Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Communicating to Generation Y

I wanted to share a thought that I read in Peter Sheahan's book called 'Generation Y'


If you are not yet with the rest of the world in the new millennium, then here is a reality check. We are no longer in the information age. We are in the entertainment age. If you are not entertaining people, you are dead. But listen carefully! By entertaining I don't mean performance, with all the bells and whistles. I mean genuinely engaging people.

Make New Mistakes


I found this great Blog written by Pastor Steve Furtick... the lead pastor of Elevation church. It was just too good not to share it with you...

One tension I face daily as a leader is:
How do I enforce a standard of excellence for those I lead…
While still allocating the freedom for them to make mistakes?

Here’s one insight that has given me some clarity lately:
I don’t mind those I lead making mistakes. In fact, I prefer it. If they’re not making mistakes, they’re probably not playing to win.

I just want you to make new mistakes. Different mistakes than you made last time. Mistakes that reveal a new level of effort, or a new frontier of endeavor.

Most leaders don’t mind mistakes. They just can’t stand to see the same mistakes over…and over…and over again. Mistakes are fine (even mandatory) as long as we’re cruising down the open highway. But they make me car sick if we’re simply circling the cul-de-sac.

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Enjoy the Ride!


"Get used to enjoying the journey because the destination is a mirage."
Steven Furtick

Thursday, 21 February 2008

You Are Not Alone

I suppose we like to think that as Christians we don't struggle with things like porn... unforgivness... hatred... racism... etc. But the truth is we do!

Porn is a major problem today... and if you don't believe me... then just check out the stats below that I got from XXXCHURCH:


Get The Facts

One of the problems with porn is it makes you feel that you are all alone. The reality is that you are not. Check out the stats below and see how many people are involved in the world of porn.

Pornography Industry Statistics

Size of the Industry $57.0 billion world-wide - $12.0 billion US

Adult Videos $20.0 billion

Escort Services $11.0 billion

Magazines $7.5 billion

Sex Clubs $5.0 billion

Phone Sex $4.5 billion

Cable & Pay Per View $2.5 billion

Internet $2.5 billion

CD-ROM $1.5 billion

Novelties $1.0 billion

Other $1.5 billion


Porn revenue is larger than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises.

US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, & NBC (6.2 billion).

Child pornography generates $3 billion annually.

Internet Porn Statistics

Pornographic Website's 4.2 million (12% of total website's)

Pornographic Pages 372 million

Daily Pornographic Search Engine Requests 68 million (25% of total search engine requests)

Daily Pornographics Emails 2.5 billion (8% of total emails)

Avg. Daily Pornographic Emails/User 4.5 per internet user

Monthly Pornographic downloads (Peer-to-peer) 1.5 billion (35% of all downloads)

Daily Gnutella "child pornography" requests 116 thousand

Website's offering illegal child pornography 100 thousand

Sexual solicitations of youth made in chat rooms 89%

Youths who received sexual solicitation 20%

Worldwide visitors to pornographic web sites 72 million annually



Children's Exposure to Pornography

Average age of first Internet exposure to pornography 11 years old

Largest Consumer of Internet Pornography 12-17 age group

15-17 year olds having multiple hardcore exposures 80%

8-16 year olds having viewed porn online 90% (most while doing homework)

7-17 year olds who would freely give out home address 29%

7-17 year olds who would freely give out email addresses 14%

Children's characters linked to thousands of porn links 26 (including Pokeman and Action Man)



Adult Internet Porn Statistics

Men admitting to accessing porn at work 20%

US adults who regularly visit internet porn sites 40 million

Promise Keepers men who viewed porn in the last week 53%

Christians who say porn is a major problem in the home 47%

Adults admitting to internet sexual addiction 10%

Breakdown of male/female visitors to porn sites 72% male - 28% female



Women & Pornography

13% of Women admit to accessing porn at work.

70% of women keep their cyber activities secret.

17% of all women struggle with pornography addiction.

Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs.

Women favor chat rooms 2X's more than men.

1 out of 3 visitors to adult website's are women.

9.4 million women access adult website's each month.


Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Porn Sunday

Porn Sunday is coming soon to Eastside Church in Hamilton New Zealand...

As I research the subject, and hear people's struggles I am amazed at the wide spread cancer that has infected our communities. The Web site www.pornsunday.com estimates there are 4.2 million pornographic sites online with 40 million visitors daily. I think that if everyone in church honestly answered the question, 'Have you viewed porn in the last month' that we would fall off of our seats as we saw just so many hands going up.

