You tinker and tinker and tinker until... what? Until its perfect?
Sometimes you just gotta pull the trigger and do it.
Don't wait until its perfect (because it never will be).
Give it your best shot, throw it out there, and see what happens.
If you get feedback that it stinks, fix it. If its celebrated, hooray!
But it will never be perfect.
Perfect is overrated.
As Tina Fey says, "Perfect is boring on live tv."
In 1962, the Beatles auditioned for Decca Records.
The label turned them down, saying that “guitar groups are on the way out”
and “the Beatles have no future in show business.”
And after that, the Beatles stopped making music forever.
Grudges are dumb.
When you hold something against someone else, you imprison one person: yourself.
Forgiveness is the most powerful force in the universe:
Yes, leadership is hard and tough.
If you want everyone to like you, sell ice cream cones!
Leadership is hard, but it’s worth it.
Paul told Timothy to suck it up and press on (2 Timothy 2:3).
And when I feel stressed or scared or overwhelmed, I remember the fearlessness of Christian leaders who have come before me.
One of my favorite historical leaders was John Chrysostom.
When John Chrysostom (ca. 347-407) was brought before the empress Eudoxia, she threatened him with banishment if he insisted on his Christian independence as a preacher.
“You cannot banish me, for this world is my Father’s house.”
“But I will kill you,” said the empress.
“No, you cannot, for my life is hid with Christ in God,” said John.
“I will take away your treasures.”
“No, you cannot, for my treasure is in heaven and my heart is there.”
“But I will drive you away from your friends and you will have no one left.”
“No, you cannot, for I have a Friend in heaven from whom you cannot separate me. I defy you, for there is nothing you can do to harm me.”
One Saturday night in the mid-1990's while working at The Second City comedy theater in Chicago, I received a phone call that I was being activated as an understudy for a
children’s theater performance the next day.
Somebody in the cast of the production was sick and so my moment in the spotlight was beckoning. I was excited until I realized that the production involved dressing up as a pirate and I needed to provide my own pantyhose.
Apparently Captain Hook had an inner diva.
Pantyhose, really? I’m a guy which means I have an allergy to Haines and don’t know the first thing about choosing pantyhose.
But here I was after working the late shift at Second City, clumsily fumbling through the pantyhose aisle of a Walgreens at 3 am. I think my Man Card was suspended for the night.
Luckily, two women walked into the Walgreens and came to my aid: Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey. I shared in my book, "Holy Shift," about how at this time in her life, Tina Fey was not big into parties after late night performances at Second City. Her regular rituals included renting movies at the local Blockbuster Video and grabbing a snack at the Walgreens across the street.
This is how she and Dratch found me.
I wish I could say it was one of my finer moments in life but there’s no way to spin it: I was a young college dude looking pathetic buying women’s pantyhose.
Tina and Rachel must have thought I was nuts and easily could have assumed the worst about me and walked away. Instead they walked toward me. Instead of talking ABOUT me, they chose to talk WITH me.
It didn’t hurt that they recognized me from Second City, so they came over to ask what I was up to.
After I explained my predicament in a way that only professional theater people can understand, Tina took a few minutes to choose just the right color and size of pantyhose for me to dress up in as a pirate the next day.
Yes, it’s true: Tina Fey helped me pick out pantyhose.
Actually purchasing the pantyhose was embarrassing. There is just no cool way for a twenty-year-old dude at 3 am to slyly hand over a pink package of Haines Hosiery Thigh-Highs
and declare with security in their own manhood, “It’s just something for the little lady at home.”
Yes, I may have looked odd or even a bit creepy from the outside
looking in.
The cashier didn’t crack a smile once during the checkout
process, he just stared at me in judgment. And I can’t blame him
for assuming the worst about me.
But isn’t that how we all react when we encounter something out of the ordinary without all the information on the situation?
What if we chose to believe the best about the people we encounter?
What if we eclipsed our inner judge with a presumption of compassion?
At Life Church Saginaw, we are willing to try anything and do
anything short of sin to engage people who normally will not darken a church door.
Having a whatever it takes attitude to reaching people
far from God has led us on some wild adventures.
One idea that has gained traction and successfully reached families in our region each year is our annual Easter Egg Helicopter Drop.
We invite folks to our church campus, throw a free party (remember, Jesus loved a good party!), and after they realize we are normal and harmless, we invite them back the next day for Easter services.
We have heard story after story of people becoming Christ-followers as a direct result of our Egg Drop!
As you can imagine, when you throw 50,000 eggs out of a helicopter, the media takes notice. Flying plastic eggs play well for local news cameras.
One year our Egg Drop even caught the attention of
newspapers throughout Michigan and The Christian Post, a national online publication. People far from God loved our heart and passion for serving area families. However, the online comments sections were filled with venom and judgment . . .
from other Christians.
As I read the first few comments from self-professing Christians,
I felt like a hemophiliac in a razor factory. Instead of talking
TO us, brothers and sisters in Christ were talking
ABOUT us on a public forum with assumptions that were not true.
The statements made about our church’s motives by people outside our church who claimed to represent the one true Church made people who go to church look stupid.
Assuming the worst can lead to unnecessary black-eyes within the Body of Christ. Friendly-fire is preventable. God gave us one mouth and two ears for a reason. It is always wiser to listen more than we speak.
Labeling people in public forums is not a sign of maturity—it’s a
preschool mentality. If we are unable to gather all the facts, then
our default as Christ-followers needs to be believing the best about people, not assuming the worst.
We have a fantastic team of Interns at Life Church who are learning and growing in their leadership skills. Part of the program is that we are intentionally providing a safe environment to make mistakes in.
We learn when we try.
