Doing Life in Groups and Teams

Dan Sullivan · August 3, 2017 ·

Ecclesiology is as much about what you don’t say as what you say. This is something they say a lot at One Life:

At One Life we do life in groups and teams.

Not to speak for One Life, but I want to offer my own commentary on this. This is one 2017 paradigm of

Acts 2:42-47

[42] And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. [43] And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. [44] And all who believed were together and had all things in common. [45] And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. [46] And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, [47] praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (ESV)

When they say that life happens on groups and teams, they are saying that it isn’t dependent on the Sunday morning church service. The Sunday morning thing is a thing, and many of the teams are teams because of the Sunday morning thing, but if you talk to the people in the best of teams you’ll find out that they grow up into something much bigger than volunteer group.

The job or activity is just a framework to be together. Where the real Acts 2:42-46 part happens is when the group breaks out of just serving coffee on Sunday and turns into people playing volleyball together on a Tuesday night. When we structure our lives around time spent with people instead of things, our life is enhanced. That’s when our family life is the happiest and the most balanced: when we are spending time in the community of The Church.

I need to disclose here, that my family is part of the People of Praise, so we do community bigger and badder than a lot of people, but that is just part of our way of life.

In the Sunday morning church service, you are going to get some singing and some teaching, but if that is the full Christian Community experience for you, you are missing out. Joining with other people, changing your schedule and prioritizing deliberate time with Christian people, will change your life.

I used to have people over and they’d ask “Is this a Bible study?” my answer was that it was whatever we made it. If our hearts overflowed with YouTube videos and complaints about work, that’s what it would be. If our hearts overflowed with cool stuff we read in the Bible this week, then it would be that. Both are OK. We are free in Christ to talk about whatever. But there are some things that are going to grow us more than others.

The more we share together, the more we live life. Life in abundance is an overflow of everything that life is. Pain, suffering, joy, victory, you name it. If you want to up your game and have a richer, fuller life, do it. Adjust your schedule, cancel and quit the shallow stuff. Spend time with the people you want to be more like, and watch God show off and add to your number daily those that are also being saved.

We Can’t Reach Something We Are Afraid to Touch

Dan Sullivan · September 27, 2016 ·

[13] He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. [14] And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

[15] And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. [16] And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” [17] And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Mark 2:13-17 ESV

One of the brilliant things about poverty as mission shows up here. Jesus wasn’t afraid of the tax man. Since the man Jesus was talking to couldn’t take away anything that Jesus had, Jesus wasn’t afraid to talk to him. Jesus might not have even had the case to be bitter towards what Matthew had taken in the past.

If we fear for our lives, we won’t talk to dangerous people.

If we fear for our wealth, we won’t talk to those that steal.

If we fear for our comfort, we won’t talk to those who impose.

If we fear for our good reputation, we won’t talk to those that are below us.

Unifying spread out communities

Dan Sullivan · September 21, 2016 ·

Unity within a spread out group like a multi-site church. that was one of the main topics last week at One Life Core. These are my notes on the night and some of my own commentary.

A shared language and shared ideals help people that aren’t together all the time keep unity with one another. If I’m working at the same goal as my brothers in the east side and in Henderson and Mt.Vernon, I don’t have to see them every single day to share my life with them. Using the same language helps us put emphasis on the same things.

Have you ever seen a movie that was awful but you enjoyed being with your friends so much that you remember it being a good movie? It’s like that with church programs. The connection to the people you are with is what makes it good or bad.

Like Bret said, let us focus on connecting and befriending and meeting instead of making up a slew of events and programs. The trick is that we are so stuck in a program paradigm that we’d make a program to make more connections, but we’re getting there.

Heroes and Damsels in Christian Community

Dan Sullivan · June 9, 2016 ·

We all love to be the hero and save the day. But the pride of isolation wins out when we are in need of help. What if we saw our times of needing help as chances to make somebody feel like a hero? I know that goes way against a John Wayne Republican Protestant work ethic, but really, consider it!

