Transformed Episode #068 – Transformation Beyond Your Wildest Dreams Part 3

Many coaches have enjoyed short-term success while ignoring spiritual commitment. However, a high percentage of coaches who had lengthy careers have been people of faith.

Faith has provided them with a compass to find their way through the pitfalls of coaching. Training only the mind and muscles for an athletic contest without preparing emotionally and spiritually is often not very effective. The heart sustains the mind and the muscles.

Those who attempt to achieve challenging goals operating solely on a physical and mental plane, with no spiritual depth, are analogous to a body functioning without a heart. If you truly are a follower of Jesus Christ, then you will imitate God’s wisdom.

Drawing us deeper into a life beyond our wildest dreams are the 6 lifestyle transformations found in Ephesians 5.

You can also contact Dr. Smith in one of three ways:

at our website at EaglesInLeadership.org,
or by emailing us at transformedpodcast@gmail.com
or you can call our voicemail line at  206-350-1566. Leave a comment that we can play on a future episode …
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review at iTunes or Podcast Pickle. Feel free to pass this episode on to a friend.

This podcast was recorded and edited in Palos Verdes, CA by Tabitha Grace Smith. All material contained therein is copyrighted under the Creative Commons License, please do not rebroadcast without permission.

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Len Sweet Shares His Twitter Theology

Editor’s Note: Our friend, Len Sweet, has so captured the essence of why we use Twitter at Eagles In Leadership. As you know, we believe leadership is done when we step down, becoming a servant – even a slave of others – because we follow Jesus. As such, we are here to influence this world – the people whom God so deeply loves – into a personal relationship with Him. We are also here to lift those fellow followers (eagle leaders) as they pursue Him and seek to influence their social networks. Thanks to Len, we can see the value of a global tableau on which to do this. Thanks Len for allowing us to repost this!

If you would like to follow Dr. Matthew Smith on Twitter, he is drmattphd; if you would like to follow him on Facebook, he is Matthew Lee Smith.

So, without further ado, here is …

Twitter Theology:  5 Ways Twitter Has Changed My Life and helped me be a better Disciple of Jesus

By Leonard Sweet

I have been on twitter for less than a year, but it has already changed my life.

Twitter is less than two years old, with fewer than fifty employees and, as far as anyone can tell, no business plan. It has grown so fast that the site is rickety and unreliable, with the “fail whale” icon showing up all too frequently (a sign that the volume of tweets has overwhelmed the site’s ability to keep up). When you’re using twitter you get same feeling our ancestors must have when they turned the crank of the model-T.

But I can’t imagine life without twitter. A case can be made for twitter on the basis of twitter’s role in the communications revolution (this would lead me to defend tweets during worship), or in political revolutions taking place around the world (Iran, for example). But I want to make a more personal case: Twitter makes me a better Jesus disciple, partly because twitter is my laboratory for future ministry. Here’s why.

1) Followership

Twitter only knows two categories: who are you following, and who are your followers. Twitter’s categorical imperative is one of followership, not leadership.

Jesus’ category is “leader.” My fundamental category is “follower.” Even when Jesus calls me up to the front of the line, I still lead “from behind.” For the last fifty years the church has made a fetish of a word that is hard to find even once in the New Testament (“leader”) and has ignored a word that is found hundreds of times (“mathetes” or “follower,” “disciple”). Twitter is a daily reminder that everything doesn’t rise and fall on leadership but on followership—-who am I following, and who is following me. The name “Christian” (“little Christ”) was given to believers in Antioch (Acts 11:26) because people saw in them the Christ they followed.

Paul said “follow me as I follow Christ.” In twitter’s ethic of followership, I am constantly reframing reality in ways that are more Jesus—more grace-full, more forgiving, more loving, more humorous—-and helping my “followers” to better follow Christ. I am constantly on the prowl for things that could encourage, enrich, inspire. I want my tweeps either to smile after reading one of my tweets, or to shake their head and sing, “What a Tweep We Have in Jesus.” In my ongoing battle with self-transcendence over self-absorption, twitter has helped me become more others-focused.

For the One who taught us to be “in” the world but not “of” the world (or “out of it” either), the question is not “Would Jesus Tweet?” but “What Would Jesus Tweet?” The twitter question of “What are you doing?” has been replaced in my mind with “What is God doing?” and “Where do I see Jesus?” and “What am I paying attention to?”

With a new list of followers every day, and an unlimited number of potential followers, I am also reminded daily that the most important people in my life I haven’t met yet.

2) Sound Bytes that Bite

If you can’t say it in everyday words, you probably don’t understand it yourself. And if you can’t say it in less than 140 characters, you can’t say it in a way that can connect with a Google world. The first task of a missionary is to learn the language. In a Google world there is no logos without logo.

In spite of all the warnings about trading in caricature and cliche, most of history’s greatest books and thinkers have distilled their thoughts into a 140 character tweet. In fact, the single killer sentence is what has changed the world.

No one was better at tweets than Jesus. Jesus was a master at sound bytes that bite with terseness and immediacy. In fact, he was always twittering the gospel in pithy, memorable phrases, and even expressed his gospel in The Great Tweet: “Love one another as I have loved you.” I suspect his followers would be well advised to RT (ReTweet) everything he said.

