Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Tornado Relief Info - part 2


All donations are TAX DEDUCTIBLE through Oklahoma City Bible Methodist Church

Every dollar will go to tornado relief projects.  We will be serving 300-500 meals per day for the next 3-4 weeks.  This will include equipment and supplies for volunteer relief.  Teams will be doing cleanup for months to come.  Supplies are needed for homeless victims.

Relief Regional Coordinators: If you are wanting to join a group that will come to work, these are the contacts for your area.  They will be coordinating groups to come out, bring supplies, etc.  Please contact them first, instead of me. :-)

Midwest - KS, OK, MO, TX
Darrell Stetler II - 405-974-0507 (mobile) or on Facebook

Heartland - OH, IN, KY
John Parker - 864-380-5718
Jeremy Fish - (317) 714-8865 Cell

Northeast - PA, NY
Dwight Rine - 717-507-3690 –  cell, 570-966-2277  – office

Eastern Seaboard - VA, MD, WV
Troy Keaton - 540-529-0673

Southeast - AL, TN, GA, MS
Doug Eads - 205-799-4169

Florida
Jonathan Heath - 772-678-1337

TLC - Touching Lives for Christ - for more info on this mission group coming out June 10-17, call
Joy Budensiek - 772-214-8966

TO ALL COORDINATORS:  Here is a link to a spreadsheet where you (or the leader of an individual group) can enter the info for your group.  PLEASE DON'T USE THIS IF YOU'RE NOT BRINGING A GROUP.  Be careful not to delete other groups info!

Thanks!

Monday, May 20, 2013

Moore / OKC Tornado Relief Conference Call

Tornado Relief Conference call

Many people are wondering how they can help.  The next few weeks will be challenging and expensive. 

For info:
Conference call tomorrow with details: 9:00 AM Central / 10:00 AM Eastern
712-432-0031, access code 1119#. Follow the prompts.

We will be focusing on a 4 major efforts: 

1. Prayer and emotional support - our prayer stand will be set up, with a couple of people who will pray with folks, provide care.  
2. Feeding relief workers - we will be grilling hamburgers & chicken, handing out water, etc. 
3. Power station - generators for charging devices, etc. 
4. Clean up and restoration efforts.  Chain saw and bobcat crews, cleanup crews, etc.



How you can help: 

1. Pray. Lots. For our protection, energy, coordination of a complicated project.  
2. Give. You can do so here: https://okcbiblemethodist.cloverdonations.com/tornado/ with debit/credit card securely.  All money received goes to tornado relief efforts.
3. Work. If you want to help with a crew, be on the call.  If you can't, contact me on my facebook (facebook.com/darrellstetler2) or my twitter (twitter.com/darrellstetler2) and I'll be happy to talk with you or set up a 2nd conference call with your team/crew.
4. Materials. If you live close, chainsaws, bobcats, trailers, trucks, gas cans, generators, will all be needed.

Thanks.  We may know more tomorrow after the call.  

Blessings!

Darrell



Friday, April 26, 2013

Notes on T. Mark Miller, Chick-Fil-A Vice President at the Leadership Forum


Really enjoyed T. Mark Miller's session at the Leadership Forum.  You can find him on Twitter here.  I'm such an admirer of Chick-Fil-A's corporate culture, it was a privilege to learn from a guy who helped build it. Check out my notes below.



T. Mark Miller – VP of Organizational Effectiveness, Chick-Fil-A


If you’d like more leaders faster, this is for you.
I was the 16th corporate employee.  Immersion and Osmosis was our process in those days. 

We had leadership opportunities, with no leaders ready.  It’s a bad moment when you’re facing great opportunities, and you look at the bench and it’s empty. 

The lid on your organization is leadership.

Creating a leadership Culture.

Questions you have to ask and answer:

1.      DEFINE IT: Do you have a common definition of leadership?

Unless you’ve forged a consensus , you probably don’t. 
There are over 6,000 published definition of leadership.
IF you don’t, it’s difficult to understand promotion and rewards from department to department. It's difficult to transfer talent across the organization. 
It doesn’t matter if you choose one, or write your own; the important thing is agreement. 
The Secret (co-authored with Ken Blanchard) – great leaders serve.

2.      TRAIN IT: Are your current & future leaders able to deliver on the definition?

We all know that you have to do it before you really get it, but sometimes we forget that there is a knowledge and skill component to leadership, before you ever really learn it by doing it.
You have to train it.  If you want a leadership culture, you have to do leadership training.

3.      PRACTICE IT: Are you providing ample opportunities for emerging leaders to lead?

It’s not best always to give it to the proven leader.  Sometimes you have to give it to the guy who’s currently batting .100 instead of the guy batting .300.  As long as it’s not the World Series. J
What’s the best way to develop leaders?  Stephen Covey: “Give them REAL responsibility.”
Ask often: Is this an opportunity for an emerging leader?

4.      MEASURE IT: How do you measure the success of your leadership culture?

Are we making progress? 
Often, we just commit random acts of training.  We need to develop a scorecard. 

One metric: How many people have we trained?
We do a formal leadership talent review, with associated metrics.  How many people are ready NOW?  How many in 24-36 months? 
Nothing improves without measurement.

5.      MODEL IT: Are your current leaders modeling the desired behaviors?

 People always watch the leader, even when you don’t want them to.
This assessment may be who I am right now, but it’s not a measure of who I am going to become.
You can change the results in the future


QUESTION: Do you find it harder or easier to differentiate yourself in the current “customer service lacking”?
The state of the fast food industry is terrible.  We LOVE that.  It’s not easy to execute, but what an opportunity to differentiate ourselves.  In the past, we wanted to differentiate ourselves on quality.  We still believe in quality, but for this era, we differentiate ourselves with service. 

