Timshiels’s Weblog

Big Mo Comes to Those Who Know…and Do
By John C. Maxwell

How do leaders generate positive momentum? It’s very simple: by learning and then applying what they have learned. In the knowledge economy, leaders are distinguished by their ability to process information and put it to use.

There are three ways in which leaders interact with information, and each impacts momentum.

1) Ignorance

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge. ~ Elbert Hubbard

What you don’t know can hurt you. Just ask Circuit City. In March 2007, the company chose to lay off its highest-paid, most knowledgeable employees in favor of cheaper labor. The result? Customer service nightmares. Complaints skyrocketed as inexperienced workers replaced seasoned salespeople. By the end of 2008, the electronics superstore had filed for bankruptcy.

Whenever a company ceases to learn or reduces its storehouse of knowledge, decline swiftly follows. In today’s climate, change happens too quickly for businesses to forego learning. Unless leaders make a concerted effort to gather information and re-educate themselves, their organizations will suffer the negative momentum of ignorance.

2) Negligence

“Negligence is the rust of the soul, that corrodes through all her best resolves”
~ Owen Falham

Executives at Philip Morris clearly knew the health hazards of smoking, yet they chose not to warn customers about the harmful effects of their products. When the truth about tobacco became widely known, the public was outraged at the company’s negligence. Scads of lawsuits were filed against Philip Morris, alleging that it deliberately withheld information from customers. To date, the company has paid out millions of dollars in court-ordered settlements, and is on the hook for millions more.

When companies refuse to act on important information-either due to apathy or wicked intentions-then they are said to be negligent. Philip Morris failed to respond properly to the information at its disposal, namely that its products fostered addiction and had adverse health effects. In the end, the company paid dearly in financial penalties and lost significant momentum.

3) Action

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage. ~ Jack Welch

Big business doesn’t always equal heartlessness. In 1987, Merck realized it had a drug that could counteract river blindness, a disease endemic to impoverished regions. At great expense to its pocketbook, Merck agreed to provide the drug to all who needed it, as long as they needed it. In the 20+ years since making that commitment, the company has provided over 600 million treatments.

Merck’s public image was boosted exponentially as a result of its generosity. The best and brightest minds in the pharmaceutical industry flocked to Merck to associate themselves with an organization that genuinely seemed to care. By putting its knowledge to work in such a benevolent way, Merck enjoyed a surge of momentum.

Summary

If you’re looking for a surefire source of momentum, then make every effort to learn-and to turn what you learn into action. Yes, learning can be a costly endeavor. You may have to open your wallet to purchase resources and provide training opportunities for your people. However, at the end of the day, you cannot afford to neglect the pursuit of knowledge.

RUNNING FREE

Starting 25th April 2010, I will attempt to run from Derry City to Dublin covering a massive 168.5 miles over the course of seven days.
It will all start at 8am on the 25th April 2010 when I will line up to to leave from The Everglades Hotel Waterside Derry.  Over the following 6 days my running will take me via Strabane, Omagh, Armagh, Newry, Dundalk and Drogheda, 128.5 miles down and ‘only’ 40 miles to go. On Saturday 1st May, I will pull on my trainers for the last time and attempt the final leg of this unique and physically demanding endurance challenge.

Day 1 – Derry to Strabane – 13.74 miles

Day 2 – Strabane to Omagh  – 19.52 miles

Day 3 – Omagh to Armagh  – 35.63 miles

Day 4 – Armagh to Newry  – 19.56 miles

Day 5 – Newry to Dundalk – 13.3 miles

Day 6 – Dundalk to Drogheda – 26.71 miles

Day 7 – Drogheda to Dublin  – 40.04 miles

I am running to raise funds for the charity Zimbabwe Orphan Care. Zimbabwe Orphan Care was established in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2000 by Alan & Dorothy Graham, originally from Belfast. ZOC is a registered UK and NI charity(XT8500). 
In a world where the problems seem overwhelming, ZOC seeks to offer housing, schooling, clothes, food and water, hope and love to some of the 800,000 orphans currently living in poverty in Zimbabwe. We believe that all the money raised should go to this cause so we have no administration or staff costs outside of Zimbabwe where we offer much needed employment to over 20 people. 2009 saw the opening of ‘Jabulani, our first home in Harare for abandoned babies, and through this we have been able to offer ‘life’ to these new born, abandoned orphans, without which they would surely have died.

