Drag

You can’t cheat drag. “Drag” refers to a force that opposes the forward motion of an object. The word comes from the world of aerodynamics. To locate drag and determine the aerodynamic profile of an object, the object is typically placed in a wind tunnel, where these areas of drag can be profiled and examined so that they might be modified to reduce drag and improve performance and efficiency. The focus is generally on the overall shape of the object. Typically, the areas that are sticking out too much create the most drag.

The key to improving performance is to locate the areas of drag of an existing design.

For example, in the 1950’s car windshields were designed upright, but windshields on today’s cars are more angled to reduce drag. Consider the Olympics. The swimmer’s “skin” is patterned after sharkskin in order to reduce drag. Likewise, the winter Olympic bobsleds and speed skating suits are designed to reduce drag.

Some attempt to defeat drag. Runners and elite athletes often try to cheat drag by running with a small parachute attached at their waists. The purpose is to create resistance (drag) as they run, which increases their stamina and strength. But one of the clear facts from the laws of aerodynamics is that you can’t cheat drag.[1]

Just like runners can’t cheat drag, leaders can’t cheat drag. Leaders cannot reach their potential or maximize their effectiveness by carrying around a drag parachute comprised of significant social and emotional skill set and organizational deficients.

But organizational, emotional, and spiritual drag can be reduced.

Coaching can help do just that. The Church Multiplication Network (CMN), a ministry of the Assemblies of God for church planting, believes that the use of coaching will reduce drag and lead to healthier ministers and healthier church plants. Coaching is not the only tool that can be used to reduce drag, CMN trained coaches help persons being coached determine how to implement the use of other tools such as mentors, consultants and counseling in the journey of reducing drag from their personal and ministry lives.

The Church Multiplication Network has partnered with Purdue University to train, assess, evaluate and report on the impact of coaches’ work with church plants. Coaches are being trained using International Coach Federation competencies. They are then assessed to determine when their coaching skills are at a predetermined quality level and given a certificate as Assemblies of God certified coaches. Coaches start working with church plant pastors during pre-launch and continue working with the team for at least the first three years of the church’s life. Church Multiplication Network has partnered to help coach 79 churches plants thus far in 09. Through these 79 churches, 2,126 persons have given their lives to Christ; and over $314,000 has been given to missions. CMN’s goal is to plant 500 churches each year.

CMN Coaches are being trained with skills to help ministry leaders discover areas of skill set drag, which impact performance and efficiency, both personally and organizationally. Coaches use Christian coaching listening and questioning skills, which include an ear that hears not only the person being coached but also the Holy Spirit, helping ministers establish personal plans for intervention and accountability systems. These God-birthed plans lead not only to more efficient performance but also less personal friction, a by-product of drag that can lead to damaging emotional and spiritual drain.

Church Multiplication Network has also been asked by the Assemblies of God to train and certify coaches for the Church Transformation Network. Training includes specific coaching skills in the area of change, transition and transformation and the coaching of teams. These coaches are being used with pastors who are working in older, established churches to revitalize missional focus, develop vision for the future, and overcome obstacles that cloud decisions or keep them from growing. The coaches work as well with these pastors helping them move forward as leaders and personally in their spiritual, emotional, and relational lives.

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[1] Rich Handley, “Advanced EQ-I Interpretation Techniques: The Concepts of Drag, Balance, and Leverage,” in Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence: Best Practices, Case Studies, and Strategies, ed. by Marcia Hughes, Henry L. Thompson, and James Bradford Terrell (San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2006), 97-110.

Fearless in Prayer

In the introduction to Catherine Marshall’s A Closer Walk, her husband of twenty-three years, Leonard LeSourd, writes about their marriage in 1959: Catherine had huge adjustments to make. She sold her Washington dream house to move to Chappaqua, forty miles north of New York City, so that I could continue to commute to my job at Guideposts in the city. My children–Linda, ten; Chester, six; Jeffry, three–had been through a deeply unsettling two years, adjusting to a variety of housekeepers. They had mixed feelings toward moving into a new house, and especially toward “the new Mommie that Daddy’s bringing home.” Catherine’s son, Peter John, nineteen, was going through a period of rebellion at Yale. Catherine and I had so many things to pray about that each morning to read the Bible and seek answers together. Her current journal lay open beside us in these pre-dawn prayer times, recording our changing needs, His unchanging faithfulness.

From Catherine Marshall, A Closer Walk (Ada, MI: Fleming H. Revel Co., 1986), 102-103.

“When you pray, go away by yourself, all alone, and shut the door behind you and pray to your Father secretly, and your Father who knows your secrets, will reward you.” Matthew 6:6 TLB

Fearless with Money

Don’t store up treasures here on earth where they can erode away or may be stolen. Store them in heaven where they will never lose their value. - Matthew 6:19-20 TLB

A film editor once said, “ I had this date the other night with woman who wanted to walk along the beach. I’m wearing a twelve-hundred-dollar suit, a seventy-dollar tie, a hundred-and-fifty-dollar shirt, and a pair of two-hundred-dollar shoes. It costs me fifteen dollars to clean my suit and six dollars to have my shirt hand-washed.