I need help. My chainsaw is stuck in a tree that weighs 6,000 pounds. If only I had another chainsaw, I could cut a wedge here and get my chainsaw loose. My buddy Paul has a chainsaw and he is mowing grass at his house today.

“Paul, I need your help!” Paul becomes the hero, I’m the damsel in distress, and he does two cuts in the log and my chainsaw is free. Some high fives and thanks, and he’s back to mowing and I have my saw back.

I wish that’s what happened. Instead, I was in “I’ve got this!” mode and I hacked on that log with a maul for an hour.

Hack

Sweat

Breathe

Hack

I seriously thought I was going to have a heart attack. My callouses had blisters and the blisters were busting that clear fluid out. Really, it’s true. An hour later my chainsaw was free and in need of repair.

I know how that story should have gone. But by trying to be the hero myself, I neither became the hero nor allowed anyone else to be that guy.

As part of living with my brothers and sisters in community, John Wayne needs to have a funeral already.

Every time my boys argue I quote Proverbs 17:17 to them.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Proverbs 17:17 ESV
http://bible.com/59/pro.17.17.ESV

When I’m out having a heart attack at the park while I cut up fallen trees, I need to quote it to myself too! (or have a brother quote it to me in advance!)

We need to live in a culture where we admit that we need each other and we aren’t afraid to ask for help. As we grow and become of “one heart and one mind” like the group in Acts 2, our humility and trust in each other will grow, and Christ will show off in us more and more as the true Hero.

Extra Presence for Christmas

Dan Sullivan · December 23, 2015 ·

This week we have been doing one of the things that our Christian community, The People of Praise, does regularly all over the United States: we’ve been a ‘household.’ We aren’t the only ones doing this, from the looks of Instagram, but everyone else calls it ‘having house guests.’

Having someone stay at your house is inconvenient. You have to be sensitive to more people’s bed times, you have to wait an extra rotation on the bathroom (we only have one!), you have to NOT walk around the house in your boxers but actually take a minute to put on your pajamas and DEFINITELY close the door when you use the bathroom (we only have one!)

At the same time, there really is something holy about the whole ordeal. Keith Hueftle has a whole book on the grace-lovingkindness-hesed of God shown in the Bible through hospitality. As we are continually considering others better than ourselves with our houseguest, we are given a chance to fulfill what Jesus said-

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. – John 13:34

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 22:36-40

Of all of the various spiritual exercises we do, don’t they all turn us from convenience and comfort towards fulfilling something that the Lord wants to do, as a practical activity (give somebody a place to stay) and as a spiritual one (help work out areas that I’m selfish) all at the same time? What is even better is that it is over Christmas, so all of our family gatherings, driving around town, and hustle and bustle (a phrase we only use during Christmas?!) have an extra player in the game. (Literally, we have an almost perpetual board game going on through December and she is always able and willing to join in and play.)

Joseph and Mary were house guests, since they had to leave their normal home and go back to Joseph’s family’s house to be counted in a census. All of the reality of travel and couch-surfing is often lost when we see the abandoned cottage with a few animals in it around Christmas.

It was crowded, they were away from home, a baby was being born, and stranger shepherds were showing up out of nowhere to give them compliments and be amazed.

Praise God for the greater reality He shows us every day about the real life of His Son and the Nativity on Earth.

Merry Christmas, dear reader. Now I have to go hit the shower before everyone wakes up. (We only have one bathroom!)

Sheila Heen – WCAGLS 2015

Dan Sullivan · August 25, 2015 ·

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Here are my notes from Sheila Heen’s talk at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. She was really good. The even better part of this whole talk was that I was getting my semi-annual review at work right as I was putting the notes together! At the end she said some things about how we really see ourselves in the feedback from others, and that as a community of people we need that. Her book is here and after you read my notes you should go check it out.

Notes from our Monday night prayer meeting

Dan Sullivan · March 10, 2014 ·

Here are my notes from our prayer meeting Monday night. The topic was “How can we do mission work together if we are from all different churches?” There were a couple very good points in here to think on, but you just get a few notecard quotes from me here.

