Punch the button, not the attendant

My friend Matt and I were on our way to breakfast recently. Matt's claim to fame is that he nearly died on a Tibetan mountain pass when his car broke down one time. He, his wife and son were saved by the thoughtful actions of their driver. He pointed the disabled car toward the fading sunlight and, using the hood, redirected sufficient rays to thaw the frozen line. Matt has other claims to fame, but that was the coolest one I heard during this particular breakfast.

At any rate, on the way to food, we stopped for fuel. I would think by now we would have standardized the gas pump. Apparently not. This one, with it's unique variety of questions to answer, selections to make, and buttons to push, nearly stumped us. And that's saying something: Matt's an engineer and me, well, I graduated from Ball State University.

Once the gas was flowing we noticed the button and sign shown below. Apparently we were not alone in our frustration with the complicated pump. It looked liked someone had tried with great vigor to "speak with an attendant," enough vigor to snap off portions of the button!

I love orange shirts

I recently attended a conference at Wheaton College. I'd been to the school before, but didn't really know where anything was. My friend Matt and I parked within a dozen yards of a banner denoting our conference. But it turned out that was mostly a good place to hang a banner, not really the main place where the meeting was being held.



As we walked up toward the banner we were met by a couple young people in orange shirts. They informed us that our first order was to register in the gym. "Follow the sidewalk that way," the orange shirt pointed and said. Matt and I strode off obediently. Just at the point when I was thinking, "Where's the dang gym?" another orange shirt materialized and said, "Need to register? Just this way." At the gym, an orange shirt opened the door. At dinner a particularly intrepid orange shirt held open two doors at once to let in the thronging masses. Like signs in the Paris Metro, the orange shirts seemed to always be where I needed them.

I wanted to bring one home with me.

How cool would that be? Someone who knew the schedule, knew where the places were that you needed to be, and held open the door when you got there. And all this with a smiling face. Amazing and wonderful.

It makes me wonder if the orange shirts all came from Utah or maybe Enterprise Car Rental.

Lessons in Influence from the Book of Esther

Last Saturday I had a cool opportunity to sit with a few others, listening to our senior pastor Gregg Parris talk about what it means to be a leader. He spoke briefly about some of his success as a leader. He also spoke in depth about several of his devastating failures. I’ll blog some of those stories in coming days.*

Drawing from the book of Esther in the Bible, Gregg presented us with eight leadership lessons. I missed many of the connections to Esther, so you may want to read the book for yourself. It’s a fascinating story.

Eight Lessons in Influence from Esther

Pray to see things as they are. Often times the stated issue isn’t the real issue. Gregg said the younger you are when you learn this, the better off you’ll be for the rest of your life. Ask, “God, what is really going on in this conflict?”

Influence influencers. Gregg said that this principle is why he showed up on Saturday morning to speak to our small group. He sees potential to influence in our little band of interns. (No pressure, guys!)

Be courageous and self-sacrificial. You will never be a great leader unless you’re willing to suffer. Those who suffer with grace do so because of their courage.

Timing and preparation are crucial to influence. You have to pick your battles. And you need to be prepared. With regard to issues of the kingdom of God, timing is everything.

Be crucified to personal ambition. Authority to lead comes to the degree that you lay down your life for the people you serve. If you will take care of the depth of your relationship with God, he’ll take care of the breadth of your influence.

Be positive, not destructive. Destruction is what happens when we’re not positive. Think the best of people.

Get control of your pride and ego before exerting influence.

Trust God with the results.

If I had to choose one or two of these to consider in my life, maybe to focus some growth and training on, I think I’d go with “Pray to see things as they are.” I could also do with a greater sense of personal sacrifice and courage, but I’d rather not think about that.

One thing I see at work in my life, that I delight in, is the privilege I have to influence influencers. I spend a good bit of my time speaking to and writing for people who love Jesus and want to respectfully invite others to follow him.

How about you? Any of these you’d like to grow in? Any you’ve seen God give you or build in you lately?


*OK, truth be told: Gregg didn’t talk about failure and I wouldn’t blog it if he did. I just put that in there to encourage you to keep reading!

Grateful for God's provision

Here’s something I’m thankful for today: Food. Yummy food in ample quantity. Many people around the world do not have ample food, tasty or otherwise. If there’s food to buy, they lay awake at night wondering how they’ll afford to get it for their kids. Other people can’t enjoy food right now like my friend who struggles with anorexia and my dad who finds little or no appeal in food as he battles cancer.

