Five Practices That Grow Your Influence

by John Eiselt

A minor miscalculation led us so far off-course that we were legitimately lost by the time we reached the end of our directions. We had a compass, distances, degrees, and directions but we missed the mark dramatically.

We were at a Boy Scout Leadership Camp weekend. The purpose of the weekend was to develop leadership skills that we would then use in various roles of leadership in our local Boy Scout Troops. The weekend experience was designed to introduce its participants to challenging circumstances that required leadership and the use of skills we had learned in scouting. I don’t recall how or why I was chosen to lead our particular group, but all eyes were on me to get us back on course.

Perhaps you don’t think of yourself as a leader or feel ill-equipped to lead in the role you find yourself in. As parents, siblings, neighbors, classmates, leaders, team-members, and supervisors we all have influence. Influence and leadership come in many forms at all ages of our lives. What we do with the influence we have is critical to living lives of purpose that are on mission with God.

This weekend, we’re looking at a letter to a young leader learning to use his influence to protect and guide the people placed under his leadership. It is a message about identity, integrity, and influencing the world around us. It is a message that applies to all of us. 

Join us this weekend as we look at Paul’s letters to Timothy and discover five practices that grow your influence.

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

How the Resurrection is the Answer to Our Deepest Regrets

One of my favorite ads for the 2011 Super Bowl was titled "Reply All," by Bridgestone Tires. Two men are working at their computers in an office cubicle. One sends an email to the other receives it, smiles, then suddenly raises an alrm. "Rod, you sent this email 'Reply all.' You hit 'Reply all’!"

So he goes to people’s offices and sweeps and throws their computers out the window, he goes into the executive board room and takes their computers, he goes into people’s homes while their working…….. You get the picture.

It’s funny but it’s also painful because most us have done something similar, sending a text back to someone but choosing the one that had 10 other people on it, right? That’s probably the one that happens most often now. 

But it doesn’t have to be an inadvertent message sent to a bunch of people that we wish we could erase or take back. Sometimes it’s our actual words, words we say—words we chose carefully or in haste for a moment filled with emotion—words we say to someone that we almost instantly regret. But the damage is done. 

Regrets come in all shapes and sizes.

Our lives tell a story, but there’s no rewind. There’s no way to reverse the damage we’ve inflicted by much of what we’ve left undone or by all of what we’ve done. We live in a story we can’t reverse. That’s reality. There’s no time machine. There’s no going back. 

The answer to our regrets and our very real guilt is the resurrection.

I hope you can join us this weekend as we celebrate the resurrection.

Also join us tonight as we remember good Friday (services are at 5:30 and 7:00pm.

Bring a friend.