Sometimes, saying nothing, is saying everything.

Dwell’s David A. Greene has a great post on the price point accessibility of modern prefab on the Dwell Daily Blog.

Who is going to be the one to take modern prefab into modern levels of mass production to bring the price down?

Yesterday, Sarah and I celebrated our 9th anniversary.

I picked an amazing dinner spot at Ciao Bella. She picked a slow chick flick (me, two other guys + 100 teenage girls). Together we had one of the most fun, relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable anniversaries we’ve ever had.

Our marriage has really strengthened this year. We turned a corner in France that we’ve struggled to get around for years. It’s exciting.

Along with just having fun, we talked about some goals we have for our marriage for year #10.

1. Pray together more (needs to be quantified)
2. Serve more (needs to be quantified)
3. Define our first official budget ever!
4. Take a real vacation, this year and ever year (I’m praying for a miracle that we’ll spend our 10th anniversary in Italy or at least on a beach)
5. Get a nice espresso machine to change my starbucks habit from buying drinks to buying beans. 

I can’t help it. They absolutely think I’m the next best thing to mom!

This is my new “nephew” Koen Nikhil Mehta. He thinks I’m so cool. And I think the same thing about him.

Vice Chairman and CEO of Best Buy

• Spent 7 years watching other people lead
• Being bankrupt, gives the freedom to have creativity bloom

Leaders get into leadership because they want affirmation of themselves.

• True leaders get their joy out of seeing the leadership qualities of others come out.
• Once again: Marcus Buckingham rocks!
• The Biggest part of the job of the CEO: Staying engaged with the people that make the difference.

Motivating Leaders: Find your leadership base

• do you believe in it?
• how are coding what you’re doing? (are you masking what you really feel about your work).

How many 25 year old women here the voice of God tell them they should take on the prison system?

Not many, I’d guess. 

Catherine Rohr, overall else, seems to be a person who takes joy in being called to do work in the hardest places. 

The Vision: She looks for proven entrepreneurs in the prison system. (Insert chuckle). The key is to find people who really are sick and tired of their old ways. First, she breaks down the tough guy barriers. Then puts them through business boot camp. 

Then they graduate, get housing, job placement, medical insurance, and then they help them start the business ideas that burgeoned in prison. She achieves a single digit return to prison rate. 

Unbelievable. 

“These guys have been takers all their lives. Now, 70% of them give back to the program with financial donations.”

-Catherine Rohr

This creates the multi-generational community impact we’re all looking for. These guys get out, turn around their life and turn around their families too…

The message for the inmates

• We can be broken and still be loved.

Handling Criticism as a leader:

• Don’t let emotions over the criticism get in the way of the business.
• Ask if this is legit feedback. If it is, engage it. If it isn’t, ignore it.

Keeping from Burning Out:

• scheduled down time
• have no privacy, sacrifice privacy and gain acountability
• If there is time when someone doesn’t know where you are during the day, that’s a problem

The SwellHouse is a new prefab package from The Office of Mobile Design.

The SwellHouse advertises mass-customization. In essence, it’s mass produced, with the ability to quickly customize it to your modular needs…It essentially comes as a bunch of boxes that get shipped from the factory, bolted together on site with all the energy, plumbing and information systems hidden away in the cavities.

I like the standard design of this house. The “S” model as the call it, has sliding panels and walls that merge the inside world and the outside world by creating courtyards on the inside of the building. They use stand “green” practices and materials to make this house have a smaller environmental footprint, aside from the smaller footprint of the factory produced modular building process overall.

Check it out.

• Align
• Empower
• Serve
• Collaborate

People find their passion for leadership in their life stories…

How do leaders develop?

1. Understand the purpose of your leadership.
2. Get feedback, prayer & introspection.
3. Will you be true to your values.
4. Discover your intrinsic motivations. Lead from your strengths. (are you in your sweet spot?)
5. Build a supportive team around you. Have one person that you’re able to have complete transparency with.
6. Lead an integrated life. Be the same person in all environments of life. Congruency.

• Leadership in endeavors and issues that matter to God. 
• Just because I’m leading and people are following, doesn’t mean that I’m leading in things that matter to God. 
• Are Jesus and I on the same page?

I love that Bill genuinely feels the weight of leadership at his core. You can tell that it’s not just fluff for him.

A few of Bill’s axiom’s that hit me:

“If it feels funky, engage.”

• This is me to a fault
• I need to extend this by saying, if it feels funky, engage diplomatically. 
• Great leaders have the courage to call out when things are heading in a God-inspired direction, I want to grow in this area.

Teaching leadership, unapologetically, from a Christian perspective.

Rom. 12:8

Starting off with general Bill Hybel’s candor….

Do you have a framework that helps you arrive at an effective, God-honoring decision?

Questions Christians tend to ask:

1. Does the Bible say anything about this?
2. What would smart advisors, advise me to do? (A story of the young king seeking out wise counsel…he took the advise of the young advisors…hint, hint.
3. What experience have you had that would inform you about these decisions?
4. Is there a prompting of the Holy Spirit that I need to be paying attention to? (When you’re instep with the spirit, it leads to life and peace.)

“The best way to destroy my enemy is to turn him into my friend.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“Promote a clash of ideas”

“Reward your best performers, get rid of your non-performers.”

– Colin Powell

“Get the right people around the table”

“Facts are your Friends”

– Hybels

“Leaders have to call fouls.”

“Sometimes, leaders have to call fouls on themselves.”

“When things feel funky, engage.”

– Hybels

Today, I’m attending the Willow Creek LEAD Summit 2008. This was one of my highlight conferences from last year. Marcus Buckingham changed my life last year. As well as Richard Curtis and Colin Powell’s messages. 

This year, very exciting, my own pastor and supervisor, Efrem Smith is at the Summit talking about the Church and Reconciliation. Can’t wait to hear how it goes. Pray for him today as he prepares for his message.

*If you want to send text questions during the summit, send questions to: 72265

It was an honor full of joy and sadness to celebrate and say goodbye to Taylor Stephen Ward tonight.

Taylor was a young man with abounding compassion and love, complex struggles and demons, and effervescent virtue and grace.

The line of visitation went out the sanctuary doors, the lobby doors, and spilled onto the streets. The front parking lot, the back parking lot and the side streets were lined with cars. The church pews, the balcony and the overflow seats in the lobby were full at Brookdale Covenant Church.

For a young man who struggled to know that he was loved, but had un-ending compassion for others, his story is made complete in the lives he touched and the stories he left implanted in the hearts of others.

There were hundreds of people there trying to find a way to make goodbye make sense. And yet, in the tragedy of the moment it all made sense. It makes sense sometimes why the hardest thing you could ever want to hear, has to be heard, has to be felt deep in your gut and your heart. The loss of Taylor to so many people who didn’t know Jesus before tonight, went home believing that they shared a Journey with you, and it led you back to the one who loves you infinitely.

As pastor Steve said, you are finally free. Normal, never, but free forever.

Countless people had their story changed because of you.