Working hard and working with excellence are aspirations that cross barriers between faithful Christ followers and those outside of a relationship with Him. Work is honored, respected, and often gives people a sense of dignity or pride in their life – and not just in...
We just bought my in-law’s house. It was something we always whimsically bantered about in passing, but we certainly weren’t looking for it right now. The opportunity just kind of found us. It’s a lovely home, not an expansion in square footage but in quality,...
People used to ask me where I worked, and back when I worked at a convenience store in 2016, I would respond with, “Oh, I just work at Kwik Trip.” Their next reply was usually a lot more enthusiastic & upbeat than mine was – I wasn’t really thrilled about my...
Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is a business term used to clearly describe the specific benefit an organization or product offers to the market. While it seems sort of blasphemous to ask about the Gospel’s UVP, I hope you’ll put down your stones for a second and let...
vI just returned from an exciting meeting on the West Coast. For the average Midwesterner, a January trip to any warmer climate is always a bonus, but it was the topic of discussion that energized me the most. A local pastor and a group of businessmen from his church...
Over the last 5 years, our nonprofit affordable housing company expanded into assisted living. A.L. wasn’t in our original vision plan – we provided apartments not services – but the opportunity and the extensive need eventually drew us in. Since then, our compassion...
One of the most powerful tools you can add to your business arsenal this year is prayer. Prayer changes everything. Prayer aligns our hearts with the heart of God and makes us a safe place for Him to deposit His creativity and His ideas and His blessing. There’s this great scene from the Magicians Nephew in The Chronicles of Narnia series that I think illustrates why prayer is so vital. And I’m just going to read it to you, I’m just going to read right out of, right out of this great book. If you haven’t read The Chronicles of Narnia series, I highly recommend it, but the Magicians Nephew, there’s this great scene when Aslan has sent young Digory on a journey to accomplish something for him with one of his friends and they’ve gone on a flying horse together.
I am a big fan of medieval things. Medieval stories, movies, video games, and the Minnesota Renaissance Fair. Huge fan, really. My brother, his girlfriend, and I get decked out every year from swords to hats to chainmail armor, and head up to Shakopee, Minnesota and...
When I think of my own journey, I could not imagine the state of my spiritual health without having spent daily devotional time with the Lord. I’m not talking just the Sunday morning special, but I mean really getting into the consistency of devoting time to just Him...
A mentor once told me that the two most vulnerable moments for any leader are after a great failure or after a great success. And it’s those moments of success that I want to talk about today. I think it’s when God has breathed on something that we are involved in; When God has done something more than we could have ever asked or expected. We tend to want to take more ownership of those things than we should. And it’s not that we don’t have a role to play, but I think in those moments of success when God has just multiplied something beyond our wildest imaginations, we can tend to pat ourselves on the back. Maybe begin to arrogantly think we were more of the causation for that than we actually were. And there’s going to be moments in any leadership journey of failure, but there’s also gonna be these moments where things just work. Where you look back and you realized, “Oh my gosh, look what has happened in and around me.” And it’s in those moments that we need to humbly fall on our knees and remember that we have a role to play. We are stewards. We function in obedience and response to God but the work, and ultimately the glory, for any success, in any endeavor, goes to God alone. And so, I want to encourage you, in those moments of success, to stay close to the heart of God. Cause there’s gonna be moments where God just miraculously breathes on something and it’s in those moments, we should be grateful that He allowed us to be a part of that journey.
For those of you who may not know, I’m a huge Indianapolis Colts football fan. In fact, my family gets a little concerned about me during the games, during the autumn football season, because I can get pretty intense. Weather I’m physically at Lucas Oil Stadium, you know yelling and screaming, or if I’m in my own living room screaming, the dogs underneath the table in fear or making my neighbors wonder if they should call the police for a domestic disturbance.
You know every Monday morning at our housing company, CRF Affordable Housing, we have a conference call where all of our staff across the state of Indiana can call in and kind of give updates on things that are happening at each of the properties, share stories, and we’re able to share things with them as well. But, the way we have committed to start this call every Monday morning is that everyone shares a win; everyone shares something good that’s happened. Maybe at their property, within the context of their work, or even within their own family or something personal that’s happened.
You know one of the things we talk about here at The Stone Table is how our stories, the story of our life, the story of our careers, really the story of everything as a follower of Jesus, is really part of a much greater story. We talk about our work and the great story and I’ve had some folks ask me, you know, “What does it look like to engage my work and my career and my vocation through that great story? Is it ok if I like my work? Is it ok if I pursue a career that excites me? Is it okay if I make money and profit from my work? Or, does embedding my story in a greater story mean that I can’t enjoy any of those things?”