Church, Part of a Complete Breakfast

Dan Sullivan · February 22, 2014 ·

I have not gone to church on a Sunday morning the same way ever since I moved back to the United States. Granted, there were days in 1996-1999 that I bounced around from church to church, but that was for different reasons.

When I was in college, and then after I graduated, I spent a lot of time around people that lived the Christian life together on a day to day basis. Church, if attended, was only about 25% of the complete Christian life. The other 75% was daily prayer and Bible reading, evangelism out on the streets, and discussion discussion discussion with others about what we read, what we did, and what God was teaching us.

My wife and I now refer to those days at the “Cherry Court Days” as do many of the other people we were doing life with. I have heard pastors describe those days as “better than seminary” and others refer to it as a revival. Several of the people involved in that experience now work in the professional ministry 15 years later.

It permanently ruined many of us for any substitutes.

Fast forward to the present time, and my grumblings. My wife used to hate Sunday afternoons because we would go to church on Sunday mornings and I would gripe and complain all the way home. Eventually we quit going to church altogether and we began to try to exalt the Lord and seek Him in our day to day life. Some people worried about us, like we had fallen away. Others didn’t bring it up, because my criticisms were so visceral that I didn’t know how to explain them with grace. Some of my bros stuck by me even when I said some pretty negative stuff about the people they loved.

In that time, we grew in the Lord by leaps and bounds. We took responsibility for our children’s discipleship like youth pastors want people to do. We reached out to our neighbors, contacts, and our sphere of influence because we loved our Lord and we loved others beyond a scheduled event organized by someone we didn’t know at a location far far away from our front porch (where real life happens for us).

It was very very good. I should say it has been very very good, because we’ve only recently changed our act.

For the last year we have fallen in with a group of people doing that same thing in the neighborhood next door. The People of Praise is a covenanted Christian Community that shares life, time, possessions, and Jesus together on a daily basis. A little over a month ago we decided to join them and we began the 3-6 year process of discerning if joining the People of Praise will help us in our walk with Jesus.

One requirement to join the People of Praise: go to church.

Now the POP isn’t a church–it’s an ecumenical community. Everyone in the POP goes to their own church and is a part of their own church. In Evansville there are AOG folks, Catholic, Protestant, and Baptist folks. So here we are, my wife and I, what I would call disenfranchised program church folks. (A program church is what people used to call a megachurch, but now churches of all sizes follow the megachurch model whether they have 50-50,000 members.)

As were were “not going to church” we had visited a few places where our friends went on Sundays, and so we didn’t have to shop around.

We went, and we loved it. After I got home I realized why. You know how on the commercial for fruit loops, after the cartoon adventure and the toucan saving the day, they show a breakfast table of awesomeness and say “Fruit Loops is part of a complete breakfast” and they show eggs, orange juice, some toast, a glass of milk, and an apple? That is what Sunday morning church was to me. Part of a complete breakfast. It was sweet and awesome and I wanted 2 bowls but I wasn’t expecting it to be my complete breakfast. Where the Sunday morning church, even with it’s structured activities and programs, fell short, the para-church Christian Community filled in the gaps. And now I go to that church in a whole new way.

Links of interest:

People of Praise

OneLife church

Adventure and Safety in the Church

Dan Sullivan · February 15, 2014 ·

I’m still taking a long, slow read through The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch. It is really good. This week I’ve had several conversations about community, Christian community, koinonia, and church. This quote sounded really good for today as we go out to the YMCA Pancake Days, then play with neighborhood kids at boys group with the People of Praise (the Christian community we are a part of)

“Risk is the price we pay for genuine adventure, and it was Alfred North Whitehead who once remarked that without adventure, civilization is in full decay. The same is equally true for the church. And once again, it is largely because we have structured community in isolation from any real engagement with the world. ” – p.231

WCAGLS Session 4, Liz Wiseman

Dan Sullivan · August 8, 2013 ·

Session 4? Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers

Looks like we might get a bunch of business stuff out of this. This intro is pretty cool though.

