Month: February 2017

Mmmm… Paczki! Happy Fat Tuesday!

It’s that time of year again, when grocers put out stacks of Paczki’s without any explanation. They just mysteriously appear, and I wonder how many people wonder – what is a paczki? Why do they show up at the end of winter? What’s the story behind the paczki? How do you even say “paczki” – putch-key? patch-key? puz-chkai?

So as you may know, today is Fat Tuesday, or more famously known as Mardi Gras. It’d be easy to think that this is a New Orleans thing, or a South American thing (where they call it Carnival). Nope, it’s a Christian thing! Surprise!

The Christian church calendar is marked by four major seasons – Advent/Christmas/Epiphany, Lent, Easter & Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. Ash Wednesday is the first day of the Lenten Season, a time of 40 days leading up to Easter (not including Sundays) where Christians fast (for a variety of reasons) from food items (often unhealthy ones) bad habits they’ve been meaning to give up, or immature attitudes towards others.

Lent was famous for fasting from all rich foods, especially meat. As the times changed, so did the restrictions,one of them being you could eat fish on Fridays as a substitute for beef (hence all the Arby’s commercials for their fish sandwiches)!

To prepare for Lent, it was important to get rid of all the banned food from the house so that you would not be tempted during the 40 days (reminiscent of Christ’s fast in the wilderness). Instead of throwing the food in the garbage, the people would have a huge feast and eat up all the banned food on the day before Lent, hence Fat Tuesday.

We live in a day where the Christian church calendar does not dictate our public lives. It barely directs the lives of some Christians. All Christians celebrate Christmas and Easter though. And most Christians say that Easter is the most important holy day, but they actually spend more time preparing and celebrating Christmas. So what’s a way to embody your value of Easter? Join the church in fasting for forty days during Lent. And how do you prepare for Lent? Celebrate Fat Tuesday!

For Fat Tuesday, eat a paczki, or have pancakes for dinner! Make them extra rich, lather them with icing, or pudding or sprinkled with your favorite candy like Reese’s Pieces and gummy bears (that’s what we do)! In England it’s called Pancake Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday!

For Ash Wednesday, let it be a fast day – maybe just stick to water and a small apple or little bit of bread and very small dinner of veggies. For Lent, pray about something the Lord may want you to give up for the season as a way to prepare for Easter. The point is to deny yourself something you enjoy, but the point of that is to make it a spiritual practice, one that uses  your craving to prompt prayerful reflection on your life with God. Let your desire for “it” be a reminder to pray for others, to be attentive to what the Lord wants you to be hungry for.

In Lent we deny ourselves. In the season of Easter and Pentecost, we start up something new, something good, something that is inspired by the resurrection of Jesus Christ and new life that comes from the Holy Spirit.

So on this Fat Tuesday, as you feast, prayerfully consider what the Lord may have you fast from. And then be praying what new thing he may want you to begin in Easter.

In the meantime, enjoy those paczki’s and pancakes!

Leadership = Relationships + Credibility

Pennsylvania is a beautiful state! Especially with all of those hills! I spent the last two days in the Harrisburg area to teach a Leadership & Management class with Evangelical Seminary as an adjunct professor.

It’s an innovative 14 week online class with a week-long residency in the middle, crafted and implemented by a team of two lead professors and four contributing professors. It brings together practical experience, professional reflection, and focused academic instruction. I’m glad to be part of the team!

I just wish I would have more time to hike those hills after class on Tuesday!

My portion with the students was to take the last four hours of the class and help them synthesize what they’ve been learning to integrate into their current leadership and management situations. We reviewed some great literature, which I will list below. Each student is in an interesting leadership opportunity, as are most people working with a team to get things done!

Here are a few takeaways I have from the time with students and this class, leadership reflections that will help me grow as a leader, and hopefully you as well.

  • Leadership and management at its best matures relationships while increasing credibility. Credibility is tied to – will you do what you say you will do, and will you do it well and in such a way that we are better off as a people for having done it?
  • Leadership is required because of the constant changes we experience in our culture, communities, and workplaces.
  • Leadership is more than just problem-solving in reaction to big and small changes, it’s helping people manage the transitions required to adapt and thrive amidst the change.
  • Change implies loss, and loss must be acknowledged, empathized with, and honored. Grief of some form accompanies most change and transitions we face in life -whether in our business or homes. Leaders care for their people amidst change by helping them through their loss and transitions.
  • People don’t like endings. We like the status quo. And we are nervous about new beginnings. Remember that if you are a leader.
  • Many people don’t want to be a leader. Reluctant leaders are often the best kind, though! Connect them to a passion, empower them to act on a desire they have that will bring about a positive change, and support them as they grow as a leader!
  • Leading is first about action, eventually it is about position. The credibility of the position is fundamentally tied to the quality of the action. And it is ultimately connected to the use of power to help people grow  – so don’t advantage of them! Never use your position to enrich yourself at the expense of others.
  • Beware leaders who are always seeking to be relevant, famous, and powerful. Instead support leaders who listen well, care for people, and help you get important stuff done for others.
  • The strength of a leader is their weakness. Most of our limps as a leader come from our success. What works well in one moment, may not be the wisest course in the next. As circumstances change, what is needed from us changes – sometimes our strength is exactly what this crisis needs, and other times our strength is the worst thing. That should keep leaders humble!
  • Christian leaders ground their identity and mission in Christ Jesus. Through the powerful love of God they wisely work to mature relationships and increase credibility to further God’s mission in the world – which is for the restoration of all creation and the arrival of the kingdom of peace.
  • We ought to lead others in the way Christ leads us: humbly, mercifully, and justly – for the means produce the ends we desire.

