Brian Castelli – With His Heart

Earlier this week, the Raleigh News & Observer newspaper reported on a new initiative coming to the Raleigh area this year (2009). In an article titled, “In Wake, Nurses Will Aid Families,” Staff Writer Sarah Avery describes the way the new program will impact lives. Avery writes:

The program’s mission is to improve the health of poor children and their mothers by intervening early, while the young women are still pregnant, and sticking with them as their babies grow into toddlers. Established 30 years ago and tested against other interventions to gauge its success, the Nurse Family Partnership has a track record of keeping young mothers off welfare, delaying a second pregnancy and helping women be more attentive and engaged moms.

The bottom line message for you and me: Relationships make a difference. As we attempt to engage the world, it’s getting involved directly in the lives of others that brings about change.

Many people seem to think that all you need to do is be “good enough” and you can get to heaven. This view has several problems, not least among them are the difficulty of determining how much is enough and the fact that the Bible says this isn’t the way. The question then becomes what can we do to help people understand this? I believe that the answer is a return to the Bible.

In one of his letters to the Corinthians, Paul says that a person becomes a “new creation” when he or she follows Jesus. We need the “new heart” that comes with the “new creation”.

I was talking to my friend, Domou, today. He said that as we make positive change, we find new reasons to change. I find this line of reasoning fascinating. As he talked, I thought about what happened at my house when we put a new floor in the living room. It looked great, but the walls looked dingy by comparison. So we painted. Then the drapes looked shabby by comparison, so we changed them.

I think a similar thing happens to us when we make positive change. When we improve in a single area, we often expose other areas where we need work. As we tackle these newly-exposed areas, more opens. Over time, if we’re diligent, we continuously improve.

Fascinating! And true!

Your legacy is now!

A few months ago I attended a Christian Men’s Leadership Conference in my area. One of the speakers closed with a few comments about legacy.

My legacy is *now*. I’m always thinking about what I’m going to do, the legacy I’m going to leave. The speaker said that this is wrong thinking. The legacy I leave is where I am right now because I don’t know if I’m going to survive to see tomorrow. He used the example of Tim Russert, the TV reporter who slumped over in his chair at work last week. He had no warning. Poof, he was gone. Not everybody gets a notice like my uncle did. He had cancer and received a “you have 4 weeks to live” prognosis. My grandfather, in excellent physical condition, died of an aneurysm. He was gone in minutes.

This could happen to me. None of us know how much time we have left. Steven Curtis Chapman does a song called, “The Next 5 Minutes.” The premise of the song is that we can predict with high certainty that we’ll live for 5 more minutes, so let’s use those 5 minutes to bring glory to God.

On a related note, I recently read something from Chuck Colson in which he said that every choice we make either builds God’s kingdom or tears it down. Put these two concepts together and it’s pretty clear that we are to spend the next 5 minutes building – God’s kingdom and our legacy.
Let’s get busy, people!

My friend, Laura, launched a blog a few weeks ago. You can check out Archer Coaching Blog.

In her first post, she offered this quote:

In my comment to her blog post, I pointed out that the words “for a very long time” really stuck with me. It reminded me of the time my wife and I went snorkeling in Hawaii.

I am a poor swimmer. We went out from a secluded cove. I could manage to stay out in the water for 20-30 minutes at a time before I became so uncomfortable that I had to go back to shore for a rest. After 10 minutes of building back my comfort while standing on solid ground I plunged back in. I repeated this process several times. (And we had a wonderful time!)

I think this story is appropriate in that it takes great courage to stay out where we can’t see the shore. I’m all for applying the “Just Do It” philosophy in some situations, but in others I think we need to build on our experience, taking ever greater risks as we strengthen ourselves. Sometimes we need a “safe haven” where we can retreat, recharge and replan. This will allow us to build up our “out of sight of shore” endurance for the biggest challenges of our lives.

Leaders aren’t created in an instant.