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All Stressed up and no Place to Go:
Being Hospitable During the Holidays
without Being a Hot Mess

We feel a lot of pressure to measure up. This is true any time, but holidays bring out the best and the worst of it. Isn’t it odd how a time of year that is supposed to angelically sing “Peace on earth” too often fiendishly shouts—“You’re not good enough! You’ll never get it right!”?

Peace on earth seems like something you last got when you had an epidural.

Friends, if you think stress is what the holidays are all about--you’re doing it wrong.

Like Charlie Brown seeking the meaning of Christmas, we need to step out of the self- imposed spotlight and ask, “Is this what it’s really all about?”

The answer is no. No. It is definitely not. Do you want peace on at least your part of the earth, as well as a chance to show a scurrying, stressed, self-indulgent yet self-doubting world what Christmas is really all about?

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Discipling the Next Generation
Toward Leadership

Too often, pastors approach the idea of training the next generation in leadership with assumptions, definitions, and expectations that create failure, or at least frustration, from the starting line:

• How can I get young people to take on leadership?
• How can I make them understand that they need to do these things?
• The young people don’t want to commit.
• They don’t want to do anything without questioning everything.
• They won’t submit to leadership.
• They don’t want to pay their dues.

If you truly want to motivate Millennials toward leadership, do a few things right now. Toss out all your stereotypes. Choose to stop believing all the assumptions. Start questioning what you believe is necessary and why.

Begin with a completely empty, fresh clean white board in your mind on which you have written nothing about what millennials are like. Nothing.
Now you’re ready.

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