Spinal Tap is one of the greatest movies of all time. You probably haven’t heard of Anvil unless you are a metal connoisseur.
There’s a documentary coming out about Anvil, here’s the trailer:
It’s easy to take notes and learn from the monster success stories, but you can also learn a lot from the failures of others.
She’s my wife. I’m insanely in love with her. Today marks 9 years since we were married.
She always has wise words right when I need them
She tells me what I don’t want to hear, right when I need to hear it
She is always game for whatever ministry adventure God takes us on, and there have been a lot of them
Oh, she’s hot too
Tom has been one of my best friends over the last 12 years and He is creative on a level that I don’t even understand. Tom’s a finalist for some hair care video spot thing. I think if he wins he gets shampoo for life or something life changing. I’d tell you to go here and vote for Tom, but after watching the other videos its really the only choice.
We had one of those airplane days where the domino effect of a couple late planes eventually starts to get the whole system behind. Before you not there are mobs of people that have this energy of discontent that you can cut with a knife. It’s in the air and you can taste it.
We spend a lot of time talking about strategies and formulas for accomplishing this thing and that, but at the end of the day, someone has to be able to read the energy that is happening. The problem is that for the most part this energy is not something that can be measured with instruments or counted on a spreadsheet.
At some point we must rely on something that is not quite tangible.
Sometimes its the Holy Spirit that we must rely on. Sometimes its a person that we must rely on.
Both can be difficult to trust for people not accustomed to exercising faith.
I wish I could pinpont it.
How do we engage experts in a volunteer setting? That is to say, how do we get the best people for the job in the right place?
For the most part, we tend to to put presence as the highest virtue that a volunteer can have, skills and gifts come second. Most leaders are scrambling between one project and the next and we usually rest at ‘good enough‘ out of pure survival rather than strategy.
I’m starting to see that this tactic, or lack thereof, while not bad or evil in any way, tends to alienate potential experts.
Here are some of my thoughts:
These characteristics usually mean more work for the leader. You may have to shape your work flow around the expert. You may need to find more people to help fill in the peripheral gaps around the expert. You my have to trust someone who knows more than you, that’s often the hardest pill to swallow. You will probably have to let the expert in on vision shaping. You will have to learn to love someone who has quirks and eccentricities.
