A Focus On The Future

Each December, I try to take time away to pray and plan for the coming year. But this year I received no clue about 2016. Sure, there was the normal stuff - losing weight, getting more exercise, and spending more time with family and friends – but I was getting no vision or goals for the coming year. 

Then, on New Year’s Day it hit me.

Your purpose in life - and mine - is to be used by our Creator to do His will here on earth. He will use our past experiences as preparation for our divine role. [Everybody has a divine role.] My dilemma this year was choosing between two or three opportunities.

So I began to look back on my life for a clue of what God prepared me for. The first half was spent in a purely secular environment, striving to climb the corporate ladder, and manipulating people and situations to my own advantage. While deemed successful in the eyes of the world, something in my life was missing. It was then that the Lord came into my life through the efforts of my wife Rita and a loving church family on Mississippi’s gulf coast. As my devotion to God increased, my business success also increased and we moved to San Diego and built a successful international consulting business. At the top of the business mountain, the Lord called me to make a decision. I could continue in my present life dividing time between business and ministry, or enter fully into His service. We chose the latter.

A number of divine encounters caused us to move to the Seattle area and accept a part time secular position - to pay bills - while entering the ministry. Soon I entered seminary and held three unpaid ministry positions. As a regional director for a renewal ministry, we consulted with churches and their leaders. As part of an evangelistic ministry, we helped lead conferences in around the country. All the while we continued to minister in a local church. One day while driving to work, I felt the Lord ask me if I was enjoying all of this. My answer to Him was a resounding, “Yes!” My heart fell when He told me I had to choose one and get rid of the others. I 

responded, “Okay, but can I wait for a while?” Soon we let go of the secular position, the regional director position and began to plant and lead churches where we could minister to all of God’s people.

As the year 2016 begins, the Lord told me again that I have been too scattered and trying to do too many different things all at once. But this time, He did not give me a choice. My role has been to encourage and equip the church and its leaders to become all that God created them to be. God prepared me for this throughout my entire life. In the first half, He taught me to plan, motivate, and lead people to accomplish a common purpose. In the second half, He showed me the difficulties that ministry leaders face and has given me the tools and the heart to encourage and equip God's people and their leaders. Therefore, that is to be our focus for the foreseeable future, and the it is the specific focus for 2016.

This is not a change in direction, but a refocus on our true purpose. Our websites, blog, and five books, all are focused on equipping God's people, ministers, and leaders to be the best they can be. While these resources are also useful to leaders of secular organizations, our focus will continue to be on those who minister in the name of God. 

In 2016, we plan to develop additional resources to better use social media to reach out to our target audience and provide the resources they need in a form that will best suit their busy schedules.

Please provide any comments or suggestions you might have for us at this time.

 Bill Johnson

Psalm 71:17-18

If anyone is confused about their God-given purpose, please read our book "Destiny."

Do You See the People?

Jim was a veteran of World War II -a member of the "Greatest Generation." He was a colleague and a personal friend.  As a B-24 bombardier, Jim flew many bombing missions over Germany. We were having lunch at a Mexican restaurant one day when I asked "the" question, "What were you feeling and what was it like to be the one dropping bombs on people below that could be wounded or killed?" 

His reply was very telling and has wide implications, “When I looked through the bombsight, from altitude, I never saw people, I only saw buildings and weapons factories.”

I never saw people!

Jim’s answer provides an interesting insight not only about war, but also about our business and personal lives. War is hell and there will always be innocent lives lost and threatened. But there is another concern that hits much closer to home. 

Leaders are often gifted with the ability to focus on long-range issues. In focusing on the goal/vision/purpose, there is a tendency to lose sight of immediate surroundings. Looking to the future, leaders can fall into the trap of never seeing the people. 

In this TGIF world (Twitter, Google, I-Phone, & Facebook) there is so much technology at our disposal that we have a tendency to rely on these modern forms of communication without interacting with real, live people.  We need to have face to face meetings between people, without phones, texts, or Skype. The most effective communication is still one on one. Studies have shown that what we say is not half as important as how we say it. A text can be misinterpreted. People interpret our communications in three different ways; 

• 55% of what they hear is based on facial expression & body language, 
• 37% percent is based upon the tone of our voice, 
• and only 8% on the words that we say.

