paul hollifield 8.0

I have got to learn when Jesse says, “you wanna come hear our band play?”, to ask when and where before saying, “Absolutely!” These guys do some serious gorilla evangelism. Their ministry is not for the faint at heart. I wound up in a smokey little “club” (read bar with a tiny stage) in the heart of South Beach watching The Saturn Project. I have to say it was one of the best shows I have seen them do. Mind you that it was the second time I had seen them outside of a church setting, but they blew away everyone else that performed that night. They also did their original stuff, full of references to a revolutionary, life-changing Jesus. It was great to see people searching for peace, love, connection in some way, come up to the band afterwards and tell them that they were different somehow. A lot of seed planted there Monday night.

After the band played, (did I mention they didn’t go on stage until around 12:45 a.m.?), we were all starving. We headed a couple of blocks north to the finest burger place in South Beach, “Cheeseburger Baby.” It was there I helped Alex and Jesse to cheat on their new diet plan. It’s always great when the big boy on staff brings someone over to the dark side.

 

Just finished reading a great book by Mike Bonem & Roger Patterson called “Leading From The Second Chair.” This should be required for anyone serving on a church staff, even lead pastors. Here are a few take-aways:

1. The definition of a second-chair leader is “a person in a subordinate role whose influence with others adds value throughout the organization.”

2. Second-chair leaders must live inside of three paradoxes: the subordinate-leader, deep-wide, and contentment-dreaming.

3. “Many who aspire to leadership fail because they have never learned to follow.” - Oswald Chambers

4. The second-chair leader must learn to be subordinate first, building a relationship trust with the first-chair, and work successfully around the defined line of authority.

5. The deep-wide paradox describes the ability to see the big picture or see the overall vision of the organization while simultaneously dealing with the details of specific areas.

6. This paradox (deep-wide) can best be navigated by working with integrated systems as opposed to loosely connected “silos.”

7. Putting the deep-wide paradox into practice requires the following actions: Be a pulse taker, be a vision amplifier, be a leader multiplier, and be a gap filler.

8. Contentment in the second chair is your choice to stay and grow and excel, for a season, regardless of current circumstances.

9. Contentment in the second chair is less like a sleeping baby and more like a mountain climber on the side of a peak.

10. The most important part of dreaming is the stewardship of the dream. It is done in four parts: Be careful what you say and to whom you say it, check your ego at the door, practice both now and later, trust God in the details.

Welcome to the first edition of the Sunday Stew…all ingredients are certified non-organic and hormone- filled! Today was an interesting day from start to finish. Here are the highlights:

Let me just say that it was great to be back home at Life Pointe this morning.

Back at home the family prepares to leave me for a week. The two youngest are in a wedding this coming weekend as junior bride and flower girl. The wedding is up in North Carolina, but Anne will take advantage of being close to her dad and go a couple of days early to spend some time on the farm. Due to being gone all week and missing Sunday, they will go without me and I will count every minute until they return. I wasn’t created to be alone. Pray for Anne this week as she makes the 15 1/2 hour journey with just the four kids. Who knows, with the extra time this week maybe I’ll blog more than once! Don’t hold your breath, but anything’s possible.

Such a great weekend required a day to marinate before I could post.

Well, today was a boring Friday for the Miami Hollifield’s. We just stayed around the house and tried to catch up on the week. I finished out the evening by going into the office for a couple of hours to wrap up stuff for the weekend.

Last night, Nathan and I took advantage of some complimentary Miami Heat tickets and caught the Heat/Wizards game. Heat looked pitiful. UNC alums (Jameson & Haywood) played pretty well for the Wizards. Nathan enjoyed the game, though the dance breaks by the Heat dancers were as close as he has come to visiting a strip club. We took many trips for snacks. We took the Metrorail from South Dadeland into the city to avoid the traffic and high dollar parking. The train was a little more confusing than NY or DC, but we figured it out. Nathan crashed on the trip home and slept like a log all the way back to Dadeland. We have a planned trip back to AA Arena for Monday’s game against the Timberwolves. We are much more prepared this time and plan to get there early to experience the “Winter Wonderland” events in the lobby.

 The coolest thing that has happened this week is the creation of two new blogs in our household. You can check out what Mariah and Nathan have to say about life and stuff. They are already putting me to shame in the blogging department. Nathan told me this week that he can’t wait to post his “Sunday Wrap Up” and talk about Pastor Travis‘ message this week. The world will never be the same.

Tomorrow, I will rise around 8 a.m. to go play basketball with Jesse and all the other Life Pointe hoodlums in the park. If I survive, I will head to the opera house at the Carnival Center at 2 p.m. to take my oldest two daughters for our annual trip to see George Ballentine’s “Nutcracker” as performed by the Miami City Ballet. This is Maggie’s first year to attend (you must be at least four yrs. old) and Mariah’s seventh. We will see how they compare to the NC and NYC Ballet Companies. Can’t wait to dress up and hang out with my girls. To be honest, I enjoy the music more than the dancing. Maybe after tomorrow it actually will begin to “look a lot like Christmas.”

Thanks to my good friend Glen Rochelle for passing this along! Enjoy!

 This is the sight we found today when coming back from an afternoon at the beach. It had been a decent day, a little rain but overall a good day with the family. Evidently, the “smash and grab” criminal that did this took Anne’s purse and our digital camera. So instead of heading out to a nice family meal to end the day, we spent 2 1/2 hours sitting in the 34th Street parking lot, waiting for the Miami Beach CSI to come out and do their thing. BTW, my car has been thoroughly fingerprinted and Miami CSI drives an AstroVan and not a cool black Hummer. After many calls to credit card and insurance companies we finally headed back to Homestead, a little weary and a little wiser. The kids are still somewhat shaken, but are dealing with the slight trama by sleeping out in the living room tonight and watching a Santa movie. Bottom line - we are safe, didn’t lose much and will have a new window sometime between 12 and 5 tomorrow. God is still faithful and we will survive.

Just some thoughts from yesterday’s Life Pointe gathering: