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“Time is on your side”

This one is one of the toughest things to figure out. Time. It seems to be a simple, straightforward, linear, idea. However, if you are a type A driven personality, time is generally a tough thing to understand fully.

At 23, I am at a place where most people wish they could be at. I know I sound like a total jerk but stay with me please. I married a beautiful woman who loves me more than I can imagine, I’m debt free, I have an incredible job in ministry with people that are my biggest fans, and I’m still at the beginning of “real life”. But it’s an extremely difficult place to be at for me. Why? Because of unrealistic expectations that I hold for myself and the inescapable reality of time itself.

Why can’t I have the communication ability of someone who has done this for 30 years? I’ve been at it for 1.3 years.

Why can’t I have some of the deep relationships that other staffers have established? I haven’t been at it long enough.

Why do I struggle to make or feel like I have the support of making certain decisions? Think about the “length of time” and “number” of things on your resume.

The reality is that as much as our personality fights against the certainty of time, it’s still time. It takes time to develop a ton of things that exist in other’s leadership. In The Making of a Leader a book by Robert Clinton, they suggest that there are six phases of how God develops leaders:

• Sovereign Foundations
• Inner Life Growth
• Ministry Maturing
• Life Maturing
• Convergence
• Afterglow or Celebration

Where the Convergence phase is “people’s ministry experiences and their life experiences converge into a specific job or responsibility wherein they draw on all they have learned in order to enjoy maximum effectiveness. This will be the job or role for which leaders are best known and in which they experience their greatest success.”

See how far down the list that Convergence phase is located? Yeah… and yet I know a lot of other young leaders that become increasingly frustrated by the fact that they haven’t had their Convergence phase yet. It’s just takes time. Not to mention, it takes time to get through all those other phases that God desires to take you through.

So here’s a few suggestions when struggling with the issue of time and the fact that you aren’t 75 years old with 50 years of ministry experience under your belt:

1. Read someone’s biography-it allows you to understand the development of a leader and how God did things in His timing and how perfectly they culminated. Not to mention it always helps to gain a little perspective.
2. Pray-I always feel better when I voice my frustration to God. Granted, he might have a fun answer like He did for Job, but it’s always an encouragement that He’s in charge.
3. Reflect-When we look towards the future too much, it causes us to lose focus on some of the victories of the past. I wouldn’t be what I am today without my past. It’s helpful to see ways in which God shaped me through past experiences.

Time is inevitable. You aren’t just going to be a great leader in a year or even (*yikes*) 10 years. But the focusing on the present helps to make your future a lot brighter. So take what seems like an enemy in the clock and make it your friend. Allow your present to be the best time of your life and the future will take care of itself.

iSlate UI Concept, originally uploaded by celipovideos.

So we’ve all heard crazy rumors about this very device.

iSlate
iPad
iTablet

and I’ve even got a good friend who thinks that it’s going to be something totally different.

But here’s what I think. I think Apple is designing a new way to look at a computer. They want a family device to take media consumption to a whole new place. Think of art, reading, games, television all on one device with the ability to be all-in-one but also peripheral device.

Seems to be an incredible technology upgrade to me.

But what do you think? What does Apple have up their sleeve?

This week I’ll be doing a series of posts on “Leading when you’re Young”. I am 23 years old and am a leadership nutjob. I love to read, probably bordering on unhealthy amounts of leadership material. From business to church, sales to service, profit to non-profit, it all is interesting to me. I hope to give some encouragement and share some struggles of leading when you are young.

And if you’re young and in leadership, hang in there. It takes time, and that is the hardest thing for me to remember.

Well this picture represents what most of think of, when we think of teenagers. Goofy, awkward, slight immature, yet full of potential. I figure I would use myself because well I like to think I am a kid at heart. O, and well, I bear a striking resemblance to….well…..uh….a teenager.

But leveraging our influence to develop these young people. Giving them an opportunity to learn about ministry. Learning the ins and outs and what serving God is all about. But being honest, alot of times, kids and students end up being used more than developed into spiritual leaders. It starts out really honest, we want to develop the potential that we see in our kids and students. But over time the day to day gets in the way of training.

When I worked at the Brown, aka UPS we were told as sup’s we were to spend 70% of our time on training. Why? Because without our people, it doesn’t work. But getting people in the right spots isn’t training. Getting people aligned with their gift set isn’t training. Training is training.

Here’s a few tips to check your influence and make sure you are developing rather than using your students and kids in ministry.

1)What: What do you spend the majority of your time with these young people doing? What is it that you are “doing” with them and not only that but what specifically are you trying to develop in them? Is it time management, communication, classroom management, or none of the above? Keep the what in focus. What is your purpose?

2)Who: Who is it that you are developing? Did they fall in your lap? Or did you hand select them? Generally taking part in the selection process tends to nip this using thing in the bud. Why? Well because you personally picked them and have more of an idea of your purpose. You picked these young people and you know the reason and the intent.

3)Where: This seems a bit odd, but generally if your “mentoring” only takes place on a Sunday and on campus. Then most likely it’s not mentoring. Go offsite, it shows the people you are pouring into that you see that they are valuable.

Those are things that I would continue to check myself on. Keep those in focus and come up with a plan and strategy. Set a time and pour into these young people.

I had people do this for me, they cared for me and invested time and money into my development. But I’ve also been used before. A lot actually. And we wonder why young people sometimes have problems with authority? Leverage your influence. There are young folks out there dying for someone to see potential in them and give them some guidance.

orange eruption, originally uploaded by schmaecky.

Decided on another random pic for Kenny

I know that most here will give you some awesome illustrations of this very thing for their own kids. But I am deciding to give you some of my own. I don’t have kids and a lot of people call me a kid so I think it’ll work.

I remember a SS (that’s Sunday School) teacher that I had when I was a young boy. His name was Charlie Bishop. He worked with his hands, in fact two of the fingers on his right hand were injured at work. He created marvelous things out of wood. He was there all the time, every Sunday and I remember how endeared we were to him. He made different kids different things. But for me he had made a case to hold my Hotwheels in. I still have those things at my parent’s home in Memphis.

I will never, ever forget Charlie Bishop.

I wish I could tell you how incredible a communicator he was or how this one particular thing he did for me was more incredible than the others, but honestly there wasn’t any of that. He was consistent, humble, and he loved us.

He invested in my life as a very young boy and he prayed every Sunday for us to know God. As I got older I had fewer and fewer interactions with him but I always remembered the impact that he had on my life.

Then in different stages of my life, I would have someone else there to guide me on my way.

Now I am searching for more influencers to help guide me into being a great husband, and one day a father.

And we must focus the same efforts for our children. Helping put coaches, mentors, and teachers in place that will partner with the parents to develop a child.

It can’t just be one, there have to be more. Eventually kids will look elsewhere. Instead of fighting, help find people that those kids can run to who you can trust and will be a positive influence.

It’s true that it takes a village. But you can be the village idiot by being unaware or fighting against it. Or you can be a village leader by using the situation to benefit your child.