In the church, we tend to sit in our comfortable pew and send money for someone else to go into the poor neighborhoods of our cities, go overseas to minister in the developing countries, or to just share our faith with our next door neighbor. We will never receive the blessing of touching lives until we serve others face to face. That is a life changing event, not for those touched, but for those who touch.So often we think we are doing our duty by sending a donation to the Salvation Army, overseas missionaries, or disaster relief. But without interacting directly with people, we are never doing enough. Something of our message is lost without our presence. It is the difference between being and doing. You can do good stuff, but being good is more effective. 

In the business world, it is easier to sit in a padded chair behind our plush desk than it is to go out among the employees, customers, and the community. The view from the office is a distorted image of the needs of the organization. There has to be a time to get away from all the hustle and bustle and to think and plan, but it is just as important to see the people and listen to what they are saying and become known to them.

When taking an automobile trip with my wife, Rita, I usually do all of the driving. Her driving makes me very nervous while its relaxing for me to drive. It has taken years to understand why this is so. It is not about being in control. There are others, worse drivers than Rita, with whom I am not nervous. We finally figured it out. Rita is a detail oriented person with shorter range vision. I, on the other hand, am a long range viewer. She sees everything around her but does not see the things I see - way ahead down the road. While I am focusing on the road ahead, I often ignore, or do not always see, the things that are close up on either side. 

I never want to get to the point where I do not see people!

What Happened to The Dream

(Excerpt from "Disorganize or Bust") 

When a baby is born, the family gathers around and are struck with the wonder of what the child will accomplish. It is a time of joy, looking to the future and dreaming big dreams. There is the potential for greatness. Parents also feel the burden of responsibility to provide the child everything needed to reach its full potential. As the child grows into adulthood, there will be many trials passing through different age levels – the terrible twos, teenage years, and leaving the nest. Later in life choices are made, good and bad.

So also is an organization. There is the vision of what the organization can become. There will be a significant purpose that motivates the organizers to expend their lives for the good of the purpose. The future trials are subjugated by the sheer power of the vision. The rewards are seen as greater than the risks. The family, employees, or members of the organization can see the significance of what they are all about.

Then trials begin to show up and the vision of the future is dimmed in light of immediate circumstances. The exciting adventure has become a drudgery. This can happen even in the best of situations. Somewhere along the way the organization itself has changed. Instead of fulfilling the vision for which it was created, it now has become a consumer of valuable resources. Like a spoiled child, the organization demands everyone’s attention and the vision is subjugated to the demands of the organization. The organization which was started to fulfill a need has become the entity in need. Resources intended to serve the greater purpose are now consumed to maintain the organization.

The organization has become institutionalized. It acts like Audry Jr., the crossbreed of a Butterwort and a Venus Fly Trap in the movie Little Shop of Horrors. Little Shop of Horrors is a 1986 American rock musical horror comedy film directed by Frank Oz. It is a film adaptation of the off-Broadway musical comedy of the same name by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman about a nerdy florist shop worker who raises a vicious, raunchy plant that feeds on human blood. As the plant keeps growing, it became more demanding, and commands its owner, “Feed me Seymour!”

Organizations can grow into bureaucracies and become more demanding, consuming more and more time and resources, just to continue to exist. The leaders, employees, or members become so consumed with keeping the organization fed that they forget the original purpose. 

Imagine the “Borg Collective.” The Borg are a fictional alien race that appears as recurring antagonists in the Star Trek franchise. Aside from being the main threat in First Contact, the Borg play major roles in The Next Generation and Voyager television series, primarily as an invasion threat to the United Federation of Planets, and serve as the way home to the Alpha Quadrant for isolated Federation starship Voyager. from the Star Trek television series.

The Borg was an alien race that was a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones in a hive mind called the Collective, or the hive. The fictional Borg, whose ultimate goal is "achieving perfection," resembles a large organization trying to achieve ultimate institutionalization.

Any organization, large or small, can fall into the trap of losing sight of the original significant purpose for which it was created. Governments, major corporations, labor unions, service organizations, religious entities and individuals all are vulnerable to losing the vision. 

