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When was the last time that you were passionate about the life that God is calling you to live?

Last Spring, I acted on a longstanding desire to learn to surf. I had been body surfing and body boarding for most of the last twenty years. But I was always keenly interested in riding the waves standing up. I am nearing 40 years of age now so I figured it was now or never.

I purchased two boards: one for my daughters and one for my wife and me. We took the boards to the beach in the north Cocoa Beach area of Florida and began the process of learning to surf.
It was not easy. At least, it wasn’t easy for me. My daughters were able to stand up immediately and begin to ride waves. I think that I fell 40 times before finally getting my feet under me and experiencing the raw, sublime power of the ocean propelling me toward the shore.

It was a life-changing moment. I knew instantly why grown women and men leave jobs at the drop of hat when the word gets out that good waves are present. I understood why otherwise responsible adults head for the coastline as storms approach in search of a big wave. There is nothing quite like surfing. I love to talk to friends about my experiences.

But a peculiar twist occurs in most of my conversations with others about surfing. No matter how I describe the pleasures and sheer joy of surfing. No matter how well I share the sense of oneness with creation or the powerful rush of the primordial waters. People tend to have a different question on their minds: BRIAN, AREN’T YOU AFRAID OF SHARKS?

Isn’t this an interesting shift? But its all too human. Fear prevents most of us from experiencing the life that God dreamed for us when we were created. Even Christ followers gravitate to the path of least resistance. How do we break out of the stifling grip of fear? It takes a reality altering moment of transformation. Catching my first wave changed me. Of course I have no desire to be chewed up by a hungry shark, but when I’m in the ocean, I am not worrying about sharks (and I’ve never seen one). When I am surfing, I am in the ocean to catch waves. Period.

Jesus’ death on the cross and God the Father’s action of raising the Son from the dead on the third day is the ultimate game changer in Creation. Through Jesus’ sacrificial death for sin, suffering and injustice and his resurrection for the sake of God’s ultimate victory, we can now make sense of the past because the future of Creation is guaranteed. Thus, we can now live purposively and courageously for God’s mission in the present.

Jesus’ call becomes a call to live free as the people whom we were created to be. We can live unfettered by the fears that rob the masses from true life. We live as dead men and women walking.

When we (re)align our lives in light of God’s game changing actions in the life, death, and resurrection, our lives become paradoxical. We learn to relish risk. We begin to fill more alive because we are dead to the world. We understand profoundly that our future is utterly secure because of what Jesus has already accomplished. This unleashes us to be free in the present. We live purposefully and courageously in the present.

We learn the truth of sayings such as:
“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” Andre Gide

“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” William Shedd

I’ve begun to understand what this life looks like by learning to surf:
1) The only way to surf is to leave the safety of the shoreline.
2) To get to the waves you have to paddle through the breakers.
3) After a wipeout, you simply paddle back out and catch another wave.
4) Stormy weather can bring the best waves.
5) Every wave is different, but even the perfect one does not last forever.
6) Surfers are passionate about surfing — they live to surf.
When was the last time that you were truly passionate about the life that God is calling you to live.

(Re)Aligning for the Future of God’s Dreams

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” C. S. Dream

The future looks different when we are (re)aligned with God missional dreams.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw, writer

God is looking for women and men who are unreasonable in the sense that we are captured and committed to God’s dreams—we are unwilling to settle for the stifling of the status quo whenever we are called anew and afresh by Jesus into the world on mission.

What are you afraid of? What is keeping you from pursuing the missional dreams of God for your life? What would it mean for you today to take the initial step?

© 2008 Brian D. Russell

I happened across this quotation from John Wesley:

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergy or laymen, such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven upon earth .. [Letter from John Wesley to Alexander Mather, 6 August 1777]

Today, I am working with a group of ministry interns with the Central Florida Wesley Foundation. This group serves the main campus of the University of Central Florida just east of Orlando. Each team member has taken the Clifton-Gallup StrengthsFinder Assessment.

We will be doing some team building exercises and provide a general introduction to Strengths theory.

