Where is Your Attention?

Do you have the ability to focus your mind on what you want, when you want?

It is often said that our most precious commodity is time. I disagree. Because the experience of time is relative, I do not find it an adequate measurement tool. Rather, I propose that our most precious commodity is our attention. We only have so much attention to give at any given moment, and so our question becomes, to whom and to what should I devote it?

Unfortunately, for most people including myself, the ability to control one’s own attention is severely underdeveloped. As a result, I frequently find that my mind races off, following various thoughts as they arise. Perhaps you may identify with the following experience – I was reading the other day and came to the end of a page only to realize that I had no idea of I had just read because I was not paying attention (and so, frustratingly, has to re-read the entire page). What a strange experience!

If you can recall such a time you’ll realise - you were reading, but your attention was decidedly absent. Where did it go? If you were not controlling your own attention, do you know who or what was? This is something worth contemplating. The undisciplined mind is a noisy and busy mind. Sometimes we can see evidence of this mind in outward behaviour such as quick speech, the inability to sit still, or the constant need to rush from one thing to another. The most common incarnation of this type in organizations today is the person who has to respond to every ping from their Blackberry (not unlike Pavlov's dogs). However, just as often, the only evidence of an undisciplined mind is the feeling that another person is not really listening to us. Perhaps you have noticed this in others - they appear to be paying attention, but you don't get the sense that they really are. Or, perhaps you have noticed how your own mind wanders when in conversation with others.

Left untrained, our minds will often repeat the same collection of thoughts over and over again, sometimes for years. When we have not practiced mental discipline to tame what has been referred to as our "wild horse mind," we find ourselves in a state of constant distraction, unable to be fully present to any situation - regardless of where we find ourselves. For example, we may be on vacation, but if our attention is back at work, then time away from the office has not been sufficient to provide that much needed holiday. Without applying mental discipline to direct our own attention, our mind is consumed with thoughts, making it difficult, if not impossible, to notice what is actually happening - in a conversation, in a meeting, or during a presentation or important negotiation. The cost of this lack of attention can never be fully known; however, I believe it is greater than we can possibly imagine.

Try This:
For one week, pay attention to the thoughts you think most often. Notice all the things you say to yourself about what is happening and what it means to you. Simply bring awareness to where you currently invest your most precious commodity - your attention. At the end of the week, answer the following questions:
- What are the thoughts I think most often?
- Which thoughts are useful to myself and others?
- Which ones are not?
- How can I more effectively focus my attention next week?

Why The CEO-Leader Model Doesn't Serve The Purpose Of Going Missional

In an interview with Pastor/Professor David Fitch with the editors of The Leadership Journal here are a few of his perspectives on leadership in the Life on the Vine, in Long Grove Illinois, a chruch seeking a more missional posture.

"At Life on the Vine, we recently added a fourth pastor. Some people
told me a model with multiple visible leaders would never work—there
would be no single face to attach to the vision of the church and the
church would never grow. Balderdash (is that a word?). The church
continues to grow. There are signs of healing, new mission, and new
souls finding God."

1. It doesn't make sense to build a church around a personality
People start coming to hear that one guy (most often it's a guy), and
as the crowds get bigger this pastor becomes distanced from the
congregation at which point he loses the ability to speak into the
people's lives that he knows.

2. There are no supermen or superwomen
With mutliple pastors the whole ministry of the chruch is fed from their may gifts, and all are invited to participate in the empowerment of the gifts as modeled by the many faceted leadership. No single pastor has the gifts required to bring this about.

3. Isolated pastors can get tunnel vision
Multiple pastors in submission to one to another can work against this.

4. Pastors benefit from being bi-vocational/bi-ministrerial (since bing the secular workplace is ministry)
Pastors who have jobs outside the chruch can get to know non-Christains and spend time in non-Christain settings.

5. It models the diversity and interrelatedness of the Body
The notion of a senior pastor puts up a false impression that one
person is especially qualified and elevated to ministry. But with
multiple pastors, he/she does not stand alone. The whole body is called
to minister the gospel inside and outside the church as a way of life.

6. It protects pastors from the temptations which lead to moral failure and/or disappointment.
Multiple leaders in mutual submission to each other in Christ, there
can be no temptation to put any of the pastors on a false pedestal as
an image of the perfect Christian.

