Jesus repeatedly said, “If you want to find your life you must lose your life.” Looking back I now realize I had it backwards. I spent decades making myself successful, all the while thinking I was becoming a better “leader.” I believe much of our absorption with leadership, in the Church as well as the culture at large, amounts to the justification of selfish desires that fly in the face of Jesus’ words and example.

What can you do today to obey Jesus? In all our lives, God has placed people who feel like anything but successful. Your job and mine is to come alongside those he has assigned to us to offer lift them up.

Maybe some of the leadership books you’ve been reading will come in handy as you promote others into the limelight you used to live in.

We can do these things actions with all good intentions in an effort to connect with lots of people as quickly as possible…as if the name of the game is sheer volume. God does care about the masses, but that care has to be done with the right heart.

Here’s what I’ve discovered:

It’s one thing to do outreach – it’s a different thing to reach out.

It’s possible to do outreach without the love of God in our hearts – to go through the external motions of what looks like love yet to miss the point of connecting with people’s hearts.

It’s not possible to reach out unless God’s love is at the center of hearts. When we reach out we extend our hearts to others who are in need. We show vulnerability to others who are in need of being touched by God who dwells in us.

Bottom line: Let’s do both – let’s touch lots of people…at the same time it’s essential that we connect with them profoundly at a heart level.

People come to Christ gradually. God draws people into his Kingdom through a series of touches. Professor George Hunter, of Asbury Seminary, and I believe it takes between 12 and 20 profound touches on average for a not-yet Believer to come to Christ. As he puts it, “That’s a lot of toilets to clean!” I wish it was easier to win people to Christ but that’s not the way it works in our day – maybe it’s always been that way. Commit with me to the long haul.

As we come to the end of the year, I wonder if you have any ideas about topics you’d like me address in 2012. There are lots of directions I could go as we break into the new year, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. To make this an exciting blog I need to hear what God is doing in your life and where you are headed in the Kingdom.

Please respond below on this site or email me directly at SteveSjogren@mac.com.

Good things are on the way!

Thanks!

Steve

In his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell makes a compelling case that history repeatedly shows that it takes 10,000 hours of practice for someone in any discipline to become an expert in their field of study. You can apply that truth to any discipline in life and you will come out an expert. Any area of study.

That’s an insight that I find encouraging and hopeful. It’s possible for us to move from average in an area of life where we feel called to excel – and to knuckle down, practice, focus, discipline ourselves – and to come out as dazzling experts in that field. Sure it’s difficult and costly. Not many are willing or perhaps even able to dedicate that many hours of disciplined practice to something, but if you do you will emerge as an amazing person others will seek out as an expert in your field.

What would your life look like if you spent 10,000 hours serving others? Split that up between cleaning toilets, cleaning windshields, giving away bottles of water, giving away bags of microwave popcorn, doing car washes, et al. (you get the idea)… If you did this for 40 hours a week in a systematic way that would be a several year trek – difficult to get there, but not impossible. You’d be the next Mother Teresa. Your inner compass would be permanently reset. I know I’d show up to hear you speak. I’d buy your book and so would plenty of others!