Here are some links that may be helpful for persons desiring more information:

Articles by Brian
Annotated Bibliography for StrengthsFinder Resources

Thinking about Strengths and Talents

Unleashed for God: Reflections on Strengths, Gifts, Talents, and Passions

The Power of Focus

Other links:
Advising Strategies for Course Selection Based on StrengthsFinders

Chip Anderson’s Description of the 34 Talents (Anderson was one of the early maestros of StrengthsFinder

Tim McGinnis’s site

Leader as Surfer

My family moved into a new stage in its evolution as beach goers. We have been longtime avid bodyboarders. Today we became surfers. Sort of. In possession of a short board, my daughters dominated the action. They were both able to stand almost immediately. Due to their light weight, they also had the advantage of being able to catch and ride waves in 2-3′ of water. Let us just say that the best surfing days for my wife and I are still ahead of us.

As I watched my girls maneuver adroitly through the waves just north of Cocoa Beach, I saw clearly that surfing offers many lessons for missional leaders in the 21st century:

1) The only way to surf is to leave the safety of the shoreline.

2) After a wipeout, you simply paddle back out and catch another wave.

3) The master surfer knows how to read the waves.

4) Surfers are passionate about surfing — they live to surf.

5) Stormy weather can bring the best waves.

6) Every wave is different, but even the perfect one does not last forever.

7) To get to the waves you have to paddle through the breakers.

© 2008 Brian D. Russell

By the way, we purchased the Short Board at the legendary Cocoa Beach surf shop: Ron Jon’s

“Aim at nothing and you’ll succeed.” - Anonymous
“What most counts is not to live, but to live aright.” — Socrates

God created humanity for profound purposes. Too many women and men fail to grasp let alone live as the people that they were crafted to be. Why the disconnect between life as God intended and life as most experience it? I don’t ask this merely of non-Christ followers but particularly of Christ followers. God created us to be world changers. God appointed us as ambassadors and heralds. God designed us for deep relationships and deep community. God intended for us to embody his character.

How do we move from mediocre to memorable? How do we shift from ordinary to extraordinary? How do we stop meandering and start focusing? How do we stop responding and start creating?

It takes a combination of tenacity mixed with a sense of purpose. God’s purposes.

Jackie, my wife, often says, “Live life on purpose. Live out loud.”  We need to commit to making each day our personal masterpiece. Some days we will paint Mona Lisas. Other days we may finish with the smeared colors of a finger painting. Some days we will burn through the hours as though we were racing down the autobahn in a Ferrari 360 Spider. Other days we force our way through debris and obstacles as though we were piloting a bulldozer. Either way we live on purpose and out loud. We don’t merely react to life or complain about the hand that we are dealt. As the Danish proverb reminds us, “Life is not holding a good hand; Life is playing a poor hand well.”

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you get neither.”

Are you living the life of God’s dreams? Are you living life on purpose? Are you living out loud?

As we were learn to dream God sized dreams and pursue God’s intentions for us, we will begin to taste the sort of lives that we need to live in the world as we seek to shape the future for Jesus the Messiah and His Kingdom.

© 2008 Brian D. Russell

I was rereading Erwin McManus’sAn Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind. On pages 144-45, he writes about the need to raise up leaders from within a community of faith instead of hiring from the outside:

The development of indigenous leadership is critical to creating and shaping ethos. It is also essential in generating first-century church momentum. One reason for this is that when you identify leaders from within, everyone realizes that he or she could be the next leader identified. It gives everyone a sense of inspiration and hope that he or she might be selected and invested in. If you’re always hiring from the outside, it becomes a mystery how one ever grows to that level of leadership. The obvious conclusion for someone interested in leadership would be that he or she has to leave the church to find a place where that level of leadership could be obtained.
In an organization, leaders must be brought from the outside. in a movement, leaders emerge from within. A genuine movement is a leadership culture. It values the identification, development, and empowering of new leaders. A central component of a movement’s success is not the selection of accredited leaders but of proven leadership. Leadership is not about how much education a person has attained but how much they have actually accomplished in a ministry context. In many congregations the only role that members can aspire to is to be a good follower. in the first-century church, there were no other churches to take leaders from. Everybody had to be homegrown.

Bold face has been added.

How well do communities of faith empower and unleash new leaders?

What are best practices in accomplishing this?

What does it mean for missional leaders to focus on leadership development of others?