Dave Ramsey discussed the importance of unstoppable momentum and how to get it during Catalyst Conference’s 7th session. Here is what he said:

Despite The Beverly Hillbillies not airing since 1971, many people (even born after 1971) can sing the theme song.  How would you like to have that impact? Imagine people being about to talk about what you did 39 years after you did it.

When you have momentum, you better than you are. The thing I’ve discovered about momentum is that it is very important to get some in every area of your life. Momentum is not a random occurrence. It must be created. You must pour yourself into your calling. You must pour yourself into your craft.

Learn the momentum theorem.

Momentum Theorem
Focused intensity over time multiplied by God creates unstoppable momentum.

Focus is lost for two reasons:

1. Fear
   Fear can cause you to lose focus. Fear is not a fruit of the spirit.
2. Greed
   You can get greedy for money, stats, fame, and/or more. James 1:8 says, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

With focus, you can’t see anything but what you are looking at. With focus, you have an unbelievable advantage. Rick Warren says, “Focus is intentional.” You have to be proactive. You have to happen to things.

Intensity  matters. Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” If you are going to be an intense sports fan and take your shirt off and paint yourself blue, live your life with that same intensity. Be intense at parenting. Be intense about your calling. Intensity moves things. You’ve got to be fired up. You can’t do it with lack of focus because your intensity will be too spread out then.

Focused intensity is good, but if it only lasts for three days, it is not going to amount to anything. This is the hardest part of the equation. Og Mandino says, “If I persist long enough, I will win.” As Paul talks about - run your race well. It is a long race… over time. Don’t quit. Stay on course. Keep moving. Be the focused, intense tortoise and not the ADHD hare.

If you are quickly successful be very, very scared because you may not have the proper foundation underneath it.

But even still, you need God. When you multiply your focused intensity over time by God then God gives you the energy and ability needed to win. Get plugged in to God as your power source and your momentum will become unstoppable.

Matt Chandler of The Village Church (Highland Village, TX) discussed the importance of confession, repentance, and focusing on God during Catalyst Conference’s fifth session.

There are a lot of things going on in your churches. Some of you are in good places. Some of you are in bad places. Remind yourself what you have been caught up in.

Apparently according to Hebrews 11, the gauntlet that you and I will run has seasons with lions and seasons where we escape the sword and seasons where we die by the sword and seasons where the dead will rise and seasons when the dead are dead.

Somehow the idea of confession and repentance has become negative. It seems like the longer we are Christians, the more we think you shouldn’t be confessing things. The problem is, well… the Bible. 1 John 1:5-10 says if you live and walk as if you are sinless, you are a liar.

Look at every delay as an opportunity to deepen the waters with the God of the universe. It is a lack of gratitude and therefore a sin that causes you to want to be something that you aren’t. A day is coming when history in your life will be rewritten as it really is. Your role is bigger than you think.

Look to Jesus because He is the founder of our faith. Without Him there is no reconciliation with God.

May we remember what we have grown up in. May we remember what God has called us to. And may we run well.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, discussed the danger of overconfidence during Catalyst Conference’s second session. Here is what he said:

People who were experts still made mistakes, which led to the current financial crises.

If you have more information, do you get better at making a prediction? But a research study showed that it doesn’t really make a difference. However, with more information people’s confidence in their predictions improves.

Too much confidence in a guess is called miscalculation.

Incompetence irritates me, but overconfidence scares me. Incompetent people rarely have the opportunities to make mistakes that greatly affect things. But overconfident leaders and experts have the dangerous ability to create disaster.

In 1863 during the Civil War in Virginia, the Union army was in incredibly poor shape. And Lincoln in Washington was becoming increasingly worried. Fighting Joe Hooker came and happened to know more about Confederate General Lee than anyone. Hooker devised a brilliant battle plan by distributing his army in thirds and surrounding Lee’s army. Lee was significantly outnumbered 2 to 1. Hooker said that even God Almighty couldn’t prevent them from victory. What happened next was the Battle of Chancellorsville. Hooker expected Lee to retreat, became trapped by his confidence, and did not plan for anything else. In fact, the Union army lowered their guard; Lee attached, and Hooker’s army ran away only to suffer one of the worst defeats of the war.

We think we need daring and bold decision making from our leaders in time of crisis. But we don’t. We need humility.

QUESTION: What are the warning signs for leaders being to overconfident?