Multipliers:
1. Talent magnets
2. Liberators
3. Challenger
4. Debate Maker
5. Investor

Dang, another no podium thing!

I hope there is a Momma Maggie event at this conference where we see that all of this intelligence is crap without dedication, control, and leading by Jesus.

When people do their best work, they bring their full, unblemished offering.

Leaders that use their intelligence to multiply the intelligence of others.

In the past, the role of the leader was to have ideas and get other people to do what he wanted. The CEO was the alpha male and everyone did his bidding. Now we are starting to see that when everyone on the team does their greatest thing, it's better for everyone, even the CEO.

The greatest winning coach of any sport of all time, told each of his players to be intelligent on the field and helped them to be intelligent on their own on the field.

Multipliers make everyone around them bring out their super powers.

Pressure vs. Stress
– william tell has pressure, his son feels stress
– the difference is in control. If you share the control, you will share the pressure.
– if you keep control, your staff will get the stress

what did your diminisher do?
– Threatened consequences
– Didn't offer details to the solution or coaching
– non-specific about the goal, so that only they would know what success was
– What percent of your capabilities did they get from you? 0% (I got fired, sort of)

What did your multiplier do?
– gave me the big picture
– coached and gave me tiny tasks
– spent a lot of time with me on the thing I needed to do
– What percent of your capabilities did they get from you? 100% (I am still working for that guy, for free, just for his sake and the sake of the big picture!)

Multipliers think people are smart, and they are going to figure it out.
Diminishers think nobody is going to figure it out without me.

results of the survey:

Diminishers

were selfish
were controlling
didn't delegate
hire and acquire smart people
build empires, but don't use them well
staff are knick knacks, trophy staff
decisions are made by a small inner circle
they get a lot of buy-in on a decision they already made
got 43% of people's productivity

We actually get stupid under stress, and it takes 18 minutes for our brains to reboot after stress ceases.

Multipliers

trust guru
let the team drive the car
let the team make decisions and have input to the idea
they think people are smart and can figure stuff out, like when we let our children be smart
create space for people to do their own thing, free them up to be great
challenge people without apology, stir real and good conflict with the status quo
don't make hirlings, they make team mates and owners
building up and equipping the workers to be great

Both of them are exhausting, but one is exhausting at 43% effort and one is exhausting at 100% effect.

Many of us are accidental diminishers. How are we diminishing without realizing it?

Idea guy: bursts in the door, full of ideas and innovation
– nothing gets done here, we chase 700,432,987,123 ideas but never get done

Always on: always has energy, is go go go, never running out
– they get tuned out and sound like charlie brown's teacher

Rescuer: I'm going to help everybody, won't let anyone fail!
– when the leader is to helpful, too soon, too often, the failer won't fail and learn
– we diminish their self-confidence when we do everything for them

Pace-setter: curve buster, creates spectators not followers
– people don't race to catch up with the leader, they drop out
– people give up and hold back, walk when they are lapped

Rapid responder: I'm going to make fast decisions
– if they are included in a discussion, you let them take it
– why bother if Johnny speed is going to beat us anyway

Optimist psycho: what if they discount a real, sincere, struggle?
– can become shallow
– we need you to acknowledge that this sucks, is bad and sad, and might not end well.
– get real!

you could be any of these, and be genuinely trying to help out, but you are diminishing everyone you come in contact with!

We don't tend to drift into better behavior, we have to deliberately do it.

She described bedtime chaos at my house to a tee!
a coworker said to her, what if you only spoke to your kids at bedtime in questions? It was bedtime heaven!

She did it for 3 days in a row, and then realized it would work with her employees in the office.

When you leave meeting with a diminisher, you feel like they are the smartest person in the world, albeit a jerk.
When you leave meeting with a multiplier, you feel like you are the smartest person in the world.

The guy that walked across a tightrope from one world trade tower to the other: The first step was the only hard step. After that it was just walking.

"Thank you for letting me be part of this conversation."

Wow, she not only talked about it, but she even practiced it from the podium.