We all have a story.  Like a great novel, our life stories include a storyline, some interesting characters and perhaps some epic dreams.  The story of our lives unfolds within a lot of different contexts, such as family, friends, work, recreation and community, but there’s a thread that weaves it’s way through all the seasons of our lives.  The thread that follows us through life could be described as a healthy tension within our souls.  This healthy tension is wedged between a pressure to conform and a passion to create.  Culture compels us to conform but our hearts stir us to dream big and create.  Conformity is not all bad.  It’s not like we can’t just wake up every day and swing for the fence.  There’s simply a balance to maintain between the wonder and passion of childhood and the wisdom and experience of adulthood.

I think we often lean way to far towards conformity, out of fearful insecurity, rather than embracing the wonder and passion of a redeemed life.  It could be said that our response to, or management of, this healthy tension between conformity and creativity ultimately crafts our stories.  It could also be said that our responses to this healthy tension are shaped by our values, our dreams and a desire to learn more about ourselves.  The learning piece is crucial to writing a better story.  As life unfolds, we bump into defining moments that call upon the life lessons of past mistakes.  These defining moments also call for courage and a sense of purpose.  The plot thickens when we learn, adapt and move forward with purpose.

In late 2008, my family began the journey of planting a church in a community where we didn’t know very many people.  One other family signed up for this journey with us.  When Longleaf Church gathered for the first time in the early part of 2009, about 15 people showed up ready to embrace our mission and vision.  At this first meeting, I laid out some aggressive pre-launch goals and a journey that was going to take faith, sacrifice and perseverance.  No one backed down.  So, my story intersected with the stories of other people in a profound and providential way.  Over the course of 2009 and the first half of 2010, a few people with a shared vision became a fast growing community people planting a revolutionary church together.  We have learned fast and worked hard together.

We have a shared story of purpose.  We reached our aggressive pre-launch goals and Chapter Two of the Longleaf Church story will start unfolding on 9.12.10 when we launch our church.  We have some big goals for the last quarter of 2010. Central to all of our other goals, is the goal to double the number of people serving strategically at Longleaf Church from about 50 to 100 by year-end.  We want to perpetuate our living a better story better story momentum by asking people to share their stories and inspire others.  The narrative of Longleaf Church has been a great ride so far.  I can’t wait for Chapter Two to begin.  The healthy tension is still with me, but I’m ready to swing for the fence.

Life is like traveling by canoe across a great big lake and all we have is a paddle.  So, we paddle forward. We aren’t exactly sure where we’re headed sometimes, but we just keep paddling.  As we paddle forward, we often forget to look up at the horizon and our direction shifts.  Sometimes we just stop paddling altogether because we’re lost or we just want to pause and contemplate our bearings.  It can be windy on the lake, and there are the undercurrents to consider.  Worse, we could find ourselves offshore when a thunderstorm rolls in.  Canoes don’t have sails so paddling is our only recourse against the elements and the current.  Imagine a guide sitting in our canoe with us.  This guide doesn’t paddle for us, but they have a GPS and an iPhone 4.  Imagine if our guide always considers the horizon and the elements.  Imagine if our guide is purely motivated to help us paddle forward in the best direction.  That’s someone we should listen to.

The concept of coaching people was once singularly equated with athletic pursuits. In the 1990′s coaching emerged as an independent discipline with multiple contexts such as life coaching, career coaching and leadership coaching. It just makes sense. Coaching is about listening effectively, empathizing and helping a person create clear next steps in life. Coaching is empowered by asking great questions, but great coaching begins by becoming a trusted advocate in the life of another person. Coaching IS NOT coercion or an explicit means to an end. When a person that’s compelled by a genuine spirit invests time and energy into the life of another person that’s compelled by a humble spirit, serious personal growth can happen.

The opportunities in life to coach people represent some of the biggest opportunities we’ll encounter to make a difference in this world.  In turn, realizing our own potential includes empowering the right people to coach us.  Unfortunately, it very often takes retrospect for us to see this. When we look backwards on the seasons of our lives, our accomplishments seem faded.  It’s relationships that can change us and sustain us.  Each time we positively influence someone’s life through coaching, the impact multiples exponentially through that person’s life. While coaching is now a widely recognized profession, it’s also something that has long happened organically between peers and within small groups.  It’s quite biblical.  I often refer to peer-to-peer coaching relationships as Hebrews 10:24 Relationships.

As for leaders, coaching people will define our future. Leading well means coaching well so leaders should embrace it with passion and strategy.  I have recently identified and placed 7 young @longleafchurch leaders into a Leadership Development Program.  As a part of their program, I designed a Leadership Coaching component.  This process has prompted me to consider what the basic elements of a successful coaching relationship are.  Here are some points to consider that can empower a great coaching relationship:

• Coaching Competencies – Coaches don’t necessarily need an in depth understanding of their coachee’s professional or volunteer roles, but they do need at least a basic understanding.  The core competencies of an effective coach should include; listening skills, goal-orientation, trustworthiness, analytical thinking and at least for my context, biblical literacy.
• Relationship Dynamics - To be effective, a coach must have a genuine spirit.  To grow, a coachee must have a humble spirit.  The coaching concept is more akin to being a guide than a mentor.  Coaches don’t tell, they ask great questions. The key is mutual trust.
• Clear Goals – At the outset, the coaching relationship should begin with goals for the coachee.  I suggest 1-3 goals. Chances are, these goals will get refined during the coaching relationship.  The overarching goals are personal growth for BOTH parties AND the refinement of personal goals and weekly productivity systems for the coachee.