When you stop listening to those around you. You cut yourself off from others.

QUESTION: What do you say to the church leader who has resisted accountability because of fear?

When a leader can no longer do everything all by himself, you have to change.  When your growth reaches a certain point, you have to change. Leadership has to become more collective.

Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research shared his major church planting mistakes at Catalyst’s third lab. Here is what he said:

All too often church planters run gung-ho into church planting like they’re storming the beaches of Normandy but then get mowed down. I share mistakes, so that hopefully you can avoid them.

I knew that I needed to make some change in my life. People never change until the pain of staying the same grows greater than the pain of change.

ED’S BIG 7 CHURCH PLANTING MISTAKES

1. Forgetting the mission.
   Our motivations can naturally be mixed. We often focus on our own agenda rather than God’s agenda. You should want to plant a great church because of who God is rather than to prove something about yourself to others. God intervenes when we make it about our minds and our power and our glory. If at the end of the day, you could have done it without God, then God isn’t in it. The goal is God’s glory. You can’t become distracted by the tools.
2. Being married to a model.
   If you are more excited by the “how” than the “who,” then you are being distracted. I must be sure that I do not fall in love with someone else’s ministry model and mission. If you listen to other churches’ success stories, you can become distracted by the model. Ministry pornography is an unrealistic depiction of something that you never going to have that distracts you from what you are supposed to do. The “how” of church planting is in many ways determined by the “who,” “when,” and “where” of culture. Too many church planters plant a church in their head and not in their communities. If you aren’t asking “how” you should plant, you have a problem.
3. Not taking care of yourself.
   (1) First and foremost, you need to take care of yourself physically. If you don’t take care of yourself, then you will not be able to properly prioritize God in your life. Don’t tell yourself that you will take care of your body after you… plant that church… write that book… whatever. My job first and foremost, is to be the type of Christ follower, husband, and father God wants me to be, and if I am not taking care of myself, then I will never be able to be who God wants me to be.
   (2) You also need to take care of yourself spiritually. The personality type that plants churches is not consistent with the same personality type that is great at walking with God.Your people need more a pastor who has been with God than an entrepreneur that is full of ideas.
   (3) And you need to take care of your family. Your family will be with you in the end, but often the people you start a church with are not the ones you finish a church with.
4. Arrogance.
   I was too sarcastic and didn’t listen well. There are different reasons people are arrogant, but my arrogance was from trying to desperately prove myself to others. I needed to realize that my Father in heaven is already pleased with me. Unfortunately, my needs got in the way. Churches whose pastors have a weekly mentor pastor churches that are twice as large as churches whose pastors are without mentors.
5. Not taking believers deeper.
   People who are yearning for maturity are longing for what Christ followers need. But I made the mistake of thinking their quest to go deeper was not aligning with the church’s mission to reach people. If your vision doesn’t take people deeper spiritually, then you have a bad vision. You don’t want to take pride in what God calls a problem. Christians wanting to grow deeper are not you enemies but your partners.
6. Ignoring hidden agendas.
   Every person in your church has a vision for your church, and it is not the same as your vision for the church. Often the people you start with go away, and the people who stay try to hijack the vision a year later.
7. Afraid of finances.
   Part of why I was afraid of finances is because of the popular mindset of the time that said that talking about finances would offend seekers. Talking about money is fine… just don’t talk about money in a creepy way.

What your church needs is a godly and God-directed church planter. Anything else is not his agenda but yours. Anything else is too much about you and not enough about Jesus.

Reggie Joiner of The reThink Group discussed the importance of family at Catalyst’s second pre-lab. Here is what he said:

Most of us (attending Catalyst) have been influenced by the church. Yet although some of us have been influenced by the church, we have all been influenced by our family.

God uses 2 entities – church and family – to teach the gospel to a child. If you can influence a family, you can influence in an exponential way.

1. We are influenced by family.
2. Somewhere along the way we develop a picture of what we think family looks like.
   A church may use a stock photo of a family, but it likely is an unrealistic representation of a family.
3. If we hold to tightly to an ideal picture of family, we set families up to be disillusioned.
   Things don’t work out the way we thought they would.
4. God never gives s a picture of an ideal family in the Bible.
   God isn’t trying to give you an ideal picture. He is trying to tell a story through your family and my family. God is trying to unpack something that is much more bigger than family, bugger than church, and much, much bigger than a nation. Your calling as a leader should not e to get families to conform to a common picture. Your calling is not to build better families. Your calling is not to build a bigger church. Your calling is to lead people into a relationship with Christ. Our purpose is not to build better families but to use that family to influence the world.