If you would like to know more about ZOC please log onto www.zimorphancare.org

With your help we can make a difference

It’s easy to donate online with a credit or debit card – just go to my JustGiving page:

Link (roll over me to see where I go)

JustGiving sends your donation straight to Zimbabwe Orphan Care and automatically reclaims Gift Aid on all eligible donations, so what you give is worth even more. I hope you’ll join me in supporting Zimbabwe Orphan Care.

Thank you.

one

At the turn of the year CCF launched a new prayer initiative called ONE.  2010 saw the start of a new decade and represents a new and exciting chapter in the life of the church.  In promotional literature  Brian Somerville or Senior Pastor uses these words “as a church committed to reaching out to each other, our city and across the world, we recognize our need to pray”.
During a recent Mosaic podcast I heard Erwin Mc Manus say that “God had spiritualized the word conversation and replaced it with the word prayer”. If there were a christian dictionary  and you looked up the word prayer it’s definition would probably looked something like ‘the conversation or dialogue that takes place between you and God’.  Prayer is the communication process that allows us to talk to God!  We all long to connect with someone who can identify with our circumstances and share in our day-to-day life. Prayer is just that – a personal experience and intimate connection with our loving Heavenly Father.
Today you have a fantastic opportunity to connect with God, an opportunity to connect with the living God and have a real God encounter in your life.  A God encounter has the potential to change the world.  A God encounter can inspire vision, create purpose and fuel passion.  It can bring healing, transformation and restoration.  There is no limits to the potential of what can happen when you connect with God.  The power of prayer should not be underestimated. James 5:16-18 declares, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective”.  Jesus taught, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).
Right now the enemy is terrified of the potential that lies within you, he is terrified of the prayers that you will pray today, he is terrified that we will connect with God and have a God encounter not just in our own lives but in the life of our church as well.  The last thing the devil wants is for us to have a God encounter.
In the same way that God will do anything to try and connect with you, the devil will try and do anything to prevent that from happening.  He wants to interfere with your relationship with God.
In his book the Inner Game of Work, Tim Gallwey says that Performance = potential – interference P=P-I
Your performance is equal to what you are capable of when you remove obstacles. Your ability to pray, your ability to be effective for God is equal to your potential minus the negative influence you have in your life.  If you have Jesus in your life you have infinite divine potential in your life.
If you have Jesus in your life you are an unstoppable force.  Imagine a life free from negative influence, free from obstacles and interference.  Imagine the prayers that we’ d pray and the things we would accomplish.
Lets face it we all have stuff, we all have stuff that gets in the way,  we all have stuff that the devil will try to use to interfere with our God encounter.  Fear, guilt, shame, a past hurt, a painful memory and so on.  Can I encourage you that whatever it is God has already dealt with through Jesus and the cross.  It gone! It’s finished! It has no power over you! Let it go! Let it go!
The prayers that you pray today have the potential to change the world, they have the potential to change you and they have the potential to change me.
I pray that something of the miraculous will take place in your life today, that something of the supernatural will happen in each of our lives and in the life of our church.
Let the voice of faith be the voice that influences your prayers today and remember “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him”.  1 John 5:14-15