7. It is hard for pastors to be servants when they are put on a pedestal.
All pastors should have to clean toilets, serve the poor, and vacuum floors after potlucks. We should see ourselves in submission to the Body of Christ, not over it. (Mark 10:42-45). This "amongness" is not always possible as a senior pastor.

8. Because the senior pastor position is an impossible position to live up to.
Therefore, by accepting this role we are setting ourselves up (and the church) for inevitable failure.


While Pastor David Finch agrees that in some contexts and ways of bing the Body of Christ, the senior pastor position may still have validity - it doesn't work at 'Life on the Vine' whilst they seek to be missional.

Unlearn Your Fears

Winston Churchill once said, “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend.” The systematic development of the deep down quality of unflinching courage is one of the fundamental requirements for leadership in any field. Fear, or the lack of courage is more responsible for failure in management, and in life, than any other factor. It is always fear that causes people to hold back, to sell themselves short, to settle for far less than they are capable of!

Eliminate Fear and Doubt
I firmly believe that you can do, have or be far more than you now know if only you could eliminate the fear, doubts and misgivings that consciously and unconsciously interfere with your realizing your full potential.

Unlearn Your Fears
If there is anything positive about fear, it is that all fears are learned, that no one is born with fears, and that having been learned, they can be unlearned. If you want to understand the role of fear in shaping the course of your life, just ask yourself, if you had a magic wand that would absolutely guarantee you success in any one thing you attempted, what goal would you set for yourself.

The Question
“What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?” If you had no fears at all with regard to money or the criticism of others, what would you do differently? Most people can think of all kinds of changes they would, or could, make in their lives if they had no fears to hold them back.

The Origins of Fear
The development of courage begins with understanding the psychological origins of fear. The newborn child has only two fears; the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears that we experience as adults are learned as we are growing up, primarily as the result of well-meaning but destructive criticism from our parents.

How Fears Develop
When the curious child gets into things and makes a mess, the parent scolds and punishes the child, eventually building up a pattern of fear connected with trying or getting into anything new or different. As adults, we experience this as the fear of failure, the fear of risking, of making a mistake, of losing.

Action Exercises
Here are two steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

1. Imagine that you had no fears at all. What would you set as a goal for yourself if you were guaranteed of success?

2. Decide exactly what you want and then act as if it were impossible to fail. You may be surprised at how successful you are.

Manager or Leader Which Are You?

There’s a difference between being a boss and a leader. Which one are you?

Webster’s definitions of a boss include: A person who exercises control over others and makes decisions, usually the person of highest rank or authority, a supervisor, a person who commands in a domineering manner.

In contrast the definitions for a leader include: A person who rules, guides, inspires, escorts, directs, influences, persuades, and is out and ahead of or at the head of others. They have influence, power, and commanding authority over those they lead. They tend toward a certain goal or result, are in the foremost position, and usually “pull” people toward what becomes a common vision. People usually follow a leader because they want to rather than have to.

Influential leaders, who lead with great ethics, whether they are Prime Ministers, Kings, corporate CEOs, Girl Guide or Scout leaders, bare some traits in common. They are passionate about what they do and what they believe in; they are visionaries, can see the “big picture”, and are driven inside to draw people into what they believe – to jump on the train with them.

A manager in a restaurant sees tables and chairs that need to be filled, customers that need to be fed, employees that need to be scheduled, doors that need fixed, floors that need to be cleaned, the end of the day/week accounting that needs to be done and marketing that needs to be planned. They work toward these ends, seeing them to fulfillment, sometimes in very creative ways.

A leader in a restaurant sees those things too, but he or she also feels excitement about being in business, or about making profit from people’s need for food and associate atmosphere and how that profit can be poured back into the restaurant to give it a competitive edge over other restaurants. They care about, and inspire, their staff, realizing that they are the front line ambassadors of the restaurant. They not only see where the restaurant is at now, but they also envision what it will look like or how it will impact their community ten years from now. Whether they actually own the restaurant or not, they make the restaurant their own.

With good leaders, people usually feel drawn, or “pulled”, into the same vision. Have you ever gone into a restaurant and been treated so well by the staff there that you just knew that you would return again? Not only did you just receive knock your socks off customer service, but you also met employees empowered by the vision of a true leader.

A leader usually develops and motivates leaders under them. People who get “fired-up” and captivated by the vision and rise to the occasion.

For leaders, leadership is a way of life. If there's leadership spontaneously required at a gathering, leaders will step up to bat, even if it's just to open a door as people arrive.

Can a manager be a leader? Definitely.