The obvious examples of this bureaucratic process are government agencies. But, we see it in the banking industry where a bank becomes “too large to fail.” Some corporations have grown out of control through merger and acquisition in an attempt to control an industry. Labor unions which came into life to protect the workers have become institutions which have lost sight of their original purpose and exploit workers as the industrial barons once did. Education systems have become large bureaucracies which must be maintained while the education of students continues to fail. In the old one room country school, the expenditures for education were spent mostly in the classroom. Now the majority of funds are spent on maintaining a hierarchal bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of some charitable organizations has grown to the point where only a small fraction (as little as five percent in some well-known cases) of their income is actually spent helping people while the majority of income feeds the organizational beast. Our religious institutions are not immune to this structural obesity. Many local churches spend the majority of their budgets on maintaining facilities and infrastructure. As a result little is left to feed the poor and minister to those in need.

While this situation is pandemic throughout the world, there are solutions that can renew these organizations. Renewal infers that there was a significant vision which has been lost but can still be realized, but it will require taking drastic steps. The alternative is to continue on the path of growing budgets while providing less and less significant work.

John 15:2 (NIV) He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

What do you believe about Heaven and Hell

New movies are hitting the big screen about heaven, hell and the existence of God. It appears that God is suddenly "IN".

But what do you believe? 

What happened to me one evening changed me forever.  

It makes a difference what you believe about heaven and hell. Are they real places? Is there a place of eternal bliss and a place of eternal torment? Would a loving God send allow anyone to live in hell for eternity? Obviously there are a number of serious, Christians who differ on these issues. What you believe will affect the way you live out you faith. Nihilists and Universalists do not have a burden, but if you believe there is a real heaven and a hell, you have a big responsibility. My belief was radically confirmed.

We were a small group, no more than eight people crowded into our living room seeking the Lord. Rita and I had moved two thousand miles from the Pacific Northwest to Ridgeland, Mississippi, to plant a new church. We had gathered a few people, mostly single young adults and had begun meeting in our home on Wednesday evenings. Each meeting began with a time of intimate worship. One particular evening something very strange and unexpected occurred. As usual we started with a time of worship. 

The worship mood had just transitioned from praise, to a more subdued and holy worship. Suddenly the mood was broken by a loud commotion outside in the street. Ignoring the disturbance for me was impossible. As the noises got louder, I leaned over to the window to look out. Pushing the curtain back a couple of inches, I stared out into the evening dusk, seeing only the quiet peaceful street and a lone squirrel climbing the oak in our front yard.  

"Maybe someone drove by with their car radio blaring, I thought. As I returned back to worship, the noise started all over again.  This time it was louder and more intense. I could make out voices of people screaming and cursing. It was as if there was a brawl right in our front yard. Again I turned and pushed the curtains back. Again there was no one there and nothing amiss. No one in the room was noticed what I was hearing. They were all continuing in their worship, oblivious to the ruckus. It was then I felt that the Lord was trying to get my attention. Believe me, it worked. 

“Okay, Lord, what are you trying to show me?” Swiftly I was taken, in the spirit, to the top of a mountain overlooking a wide, barren valley. That picture still puts chills in my heart. Across the valley were thousands of people marching up a shallow mountain to its crater. The ancient volcano, had come back to life. Smoke and flames were belching into the air from the hot lava, yet the people kept climbing the hill toward disaster. As they reached the top they realized that they were going to fall into the fiery lake. They could not stop because the others coming up the hill behind them were pushing them forward into the fire. Then the Spirit took me in for close look. He spoke again, “These people are perishing. You must warn them.”

This incident was so real and so upsetting that I could not talk about it for several weeks, and whenever I did all I could do was weep. We abandoned the teaching element of the meeting and spend the rest of the evening praying for one another other. This happened twenty years ago but it is as real to me today as it was then. I believe!

I have never been a "fire and brimstone" preacher, but I feel a heavy responsibility to warn the people, like the "watchman on the wall." If you truly believe that there is a place of eternal torment, and you care about other people, it is also your responsibility to warn them.

Ezekial 33:1-6

Bill Johnson

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