Leaders are the carriers of the culture.  Leaders get whatever they create or allow.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

John Maxwell Notes from the 2013 Leadership Forum (Ohio Christian Unversity)

Recently, I was privileged to attend the Leadership Forum at Ohio Christian University.

Dr. Mark Smith has been someone who has spoken into my life in several ways in the area of leadership.  At his invitation, I attended the Forum and the Executive session with John MaxwellCal Thomas, Kevin Myers, & T. Mark Miller.

Let me take a chance to say "Thanks" to Dr. Smith for his investment in my life.  It has been an inspiration to me to invest in others, to pass on what I've been given.

The next few posts will be my notes from those sessions.  I was privileged to sit on the front row, right in the middle, so I was in the firing line and typed as fast as I could. :-)


So, you may find some unfinished sentences, hanging thoughts, dangling participles and other faults and foibles in my notes.  Think you'll find some good stuff, though.  Enjoy.  I'll post from each speaker in a different post.

-------------------------


John Maxwell


Topic: “If I could spend a day with you…”

Questions he asks during a learning lunch:

1.     What is the greatest lesson you’ve ever learned?

·         From this question, you get wisdom.

2.     What are you learning right now?

·         From this question, you get passion.  That’s where the energy and joy comes from.
·         College is sometimes boring because profs teach from old notes.
·         When you learn something, teach it immediately.  The greatest teaching comes from something you’re learning now.

3.     How has failure shaped your life?

·         The great value of failure is that it teaches you things that success never will.
·         The only things that teach you are the things that touch you.
·         Some leaders leave the scene of the accident as quickly as they can. Don't. Stay and learn.
Experience is not the best teacher.  Evaluated experience is the best teacher.
·         The older I get, the more I like to talk about my failures.
·         One of the greatest contributions you can make to another person is to share openly about your failures.
·         If you’re highly successful, you create a gap (the success gap) between you and the younger people.  Financial gap, opportunity gap. 
·         Success separates from others.  You don’t intend to create that gap, but it happens any way. 
·         There are two responses to this:
o   There are some people who really like it, and use it to their advantage.  When you use the gap this in this way, you create FANS. 
o   There are some people who want to bridge the success gap.  You can’t CLOSE it, but you can BRIDGE it.  They work hard at being vulnerable, they share the bad side. 
o   When you do this, you create FRIENDS.  There’s a lot of difference between people that walk behind you and people who walk beside you. 
·         As I’ve grown older I’ve gotten very uncomfortable with success. Wish they could see me when I started.
·         The first time you do anything, you’re not any good.
·         If you want to build the bridge, you have to let them see you as you WERE, not as you ARE.  If you like the gap, you want them to only see you as you ARE, not as you WERE.
If you want to impress people, talk about your successes. If you want to impact people, talk about your failures.
If you only talk about successes, you slowly leave the people.  You can’t say goodbye and help people at the same time.

If you’re alone at the top, you’re not a leader, you’re a hiker.  You have no right to go to the top without people.
Walk slowly through the crowd.  Visually close the gap, so that by the time you’re speaking, there’s no gap. There’s just a guy, who is your friend and wants to help you.

4.     Who do you know that I should know?

This is a great networking question.

5.     What have you read that I should read?

98% of the books I read are recommended books from other people.
·         What’s the title?
·         Why should I read it?

6.     What have you done that I should do?

Life experiences

7.     How can I add value to you?

This is how I can express gratitude to them for helping me.  Always express gratitude to those who bless you.
The mentor never pays.
Some people, I owe them so much if I bought every meal for the rest of my life, they
Gratitude is the least expressed of all the virtues.



*At this point, the emcee flagged that he had only 5 minutes left.  John noted that he hadn't intended to spend so much time teaching on the questions that he asks in a learning lunch.  So he changed his topic to: 

What I would say if I could spend 5 minutes with you:  

1.      Get a personal definition of success.

Don’t accept the same definintion of success that other people do.  Define it as God would have you to define it. 
Knowing my purpose and doing it.
Growing to my maximum potential.
Sowing seeds that bring success to others.

God will only give to you what He knows will flow through you.

2.      Select your inner circle carefully.

These people will determine if you reach your potential.
You cannot reach your potential by yourself.  It’s impossible.
You can limit your potential by other people….

3.      In giftedness, work on your strengths.  In your choices, work on your weaknesses. 

Your strengths will give your greatest rewards.  
But in your choices, work on your weak areas. We all have weaknesses.

4.      Improve your thinking, and you’ll improve your life.

The greatest gap between successful people and unsuccessful people is their thinking.  Successful people think almost entirely differently than non-successful people. 

5.      Live your life by embracing the eternal. 

Never lose the focus that this life is brief compared to the next. 
Little sign in my parent’s home: “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past; Only what’s done for Christ will last.”


Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Why is it easier to confess to God than to confess to a brother?


“Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do [find it easier], we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.”  - Bonhoeffer, "Life Together"

Oh. 

My. 

Goodness.

*leaves to mull that over for a month*

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Luther and Bonhoeffer on Living Among Enemies

“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).” 
― Dietrich BonhoefferLife Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community

This quote is rocking my world.  God help me.  Us.

Monday, March 11, 2013

CS Lewis - Surprised by Joy

“But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word INTERFERENCE. But Christianity placed at the centre what then seemed to me a transcendental Interferer. If its picture were true then no sort of 'treaty with reality' could ever be possible. There was no region even in the innermost depth of one's soul (nay, there least of all) which one could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a notice No Admittance. And that was what I wanted; some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, 'This is my business and mine only.” 
― C.S. LewisSurprised by Joy