What a Wonderful . . . Video

Ok, this is the last one! But I saved the best for last.

Enjoy!

Illustration of the Power and Joy of Partnership

Thanks to my friend Terry for sharing this video with me.

(Does anyone else think the guy sitting down looks like Dale Earnhardt, Jr.?)

Sorry skeptics . . . Logan's real . . .and so is his Mom

After hearing from a couple of skeptics who don't believe that Logan, or this story, are real. I did some more research and found this on KSBJ's Blog on Logan and His Calf. It includes a note from Logan's mom.

The Sky Angel Cowboy…

The Sky Angel Cowboy! Since posting this audio it has taken on a life of its own. People are forwarding it all over the world. Some corrections… We originally said Logan was 12. He actually turned 13 in August, so we don’t want to deprive him of such a big birthday. Logan listens to us (89.3 KSBJ which broadcasts from Houston, TX) on Sky Angel because he lives on a ranch in a very small town in Nebraska. He called us distraught because he had to take down a calf. His words have wisdom beyond his years.

A message from Logan’s Mom….

I am Logan’s Mom………I don’t know how many come back to read these after they have blogged but I thought it was time to thank so many of you for the love and acceptance of my son’s heart. It truly was a work of God and it has increased Logan’s faith and brought healing to his heart in more ways than one!! We appreciate your prayers so much. We praise God that this message from Him has brought hope and healing to many of you. Our God is truly an awesome God. May His works continue to go forth through KSBJ, in Jesus name.
Yes, we look forward to what God has in store for Logan. We have known for some time that God has given him a gift of communicating to people’s hearts. We saw signs of it even as a little boy. We home school our children and truly enjoy our time with Logan and his sister Erica who is 9.
So, thank you to all of you for your loving responses to a young man’s growing heart. Your prayers have reaped more than you know and will continue to reap heavenly power in this lost and dying world. Praise be to our everlasting Father God in all this!!
With all my love and thanks,Tee Jay Henderson

Control Issues & Straw-House Thinking

Fellow blogger, Tony Morgan, posted a great story on his blog tonymorganlive.com last week. As someone who hates being micro-managed, but fights those tendencies in myself I needed to read this.

Here you go:

Once upon a time in a far off land there lived a leader who supervised three little pigs. The leader was committed to excellence in his life and in his organization. He knew there was a direct correlation between the quality of the houses his pigs built and the success they had in protecting themselves from big, bad wolves.

The leader obsessed about every detail. He also made it clear to his team of pigs that they, too, needed to obsess about every detail. It didn't take long for the pigs to realize that their interpretation of excellence might not be the same as their supervisor's perception of excellence. Because of that, the pigs began to bring every decision about every detail to the leader. The pigs didn't want to run the risk that they might not “get it right.”

Over time, the leader found himself in a challenging predicament.

He was overwhelmed because he had to touch everything. And, he was frustrated that he was responsible for generating every new idea. For example, he was the one who originally developed the design for straw houses. His pigs built excellent straw houses. In fact, no one built straw houses any better. What they did, they did well. But, they were stuck.

"If you try to control things, that's self-limiting,” said Michael Dell, chief executive officer of Dell. “The easiest way to think about this is that if all the decisions inside an organization had to roll up to the center of the company or to one person, it's a massive bottleneck to progress.” (Check out the rest of the interview.)

In the end, the leader in this story learned that sometimes values collide. His commitment to excellence wasn't the problem. Control was the problem. His obsession with getting it right became a roadblock to progress. He discovered the need to empower his team with broad responsibilities to fulfill the organization's mission while still holding them accountable to the overall vision and values. He needed to let the pigs take risks...and sometimes fail.

Our leader was very savvy. He identified the potential threat of a menacing wolf. Instead of telling the pigs the exact dimensions of the house they needed to build and the materials they needed to use, he learned that a smart leader empowers his little pigs to prepare for the next blowhard that knocks on their door. In the end, that gives the pigs the freedom to design a strategy that the leader may never have considered. That's where innovation and creativity are birthed.

That leader is me. It happened, again, yesterday. I jumped to “the answer” without giving my team the opportunity to discover a brand new solution. The moral of this story is this: If all I've known is straw houses and I control every detail of their construction, then my leadership will never generate brick house ideas.

Follow-up on Logan's Lesson

I don't believe everything I read, hear, and see on the Internet. I delete most forwards I receive by email and if a story sounds "too good to be true" I'll go to a website designed to expose urban legends called, snopes.com.

Logan's phone call is amazing, but just to be safe--and to make sure I wasn't publicizing a fake phone call--I went to snopes.com to see what they had on this call.

The call is real. No surprise there, but what I did find surprising were the comments on Logan's call that were posted by the snopes.com website administrator and a few others on the website.

A reader asks, "Just wanting to find out if a posting on YouTube was scripted or not. It is titled Logan, the sky angel cowboy!"

Yes, everyone, remember as we celebrate the solemn occasion of Christmas that Logan's cow died for *you*.- snopes

What udder tripe. Lets all sing now: Logan the Sky Angel Cowboy....Had a lot of glurge to say, So he called this station, To get on air was what he prayed...

What's with the "love you" exchanged at the end? Am I the only one creeped out by this?

These comments remind us that there are still so many people who are missing the real reason for the season.

Logan's Lesson

One of the stations that I routinely listen to on my office computer is 89.3 KSBJ out of Houston, Texas. I got hooked on KSBJ while visiting my sister in Houston a few years ago.

The following conversation took place between one of the on-air hosts from KSBJ and a little boy named Logan.

Logan lives on a ranch in a very small town in Nebraska. Logan called the radio station distraught because he had to take down a calf. His words have wisdom beyond his years.

Enjoy . . . & Merry Christmas!

Do you own a REAL bike?

