Day 158 - here's the truth.

Day 158 and its been hard to blog the last few days. Sorry folks.

Partly a lack of inspiration ...always happens in June as you begin to run out of steam.
Really looking forward to my summer reading and getting refreshed.

Partly, way to busy for June as well.
Been traveling with some staff to do training for a church in Tacoma, WA (one day was 68F and blue skies, next day was 54F and lashing rain!).
Today, I'm just back from Tujunga, CA and training with another church.

Both these churches are getting ready for their first Alpha launch after the summer ....and we are praying with them for many people to come to faith in Christ.

As I sit here blogging, I'm searching for some inspirational thought.
There's one line that today I shared with a Senior Pastor that just resonated with everyone around the table. It's Jack Welch's (former GE boss) leadership and management mantra: "Truth is the kindest form of management."

Why do we often think softening the truth is kinder?

There is something about the 'truth' that is greater than we imagine.
There is something about living in truth, operating in truth that does something more than we think.
This is not just at the leadership level, its also at our personal level.
Can you imagine if tomorrow you operated always from the truth position.
Truthful with others, truthful to others.

I spoke last week to a friend of mine Keith Getty (modern hymn writer and sad Liverpool fan). We spoke about Dr Tim Keller and his approach to ministry, especially worship in New York city. Surrounded by world class art and artists Keller knows that his worship team and his oration on Sunday mornings cannot compete with the class acts people have enjoyed on Saturday nights in New York ....so he doesn't try and compete with mediocre music or drama or speaking; rather, he gives them Jesus.

To the couple who's marriage is falling apart; to the guy racked with guilt; to the lonely women, the drained mother, the estranged father .....mediocre music in church does nothing for them. The one thing the church can give them is Jesus. Jesus is the answer to failing marriages, guilt, loneliness, weariness, pain, disappointment.
Jesus is the truth.

The truth is - the church should stop trying to compete with what the world does very well, and give the world what it hasn't got .....the truth....Jesus.