If you are struggling with porn...
1) Know that you are not alone
2) Get help... will power will never get you out of this mess
3) Ask Jesus to change you from the inside out... and stay away from anything that can lure you back to your old ways

Getting back to point 2... click THIS LINK to get free accountability software.
Although the above 3 points might seem simple... the process is no easy one. It will possibly be the greatest challenge that you have faced in your life!!!
But you don't need to stay where you're at...

Godspeed & Kaizan

Monday, 18 February 2008

Becoming...


I've just posted a new VLOG which deals with becoming... and gives my perspective on values versus goals. Click here to check it out.

Friday, 15 February 2008

This Will Impact You!


I thought that I would draw your attention to the video that I have posted in the right hand side bar. Its called 'Don't Run Alone'. It covers some of the amazing story of team Hoyt.
Words at this point wouldn't be able to express the impact that this video will have on you... so I won't ruin it.

Go on... give the video a whirl.

I look forward to your comments : )

PS: If you haven't noticed yet, for your convenience their is a subscription bar on the right hand side panel. This will save you always having to go on line to find out if there are any new posts.
Enjoy.

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Searching For Eagles?


Today I had my first staff meeting with the youth department staff and interns.
I always find the new year so exciting... we are filled with hope and vision for the future. I'm so proud of the team... I really know that God has brought this group of people together to do some exciting stuff for the Kingdom.

With all this in mind I thought I'd share with you some more of John Maxwell's thoughts. The points that follow come from an INJOY tape club lesson called, 'Searching For Eagles.' These are John's top 10 characteristics of 'eagles':

  • They make things happen
  • They see opportunities
  • They influence the opinions and actions of others
  • They add value to you
  • They draw winners to them
  • They equip other eagles to lead
  • They provide ideas that help the organization
  • They possess an uncommonly great attitude
  • They live up to their commitments
  • They show fierce loyalty to the organization and the leader

What are your top 10 characteristics that mark a leader?

Saturday, 9 February 2008

How Are You Making A Difference?


I wanted to give you an exert from John Maxwells book, 'The 360' Leader':

"In our culture people ask, '
What do you do?' not, 'Who are you?' or, 'How are you making a difference?" Most people place too much emphasis on titles and position instead of impact.

If you are ever tempted to spend too much time and energy on getting out of the middle, then change your focus. Instead, put your effort toward reaching your potential and doing the most good you can where you are. Anytime you focus on developing your position instead of yourself, you are in effect asking, '
Am I becoming the person others want me to be?' But if you focus on developing yourself instead of your title or position, then the question you will repeatedly ask is, 'Am I becoming all that I can be."


Great food for thought!
Let me know your thoughts.

Friday, 8 February 2008

Connecting With Our Postmodern Culture


I got this great quote from my mate Jeremy's blog:


This is a quote from Ravi Zacharias that has huge implications for evangelism in the emerging culture.

"We must learn to find the back door to people’s hearts because the front door is heavily guarded."

Thursday, 7 February 2008

Self Leadership


I don't know what the new year has been like for you but for me I feel like I'm moving at warp speed. In the next month we are launching our Elevate (highschool) and Reverb (18-25's) services, getting life groups off the ground, having our first Internationals O'Week dinner, our big O' Week push at the Uni and our combined camp. WHEW!

In all this craziness I came across a great quote that I really resonated with:

"We often think that self leadership is the making of good decisions every day, when the reality is that we need to make a few critical decisions in major areas of life and then manage those decisions day to day."
Dr. John Maxwell


It has been this way in my life, and my struggles have always come when I have taken my eye off of ensuring that those key decisions were managed well. Like having a daily devotion for instance. Or spending time with the family or friends. Like sharing my faith with people.

What are your key critical decisions that you have made or need to make for your life?
I look forward to hearing about yours.

Wednesday, 6 February 2008

Visual Managment

This is a great post for leaders and parents that I got from www.shmula.com



Visual Management and Self-Reliance

One of my primary goals in life is to teach my kids to be eventually good, productive, and self-reliant adults. One area of life-skills that my wife and I are focused on in teaching our children, is teaching them the principle of work: how to work, the value of work, to take ownership over their responsibilities, and to be proud of their accomplishments, and to learn to work as a team and family. One way we are reinforcing the principle of work is through the use of effective Visual Management.