Yesterday, I had lunch with a couple who comes to The Well.

They are really good friends and both extremely successful, faithful, . . . and healthy.

She has a full-time job, but works on the side as a fitness instructor.

She specializes in spinning--leading a few spinning classes each week at a local health club.

Spinning is an exercise experience during which a leader (more like a drill-sergeant)--on a stationary bike--leads a group of about 20-30 people--also on stationary bikes--through an intense workout in a dark room to the sound of loud music.

It's really fun . . .and really hard.

We were talking about Christmas and gifts and her fiance mentioned that one of his best gifts was a mountain bike. He and I talked about how much fun it is to ride bikes. His fiance spoke up mentioning that she's never ridden a road bike out on the road and doesn't even own a bike.

"What?!?" I replied.

"You teach spinning every week and you've never ridden a bike on the road?"

I tried to tell her what she's missing--limiting her riding experience to a dark room and a stationary bike.

She's never felt the exhilaration of flying 30 mph down a hill with the sound of the wind roaring off of your helmet.

She's never felt the excitement of an early morning ride with a chill in the air and the sun rising in the eastern sky.

She's never felt the pleasure of finishing a climb on a REAL hill and the relief of coasting down the other side.

Spinning is great, but nothing compared to riding a REAL bike on the open road.

How many of us limit our spiritual life to the confines of a dim room with worship music and a stationary pew? How many of us go to a church building every week for training, but don't put our training into action outside of the building during the rest of the week? How many of us don't own our own "spiritual bike"?

Going to church is great (and commanded by God!), but nothing compares to living a life of faith in the REAL world.

Purity

Last night I spoke at our Wednesday night middle school and high school service. I love working with teens. Their energy is addictive and their potential is inspiring. One of the subjects I addressed was "Purity."

This morning as I was reflecting on "Purity" I remembered a practical lesson I picked up from a sermon somewhere. This is not original with me.

I think these 4 answers to the important question, "How to know right from wrong?" are very helpful.

Question #1—Is it helpful—physically, spiritually, mentally? I Cor. 6:12

Question #2—Does it bring me under its power? I Cor. 6:12

Question #3—Does it hurt others? I Cor. 8:13

Question #4—Does it glorify God? I Cor. 10:31

Undeliverable Gifts

Christ's Church holds an annual benevolence program called Christmas for Kids. This year we filled the gift lists--and Christmas wishes--of over 1,200 individuals.

Today was delivery day.

My family and I selected a child--a little girl. Last week we shopped carefully, finding almost every item on her Christmas list including a doll and a pink princess bicycle. We couldn't wait to see her face when she saw the bike.

With directions in hand we wound our way through the back roads of western Jacksonville filled with hope and love for a girl we'd never met only to be disappointed to find that the girl and her family had moved a few weeks ago.

We called both phone numbers we'd been given, but they had both been disconnected. Her neighbors didn't know where the girl and her family had gone. No one knew where they were.

We don't know the circumstances that caused her family to move on such short notice, or if she'll ever enjoy riding that pink princess bike.

My family and I were heart-broken with the thought that this child is going to miss the blessing of opening our gifts on Christmas morning, but even more heart-broken that she was going to miss the blessing of opening her heart to the reality that she is loved by God and a family from Mandarin.

When I realized that our gifts were going to go undelivered and unopened I immediately thought about God and how heart broken he must be that so many of his children are never going to enjoy the gift of eternal life, simply because they've moved away from Him.

Want to be a star?

For the past two days I've been studying the second chapter of Philippians. We talked about it at our small group last night and in our staff Bible study an hour ago.

Today we spent most of our time with the following verses:

14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 16as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. (Phil. 2:14,15)

Paul urges his readers to "shine like stars."

To the ancients the stars were a constant presence in the night sky. On a clear night they stood beneath a thick black cloak dotted with billions of stars. We don't see the stars in the same way they did before the days of electricity and ground-lighting. The light of countless stars can be hidden from our view with the illumination of a single 40-watt light bulb.

To the ancients the stars were also an essential navigational aid . . . or, as my friend Barton pointed out today . . . a fixed point of reference.

Paul wants us to know that we are supposed to be blameless and pure. We are supposed to be bright stars in a dark night sky. We are supposed to be shiny. We are supposed to be fixed points of reference helping people to find their way to--or back to--God.

The Heart of a Leader

In my devotions this morning I read the following passage:

Exodus 28:29-30

29 "Whenever Aaron enters the Holy Place, he will bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breastpiece of decision as a continuing memorial before the LORD. 30 Also put the Urim and the Thummim in the breastpiece, so they may be over Aaron's heart whenever he enters the presence of the LORD. Thus Aaron will always bear the means of making decisions for the Israelites over his heart before the LORD.

In this section of Exodus God is--in detail--describing what the Israelites are to do to prepare the Tabernacle and the Priests for worship.

The Urim and Thummim were objects placed in the Priest's breastplate and, although these items are not described in much detail, we know that they were a tool that God used to communicate His will to the people through the Priest.

In light of our modern view of what it takes to be a "great leader" and the fact that many people seem to believe that a "great leader" is a person who can make decisions without being unnecessarily hindered by matters of the heart, this passage intrigues me.

Isn't leadership a purely intellectual process? Isn't it true that an emotional leader is a weak leader? Isn't leadership more about the mind than the heart?

Hmmm.

I found it interesting that God commanded that the Urim and Thummim be placed over Aaron's heart saying, "Thus Aaron will always bear the means of making decisions for the Israelites over his heart."

It obvious that leaders need to make hard decisions and must not be swayed by emotion, but--in light of this passage--it's also obvious that a godly leader should have a heart that is open and receptive to God's leading.

It seems to me--after reflecting on this passage--that a godly leader leads not just with a strong mind, but also with a tender heart.