Have you been on either side of a coaching relationship such as this?  How did it impact your life?

Life-balance begins with values, but values aren’t real unless they dictate how we spend our time. Values aren’t an image we want to project, they’re simply a reflection of how we spend our time and our resources.  For parents, this is a profound reality.  Children grow up super fast and the cumulative effects of “family time” will last a lifetime. There’s an unlimited amount of worthwhile activities or pursuits that can claim our time as individuals and as families. The ebb and flow of culture causes us to drift to a place where we’ve lost control of our time and we just respond to life. This is not something that we can solve overnight, but many times actions that may seem drastic are called for sooner rather than later.  Childhood is fleeting, so the time to filter life through our value system and claim our calendars is today.

The realization of “family values” derived from biblical truth empowers families, and sometimes it creates some interesting new possibilities.  Anyone who knows Brian and Julie Jarrard would tell you that they are pretty amazing parents.  Their 5 daughters, that’s right 5, are beautiful, unique and well-adjusted kids.  Brian and Julie are not only blessed with an 8 year-old daughter and a 6 year-old daughter, they have triplet daughters who will turn 3 years old this July.

“The fact that we are currently raising 5 girls in today’s world can sometimes be an overwhelming task. We found ourselves in competition with so many other things out there. We are the ones responsible for their growth and spiritual development so we have to be fully aware of what influences their lives”, Julie said.

The Jarrard’s are proactive about family-time and intentional parenting but they’ve still wrestled with tension to maintain their first-things-first approach.

“One of the things we’ve done to put family time first is saying no to a lot of ‘opportunities’ that are otherwise good and positive but would distract us from each other”, Julie said.

The Jarrard’s made another decision along these lines that might seem radical to some of us. Beginning this fall, Julie will Home School all 5 of their daughters in-part to simplify family life at home. That’s a big family decision, but even bigger things are looming for the Jarrard Family.  A process of renewing our values certainly reorders our lives but it can also create opportunities for growth. In the case of the Jarrard family, this is quite literally what has developed.

Julie explains, “throughout a process of refocusing and refining our schedules and our daily lives, God has revealed even more to us about what He really want us to do as a family.  Removing the clutter from our lives has also been about making room for another child or children.  We have begun the process to adopt a child from Ethiopia.”

Wow.  That’s a profound revelation for a family with 5 daughters. Julie described the origins of their ongoing adoption journey by asking some great rhetorical questions:

“Do we want more toys to fill up space or do we want to make room for a baby brother? Do we want to go out to eat or can we cook something we have at home and put the money we would have used in our adoption fund? Do we pray for ourselves to get the things we want or do we pray for those children in the world who don’t have their basic needs met?  We have been amazed at how this journey has affected our girls thus far. The girls recognize that we’ll all need  to make sacrifices for their baby brother to get home. We now hear them pray before meals for children in Ethiopia and Haiti. At the same time, this is a process for all of us, and none of us are there yet. However, we can feel God shaping us into the family He wants us to be.”

That’s inspiring! You can follow the adoption journey of the Jarrard family on their new blog, Eyes on Ethiopia.

My family is coming off of a refreshing vacation to the beach and Walt Disney World!  Summer is definitely the season for vacations.  Families break from their routines to spend quality time together and focus on having fun.  Vacations really are important for kids.  They need time with parents to just have fun and forget about the pressures and responsibilities of life.  Perhaps more importantly, kids need intentional time with their parents that’s not distracted by the responsibilities and pressures from within the lives of their parents.

As I should be more often, I was so engaged with the kids while on vacation.  I was focused on their words, their expressions and their interactions with the world around them.  I took a lot of pictures while I was doing that.  One of my favorite moments was when John Harmon told Amy that he didn’t need a shower because “I rode Splash Mountain today and I got soaked!”.  Here are some of my favorite pictures from our vacation, in no particular order, starting with the shot above of Emily standing in front of the T-Rex Restaurant in Downtown Disney.

Harmon giving it 110% to get the sword out of the stone…

Playing in the sand….

In front of the Intracoastal Waterway in St Augustine…

Downtown Disney…

Surfer Kids…

Just after we rode Space Mountain at Disney…

Goofy’s Barnstormer…

Skim Boarding…

Em perusing the Disney Pins at Downtown Disney…

The girls love Disney Pins…

AJ on the Intracoastal…

Em getting ready to hit the waves…

Splash!

Cinderella’s Castle…

Sunset…

I hope you’re able to take time this summer to vacate your routine and pause to celebrate the gift of family.