“I don’t even want to think about what it would cost if I would get a drop of spaghetti sauce on my tie. And this woman wants me to roll up my pants and walk along the beach! All I can think about is how much it’s going to cost me if she wants to sit down on the sand. Here’s the bottom line that I have to ask myself: Can I afford to wear my own clothes?”

Another man, a lawyer, once said, “I don’t think I’m trapped on this treadmill forever, but I’m certainly involved with it right now....It’s the old merry-go-round of how much money is enough money? And it’s never enough.”

From Steven Carter and Julia Sokol's Lives Without Balance (New York, NY: Villard Books, Random House Inc. 1991), 125, 194.

Fearless Against Impure Thoughts

Norman Vincent Peale once stayed home for a month while his wife and children went on vacation. About midway through that month, Peale met a beautiful girl looking for excitement. When she made it clear that she would like to go on a date with Peale, he “put his conscience in mothballs” and arranged to meet her on Saturday night.

Peale awoke on Saturday morning and decided to take a walk on the beach. He took an old ax along to chop some rope away from the wreck of an old barge that had washed up on the shore. Due to the freshness of the morning and the rhythm of the ax, Peale began to chop in earnest.

As he chopped, a strange thing began to happen. He said, “I felt as if I were outside myself, looking at myself through a kind of fog that was gradually clearing. Suddenly I knew that what I had been planning for that evening was so wrong, so out of keeping with the innermost me.” Peale promptly canceled the date.

From God’s Little Lessons for Leaders (p. 95).

"To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." Romans 8:6 KJV

Cutting Out Criticism

Below is an excerpt from Catherine Marshall's A Closer Walk.

"One morning last week He [God] gave me an assignment: for one day I was to go on a “fast” from criticism. I was not to criticize anybody about anything. For the first half of the day, I simply felt a void, almost as if I had been wiped out as a person. This was especially true at lunch....I listened to the others and kept silent....In our talkative family no one seemed to notice. Bemused, I noticed that my comments were not missed. The federal government, the judicial system, and the institutional church could apparently get along fine without my penetrating observations. But still I didn’t see what this fast on criticism was accomplishing–until mid-afternoon. That afternoon, a specific, positive vision for this life was dropped into my mind with God’s unmistakable hallmark on it–joy! Ideas began to flow in a way I had not experienced in years. Now it was apparent what the Lord wanted me to see. My critical nature had not corrected a single one of the multitudinous things I found fault with. What it had done was stifle my own creativity."

What a challenge for us today, but what a freedom that comes with it!

"Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me." Psalm 25:4-5

Mastering Anger

Bobby Jones, one of golf’s greatest players, was only five years old when he first swung a golf club. By the age of twelve, he was winning club tournaments. During this time, he was known for his hot temper, and he soon had the nickname “Club Thrower.”

Jones became friends with a man named Grandpa Bart, who worked part-time in the club pro shop. Bart had been an excellent golfer but had retired when arthritis gripped his hands. After Bobby lost the National Amateur Tournament at the age of fourteen, he said, “Bobby, you are good enough to win that tournament, but you’ll never win until you can control your temper. You miss a shot - you get upset - then you lose.”

Bobby knew Grandpa Bart was right, and he became determined to improve - not his golf swings - his mood swings. When Bobby won a major tournament at age twenty one, Grandpa Bart said, “Bobby was fourteen when he mastered to game of golf, but he was twenty one when he mastered himself.”

"Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." James 1:19-20 KJV

Sharing Encouragement

Back-to-back victories by the Dallas Cowboys at the Super Bowl in 1993 and 1994 mask the fact that Jimmy Johnson, the team’s legendary former coach, knew as much about losing as he did about winning. In 1989, his first season in Dallas, Johnson’s team had only one win and fifteen losses! However, this overwhelming losing season was still not as humiliating as his first year as a high-school defensive coach, when his team finished the season with no wins and ten losses.

Johnson said about that first season in Dallas, “We had the worst team in the NFL, but I wouldn’t accept anything but being in the Super Bowl.”

Johnson kept a positive attitude. If a running back had the ball, he shouted, “Protect the ball,” rather than “Don’t fumble.” To his field-goal kickers he’d say, “Make this,” not “Don’t miss.” After a loss, he’d spend his post-game time plotting the next win, rather than second-guessing what had gone wrong.

The Cowboys responded and improved. It took four seasons of hard work, but then Super Bowl rings were on their fingers.

From Fortune (May 1, 1995) pg. 32.

Givers

There are three kinds of givers: the flint, the sponge, and the honeycomb. Which kind are you?

To get anything from the flint, you must hammer it. Yet, all you generally get are chips and sparks. The flint gives nothing away if it can help it and even then only with a great display.

To get anything from the sponge, you must squeeze it. It readily yields to pressure, and the more it is pressed, the more it gives. Still, you must push.

To get anything from the honeycomb, however, you must only take what freely flows from it. It gives its sweetness generously dripping on all without pressure, without begging or badgering.

