Husband. Dad to 5. Student Ministry Pastor. Follower of Jesus. Yatta yatta.

ONE MAN’S ADVICE ON WORKING WITH FEMALE STAFF

April 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
I work with men and women on our church staff.  But right now, I work with a lot more women than I do men in my day-to-day job responsibilities because currently, all my direct reports are women.  I have always worked with women in the church in a variety of paid and volunteer roles and have no issues with women or men by gender.  But they are different.  I’m sure working with me as a man is different than working with a woman in my role.

But I will confess that sometimes, it gets weird and I feel like an outsider at the wrong party.  Like this week in my kids ministry staff meeting one of the women proclaimed emphatically to another, “Hey, you know you look really good in that green shirt.  It goes awesome with your hair.” If this happened in a all men’s staff meeting, someone would be punched.  
I just laughed and realized, Oh yeah, I’m the only dude at this table. 
But along the way, I’ve learned some things about working with women in specific.  I’m sure they fit men to some degree too.  But if you’re a dude, here’s my 4 pieces of advice:

DOUBT YOURSELF.  
Don’t ever assume you can read your female colleagues emotions, attitudes, or feelings.  Don’t assume that you know what they are thinking or why they may or may not be upset.  I cannot afford for the women in my ministry to think they can read me anymore than I can read them.  I have a rule… if something’s wrong, I say so. If not, then we’re good.  If you have something wrong and don’t say so, they we’re still good. It’s all about communication and communication must trump intuition. 
DON’T FLIRT AND KEEP HEALTHY BOUNDARIES.
Triple that if you’re married, cuz it’s not funny and you’re not cute.  Laugh at life.  Be complimentary.  Be an encourager, just don’t flirt. Like you should consider yourself a creeper if you flirt with your staff or your students.  Don’t meet in your office without the door open or a window visible in hours where people are really in the office. More than one marriage has been ruined by casual flirting that wasn’t so casual.  
WOMEN DON’T JUST WANT TO BE HEARD, THEY WANT HELP. 
There is a myth out there that you women only want to be heard by men.  Maybe it’s true in marriage, but not in the work place.  My experience says in the office, when a woman is bringing me a problem, she rarely is looking for me to say, “Oh, I’ve been there too.  I hear your pain.  Let me know if you want my help.”  It doesn’t mean they need me to bulldoze them or handle the problem for them, but rarely are they just wanting to be heard.  They want my thoughts or help or resources or ideas or something that resembles leadership.  They have plenty of girlfriends and or maybe a spouse to give them an ear.  I’m not that guy.  So I try and help them solve problems, not just be heard. 
ENCOURAGE, ENCOURAGE, ENCOURAGE.
The work place, and sadly, especially the church can have a stigma of inferiority for women.  When you choose to empower and encourage them that you are behind them and for them, it creates a culture that is anti the norm.  If you’re leadership doesn’t encourage the women you work with, you’ll be working up hill all the time.

oh..and I thought of one more… ASK FOR THEIR INPUT.
In as much as I see stuff through a mans eyes, the women on my team can see stuff I would have normally missed.  I save myself a lot of headaches when I get a female perspective on stuff, after all, a lot of what I do as a pastor or leader directly affects lots of men and women.  Getting another point of view is super helpful to avoid missing stuff or creating problems I otherwise could have avoided.  
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BAREFOOT LEARNINGS

April 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Today I went barefoot and tried to be conscious about those in the world who go without much of what I consider normal… the very least of which is the right to own shoes.  Thousands of people around the globe went shoeless to join the hundreds of thousands of kids around the world who don’t have them.

Here’s what I learned while barefoot.

GENTLEMEN, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP PEEING ON THE FLOOR.

  • my sons do a better job of hitting the toilet and they are “sword fighting” half the time.  the floor in front of the urinal in the mens room at my seminary might be the grossest place on the planet. I think I’m peeing in the bushes next time.
SOLES INSULATE ME FROM STUFF.
  • soles of my shoes insulate me from temperature and textures I miss.  I said miss on purpose.  I think I probably experienced some pieces of my world today that I should be experiencing more often. Grass, black top pavement, carpet, concrete, dirt… they all feel different and most days, when I’m wearing shoes, I miss it.  
SHOELESS IN SAN DIEGO IS NOT A SACRIFICE. 
  • I think I could go every day without shoes in San Diego and probably not even be considered a hippy or weird or whatever- kinda like how women can ride their cruiser bike in a bra and underwear near the beach and no one thinks it’s weird around here.  So, if you went shoeless in the rain or snow or on some kinda long dirt path hike, then I tip my shoes to you.  I walked on nice surfaces all day and didn’t even suffer really.  I was reminded that I don’t really even “need” shoes in my community for so much of what I do daily. 