What you have learned along the way about leadership and management? What would your advice be to students?

 

Here are some of the resources we used that I highly recommend for you:

Henri Nouwen: In the Name of Jesus – Reflections on Christian Leadership by a brilliant Harvard educator and Catholic priest who retired to serve at L’Arche Community.

William Bridges: Managing Transitions – Making the Most of Change is a fascinating read on helping people deal with the loss that comes from change and transition. A very personal, applicable guide for business, non-profit, government, church and community leaders.

Action Trumps Everything helps over-analyzers like me get to work in smart experiments to create new opportunities and keep learning and moving forward when change is constant.

Dan Allender in Leading with a Limp – Turning Your Struggles into Strengths provides a unique and provocative insight into the souls of leaders, our complexity, the chaos we lead in, and the darkness that can emerge if we don’t learn to lead with our limp.

The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk gives intense practical ways forward for congregations seeking to thrive amidst discontinuous change. It brings together the latest in philosophy, theology, business, and other disciplines to help leaders deal with reality and join God in his mission.

One of the best overviews on leadership in the United States, The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner is easy to read, easy to integrate, grounded in practical research, and loaded with great examples. It shaped me twenty years ago, and I want it to affect the next forty.

Transform With Us

When you become a member of the YMCA, you are invited to join an association that works to strengthen the foundations of our community in spirit, mind and body. It’s not just a gym and place to swim, but a place for transformation, courage, resiliency, friendship, and belonging.

The Young Men’s Christian Association has continued to transform lives since it’s founding in the 1840’s in urban, industrialized London, England. In the 1850’s the Y planted in Montreal and Boston, and then across the United States. It’s mission is still transforming lives: to put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.

The founding principle of the YMCA is from the gospel according to John 17, where Jesus is praying for his disciples -there around him and the ones to follow him in the decades and the many centuries to come. In it the founders of the Y focused on this part of the prayer: “…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Unity with fellow members, communion with Father, Son and Spirit – that’s the ground on which the YMCA was built.

As you know, unity is invitational, never coercive. Forging unity requires the ingredients of patient kindness, healing honesty, earnest respect, and loyal responsibility. These Christian principles are compelling, and they undergird everything the Y tries to do for it’s members and in the community. When we don’t get it right, we apologize and try harder next time; when we do get it right, we build on it to better serve all.

Everyone has their own reasons for joining the Y. That’s the beauty of the YMCA! We are for all! We open up our membership to young and old, men and women, Christians and people of all or no faith, rich and poor, neighbors of all tribes, nations, languages. We try put our Christian principles to work everyday to extend a warm-hearted welcome for all.

It’s the season of our annual campaign, where we connect with friends, family, and fellow YMCA members to give generously so that we can live our promise: the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne has made a promise to our community to turn no one away due to the inability to pay. Isn’t that remarkable? What other membership association does that? We want everyone to join our mission, to come transform with us.

In his old age, the beloved apostle John wrote letters to Christians scattered around the Roman Empire, instructing them on how to live charitably in a hostile and complicated world. One of those instructions inspires our attitude and effort for the annual campaign – he writes: “If anyone has wealth in this world and sees a brother or sister in need, and has compassion on them, the love of God is in them. Dear friends, let us not just love with words, but with actions and in truth.” 

If you think about it, Jesus, were he to be living in our community today, would not have the ability to pay for a membership at the YMCA. He was homeless, wandered across the nation, relying on friends and family for his provisions. We believe that when we open up our hearts to those in need, we are doing so to Jesus as well. When we give to the annual campaign, you make it possible for those that were in need like Jesus to join our association and all it’s benefits!

The YMCA is here for all – for those that have the ability to pay, and those that don’t. Isn’t that inspiring? We are here to strengthen the foundations of our community with great love. The Y is more than a gym and place to swim, it’s an association of mission-inspired members always inviting the community: come transform with us.

Watch this beautiful reminder of what the YMCA means to so many in our country and in our neighborhoods, why we want to be for all.