Pastor Jeff has been teaching a great series of thoughts that God has put on his heart. He ended the year strong and is kicking off the new year equally strong. It is an honor God allows us to be a part of what He is doing in the local Grace Point body, city and world.

I enjoyed the "poker game" and the concept of being "All In". Easily understood and the point made that God desires us to be all He intended us to be. Through our obedience, we experience His abundance. Through our abundance, we have opportunity to "Pay it Forward" and kids will have a stellar opportunity to find Christ and grow in His Spirit while enjoying a new facility.

Exit the poker game and enter "One". We are introduced and encouraged to be a part of the "One" campaign. Pastor Jeff and ministry staff will be leading us down a path of maturity in Christ while experiencing God through "oneness".

With the new year here and myself looking for God in it, I stumbled across the concept of being a thumb. As it is a God Spot, I unashameably push you to my blog 37Stories to read about it. In a nutshell, I think the leadership of Grace Point can be described as a "thumb of one".

There are many fingers in the body of Grace Point, but there are only a few thumbs. Statistically, that would be about 20%. Count the fingers on your hand. One thumb for every four fingers. I'm told in other churches 20% of the people give 80% of the money. 20% of the people volunteer to do 80% of the work. Again, the thumbs have it.

So with the new year I want to say, "Thank you for allowing me to me a 'Thumb of One'." I look forward to running the race to win with all the other thumbs at Grace Point.

I was reading a brilliant blog site's recent article, which mentioned something in the world of cybernetics known as "The Law of Requisite Variety," which is: the survival of any living system depends upon its capacity to cultivate (not just tolerate) adaptability and diversity in its internal structure...failure results in the inability to cope successfully with variety that is introduced by external sources.

• Parker Palmer wrote a little book addressing leadership, and in it he challenged readers to take the Ortberg "Shadow Mission" principle a little further and vulnerable ask what fears or ills may be driving (and limiting) the way in which you lead. One striking example, was when the "fear of death" in a leader that drives us to keep and demand programs, projects, ideas and ways of doings things kept alive well beyond their shelf life...afraid that in turning the page of history and letting something once great die, in some way we die with it. It's a very human feeling, but it hurts our leadership - it's flesh constricting Spirit with a well-justified package.


• I heard a leader of a very successful organization, when invited to a leadership development opportunity, retort, "Why would I look outside of my own team of people for ideas on how to lead better?"


• A stud of the faith, Oswald Chambers, once advised, "Don't make a fetish of your own convictions." Ouch. Os just says so many wise things...


• I saw a church whose aim was to be a "refuge" against the world...far cry from prevailing upon the world around it!


• I've sensed that in the spirit of "taking a stand" for or against things, often times what we as Christ-followers settle for is a game of "cultural isotonic recovery" - trying to "hold the line" of a culture war in tension, instead of radically, pervasively, relevantly bursting the membrane of tolerable cease-fire in a way that transforms the landscape from the soul level


• Spoke with a retired youth pastor who shared how back in the day he'd tell large groups of youth that listening to Keith Green and his "wild rock and roll" was terrible and something to be opposed to protect our culture. Ten years later he changed his mind and began fighting against the next change the represented unknown.


• Chrysalis is a great picture of the stages, seasons of God's work both in a person on the journey in Christ as well as communities

At the recently Global Leadership Summit in Teguc 460+ leaders from the region gathered together for the first time around the campfire of Kingdom leadership. The reaction to the high caliber content was as expected and similar to what we see in the States - awe, overwhelmed with the significant implications, excitement, renewal, etc...

What impacted me was the shock leaders experienced from gaining broader awareness of each other. There were dozens of leaders from churches trying to tackle the world solo and struggling to comprehend how they could be the "hope of the world" in a city of 1,000,000+ people. Most of the churches - whether large or small - were unaware of each other, each others ministry initiatives, or the broader work happening in the city. Islands unto themselves, whether balmy or struggling, they were isolated.

Isolation in Christ is toxic. It leads us to think small, fear much, underestimate the force and power God is working in this world, overestimate the challenge and grow anemically self-sufficient. When a leader suddenly realizes God is moving His Body of more than 50,000 in this city there is a sudden rush of boldness and confidence at what God is really capable of!

This is not just a global issue, though. Certainly, the local church is handicapped within a region when operating as a solo cowboy brigade for the Kingdom. Individually we encounter the same thing, though. We reduce the Way of Christ to a singular journey quietly played out apart from community. We miss the interdependency of the Body, fail to receive and give in a Kingdom way that leads to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts...we miss an adventure, glimpses of victorious battles won against the darkness, we miss...the Hand of God moving in ways we cannot even comprehend!

Are you engaged in the Kingdom life? are you living it alone? are you reaching out in community? As a community are you reaching out to the broader Body (big C church) around you? Are we prevailing against the very gates of Hell!?

I'm in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I've had the opportunity to visit a variety of local ministries ranging from a Compassion International program, a local church ran dental/medical clinic to a retired nurse who decided to turn a small house into a feeding center for about 40 underweight/malnourished children. The central event was participating in the Global Leadership Summit here, occurring for the first time in this city/region. 460 leaders showed up and were blown away as God used this global event to do what only God can do.

Remember when "love" struck in middle school? That's when the rapturous allure of "love" begins to really take root. Of course, it's not really "love," as much as the idea of love that consumes you. It's the period in life when just the look from that certain someone, the hint that he/she might "like you," is enough to send you over the moon. You may never even talk directly about the "matter which we do not discuss," but your world can be blissfully consumed by a romance of the mind - it's when we become "in love with the idea of love."

In the 1990s a University of Washington biology professor pulled a witty prank on his students that got out of control. In an attempt to help his students realize how emotional their thinking was to always be rushing against things without thinking about the entire situation, he architected a campus-wide petition to have a ban on a chemical responsible for mass death and destruction worldwide. This chemical is dihydrogen monoxide. It's deadly. More people are killed by this chemical every year than any other substance - and yet the USA, United Nations and all other leading democracies have failed to curb its use! Students signed the petition by the thousands - to the point it had sufficient signatures to go to the Washington State House of Representatives. Just prior to the petition really taking flight, the professor released a statement: the chemical dihydrogen monoxide is indeed a deadly force, but it is more commonly known by the label H2O, or water.