MY KIDS ARE WATCHING ME.

  • We talked about this at dinner last night and Tyler was the one who said he wanted to do it.  So, I wrote Tyler a note today so that his teacher would let him go shoeless anywhere it wasn’t a danger to him.  They wouldn’t let him go to recess without shoes, but he could walk around his classroom that way.  He even told me he didn’t put on shoes when he got home but played basketball with TJ without them.  He’s very proud of himself.  I asked him what he said to his friends when they asked. I was amazed at the words this young man spit back at me today about his privilege of shoes, how other kids go without, and how he could help identify with them. Tyler and I bonded today across town.  
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BAREFOOT ON PURPOSE

April 4, 2011 by 1 Comment

Today I got an e-mail from a friend of mine, Timothy, in Uganda.  He uses a yahoo account and a computer at the local library to send me e-mails from time to time.  His English is better than my Lugandan, so we write back and forth a couple times a year.  We have some stuff in common as we both are parenting a grip of kids, share a passion for Jesus, and like a good bowl of ice cream.  However on a practical day to day level, our lives couldn’t be more different.

  • His house has no electricity, mine has like 50 places to plug into it.
  • His house has water from a well out front, mine has it from 5 locations inside my house.
  • His floor is dirt, mine is not.
  • His house has holes where windows would go, mine has windows where the holes are.
  • He has some clothes, my family has enough clothes for his whole village pretty much.
  • He is the sole pastor to many churches, I’m one of many pastors to one church.
  • He has no health care, I have medicines if my kids get a cold.
  • He has 2 boats to get across the lake, I have 3 or 4 cars to get my family across town. 
I could go on… for pages.  And if you don’t know people in situations like this, then it’s easy- especially for Americans- to assume their privileges are international rights.  But they aren’t.  I didn’t choose what country I grew up in or the kind of family I was born into.  It’s a privilege.  So from time to time, I need to get myself and my kids around those who have radically less than I do to remind me of both my gratitude and my responsibility to share the blessing.  I need to identify with the poor as a follower of Jesus. 
So, this week, I’m doing two things for this function, specifically in terms of shoes.
TOMORROW IS “ONE DAY WITHOUT SHOES” sponsored by TOM’s.  I’ll be going shoeless all day tomorrow as a fast of sorts with people from all over the globe.  It’s a chance to remind myself that again, my shoes are a luxury, not a right.  It’s a chance to go without something I don’t have to, but need to go without for a day. 


THIS SUNDAY, my family will be joining our church to work with SOLES FOR SOULS to send shoes to Japan.  We’re going to buy new shoes for our family, then wear them to church, then we’re leaving them there as an offering and going home shoeless.  I’m praying it leaves an impression in our kids and reminds them that they are a luxury.

This picture is actually from our plane ride out of Uganda and Billy is realizing for the very first time in his life that he owns shoes.  As I snapped this picture he said, “I have shoes and socks!”  I just cried for joy for him.  I still cry at this picture.  It’s a privilege.

You can learn more about it here in this video if you want to participate. 

So join me.  Let’s go without and remind ourselves that most of want we NEED is really a WANT for the rest of the world. 
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A NEW PARENTING PARADIGM

April 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been processing this for about the last 30 days or so, and don’t have this all figured out, but one of the things I’m trying to do as a parent these days is this:

I want to live in a such a way that I model and teach values to my kids that they won’t have to unlearn later.  

I don’t want to spend a lot of time apologizing for false guilt, misguided rules, unhealthy expectations, and solid convictions I lived by and clearly enforced but have since then abandoned.

Sure, every parent is screwing up their kids in some way.  None of us are perfect.  But the most extreme example of this I can think of is that parents in our country- in the not so distant past- honestly defended racial segregation, even in the church… and yet were sincerely WRONG.  Like I can’t ever imagine a day when I’m going to change my opinion on that statement.  But there are pastors who had to apologize to their kids for being comfortable with the sin of racism and even promoting it.  I really don’t ever want to look myself in the mirror and say, “I firmly believed this thing to be true, taught it with great passion and conviction, and now know it to be fully false.”  So I ask myself, “What are the things I believe today that I will apologize to my kids or my grandkids 20 years from now?”  Because I know that stuff is so hard to see in the mirror, the answer scares me to death as a pastor and a parent.

