This was an intro short before a session at the 2021 Global Leadership Summit. There were 2 little nuggets in here that were helpful:

Leaders Need to Be Decisive and Stand Behind Their Decisions

Isn’t this the worst? Either because of ignorance or lack of confidence, the worst is to have a leader that isn’t clear about their decisions and then won’t take responsibility for what their team guessed that they decided.

I see this in myself and my kids when they aren’t sure about what we’re doing tonight, or when we’re trying to solve a problem. The uncertainty causes stress, but passivity is worse. Even when we don’t do anything or we wait, we do it on purpose.

My wife even made up a a song about “Wait and see, wait and see, wait wait wait wait and see” do deal with some of this patient uncertainty.

Once I got chewed out after a record-breaking event for leaving coffee mugs in the office sink. We had hundreds of people come through and most of our team worked from dawn to midnight. The opening of the debrief meeting the next day (afternoon!) was “there were coffee mugs left in the staff kitchen and that is inexcusable.”

Leaders need to be clear and decisive about the goals. If the whole team things that the goal was passing out hundreds of free meals for thanksgiving, they are going to focus on that. If the team thinks that the goal is to keep the staff kitchen clean, they’ll focus on that. They’ll probably do a great job.

In Your Rush to Ship, Ship the Right Thing

If you are in Akimbo or other Seth Godin circles, you know that shipping your work is the ultimate goal. It doesn’t count until it ships. Startup weekend also promotes the idea of the MVP (minimum viable product).

This speaker did a great job of warning us. If you ship a horse with plans to improve it later, you aren’t going to get to a Ferrari. Be patient and keep working on what you are working on so that you actually ship a real version of the thing that you are going to end up with.

The MVP mentality is good because it helps you get your idea out there, but it can radically affect your end product or service. You need to be open to that. Once we shipped a ready-made website in a box. It was meant to be low cost and put a lot of the work on the customer. Our team wouldn’t have to do much except train the buyer and they would be off and building their website.

The problem, we learned as we were shipping our very first version, is that Wix and WordPress.com had much better cheap solutions for small businesses that wanted to build their own websites. We should have dumped it right then and gone after the people that wanted to pay developers to build their websites. We were skilled designers and developers and that was the service we should have sold.

In our rush to ship a cheap thing that we would improve over time, we shipped something that wasn’t worth us standing behind. It always turned into a custom build and hourly billing anyway, which wasn’t what we sold the customer in the first place. We lost money, but if we hoped to make money, it would have been off of the fine print, not the sales features.

And making money off of the fine print is the worst business model in the world.

Here is my sermon from August 30th, 2020.

In a lot of Bibles, you’ll have a subheading that says something like “Jesus teaches on divorce.”

While those headings might help you skim through and find what you’re looking for, they can also be misleading. In my sermon, I talk about the things that Jesus is teaching in the context of divorce.

The Pharisees were trying to figure out which team Jesus was on, or what sort of denomination. There were some Rabbis that taught this about divorce, and others taught that. If they could figure out which side Jesus was on, they could pick sides easier.

THAT is as much this is about divorce. Reitz and Mater Dei are the two big Westside High Schools in Evansville. One is the public school (Reitz) and the other is the Catholic school (Mater Dei – duh.)

I hope you find this encouraging, especially if you are divorced!

This is my sermon on Matthew 18 from August 23rd, 2020. I was in person at Westminster this week. If the trend continues downward, we’ll stay that way!

Matthew 18:1-6

Some people read this as Jesus’ caution against making children sin, but that’s not what He says. He says that to enter the kingdom of heaven you have to believe like a child believes, and then no one should make someone who believes with a such simple faith sin. The people with simple and full faith are the greatest in the kingdom, and WOE to those who lead them astray!

Matthew 18:7-9

This whole section is Jesus’ commentary on temptations and how they come at us. What Jesus says here is in right in line with Romans 15. We should bear with people that are weaker in their faith and not tempt them to sin with our own liberties. 

So Jesus says these extreme things about how to deal with sin: chop your hand off, gouge out your eye! Yet none of the disciples were maimed like this. 

Again, Jesus is speaking in parables, but that doesn’t mean we’re off the hook! Avoid giving into temptation with all of your might! 

Understand that temptation is not sin.

Understand that you can actually control yourself!

Paul talks about this: 

1Cor. 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

And look at the context. Look how he continues: 

1Cor. 10:14 ¶ Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

1Cor. 10:15 I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.

1Cor. 10:16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

1Cor. 10:17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

Resist sin and temptation because we are part of the body of Christ. I need your spiritual maturity and you need mine. You need my prayers interceding for you on Tuesday afternoon instead of me spending time giving into gossip, slander, greed, and lust.

Paul actually connects us resisting sin and the way out to our community with one another: 

1Cor. 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Of course, the other way of escape that God has provided is the forgiviness of all of your sins forever by Jesus’ death on the cross. Your sins ARE forgiven is the message of the Apostles. Not all of your sins WILL BE forgiven, or WHAT YOU’VE COMMITTED SO FAR. 

Your sins are gone. All of them ever. That is the ultimate escape. You don’t have them any more.  

Matthew 18:10 and Angels

Some people have developed a whole theology around this one sentence. Jesus didn’t teach any more on it. He may have just been going along with a lot of the beliefs of the day. 

There is something real about angels and their connection to us, but the Bible doesn’t ever say we should trust them, pray to them, glorify them, hope in them, thank them, or any of that. There is one god. 

Angels didn’t get their wings until the 4^th century when the worship of Nike, the goddess of victory, got mixed in with Christianity. Pictures of angels up until then looked just like men until they got Nike’s wings. 

Matthew 18:12-14 and God’s True Response to Us Falling Into Temptation

Remember, the context of what Jesus has been saying is simple faith and temptation!

Matt. 18:12 What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?

Matt. 18:13 And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.

Matt. 18:14 So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

As much as we want to shun and tsk tsk tsk on the person that falls into temptation, God wants to leave everything else behind to be with that person! He would even leave His seat in heaven to come and live for 33 some odd years to save me! 

A Masterclass in Forgiveness

All of this has been leading up to this great session on forgiveness. If we see how simply we can believe in Christ, and if we see God’s character leaves everything to flee sin and run after the person that has fallen in sin, we can more easily forgive others. 

Matt. 18:15 ¶ “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Matt. 18:16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

Matt. 18:17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

This way of dealing with sin is so genius. It honors everyone involved. It makes sure that the offense is really a sin and not just the accuser’s preference. And it makes expectations for the Christian body clear: Look bro, we’re not going to tolerate you living for your flesh in greed or lust or hatred. That’s not the way of Jesus!

Matt. 18:18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Matt. 18:19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

Matt. 18:20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

So you think you get this clear teaching about how to kick people out of church for doing wrong, etc. and then Peter helps us bring it back out of following a bunch of rules. 

Matthew 18:21-35 Parable About Forgiveness

So we know that Jesus died for our sins, that is, forgave our debt. But do we believe that in our actions? If Jesus forgave me completely by His grace, why should I try to get any of my identity from accusing you?