get connected

Anyone close to me will know that I have a real passion for running. I just love to run.  Its a time when I can escape the business of the world, get away from my incredibly hectic schedule and connect with God.  It’s a time of great conversation where I get to pour my heart out to God and very often he pours his out to me.  When I run I feel close to God.  Now I am very much aware that running isn’t necessarily everybody’s cup of tea but I do know that we all have a way that is unique to our relationship with God that we connect with him.  Some people like to get up early in the morning and sit in their favorite arm chair, others like to walk, some people like to get lost in worship and so on.  I think it can go to show the enormity of God and the great lengths that he will go to connect with us at an individual level, in a way that is unique to your relationship.
Every Monday I try to get out for a long run and this Monday I tried to focus on connecting with God.  While I was out I began to think about the cross and the historical relevance and timing of it and how God has used it to connect with the world. The very shape of the cross has so much significance that it would appear to me that God has gone to even greater lengths than would first appear.  When we look at the cross we all forgiveness, love, grace and mercy but lets for a moment look at the relevance of the shape of the cross.  Why did Jesus come at the time that he did to die when he did.  If he had been put to death my any other means would it have been effective. He could have come back at a time when hanging, or the electric chair, or death by lethal injection would have been the chosen form of punishment.  But he didn’t!
The shape of the cross carries so much significance.  If we stop and take a look at the horizontal line of the cross we see one side stretching east and the other side east, the hands of Jesus nailed to cross go from east to west.  God is telling us that he will go to any lengths to connect with us, there is no distance to great and nothing he won’t do to connect with us.   There is nothing i can’t do for you.  We are probably all familiar with the phrase how much does God love you (out stretched arms) this much.  John 3:16 says “for God so loved the loved the world…………..”
Lets look at the vertical line of the cross, the line that goes from north to south or south to north.  This line symbolizes the connection between us and God.  At the foot of the cross or at the base point is you and me, or if you like it’s the worlds at large, flowing through to the top of the line directing us to heaven with Jesus in the middle. Jesus is the connecting force, the common denominator that connects the world to heaven.
John 14:6 Jesus said these words  “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”. If you want to connect with the father you have got to go through the son.  God wants to connect with you, he wants to connect with me, he wants to connect with all of us and he is willing to go to any lengths to make that happen.
There is something inside of me that is saying we should pursue God with the same passion that he pursues us, we should be willing to go to any lengths to connect with God, whatever it takes for us to connect with the living God to have a real God encounter in our lives we should be prepared to do it.

CHURCH

The english language is full of a variety of interesting, exciting and challenging words that all have the power when used in the correct context to provoke a number of different emotional responses.  I love seeing the different reactions when I use the word church. Church is a word that can be met with some of the most incredible emotional fueled reactions.  It is a word that has the power to make a person smile, get a person excited, it can make a person angry or it can instill fear in a person.  The word church is an incredibly powerful word and many of us if not all of us will have an emotional attachment to it.
When I tell a person that I am employed by a church, I am usually met by a look of fear, body language changes and very often it sparks the end of our conversation.
What has happened to The Church ‘Big C’ that would make a person react in such a way?
I am all for church. I love church. I love the idea and concept of church.  I see church as a place of hope, a place where dreams are born, a community of faith building people that encourage, inspire, motivate, challenge and  support.  Jeff Lucas writes this about the church “We are part of the grace – family called the people of God. Together we cry, laugh,share our burdens, worship, grieve, pray and serve”(The Prodigal Friendly Church)
The apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians wrote “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance”.(1Corinthians 12:25-26 The Message)
There is no other place in the world that I would rather be than at the heart of the church.  In that space where Jesus is guiding us, the Holy Spirit driving us, where both are brining us closer to the father and to each other.
In a ideal or perfect world I suppose every church would look, feel and be like this, but again the unfortunate reality is that this is not the case.   If we are to be fully engaged in spiritual and social transformation then it is vitally important that we become fully engaged in our own relationship with the one true living God.  The way that the church will grow and develop is through the everyday interactions and engagements that you and I will have with the world.  You and I may be the only church that the people in your school, on your street, in your home this city may ever meet.  We are the church! Jesus has locked his credibility into ours, placed the future of his church on our shoulders and commanded us to go to the ends of the world. If the world is to catch a glimpse of the invisible God they will do it through us.  We have a huge responsibility to reflect Jesus in a way that is true to the magnificent and wonderful deity of his character.  In doing so the world will have no choice but  to stand up and take notice, change their view of the church and open up to receive the loving, healing, transforming power of God.  I pray that we will be a church that will be judged not by what we say about Jesus but by our acts of kindness, which serve everyone indiscriminately.