In the past month or so, I’ve read or heard two quotes that have surfaced this in me again:

Ed Noble, our lead pastor said this at our Parenting Summit last month:

“we need to lead our children to a Jesus that we’re not going to have to unlead them to later”

Rob Bell, in a sideline comment about the Jesus we lead students to in his book “love wins” says:

“My wife and I often talk about raising our kids in such a way that they have as little as possible to unlearn later on in life.”  

So to this end, I’m trying to do these three things at least:

  1. LEARN FROM MY KIDS QUESTIONS:  I’m trying to read my kids by reading their questions. When they ask questions, they are not just seeking information, they are telling me what they are observing.  As I hear them ask stuff, I’m learning not only what they are wondering, but what I’m teaching them by accident.  That is more important to me than what I think I’m teaching them on purpose.  
  2. EMBRACE HUMILITY BEFORE CERTAINTY:  I’m not trying to be wishy washy with my kids.  But I am trying to help them develop a thinking faith and I’m honestly trying to think about mine.  The older I get, the more educated I become, the less stuff I’m willing to die for.  I’m trying to model for my kids a humble genuine faith that doesn’t paint the world black and white just because it’s easier to be clear about stuff. Maybe I should be less clear and more humble on purpose. 
  3. DON’T EXPECT WHAT I DON’T MODEL:  If I want my kids to care for the poor, then I better do that clearly before and with them.  If I want my kids to keep their room clean, then mine better be clean.  If I want my kids to not drive and text, then I better stop driving and texting.  If I want my kids to say their sorry when they wrong someone, then I had better do it first.  If I don’t want my kids to unlearn stuff from me, then a great place for me to start is to not teach stuff I have already begun to unlearn myself. 
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FIRST QUARTER REVIEW 2011

April 2, 2011 by 2 Comments

Well, April 1st means I’m at the quarter mark in 2011. Actually, it means we’re all at the quarter mark.

So, a new month and new quarter are both decent reasons for a renewed evaluation of my goals for a new me.  I have been trying to take care of my own mind, body, and soul better in 2011.  I broke it up into some significant categories.   I’m not sure how vulnerable I want to be on the internet, but here’s what I’m willing to lay out there.

BLOGGIN’:  I have been bloggin’ 5x a week for 90 days now. Hope you’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a fun outlet for my life, learnings, and I plan to keep going… I don’t know how long, but for a while I think.

RUNNIN’: First 30 days were aces… then I got some new job responsibilities at work that kicked into full swing and seminary started crankin’ and yeah… I essentially stopped running. I kept playing soccer, but stopped running on my own. Not good.  Went for a run yesterday. Going again in the morning.  When life gets crazy, my physical self takes the first hit.  And I discovered, my body atrophies in like 30 seconds too.

BUDGETIN’: I was entering all my receipts in a budget program every week for our family.  I did this in January. I wanted to make this a regular habit.  Good news is we have cut spending quite a bit.  Bad news is… I stopped doing this after January.  Pickin’ it back up in the morning, cuz it was good when I did it.

READIN’: Outside of stuff for work, I finally got some traction on reading for life and blogs and such… and then seminary reading took over.  So, again, this one started good and hasn’t stopped like running, but definitely slowed down.  Time to figure out a better plan and time to do this.

SLEEPIN’: Um… nope.  There were a couple weeks in there where I did very little.  Spring is here, maybe the hammock will inspire me 🙂  Maybe I should put one in my office again like I did when I was 22.

EATIN’: I think my goals here were too vague.  I’m gonna revisit this one all together.  I downloaded a calorie counter thingamajig for my iphone/ipad back in late January… but I didn’t use it at all really.  Gonna try again with clearer goals this quarter.

FAMILY: Spent lots of time with my kids in the first quarter.  Made it to pretty much all the important stuff.  Lots of field trips and soccer games and several sushi dates in there 🙂

ok… so yeah, not a great first quarter.  I don’t want to grade it, cuz I might get depressed and I’m really just hoping the honest eval of my life gives me enough of a kick in the butt to keep pressing on without trippin’ up my goals so bad that I stop running after them.

How about you.  How was our first quarter of 2011?

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