind: Foreign missions is a validation of all ministries of mercy at home because it exports them abroad.
• Ministries of mercy close at hand validate the authenticity of our distant concerns.
• Just as there is a partnership between the Gospel itself and mercy to the nearby poor, so there is a wonderful partnership between Christians being the merciful church at home and Christians planting the merciful church abroad. Neither is a wasted life.
• The partnership that emerged between students, who were going, and businessmen, who were sending, was profound, because there were God-centered visionary leaders in both groups. Both were moved by the same passion not to waste their lives.
• Laypeople, pastors, churches—all of us who stay behind—will find the “sweetest and most priceless rewards” as we enlarge our hearts to embrace not only the needs close to home, but also the hard and unreached places of the world.
• These businessmen from a hundred years ago saw their secular calling and their missionary vision as an integrated whole.
• Missions is not only crucial for the life of the world. It is crucial for the life of the church. We will perish with our wealth if we do not pour ourselves out in ministries of mercy at home and missions among the unreached peoples.
• One way to describe the situation is to say that about 1.2–1.4 billion people have never had a chance to hear the Gospel; that is, they live in cultures where the preaching of the Gospel in understandable ways is not accessible. Other analysts estimate the number of un-evangelized somewhat higher. About 95 percent of these live in what has been called the 10/40 window (between latitudes 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator and between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans). This is the great challenge of our day.
• There is a call on this generation to obey the risen Christ and make disciples of all the unreached peoples of the world. I am praying that God will raise up hundreds of thousands of young people and “finishers” (people finishing one career and ready to pursue a second in Christian ministry).
• Frontier missions does what Paul aimed to do: Plant the church where there is now no possibility of ministry. This is the great need of the hour, not only for missionaries who go to serve the established church in other countries (which is a great need, especially in leadership development), but also for missionaries who go to peoples and places where there is no church to serve.
• Don’t think the days of foreign missionaries are over, as if nationals can finish the work. There are hundreds of peoples and millions of people where there are no Christian nationals to do same-culture evangelism. A culture must be crossed.
• Missions, not same-culture evangelism by nationals, will finish the Great Commission.
• So “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38), and ask him if you should be one. Expect this prayer to change you.
• Get a copy of the amazing world prayer guide called Operation World, and pray and read and ponder your way through the nations day by day.
• if you want to be most fully satisfied with God as he triumphs in the history of redemption, you can’t go on with business as usual—doing your work, making your money, giving your tithe, eating, sleeping, playing, and going to church. Instead you need to stop and go away for a few days with a Bible and notepad; and pray and think about how your particular time and place in life fits into the great purpose of God to make the nations glad in him. How will you join the great global purpose of God expressed in Psalm 67:4, “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy”?
• Many of you should stay where you are in your present job, and simply ponder how you can fit your particular skills and relationships and resources more strategically into the global purpose of your heavenly Father. But for others reading this book, it is going to be different. Many of you are simply not satisfied with what you are doing.
• If the discontent with your present situation is deep, recurrent, and lasting, and if that discontent grows in Bible-saturated soil, God may be calling you to a new work. If, in your discontent, you long to be holy, to walk pleasing to the Lord, and to magnify Christ with your one, brief life, then God may indeed be loosening your roots in order to transplant you to a place and a ministry where the deep spiritual ambitions of your soul can be satisfied.
• It is true that God can be known and enjoyed in every legitimate vocation; but when he deploys you from one place to the next, he offers fresh and deeper drinking at the fountain of his fellowship. God seldom calls us to an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of his sustaining grace.
• May God give you a fresh, Christ-exalting vision for your life—whether you go to an unreached people or stay firmly and fruitfully at your present post. May your vision get its meaning from God’s great purpose to make the nations glad in him. May the cross of Christ be your only boast, and may you say, with sweet confidence, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.