When an intern makes a mistake in our church, we always believe the best. We walk alongside them, tell them to take a deep breath, and then we ask, “You’re okay, you tried something new, now what did you learn from that experience?”
Believing the best can be a game changer in your life and your
leadership. Jumping to positive conclusions creates energy, trust,
and forward movement in any ensemble. Believing the best helps
eliminate gossip and unnecessary drama.
Believe the best about the people you are partnering with and watch how your leadership climate shifts toward a stronger ensemble!
[ Excerpt from the book, "Holy Shift," by Dr. Jonathan Herron ]
Great leaders lead with both knowledge and understanding. As a leader, always remember it’s your responsibility to lead and feed. More than ever, people are looking for someone to lead them with wisdom and understanding, and to feed them the things that will elevate their lives and their leadership.
Here are 4 qualities that describe the type of shepherds God is calling leaders to be:
1) GOD’S LOOKING FOR SHEPHERDS THAT CARRY HIS HEART
God raises up people who have His heart. His heart is for others! God is all about loving and caring for people. This is the heart good shepherds lead with.
How do you receive God’s heart? By surrendering to His presence.
GOOD SHEPHERDS spend time in His presence and receive His heart.
2) GOD’S LOOKING FOR SHEPHERDS THAT ARE FULL SO THEY CAN FEED
Shepherds are able to lead AND pour into people’s lives. A leader can’t pour into people what they don’t have.
You can’t lead on empty; it is impossible to shepherd while all dried up. It is a leader’s responsibility to stay full.
Don’t just love the idea of staying full, actually do it! Spend time in His presence and in His Word. So many people love the idea of pursuing Jesus, but staying full is about ACTION.
GOOD SHEPHERDS make it a priority to stay full so they can pour into others.
3) GOD’S LOOKING FOR SHEPHERDS THAT KEEP THEIR HEART SHARP
Jeremiah 10:21 says this: “For the shepherds have become dull-hearted, and have not sought the Lord; therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered.”
If there’s an issue chopping the wood, it mostly comes down to a dull blade. Sometimes, the problem isn’t with the wood - it’s with the blade.
This leads me to ask: If the shepherds have become dull-hearted, what is the status of the sheep? People will never surpass the leaders of their organization.
GOOD SHEPHERDS don’t let their hearts grow dull. Good shepherds always have something FRESH to say.
4) GOD’S LOOKING FOR SHEPHERDS THAT WILL LOOK AFTER HIS PEOPLE
Don’t bother worrying about your platform or about how many eyes are watching you. God decides how much influence you will have. Stay focused on the people God has entrusted into your care!
Be a shepherd whose main concern is the people they lead. Be a shepherd who is able to genuinely care about each member of the flock and bring value to each of their lives.
GOOD SHEPHERDS more concerned about their flock than their personal influence.
Let’s remember these things as we lead people.
You're made to lead, and we need you!
🎃Yes, Team Herron does Halloween, but allow me to explain WHY:
• IMAGINATION - What other holiday encourages young children to explore their creative sides? Yes, we stay away from the scary stuff, but we do encourage our children to engage with their imaginations.
• NEIGHBORS - What other day of the year do we get to rub shoulders with all our neighbors in a non-creepy way? “Love thy neighbor?” Yes, we do!
• DISCERNMENT - We have plenty of real-world examples during Halloween to teach our kids about personal holiness and honoring God with our choices.
• FREE CANDY - Papa Bear needs his Reese’s. Plus I have the opportunity after trick-or-treating every year to teach my kids the principle of tithing: I’m the father and they are to bring me 10% of everything.
One of my FAVORITE MOVIES is the sleeper-comedy, Leap of Faith, starring STEVE MARTIN and a then-unknown PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN.
Just after winning the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama (Capote), Philip Seymour Hoffman explained the approach that helped him reach the top of his profession.
In reply to a question about what advice he’d give to aspiring actors, Hoffman said,
“This is something a teacher told me years ago, and he’s right: even if you’re auditioning for something that you know you’re never going to get or for something you read and didn’t like—if you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you’re given a free chance to PRACTICE YOUR CRAFT. And in that moment, you should act as well as you can.”
“Because when you act as well as you can,” Hoffman says, “there’s NO WAY the people who have watched you will forget it.”
So it leads to opportunities, but more importantly, “at the end of the day, all that matters is the work. Everybody knows that. If I show up one day and the work I’m doing isn’t any good, then I’m just a guy who’s not acting well…
So I would say it to anybody starting out: if you’re given a chance to act, take those words and bring them alive. If you do that, something good will transpire ultimately.”
Philip Seymour Hoffman saying that good things inevitably transpire when you just focus on doing whatever you're doing as well you can reminded me of a piece of advice from Steve Martin.
“Despite a lack of natural ability,” Martin writes in his memoir, Martin would go on to put together one of the most decorated careers in the history of entertainment (five Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, a couple of Lifetime Achievement Awards, an Honorary Oscar, and on and on).
Someone stood up in an audience once and asked Martin, how do you become successful?
“You have to become undeniably good at something,” he said. “Nobody ever takes my advice, because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’ If you are just always thinking, ‘How can I be really good?’—people will come to you.”
I've written before about a trait often possessed by those who reach the heights of their profession:
They do what they do, not as a means to some end (money, fame, awards, etc.), but for the sake of doing it. To them, as Hoffman said, the work is all that matters. To them, as Ryan Holiday once told me, “the work is the win.”
You control the effort, he says, not the results. You control how well you act, not whether or not you get the part. “So ultimately,” Ryan told me, “you have to love doing it. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”
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“She brought so much love, energy, and cheerfulness to the work that she could not but succeed.” — Louisa May Alcott