Jarrod Jones

Every Wednesday is staff meeting with the Grace staff.  We always begin with Scripture and prayer. Then we get into the meat of things with our staff agenda–celebration moments, strategic ministry, old and new business etc. At the end of staff meeting we always allot about 20 - 30 minutes of leadership “training.” I walk us through material or articles about leadership based mostly on successful leaders who may or may not be Christian. We learn a lot from resources, as well as each other, in ways that we apply leadership principles in our personal lives, families, and ministries. I believe that God can use successful leaders (christian or not) to teach us how to better lead what and whom has been entrusted to us.

We wrapped up our most recent leadership training with a focus on “clarity.”  We spent weeks on this topic. A magazine leadership article we were studying had a list of questions to ask ourselves often to see if we were living, leading, and ministering with clarity.  I had my assistant make cards with the questions and give them to staff to have in front of us throughout the day.

I thought I’d post the article’s comments and questions for you with view toward helping you have clarity in your life too.  Enjoy.

The below (except for question 1) was taken from the article “The Power of Clarity” by Tony Jeary, SUCCESS Magazine, April 2009.

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[In regards to gaining clarity], [t]he willingness to change plays a huge role in your ability to succeed. Voluntary change, which does not require anyone to push you or mandate that you do new things, is the kind of change you should seek.  To enable smooth, low-stress change, you need to become aware of what you can and should change.

Here’s a change audit to follow:

1. What is it exactly that you’re trying to accomplish?

2.  What opportunities and choices present themselves to you daily?

3.  What causes you to feel stressed or rushed?

4.  What are the five most important actions you can take to bring value to your business, [ministry], or personal life?

5.  What are five actions you can either delegate or spend less time on?

6.  If you spent less time on the actions in No. 4 and focused more on the actions in No. 3, what would that mean to your effectiveness?

Remember, you will need to know what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how you will do it.  You need to know the benefit of doing it and the negative payoff for not doing it.  Acquiring clarity and increasing effectiveness will accelerate success.

I’m a loner. Maybe that’s why I liked the picture of the lonely blue chair you see flashing at the top of my site. It kind of explains me. So, by virtue of this reality, this blog will be strongly narcissistic.

My wife knows this loner thing about me well. It was quite an adjustment for us when we first got married. I blame it on my selfish genes and my single days. I was single until I was 31 years old. I ate almost every meal by myself in those days… willingly. It’s a miracle that I’m married. I wasn’t a monk (although close). I still hung out with friends here and there but kept to myself most of the time. Now that I have a family, I enjoy eating out with them more, of course. I love having that time with Christie to casually chat, and laugh, goof around with the boys, and eat their leftovers. Still I enjoy being alone– going to the mall, bookstores, coffee shops, restaurants, even the movies alone.

I spent three-and-a-half years in seminary living in an 11×14 room. I rarely ate in the cafeteria. I couldn’t afford it. Even if I could have afforded it, I would have opted to eat alone in my room anyway.  I’m not saying spending so much time alone was completely profitable but to some extent it was for me. I survived on Honey Nut Cheerios, kidney beans, sardines, an occasional Chinese buffet, and coffee. Yes, I had constant heartburn. But being social gave me heartburn too.  Still does to a degree.

I’ve done the last 10 years of ministry alone (humanly speaking)–airplanes, rental cars, hotel rooms, camp dorms, restaurants, and so forth. But I rarely felt lonely.  Some people refuel being around people, hanging out, talking about sports, drinking coffee, eating lunch, debating theology, praying together, and such. Not me. My tank is filled by being alone. Not alone for alone’s sake, but sacred-time-with-Jesus-alone in which I don’t feel rushed, busy, or anxious about what has to be done. It also relieves me from having to be on my social A-game, or B-game, or D-game. A rarity for a minister….

Right now, I’m in Des Moines, Iowa. The conference host flew me in a day early to avoid my potential tardiness or absence due to weather related flight delays or cancellations. I confess that it has been incredibly refreshing. The conference will be blessed greatly I just know it. They unknowingly granted me alone time to be focused and filled by the Holy Spirit.

On that note, being alone in a hotel room grants me personal space to allow the Spirit of God to examine and expose anything in my soul I’ve denied or avoided. It forces me to deal with sin in my life. It makes me wrestle with what kind of husband, father, leader, and pastor I’ve been. I keep the TV turned off the majority of the time so that I can’t run from “stuff.”  I read a lot. I journal a lot. I repent a lot.

