Ryan Paulson

I just watched a message by John Ortberg in my seminary class in leadership. t was a message that he gave at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit in 2007. The message was called “A Leaders Greatest Fear.”

This was one of the best messages I’ve ever heard on leadership. It was powerful. If you are a leader (of any sort) I highly suggest buying it and watching it with you team. It was really powerful and convicting. Here is a link to the site where you can buy it if you want. Well worth the $.

I’m not a huge Max Lucado fan, but he wrote a book recently where he described living life for the reason you were created as, “your sweet spot.” Well, I am so elated to say that I really think that I am in my sweet spot. I love my job. I love journeying with college students, encouraging them, teaching them, and walking through the questions and disappointments with them. Here are just a few things that I love about my job.

• The people. I get to work with great people and we fun together. What a huge blessing.
• I love the mission that we have – to help college students find and follow Jesus Christ. Our desire is to introduce people to the beauty, truth, meaning, and community found in Jesus. The more I have though about, the more I am convinced that there is nothing else that I would want to dedicate my life to.
• God is working in my heart through the calling that he has given me. I am growing as a person, as a pastor, as a husband, etc. God is growing me right now at a rate that has been unprecedented for me for a long time.

God takes us through seasons in life. Sometimes it feels like we are walking in the darkness, and sometimes it feels like your standing on the top of a mountain surveying all God’s beauty. Lord, thank you for a time of refreshing. Thanks for the perspective from the mountaintop… may I not forget it when I am in the valley.

Last night I watched (by default) part of the State of the Union Address. I just want to make a quick comment on how big of a joke politics has become in the US. I heard afterwards that GW was interrupted over 40 times by clapping. The guy could hardly get out a sentence without being clapped for. I mean, he could have said, “I love yellow labs” and the crowd would have given a standing ovation. It made it excruciating to watch. Politics hasn’t always been like this. If you go back and read some of the presidential speeches and debates from the past it wasn’t always such a show. They actually made intellegent comments about where they thought the country was heading and what we needed to do in order to get there.

I long for the day when we have a president who thinks what he is going to say is really important and asks the audience to hold their applause until the end. Just my thoughts. Did you watch it? What did you think?

I spent a lot of time last week studying the reliability of the Bible. One of the cool things that I ran across was the unbelievable number of manuscripts we have of the New Testament in comparison to other ancient books – and their proximity to the original. Here are some of the stats:

• Gaelic Wars – Julius Caesar – no one refutes it – less than 10 manuscripts written 1,000 years after original
• Aristotle poetics – less than 5 copies– written 1400 yrs after original
• Iliad – 643 manuscripts, earliest 13th century – 2100 years after the original
• NT manuscripts over 6,000 copies – earliest copies 120 AD – 25 years after the original

Pretty amazing when you look at the Bible in relation other books. I was encouraged as I studied. There is just so much information out there. My hope is that that body of Christ would be well prepared to give a reason for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15). If you want to listen to the message head to www.thewellefcc.org.

I was reminded of a line from a Rich Mullins song the other day. He wrote, “I’m not sure where you’re leading me, unless you’ve lead me here, where I’m lost enough to let myself be led.” I have realized lately that I love to have control of the reins. I know all the rhetoric and the verbiage to make it seem like I really trust God, but when the rubber hit the road I wanted to do everything myself. For me it took getting to the place of being lost to know that I needed to be led.

I have heard it said that we often see God’s hand leaving – not coming. It’s so true for me. I want to grow in this area and get to the point where I am sensitive to His Spirit and sense it’s leading… without having to be lost.

But, if that’s you today… if you are lost, maybe it’s a gift. Push in.

It’s all about timing. I have realized over the past few months that a lot of my frustration with God is due to His timing (or what I perceived to be the lack there of). I mean, don’t you just wish He would hurry up sometimes? I moved out to CA a few months ago and wanted so badly to sell our house back in Colorado so that we could get into something out here. If that would have happened, here’s what we would have bought: crap. Seriously! In the time that we have been forced to wait (because our home didn’t sell) the prices have come down incredibly. We decided to rent out our house and we are able to buy something out here as well. We put an offer (low ball) on a place that we couldn’t have touched a few months ago and the offer was accepted. In addition, the stock market took a huge hit and the fed dropped the interest rates big time.

Over the past few months I have learned a lot of things – most notably, I want His timing and His plans. They are so much better than mine. Remind of that next time I start complaining… I have a short memory.

I was glancing through the new headlines today and I noticed that Sir Edmond Hillary died last week. For those who don’t know, Hillary was the first (known) person to climb Mt Everest. He did so in 1953 with the now famous sherpa, Tenzig Norgay. Hillary optimized a life of adventure. May we be inspired to follow his example in whatever context we find ourselves in.

Recently I have been reading a new book called unChristian. This book talks about the different reasons that current 20somethings are turned off by Christianity. Some of the reasons they state are: the perception that Christians just wanted to ‘get people saved’, are hypocritical, judgmental, homophobic, sheltered and too political. The book is a fairly in depth study of the aforementioned topics. I recommend this book if you work in a church, especially if if you are working with young adults.

One of the things in this book that I found interesting was a section they had on measuring transformation that is taking place in people who are involved in the church. I have often times found this to be a difficult thing. Taking something that is so subjective (transformation) and making it objective and qualitative is nearly impossible. However, I was intrigued by the measuring tools they used. Here is what they stated:

• worshiping God intimately and passionately
• engaging in spiritual friendships with other believers
• pursuing faith in the context of family
• embracing intentional forms of spiritual growth
• serving others
• investing time and resources in spiritual pursuits
• having faith-based conversations with outsiders

Any others that you would add?

As I fly home from New Orleans I am left wondering how I might respond to a situation so devastating and seemingly without hope. As I wrote yesterday, I do believe that there is hope, and that the church is that hope, but the need is so great I start to wonder how we/I might make an actual difference. Often times I think we get discouraged by the magnitude of what needs to be done. I wonder if Jesus’ disciples felt the same way. I wonder what they thought as Jesus said to them, “go into ALL the world.” I mean, a bunch of uneducated fishermen… talk about over whelming.

I am starting to be convinced that is right where God wants us; in the midst of over whelming situations because it is in that place that we realize that we need God. We need him to show up or we will be left hopeless. God places us there because he wants us to know that it is him doing the work.

There is another side to the coin though. God often answers seemingly hopeless situations by sending his people. I can’t count how may times in scripture this is the case. God listens to his peoples’ lament, says that he hears them, and then commands them to go. I leave New Orleans today with the conviction that I must go.