Yesterday was our annual LifePoint Staff Fantasy Football Draft. With the privilege of serving alongside a team that is not only unified in mission but great friends, we season each fall with great banter and competition of our fantasy picks, games and projections. So here is my attempt of drafting a 2010 Fantasy Football Team:

Current Starters

• QB Carson Palmer
• RB Steven Jackson
• RB Cedric Benson
• RB/WR Donald Driver
• WR Larry Fitzgerald
• WR Anquan Boldin
• TE Heath Miller
• D/ST Dolphins D/ST
• K Garrett Hartley

Bench Players

• Laurence Maroney
• Jabar Gaffney
• Correll Buckhalter
• Jeremy Shockey
• Josh Morgan
• Alex Smith

So, it is officially Football Time in Tennessee! Still need to determine a good team name that strikes intimidation from the other team!

Here are a few of the statements in the article that grabbed my attention:

• “Warning: Your child is following a ‘mutant’ form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.”
• “American teenagers are embracing what she calls ‘moralistic therapeutic deism.’ Translation: It’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.”
• “[Dean] found that most American teens who called themselves Christian were indifferent and inarticulate about their faith.”
• “Some adults don’t expect much from youth pastors. They simply want them to keep their children off drugs and away from premarital sex.”
• “Others practice a ‘gospel of niceness,’ where faith is simply doing good and not ruffling feathers. The Christian call to take risks, witness and sacrifice for others is muted, she says.”
• “If teenagers lack an articulate faith, it may be because the faith we show them is too spineless to merit much in the way of conversation,” wrote Dean

Dean says committed Christian teens share four traits:

• They have a personal story about God they can share
• Deep connection to a faith community
• A sense of purpose
• A sense of hope about their future

With 15+ years of working with teens and transitioning 3 student ministries over the years, here are a few thoughts that I believe are crucial for teens to experience in the church:

1. Teaching clearly from God’s Word: God’s Glory, their sin & need for redemption, their purpose to extend God’s Glory…trust, risk, courage, boldness
2. Make sure students are connected in small groups to an adult(s) who follows God & is committed to apprenticing teens
3. Have a point leader(s), communicator(s), etc. who displays character, lifestyle and passion for God and His mission
4. Have students serving in significant roles in your church weekly
5. Send students on mission trips that are out of context, focused on the Gospel and even international
6. Teach and preach a vision for their life that is bigger that being a good American, just being nice, living a good life or a good citizen…unleash them to abandon the lifestyle of the culture and radically follow Christ

At LifePoint, we have made some intentional steps over the last six to seven years to help student own their faith and have an authentic relationship with Christ. The task is overwhelming, we have done some things that have proved effective and yet still feel a burden to do more. I would love to read your thoughts and even what you have seen to help students live out a Biblical faith.

Over the years, taking inventory through assessments, serving and conversations have been incredibly valuable to me. I promised my friends in my class I would share these today and I want to share them with you as well. Here is a short list of some of my favorite tools to take personal inventory of our leadership potential. I can’t wait to hear how these help you discover how God has formed you for real influence in our world.

S.H.A.P.E. — God has “shaped” you for an incredible purpose and life in this world. Birthed out of Rick Warren and Erik Rees at Saddleback Church, the teaching and assessments of SHAPE have fueled thousands of Christ-followers to discover their spiritual gifting and opportunities to influence the world.

Uniquely You Profile — The New Testament makes a bold promise that the Holy Spirit has gifted every Christ-follower with a spiritual gift to serve and strengthen the body. Their are tons of gift assessments out there. They are a good beginning point for discovering your gifting but they are no substitute simply getting in there and serving along with affirmation from the Body of Christ. Uniquely you is a thorough profile for helping you discover your spiritual gifting as well as your personality. I took this over a decade ago, originally, and it was a great encouragement.

Ministry Insights: Leading from your Strengths — This is a personality profile that will give direction not only on your wiring but also how that impacts your relationships. We use this as a tool for hiring and relating as a staff and trust it incredibly. Rodney also uses this in his marriage counseling. Great tool! (I am an Otter by the way).

StrengthFinders — This comes out of the business world and Gallup but has great spiritual implications for us as we look at our “SHAPE” and leadership. I believe the insight from the StrengthFinders movement is simply the discovery of God’s hard-wiring in our lives. The inspiration of StrengthFinders is to focus on our talents, God-given, and invest in those so they will be strengths. To take the assessment, you simply purchase the book. I have taken the original Now, Discover Your Strengths, the updated StrengthFinders 2.0 and Strengths Based Leadership; all incredibly helpful! Here is a breakdown of my strength mix.