Note, too, that there is another difference in the honeycomb. It is a renewable resource. If you are a “honeycomb giver” your life will be continually replenished as you give. And as long as you are connected to the source of life, you can never run dry. When you freely give, you will receive in like manner so that whatever you give away will soon be multiplied back to you.

From God’s Little Lessons for Leaders (Tulsa, OK: Honor Books, 2001), 73.

Perseverance

Sparky didn’t have much going for him. He failed every subject in the eighth grade, and in high school, he flunked Latin, Algebra, English, and Physics. He made the golf team, but he promptly lost the important match of the season and then lost the consolation match. He was awkward socially—more shy than disliked. He never once asked a girl out on a date in high school.

One thing, however, was important to Sparky—drawing. He was proud of his artwork even though no one else appreciated it. He submitted cartoons to the editors of his high school yearbook, but they were rejected. Even so, Sparky aspired to be an artist. After high school, he sent samples of his artwork to the Walt Disney Studios. Again, his work was rejected.

Still Sparky didn’t quit. He decided to write his own autobiography in cartoons. The popularity of his cartoon strip eventually led to countless books, television shows, and licensing opportunities. Sparky, you see, was Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip. Like his main character Charlie Brown, Schulz seemed unable to succeed at many things. But he made the most of his talent and refused to quit.

Forgiveness

In his book, Beneath the Crops of Jesus, A. Leonard Griffith tells the story of a young Korean exchange student, a leader in Christian circles at the University of Pennsylvania, who left his apartment on the evening of April 25, 1958, to mail a letter to his parents. As he turned from the mailbox, he was met by eleven leather jacketed teenage boys. Without a word, they beat him with a blackjack, a lead pipe, and left him lying dead in the gutter.

All of Philadelphia cried out for vengeance. The district attorney planned to seek the death penalty for the arrested youth and then, this letter arrived signed by the boy’s parents and twenty other relatives in Korea:

Our family has met together and we have decided to petition that the most generous treatment possible within the laws of your government be given to those who have committed this criminal action....In order to give evidence of our sincere hope contained in this petition, we have decided to save money to start a fund to be used for the religious, educational, vocational, and social guidance of the boys when they are released...We have dared to express our hope with a spirit received from the gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ who died for our sins.


"You Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon you."
- Psalm 86:5 NKJV

From time to time I receive letters, phone calls, and emails of encouragement. Many are stories of how God is working and touching lives. I wanted to share a few that I received recently:

* * * * *

Happy New Year Sam. I wanted to share how your teaching at Manhattan Beach this past summer helped to change my life. I was asking the Lord about the direction in my life as I sensed I was at a crossroads. I also sensed that I was physically moving. During your week of teaching you taught on the "rope holders"... boy, did that minister to me. During that week the Lord kept giving me a single word "Calvary" and through various other "hints" I ended up moving to Winnipeg in October… Up till your message on "rope holders" I really felt that I was headed in a totally different direction.

So a thank you from me to you to start your year! Your teaching was one of my life changing times.
I hope I have the opportunity to hear you again soon!

* * * * *

Just wanted to say thank you for your help in the last year. Your insight and support has been a blessing to me and the ministry. May the Lord bless you in the New Year.

Fearless to Risk

One simply cannot live without taking risks. Risk is woven into every aspect of our daily experience.
· To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
· To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
· To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
· To expose feeling is to risk exposing our true selves.
· To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd is to risk.
· To love is to risk not being loved in return.
· To live is to risk dying.
· To hope is to risk despair.
· To try at all is to risk failure.
- Unknown

“God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and of a sound mind.”
- 2 Timothy 1:7 KJV

If you know you couldn’t fail what would you risk? What would you attempt?

What an incredible Christmas!
I felt so privileged to spend time with our son, daughter-in -law and granddaughter the week before Christmas. Then to come home to NC and have my mother and sister come down for a week. I laughed, ate, ate, went to movies had parties and ate. We had 20 over to eat on Christmas eve after speaking at Hope church at the first Christmas eve service. What a great day.

This season has also been a time I have been privileged to speak each week at Morganton NC First Church. It has been a joy to be home and feel the joy of sharing the message of Christmas in a congregation throughout the season. New Years eve Vicki and I shared the message of the Passover. Passover marks the New Year on the Jewish calender. What a great night we had as people took bitter herbs, a part of the Passover meal put it on bread and then dipped it in the juice of the cup symbolizing the the shed blood of Christ covering the suffering of our sin, past bondage's, tears of the past year. Many left suffering from 08 at the altar. I then shared from Acts 12 the story of another Passover experience, the jailing of Peter and his miraculous deliverance. The expectation of the church as they prayed for his freedom was heard by God as an angel came to the prison. Those in attendance wrote out their expectations for 09 and then Vicki and I prayed over ever person.

Tomorrow I will talk about faith that God responds to. It is not the size of the faith but the believing (pisteuo) that ignites the possible (dunata). Believing the spark that ignites the impossible and causes it to become possible. Believing activates supernatural power that enables what normally would never be possible. Don't worry about the size of your faith. If your believing, then faith the size of a mustard seed, will ignite supernatural power.