But I’m thankful for the food I’ve enjoyed today: Fresh blueberries to put on my cereal this morning; tasty kettle-fried potato chips with the box lunch at the conference I’m attending; and as I walked to the workshop in which I’m typing this, some young volunteer was passing out Dove ice cream bars. Wow. Culinary utopia and dinner hasn’t even happened yet.

Of course I’d trade it all to see my friend and dad share a large pizza or a bag of White Castle hamburgers. And whole cities, nations where the food is running out? Well, that’s hard to even imagine.

Come on baby light my fire. . .

Ann and I added a new house rehab skill to our toolbox tonight. We installed a flexible gas line from the propane tap in the basement up, down, around and through the floor to a gas stove.

I don’t know about you, but Ann way prefers cooking with gas. Switching from electric will make her happy, which in turn makes the rest of us happy! My Dad should be happy to know that we used pipe dope instead of teflon tape!



If you realize after a week or so that nothing new has shown up here after this post, maybe you could swing by the house and check on things. Just put out your cigarette before you open the front door!

Un-cool car in a cool place

I got off the plane feeling pretty cool with life: Got car reserved, a cheap hotel room waiting, and a presumably nice drive in the morning through a part of the US I’d never visited. Like a good vibe black hole, the rental car agent sucked all that joy away in a moment.

“We’re out of compacts, so I’m putting you in a Town and Country.” Somehow, my mind heard that as a bigger, nicer car than what I had reserved. Then it began to dawn on me, “A Town and Country is a ding dang minivan.” Ack. The movie in my mind involved me zipping around the great forests of the Northwest in a zippy little car. It just didn’t work if you took out the Focus or the Mazda 3 and replaced it with a minivan.

“Surely you have a car,” I implored imploringly.

“Yes, we do,” she answered hopefully. “It will cost you $10 extra.”

“Ten bucks for the whole rental period?” I asked stupidly.

“Per day,” she responded with triumphant finality.

Lacking extensive blogging experience, I don’t know if it’s good manners to say the name of the rental car company. Suffice it to say, even if you’re really trying to be thrifty (wink wink, nudge nudge), I’d still advise renting from Enterprise.

The next morning I drove my decidedly uncool car out of Seattle into some of the most beautiful geography I’ve ever seen. It inspired this photo essay called, “Un-cool Car in Cool Places.”


Daring white minivan at Deception Pass



Mild-mannered minivan with fierce fighter plane



On the ocean with a Town and Country

Teaching that works for adults

I participated in a helpful workshop yesterday about dialogue education based on the ideas of an apparently very bright woman named Jane Vella. I want to learn more and more how to help people capture and apply valuable information. A good sermon still packs a punch, a powerful speech builds vision, inspires passion and catalyzes action, and well written articles (and blogs?) extend the range of communication. But many people learn best in a situation in which they’re given a chance to interact with the content being taught. Creating such settings was the point of this workshop.




Here are a couple of key take aways for me:

Six principles of effective adult learning theory

1. Respect: Respect your students because they each bring something to the table. Their life experiences matter.

2. Immediacy: Help students understand how they can immediately use the information being conveyed.

3. Relevance: Similar to immediacy, communicate the relevance of the content to the students’ lives.

4. Safety: Build a learning environment that is challenging, but not threatening. Students should feel like they can be involved without embarrassment.

5. Engagement: Students should be involved in the learning event, not simply passive recipients.

6. Inclusion: Teachers should make an effort to engage all students.

I plan to review my next several talks to see how they measure up to these six principles. I think I do well with respect, safety and inclusion, but could do better with immediacy and relevance.

Our instructor, Karen Ridout, also laid out four ways to involve students during a class or presentation by giving them four types of learning activities. She called it:

The Four A Model

Anchor (inductive): This is a task that has the learner access their own prior knowledge or experience with the topic or content. It helps them center on the topic and realize they have stuff to bring to the table.

Add (input): This a learning task that has the student hear, see, or experience substantive new content (information, research, theory, skill).

Apply (implement): With these tasks the learner puts the new content into action during the class.

Away (integrate): This is a task that connects the new learning back to the life of the learner and its future use. Think, “homework with a purpose.” These tasks include action plans and commitment statements.

My plan is to integrate one task from each of these categories into the next four talks I give.

Go here for more info on these ideas. Go here to buy Dr. Vella’s books.