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Taking the advice of several friends over the years including Mark Waltz, one of my fellow senior management team pastors/friends at Granger, I finally got around to reading Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. These guys have created a fantastic tool to help us figure out how God has wired us up for life and ministry. When you purchase the book, you also receive a special code to take the online StrengthsFinder Profile. The profile helps you identify your combination of the 34 dominant "themes" that Buckingham and Clifton have identified.

Gallup has surveyed people throughout the world and found that only 20 percent of employees working in the largest global organizations feel that their strengths are used every day. With that in mind, Buckingham and Clifton suggest:

"Look inside yourself, try to identify your strongest threads, reinforce them with practice and learning, and then either find or carve out a role that draws on these strengths every day. When you do, you will be more productive, more fulfilled, and more successful."

In case your curious, here are my top five strengths according to the profile:

1. Strategic

The Strategic theme enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large. This perspective allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity. Mindful of these patterns, you play out alternative scenarios, always asking, "What if this happened? Okay, well what if this happened?" This recurring question helps you see around the next corner. There you can evaluate accurately the potential obstacles. Guided by where you see each path leading, you start to make selections. You discard the paths that lead nowhere. You discard the paths that lead straight into resistance. You discard the paths that lead into a fog of confusion. You cull and make selections until you arrive at the chosen path-your strategy. Armed with your strategy, you strike forward. This is your Strategic theme at work: "What if?" Select. Strike.

2. Relator

Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people-in fact, you may have other themes that cause you to enjoy the thrill of turning strangers into friends-but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship. You want to understand their feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and you want them to understand yours. You know that this kind of closeness implies a certain amount of risk-you might be taken advantage of-but you are willing to accept that risk. For you a relationship has value only if it is genuine. And the only way to know that is to entrust yourself to the other person. The more you share with each other, the more you risk together. The more you risk together, the more each of you proves your caring is genuine. These are your steps toward real friendship, and you take them willingly.

3. Analytical

Your Analytical theme challenges other people: "Prove it. Show me why what you are claiming is true." In the face of this kind of questioning some will find that their brilliant theories wither and die. For you, this is precisely the point. You do not necessarily want to destroy other people’s ideas, but you do insist that their theories be sound. You see yourself as objective and dispassionate. You like data because they are value free. They have no agenda. Armed with these data, you search for patterns and connections. You want to understand how certain patterns affect one another. How do they combine? What is their outcome? Does this outcome fit with the theory being offered or the situation being confronted? These are your questions. You peel the layers back until, gradually, the root cause or causes are revealed. Others see you as logical and rigorous. Over time they will come to you in order to expose someone’s "wishful thinking" or "clumsy thinking" to your refining mind. It is hoped that your analysis is never delivered too harshly. Otherwise, others may avoid you when that "wishful thinking" is their own.

4. Focus

"Where am I headed?" you ask yourself. You ask this question every day. Guided by this theme of Focus, you need a clear destination. Lacking one, your life and your work can quickly become frustrating. And so each year, each month, and even each week you set goals. These goals then serve as your compass, helping you determine priorities and make the necessary corrections to get back on course. Your Focus is powerful because it forces you to filter; you instinctively evaluate whether or not a particular action will help you move toward your goal. Those that don’t are ignored. In the end, then, your Focus forces you to be efficient. Naturally, the flip side of this is that it causes you to become impatient with delays, obstacles, and even tangents, no matter how intriguing they appear to be. This makes you an extremely valuable team member. When others start to wander down other avenues, you bring them back to the main road. Your Focus reminds everyone that if something is not helping you move toward your destination, then it is not important. And if it is not important, then it is not worth your time. You keep everyone on point.

5. Deliberative

You are careful. You are vigilant. You are a private person. You know that the world is an unpredictable place. Everything may seem in order, but beneath the surface you sense the many risks. Rather than denying these risks, you draw each one out into the open. Then each risk can be identified, assessed, and ultimately reduced. Thus, you are a fairly serious person who approaches life with a certain reserve. For example, you like to plan ahead so as to anticipate what might go wrong. You select your friends cautiously and keep your own counsel when the conversation turns to personal matters. You are careful not to give too much praise and recognition, lest it be misconstrued. If some people don’t like you because you are not as effusive as others, then so be it. For you, life is not a popularity contest. Life is something of a minefield. Others can run through it recklessly if they so choose, but you take a different approach. You identify the dangers, weigh their relative impact, and then place your feet deliberately. You walk with care.

We’re not in Kansas anymore–or are we?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I visited Hollywood Boulevard earlier this week and saw the sites and the stars. With that in mind, I thought I’d try to find a church this weekend that was intentionally addressing the hot topics of the culture and helping people embrace the spiritual conversations that surround us in everyday life.

Well, believe it or not, I found just such a church in Kansas. Westside Family Church is located in the suburbs of Kansas City, and they’re is in the middle of a series called "Hollywood Jesus: Our Search for God in the Pop Culture." This is a spin-off of the "Pop Spirituality" series that’s available at WiredChurches.com.

I met Westside’s senior pastor, Dave Cox, out at a conference at Saddleback Church several years ago. Dave has built a great team and a phenomenal ministry to bring Jesus to the west side of Kansas City. And, as this series demonstrates, they’re not afraid to push the envelope by delivering biblical truth using a culturally relevant theme.