I am very fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing group of people known as cornerstone city fellowship.  At cornerstone you will find a group of people committed to living out the teachings of the bible in practical and relevant ways. In cornerstone you will be inspired to dream big dreams, encouraged to live the life God has called you to live and motivated to be the man or woman of God you have created to be. As a member of cornerstone I have fully come to realise that our greatest natural resource is the potential that lies within each and every one of us. The earths greatest resource is the gifts, talents, passions, and creativity of it’s citizens; it’s you, it’s me, it’s all of us.  With this comes huge responsibility.
I believe that 2010 is going to be a great year in the life of our church and I am relying on you to make it happen.  Inside you right now is unlimited, untapped potential.  At this very moment in time you have dreams beyond your wildest dreams that are just waiting to escape.  The future is waiting inside you, ready to be released.  You are a wealth of creativity, a dynamic hero that God wants to use to bring change to the world.
In his book ‘wide awake’ Erwin Mc Manus writes “This planet is made better or worse by the people we choose to become” .  The world needs you to be at the top of your game, it needs your best, it needs all of you.  If you choose to live a life that is somewhat less than that of your potential, it’s not only you that loses out, but the world the  at large loses out also.
Make 2010 a year to remember.Let passion, purpose and potential empower you as the holy spirit equips you so that God can release you into a world that needs you.

GRAND DESIGNS

We live in a very exciting and ever changing world.  Technology is moving forward at an incredibly fast pace and we are constantly discovering new and innovative products that are being pushed in the market place.  If we look around us we can see  the development of fresh and inventive ideas, state of the art design concepts and the most impressive architecture .  Creativity and vision have become fundamental parts of everyday living in modern society.  Creativity and vision are the catalysts to change, without them things stay the same.
In his book Who You Are When No Ones’s Looking, Bill Hybels says, “Vision is the ability to catch a glimpse of what God wants to do through your life if your dedicate yourself to Him”.
King David had a vision from heaven. He said, “I had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it” 1 Chronicles 28:2 NIV.  David dreamed of building a magnificent temple that would be  state of the art and innovative.  David’s temple would require new levels of creativity that would push the boundaries of the status quo to even greater heights.
We now live in the age of the new covenant where we have become a holy temple for the Lord.  Ephesians 2:21 tells us that, “we are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord”.  The spirit of the Lord lives and dwells in each of us.  He lives in you and he lives in me.
In the same way that David dreamed of building a magnificent temple, a dwelling place for the Lord, we too can dare to dream.  We can dare to dream of making ourselves a magnificent dwelling place for God.  We can dare to dream of building a magnificent life that is full of creativity and innovation.  We can dare to dream of a life that will push the boundaries of the status quo to new and greater heights.  God already has the blue print drawn up, the plan has already been made, the design feature that is uniquely you has already been created. You have got limitless power and potential at your fingerprints, being driven, guided and engergised by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, submitting to God’s perfect will for our lives.

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WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

Given the nature of athletic competition, coaches have a special appreciation for the value of teamwork. Red Auerbach, while at the helm of the Boston Celtics, shared an insight about his team’s success. After winning back-to-back championships in the NBA, Auerbach said,

When I first started coaching, people told me to put my five best players on the court. But I learned early on that this was not the key to success. It wasn’t putting the five best players on the court that was going to cause us to win. It was putting the five players on the court who could work together the best. We won championships because we put people together. They weren’t always our best players.

Like a good chef, Coach Auerbach understood that ingredients are limited on their own. The magic comes in how the ingredients are combined.

team work makes the dream work

Pastor Andrew Mc Court will always have a place in the heart of cornerstone city fellowship . He will be remembered for a great many things; huge heart, inspirational teaching, visionary, family orientated and all round mighty man of God.  Andrew had a phrase that he liked to repeat a lot, it was like his mantra for the church “team work makes the dream work”
A real team  is a group of people working together with complimentary skills who understand their role and are equally committed to a common purpose, performance goals and working approach, for which they all hold themselves equally accountable.  
For a team to be effective or to have a high level output there are a number of behaviours that need to be in place.

1. Effective Leadership

2. Clear Common Purpose

3. Good communication

4. Clear roles

5. Efficient use of time

6. Good levels of trust and openess

7. Capacity to deal with conflict constuctively

8. Emotional Intelligence  

From a biblical standpoint, teamwork means sharing in the biblical responsibilities based on biblical goals, values, priorities, giftedness, training, and God’s leading. 

The church is the largest team known to man, it is the team of all teams. In essence the church is ‘Gods Spiritual Team’.  The role of the church in the world is a team effort that requires the cooperation of all the members of the body of Christ.
²Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ¹³Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
¹⁵Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. ¹⁷And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.   Colossians 3:12-17