Visual Management has the following purposes:

  • Visual Management provides instruction
  • Visual Management conveys information
  • Visual Management provides immediate feedback
  • Visual Management quickly exposes abnormalities in a process or work area
  • Visual Management quickly conveys progress or lack thereof

My wife created a wonderful job chart, which you find below:

This Job Chart is in our kitchen, where there is frequent foot traffic and where our family spends most of our time. There are a few items I’d like to note:

  • My kid’s ages are (from top-to-bottom): 9,8,7,3,3
  • The Kid’s Heads: Visually representing each child with their face is much more effective than using their names. The Kid’s Heads are laminated and have Velcro on the back, to facilitate ease-of-job-rotation. This approach is also very environmentally friendly, since the pictures and the board are laminated — there’s no waste.
  • We have jobs over 6 days — Monday through Saturday and the jobs are fixed, but the heads are rotateable. The younger boys (the twins) rotate with each other at the bottom 2 rows — those jobs are designed for their age and ability. The top-3 rows contain jobs for the older kids and those jobs are designed for their age and ability.
  • Every Sunday, we rotate the heads for the upcoming week.

Deploying The Program

When my wife and I first met about this during our end-of-the-year meeting, we were quite excited and saw a lot of promise in helping our kids learn the value of work.

Plan:

  • My wife and I first met together to discuss our goals for the year 2008 and how we could accomplish those goals and the expected outcomes at the end of 2008. We then brainstormed all the jobs that needed to get done in our household on a daily and weekly basis. We, then, categorized the jobs based on age and abilities of our children. For example, we had to be sensitive to the child’s height or the size of their hand and matched the work to their physical and mental abilities.

Do:

  • We gathered the family together and explained our goals and vision for 2008 as it relates to the principle of work. I explained to the kids how important work is and I also shared my personal stories about the principle of work. I showed encouragement and excitement to the kids and that learning the principle of work will help them "feel big" and not little anymore.
  • My wife and I explained our expectations and discussed rewards and consequences and also the start-date.
  • We provided training on some jobs that the kids were not familiar with. This is especially true for my twins, as this is their first foray into a more structured world of chores and work.

Check:

  • Every night during our family prayer, we discuss how the day went and how their jobs are going.
  • The 3 older kids have other diversions also like homework, piano, playing the Wii, and hanging out with friends. We want to make sure that they can still do other stuff and not be too burdened by any single item.

Act:

  • Depending on the findings during our daily discussions, then we adjust. For some kids, they might have to double-up on work the next day so they can do homework. We do not want to Batch work like that, but that is an option until further discussions can be had on whether there might be too much work.

Respect For The Kids

The Job Chart conveys information so that Mom and Dad don’t have to. When Mom or Dad have to convey the information, it usually ends-up as nagging. That approach is irritating, disrespectful, and polarizes people. We want, instead, to teach self-reliance, demonstrate our trust in the kids, and help them grow in their own terms, but with our loving guidance.

How Can This Be Improved?

What we haven’t done yet is to provide Standard Work Cards for each job, showing in text how to do the job and also a picture of what a "good job" looks like. One example might be to show a side-by-side comparison of a dirty toilet next to a clean toilet, with a marker on the clean toilet, indicating to the reader what the ideal finished good should look like.

Can you think of other ways could we improve?

Just So You Know

Yes, I have jobs also. My jobs are usually of the "Ask Mom" variety. This means that I get all the hard work, inconvenient errands, and other random but necessary to-do items. And, yes: my wife is pretty much the best.

+++++

Tuesday, 5 February 2008

Christianity has an image problem

My brother put me on to what looks like a very interesting book...

Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of . . . unChristian.

Groundbreaking research into the perceptions of sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds reveals that Christians have taken several giant steps backward in one of their most important assignments. The surprising details of the study, commissioned by Fermi Project and conducted by The Barna Group, are presented with uncompromising honesty in unChristian.

Find out why these negative perceptions exist, learn how to reverse them in a Christlike manner, and discover practical examples of how Christians can positively contribute to culture.

Monday, 4 February 2008

Why Your Story Counts

I had a tremendous weekend. We had our leaders camp at Waihi beach.
Now usually I try to pack around 5-6 sessions but this weekend we only had 2. The idea was to get to really know one another. I wanted to kick this year off really emphasizing our value of doing life together. It was awesome!

This Sunday night at 6pm we kicked off our new series called, 'Just Walk Across The Room'. To kick the series off I encouraged everyone of the power of their story / testimony. Rev 12:11 says
Rev 12:11 ESV
(11) And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

So here's 3 reasons why your story is so powerful:
  1. Your story is interesting to your friends
    • (Thats why reality TV is so popular)
  2. Your story is relevant to your friends
    • (While a drug addicts / gangsters stories are amazing... most of your friends and peers just aren't drug addicts or gangsters... its your story that they can relate to!)
  3. No one can argue with your story
So as I challenged our church community... will you THIS week share your story with at least one person?
Have a great week!