Right now, I miss my family, and my family misses me. The tremendous payoff though is that I nearly always come back a bit refreshed in spirit. In other words, I come back a slightly better husband and dad.  I believe this is the upside of my travels to Christie.

In addition, I am burdened I won’t be with the Grace family to preach Sunday morn. I love them deeply, and they love me and my family deeply. But the upside is that I will come back spiritually, emotionally, and mentally, and ministerially recalibrated.  As a matter of fact, I spent 12 hours on a sermon that I was going to preach next Sunday at Grace.  Yesterday, I tossed the sermon in the digital and hotel room trash bin. The Lord has revealed a whole other direction for me to go Scripturally, not only next Sunday, but for the next 8 weeks. Without this brief time alone would I have known?

Amazing what 3 days alone can do. Yes, I’ll be speaking 4 different times this weekend, but it’s a conference with over a thousand people so no pressure for me to be social. And that means after speaking for 40 minutes, a few hellos, and a couple of conversations, my hotel room, restaurant booth, Bible, journal, and a good book await me like a cozy blanket to the soul. Being a loner has tremendous benefits.  And not only do I reap the benefits, but those closest to me do too.

Chinese Pictograph

As seen above, the Chinese Pictograph for busy = “Heart & “death.”

Christmas is a season of busyness (parties, buying gifts, preparing for guests, cooking feasts). Life in general is busy. Think of how many times you’ve said, or tweeted, or FB’ed, “I’m so busy!” What a picture of what busyness, hurriedness, and drivenness does to us. It wounds, bleeds, kills the heart.

For many of us, busyness and hurriedness is the norm of life. It’s so normal in fact that if you aren’t feeling stressed, or worried, or busy, or hurried, then you feel something is not right in the world. How dare you live in calm and peace? So then you try to find something, or remind yourself of something, to stress about.

I get enslaved to “busy.” The symptom of busy is “hurry.” I feel like I’m always in a hurry. Brush my teeth in a hurry. Kiss my kids in a hurry.  Exercise in a hurry. Drink coffee in a hurry. Pet my chihuahua in a hurry.

According to author Mark Buchanan, there are two greek terms for time. “Chronos” & “Kairos”. Most of us live our lives according to “chronos.” Chronos is where we get our words chronic, chronicle, chronology.  These words imply a forced forward motion. There’s no stopping, no slowing down, no flexibility. 8:00am work is coming. The 3:00pm deadline is coming. The project due before Christmas eve is lurking. The 6:00pm guests are on their way. No stopping it, no slowing down it down to give you more time, and it basically controls you. We’re at “chronos’” mercy. “Chronos” speaks to our wrist-watches and calendars.

“Chronos” was actually a deity/god worshipped by the greeks. It was a vicious god. A cannibal that devoured its own children. Always devouring, never satisfied.

“Kairos” on the other hand was a word that was associated with Jesus. It was time viewed as a gift, pregnant w/ opportunity and purpose.

Mark 1:14-15: Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time [Kairos] is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe the gospel.”

You can’t do anything about the forward march of time. But by God’s grace, and through learning of Rabbi/Lord Jesus,  you can “redeem the time.” You can live in the present, fully awake, attentive, noticing the “gifts” (from a baby’s giggle to the fall of a snowflake) around you, watching for opportunities to bless someone, trusting God with interruptions (that He’s sovereign over them) and believing God has a purpose in them.

10. There’s no sneeze guard for kids… who do most of the sneezing.

9. Her hair will smell like pork chops for a month.

8. Her man forgets she’s even there.

7. The lady that needs a table by herself and two chairs to sit in. Enough said.

6. It’s only $6.99.

5. Her man’s relentless, yet pointless, persistence to get her to admit the food is good.

4.  The strong potential that she’s validating their dinner and all future dinners at the buffet as a “date night.”

3.  For 2 hours her man only communicates with grunts and eye movements.

2.  It gives her husband more opportunities to flap the covers.

1.  Seen leaving the restaurant is basically her announcing to the world:  “Hey! I just ate four pounds of food!”

10. For $6.99 we can eat until we pass out.

9.  We can brag about how much we ate without throwing up.

8.  We can brag about how much we threw up after we ate.

7.  It’s the only acceptable place where a dude can grunt while he eats.

6.  It’s a cheap date.

5. There’s no parsley decor.

4. We can jump in front of elderly people and nobody will care.

3. Even if the floor and the table are sticky, hey, it’s only $6.99

2. We can justify not giving the waiter/waitress a tip.

1. Meat, meat, and more meat!

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# 10, #4, #3 —- Warren Wright

#1—-Chris Callahan