So this weekend if I wasn’t attending Granger Community Church, I’d follow the yellow brick road to Kansas and check out Westside Family Church. They’re my nominee for the next star on Hollywood Boulevard, and that makes them my cool church of the week.

While we were out at Saddleback Church this past week, we spent an evening down on Hollywood Boulevard. Adam Sandler’s new movie, The Longest Yard, just happened to be premiering at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. A handful of us camped out to catch the stars after they left the movie. The pix are in the photo album on the left. My favorite moment, since I’m quite a sports junkie, was seeing Chris Berman and shaking his hand.

Tim Stevens and I presented a couple of workshops at the Purpose Driven Church Conference at Saddleback Church yesterday. Here are the handouts for both the Simply Strategic Stuff and Simply Strategic Volunteers sessions.

"The business paradigm of any company needs to change at least every five years, and probably these days, every three. What doesn’t change are the values, the brand, the message, the mission, and the customer relationship. But how you do what you do, and what you offer, needs to change."

Steve Murphy, President and CEO of Rodale Inc. as quoted in Fast Company (May 2005)

I have a search feed set up in Bloglines to capture any references anyone makes to Granger Community Church in their blog. This morning that feature helped me find an incredible post from a young woman who has started attending our church. Among other things, this is what "starlightm42" had to say in her journal post this morning:

…I’ve also been going to church, trying to fill that God-shaped (and maybe boyfriend-shaped too? lol) hole in my heart. A progressive one near my house called Granger Community Church, and occassionally on my lunch break from work I’ll go to a half hour service at the Bascillica at Notre Dame…The services there don’t do much for me spiritually, but they do have communion. And good wine, I might add.

I still don’t really subscribe to organized religion. It’s a personal journey for me, and I don’t feel comfortable sharing it with people I don’t know very well. The only person I’ve ever really felt comfortable talking to about it is Ryan, but for the most part he seems to be pretty disinterested in relating, even though he is a believer. So, for me I go to GCC mostly just to know I’m not alone. To know that there are people there if I need them, and to learn from them. But when I go to the services, I pretty much just fuck off and sit in the back and not really talk to anyone. That’s the way I need it to be, at least for now. It’s just a really personal thing, and very intense, and I feel very emotionally vulnerable when I’m there.

That’s powerful! Is there any question that we are living in a post-modern culture? I’m grateful for "starlight’s" vulnerability to share what’s happening on her spiritual journey. From it we learn among other things:

• It’s not about alignment with a specific denomination or religious tradition, it’s about the spiritual journey.
• People don’t want church or religion, but they’re curious about God.
• Anonymity at services is still a high value for people who are seeking God.
• Someone can feel anonymous and still have a sense of belonging at the same time.

It’s affirming to know that Granger offers people like "starlight" a safe place to consider the claims of Christ. God’s doing something in her life, and it sounds like she’s on a great path.

Just checked email from the road and learned that there are already over 120 church leaders registered to join us in Granger on Monday for the upcoming WiredChurches.com workshops. It’s always a blast to host these one-day events on our campus and meet folks from throughout the country who are on a journey to take their next steps in ministry so they can reach more people for Jesus. It’s not too late to join us on Monday for one of three topics that are being presented. The workshops on Monday will include facility management, children’s ministry and communications/marketing.

All these workshops are fantastic, but I’d like to put in a special plug for the LiveWire workshop with Kem Meyer and others from our communications and tech teams. I’ve not found anything like it across the country yet. Kem has some great insights to share from her years working in both the marketplace and in ministry. She will certainly challenge not only what you communicate, but how that gets delivered using today’s technology. It’s good stuff.

If you decide to join us on Monday, make sure you look me up. I’ll be hanging around the various workshops throughout the day.

Here’s the "box score" for this past weekend at Granger Community Church.

Music: "Follow" by Delirious?

Message: "Follow the Beat" — Mark Beeson, Senior Pastor, continued the Stomp Out Loud series encouraging people to point their feet toward God and take their next step toward Christ. He encouraged everyone to keep in mind it doesn’t really matter where you’ve been–what really matters is what direction you’re heading.

Service Highlights: The service included a video with four guys creating a rhythm while they played cards. The live experience included a couple of guys drumming on buckets while a dance team stomped to the beat.

Stats: 5,155 total attendance (4,045 adults + 1,110 kids); 18.8% increase from the same weekend last year

Percentage of weekend attendance by service:

1. Sun 10:15 am = 24%
2. Sun 11:45 am = 23%
3. Sat 5:30 pm = 20%
4. Sat 7:30 pm = 19%
5. Sun 8:45 am = 15%

Final Notes: We are only four weeks away from being in our expanded auditorium and children’s center. The first weekend will be June 11/12.

One of my teammates just sent me this picture from the campus bookstore at Liberty University. Apparently one of my books, Simply Strategic Volunteers, is required reading for a class at Liberty. I knew there was something I loved about that university. Go Flames!

"I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a ‘law man’ so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not ‘mine,’ but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that."

Galatians 2:19-20 (The Message)