Five Love Languages — This has been foundational in my 13+ marriage and now I see it showing up in my parenting. Great insight! (My Love Languages are Words of Affirmation & Physical Touch…no comments from the peanut gallery, please.)

Career Direct — I used this tool as I was ending my college and graduate student career and moving into the “real world” and ministry. Great for high school students, college students or those searching for a potential new direction.

This is just the tip of the iceberg but hopefully a place to start. Their are some that are free and more simple then there is stuff out there that is more thorough. I would love to hear others you have experience and success with and if you take any of these please leave a comment about what you have discovered to encourage me and others!

Over the years, I have read many books on the topic of salvation and the Gospel; from evangelism training course books to thorough theological treatments of salvation from a survey of the Bible. Some I passed by quickly while there have been a few that have risen to the top. As we have prepared for the Radical series and having gotten the chance to be in many discussions with Pat and our team about the content of Radical, I kept coming back to a book by Will Metzger called Tell the Truth: The Whole Gospel to the Whole Person by Whole People.

I first read it in seminary and it has become a reference book for me for many years now. Our view of salvation from the words of Scripture are paramount. The principles and nuances have been debated for years. In my own journey, I have found all theological frameworks must work there way back to salvation. From there, it seems everything is defined by how we hold God’s plans and ways for redemption in our mind and soul. I love Tell the Truth because it challenges how many of us were taught to believe and communicate the gospel (many times insufficiently). I am grateful for the book because it gives me handles on how to share the Gospel and not sale “easy believing”. I have benefited because it gives real markers on assurance of salvation and it helps us that “we may know”. I am thankful for the Radical Series at LifePoint, the Radical book and Pat’s teaching to clearly examine a Biblical Gospel.

So, if you want to dig deeper, obviously I recommend a purchase and reading of this book. I am giving away a free copy of Tell the Truth to encourage people to read it. Here is how you can enter: post a tweet to your twitter account with this url included: http://bit.ly/tellthetruth (please follow me on twitter so I can direct message you if you win); post a comment below with a link to your twitter or blog and answer one of the questions; or share the link in your Facebook status (let me know you did with a comment below, also send a friend request). All entries need to be in by Wednesday, August 25 at midnight CST. Announcement on Thursday, woopie!

Also, I am curious, what are your biggest questions or struggles about the topic of salvation? And/or, what has been your biggest learning about salvation recently?

With some of the hats I wear at LP being creativity, strategy, worship planning & communications along side our Worship Programming team; I am anxious to see the many connection points to God’s truth through creativity and worship play out over the next six weeks. We have created me touch points to the series at LP and many more are developing. Be sure to connect with our Radical web site, LifePoint Facebook with a Radical page & LifePoint Twitter. If you are not connected to our weekly eNews, that’s another simple way to stay up to date. We will be adding moments from our services each week through the series that LifePointer’s can share through social media. Hundreds have been added to groups during the series to experience community. In house, high-quality small group videos are produced. People are reading the book daily and the conversations and people wrestling with God’s Truth are abundant.

If you are a LifePoint’er, what is sticking out to you so far in your reading? What is your biggest challenge or question you are wrestling with? If you are a friend from another church, I would love to hear if your church is engaging with the content from Radical. We would be glad to share what we are learning and experiencing with your team.

Want to experience more of Radical, visit:

• Radical Book web site
• Radical Book Twitter
• Author David Platt is hosting an online discussion, today (August 18) at 3:00pm CST

Yesterday, I mentioned the Habitudes class I am teaching and our first image of the Iceberg. The iceberg teaches you and as I leaders that the most important part of our leadership is what’s below the surface…our character. One of the most interesting parts of our character is our “sense of identity”. Tim Elmore describes this as “a realistic self-image based on who God made you to be.” Leaders with strong character know themselves and embrace their strengths and weaknesses.

Great leaders have learned and live out daily habits that use their strengths and focus less on their weaknesses. Reading books like Now, Discover Your Strengths and StrengthFinders 2.0; along with, listening to other leaders has helped me realize that I need to focus on the strengths God has given me and not try to fix my weaknesses attempting to be “super leader” in every situation and for every purpose.

Chris Hollomon shared this article with me other day by Casey Ross. Man, this post hit home big time! It is a great read on focusing and living out our strengths to benefit the organization we serve and the people we influence. Here is the question that I am asking myself (even printed out real big and put it above my desk):

Where do I add the most value to my organization?

Sometimes, I don’t like the answer to that question. Many times, the answers give me fuel and freedom. Other times, I need teammates to help me see the answer to this question. All the time, when I live this out honestly and trusting in God’s design of me as His servant, I am effective and empowered to be influential.