Two ways to influence families:

1. Present an ideal, “better” picture of how families should be.
2. Encourage families to cooperate with the story God wants to tell in their lives regardless of their mistakes.

Parents don’t need a better picture; they need a bigger story. Never forget that the approach and mindset we have in ministry towards the family can disillusion them or give them hope. An ideal picture can make you feel like a failure. But reality is God has chosen to use us.

God is at work telling a story of redemption in your family. Never buy into the myth that your family has to be picture perfect. God doesn’t use perfect pictures. He uses broken people. Give us a generation of leaders who are authentic and broken.

Moses had a bigger story approach in Deuteronomy 6. When you have a bigger story approach, you:

1. Imagine the end.
2. Fight for the heart.
3. Make it personal.
4. Create a rhythm.
5. Widen the circle.

Somewhere along the way, the church has to switch from a Sunday mindset to a daily mindset. A church has 40 hours a year to reach a kid, but the parents have 3,000 hours.

In his new book, Whole Church, Mel Lawrenz of Elmbrook Church (Brookfield, WI) discusses how a church can practically apply God’s grace, salvation, and people’s personal lives, in church community, in local community, and globally.

I had the opportunity to ask Mel the following question:
What are the best ways a church can keep itself and protect itself from withdrawing inwardly rather than seeking to engage its local community?

I think community engagement is one of the great movements of God through the church today. All over the country churches are re-discovering the joy of getting outside the walls of the church, serving in the local community, and glorifying God in it. There are 350 practical ideas for cohesion in Whole Church, some of which are about community engagement.

But I think the real focus is here: congregations will get moving out into the community when they are given imagination and inspiration. In other words, rather than form a church program where people can plug into the community, we should scour our congregations, discovering the examples of where the people are already doing it, and then tell the stories with power and conviction. Tell the story of the woman who is tutoring at the local rescue mission, the coffee-shop owner who uses his place for a Sunday-night college group, the young adult group that volunteers at a nursing home once a month. Find such stories, and dozens others, and tell them.

Challenge the congregation to look around their own communities, to use their own imaginations, to give something a try. But tell them NOT to wait for specific marching orders from the top.

For more excerpts of Mel’s wisdom check out Leadership Network’s blog tour.

This October is the special tenth anniversary for Catalyst Conference (Atlanta, GA). There will be phenomenal speakers like Malcolm Gladwell, Andy Stanley, and Matt Chandler. And of course, it will be an experience you will never forget.

But if you want the best rate, you better act now. Thursday, June 25th (tomorrow) is the last day to receive Catalyst Conference’s super early bird registration rate.

And to save an extra $40 on individual super early bird registrations, use the priority code “TWIT” and Catalyst will also send you a copy of Andy Stanley’s new book, The Principle of the Path.

Sometimes blunt, crude words are the only things that can shock a person out of a rut and motivate him to improve to the next level. This four-part blog series is for the church worker who needs such forthright words.

It is important to do things with excellence and to give your best in ministry. Paul exemplifies this in 1 Corinthians 9:22-23. However, when trying to give your best, it is equally important to avoid the pitfall of thinking it is all about you.

If you are good at what you do, this pitfall nurtures pride. If you lack confidence, it cripples you with insecurity. Thinking it’s all about you keeps you from delegating. It keeps you from resting. Many pastors have ruined themselves, their marriages, their families, and their churches by thinking that they are the only ones capable of doing what they do.

But the truth is…

You are not good enough.

This crude statement is actually an incredible encouragement. It is not about you. Nobody is good enough. We are all sinful, but God’s gospel gift is about grace rather than being good enough.

Fortunately, the success of God’s Kingdom does not rest on your shoulders. God does not need you, but He desperately wants you to be a part.

You are never as great as you think you are, so don’t become prideful. And you are never as bad as you think you are, so don’t become crippled by insecurity. Simply give your best and be thankful that God has given you the opportunity to be a part of His great plan.

Read Part 1 - You Deserve to Go to Hell
Read Part 2 - You Will Die Unless…
Read Part 3 - What If You Die Today?