The reality is all of us will impact at a minimum 10,000 people in our lifetime. Many of you will greatly outpace that number. So, what are the strengths God has given you? Are you focusing on those? How do you add the most value to your organization, relationships, ministry?

Last Wednesday night, I kicked off one of our Classes at LifePoint we are offering called Habitudes. Habitudes is a 4 book study written by Tim Elmore who leads a great organization called Growing Leaders. Habitudes is one of my favorite leadership studies I have ever come across and continue to use it in my leadership and leadership teaching. Habitudes takes images from everyday life, connects a leadership and Biblical principle that begins to form attitudes, habits and language for personal and organizational leadership.

We kicked off week 1 by looking at “The Iceberg”. The Iceberg represents our leadership. The 10% above the water is your skill. The 90% below the water is your character. It’s what’s below the surface that sinks the ship.

Of course, the history lesson of the Titanic rises large as an example of this principle. The crew of the Titanic focused more on what they could see than what they could not see. As leaders, we often (and dangerously) focus on what others and we see instead of focusing on what we can’t see…our character. As leaders, the largest component of our life and leadership is our character. I love how Elmore describes our character as the sum total of our self-discipline, core values, sense of identity and emotional security. A great passage that connects to this principle is Luke 6:43-45. In this passage, Christ puts a priority of our “being over doing.” Some great Biblical characters the week 1 class pointed out are Jonah, David and Solomon.

I have already had great feedback already and I am excited about this fall and the Habitudes class. If you were there or are coming, I would love to hear about how you are living the Iceberg out in your circles of influence or this has been helpful to you. How can we continue to make this a great study for you?

If you are around LifePoint, please join our conversation on Wednesday nights. If you aren’t local, I would encourage you to pick-up a copy of Habitudes as a great study for your own leadership or with your team.

Yesterday, I came across and tweeted this quote from Blaise Pascal, “The gospel to me is simply irresistible.”

As we are about to launch the Radical series in just a few days at LifePoint, the Gospel is shining brighter and brighter as God stirs in me and LifePoint. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is an amazing character from history. He was a child prodigy, French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and theologian/philosopher. Here are a few more quotes by Pascal that thrust us God-ward in our thoughts and hopefully our actions:

• “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
• “Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”
• “There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe they are sinners, the sinners who believe they are righteous.”
• “The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.”

Yesterday I received an email from Compassion International leadership. Kelly and I have been supporters of Compassion since 1996 and love this organization. They are Christ-centered, full of integrity and are fighting poverty and lostness throughout the world. I highly recommend helping Compassion help Haiti as they share the love of Christ during this crisis. You can also see other ways to give on Kyle’s Blog and thoughts about LifePoint’s response on Pat’s Blog. Here is the letter and info on how you can give:

The catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti yesterday has resulted in unfathomable chaos and devastation for hundreds of thousands of children and families. Compassion sponsors and donors serve more than 65,000 children in Haiti. At least a third of them live in the areas that were hardest hit.

I am asking you to please send a generous gift today to help these precious children and their families. We are working rapidly to assess the situation and determine the full extent of damage:

* Sadly, we anticipate there will be many deaths.
* We anticipate thousands of children and families will have lost everything.
* We anticipate many of our church-based child development centers will have been destroyed.

Without a doubt, the children we serve in Haiti are in shock and face immediate needs for food, water, medical care, shelter and counseling. We have teams prepared to respond, and we are deeply committed to helping each child.

We need your donation today. Please reach out in the name of Jesus to bring relief, comfort, love and restoration to precious children and families whose lives have been devastated by this crisis.

Thank you for caring,
Mark Hanlon
Dr. Wess Stafford
President, USA

P.S. If you would like to give by phone, please call us at (800) 336-7676. Check donations can be mailed to: Compassion International, Colorado Springs, CO 80997.

Pretty cool, huh! Love the videos by Adidas, love the concept. It is sticky, memorable, inspiring. Really cool for me because basketball has been a passion of mine since I was 7 years old. I loved the Celtics growing up as a kid, too. I will have to pull out my Larry Bird jersey for you sometime. Funny, too, because basketball is the thing that started my friendship with Matty, I was beside him when he became a Christ-follower, we were in each others’ weddings, and more!

The saying We Not Me is strong! As someone who has a passion for the church and have given my life to it, We Not Me is statement that charges my batteries. Especially, as we talk about Biblical Community this week as a part of the Centered (be sure to sign-up for the devotionals) series at LifePoint. I have always been challenged by John 13:34-35, and truly believe if the Body of Christ will be the Body of Christ there will be something incredibly powerful and convincing to a lost world that Jesus is real and He is God.

So, to my fellow Christ-followers, to my ‘brotherhood’…We Not Me. Hoowa.

(thank, Matty)