3) Surface

To say that someone is bubbling in or around the surface of a subject is not to say something nice. This is the greatest critique of twitter: its numbing, crushing banality. Do I really need to know when you finished brushing your teeth this morning? Or what toothpaste you used? Do I really need to see a picture of your kid in the hospital with a fork through his nose with the tweet “What happens when you run holding a fork straight up?”

But life is not just about the depths. Life is also about the surfaces. I spend large parts of my life with academics who spend their careers exploring the depths. Many seldom come up. You come up for the air of communication and relationship, and when you spend all your time in the depths you find yourself talking only to yourself. People with highly sensitive seismographs for souls, like writers and artists, often rail against the shallowness of living and refuse to compromise and play in the spray. That’s my theory for the high incidence of suicidal behavior if not suicide among artists and poets.

We need a theology of the surface in tandem with our theology of the depths. As Alice in Wonderland reminds us: “All this digging deep I dislike because if you dig deep all you dig is a pit into which you may fall yourself, or a well at the bottom of which there is nothing but treacle.”1 So far from the surface replacing the depths, in looking for something to tweet about, I find myself paying attention to life in heightened ways. With twitter every day is an awakening to things that never would have registered before. Twitter gives me openings in which to dive into newly discovered depths.

Life is a bunch of little things. These little things add up, and twitter reminds me to be grateful for the little things and to celebrate the little and the simple. In my list of “50 Reasons Why I Love Twitter,” Reason #33 is “A place where serious people can think serious thoughts about trivial things.” Terry Tempest Williams, in her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World (2008) says: “I used to believe that truth was found only below the surface of things. . . But something changed. . . I am interested now in what my eyes can see, what my fingers can touch.”2

A good beer is a subtle symmetry between froth and substance. A good life is a dance of depth and surface.

One of the highest compliments you can pay me? “Sweet, you do shallow well.”

4) Global Commons

This was the reason that initially convinced me to enter the twitterverse. Social media guru Aaron Linne challenged me to think of twitter like a medieval village green. If we were living a millennium ago, our lives would revolve around a village commons. In the course of a day, we would physically pass each other many times and exchange greetings: “How was your lunch?” “Who you working for now?” “What is in your hands?” Wireless technology enables those multiplicity of personal exchanges to take place today, except now it’s with people from around the world. Twitter is the new global commons.

Like soothsayers reading entrails, I conduct twea-leaf readings. Twitter both connects me to others and to what’s hot, what’s current, what’s the reigning gossip and styles of this new global village. There is nothing sadder than Young Turks turned into Old Geezers. And it can happen overnight. In fact, I like to think of myself as the “pastor” of this twitter parish. In the course of a day’s passings (“postings”) on the village commons, I try to find ways to encourage my “parishioners” (Barnabas blasts, I call them), and be a positive, healing energy in their lives.

The question social media poses is one easily answered: are the residents of your global commons reflective of our global community? Or are they only mirrors of yourself? How many people of different races, classes, continents, and religions are part of your social universe?

5) Social Solitude

I’m a hermit at heart. Twitter is made for hermits. It enables me to shut myself off without shutting anything or anybody out. It enables me to simultaneously give myself away and never stop hiding. You might call the twitterscape one of social solitude.

My life is like a barbell: lots of weight on the social end, and lots of weight on solitude end with not much in between other than the handle (read long lines at airports) that connects the socialness with the solitude. Twitter now let’s me do my solitude in society; it let’s me be anonymous in groups.

These 5 reasons may explain why of all the social media (MySpace, Facebook, etc.), twitterers are the most religious.3 But for me, these are the 5 Ways Twitter Has Changed My Life and made me into a better follower of Jesus.

© 2009 by Leonard Sweet

1. Alice in Wonderland
2.  As cited by Tom Wylie in The Bloomsbury Review, January/February 2009
3.  Beth Snyder Bulik, “What Your Favorite Social Net Says about You,” Advertising Age, 13 July 2009, 6.


Rick Hamm Dr. Leonard Sweet is the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Fox University. Voted one of the “50 Most Influential Christians in America,” Dr. Sweet is the author of more than one hundred articles, over six hundred published sermons, and a wide array of books including The Gospel According to Starbucks (WaterBrook) and So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church (David C. Cook).

twitter:  lensweet
facebook:  lensweet
www.sermons.com
www.leonardsweet.com

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Eagles In Leadership Among 100 Incredibly Inspiring Christian Blogs

We are honored to announce that OnlineBibleColleges.net has included the “Transformed Podcast” from Eagles in Leadership as one of the “100 Incredibly Inspiring Christian Blogs” in its recent post. “Transformed” was listed along with such notable podcasts such as, “Joel Osteen Ministries Podcast,” “Lifespring” and “Hope for Today.” 11 podcasts were listed in the category.

Readers were encouraged to “Get out your iPod and download one or all of these Christian related broadcasts to get tons of inspiring faith related messages.”

Tell your friends and encourage them to check it out today at: http://onlinebiblecolleges.net/100-incredibly-inspiring-christian-blogs/.

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Transformed Episode #067- Transformation Beyond Your Wildest Dreams! Part 2

As we grow spiritually, we learn that to experience a life beyond our wildest dreams, there are specific responsibilities we are to take charge of in order to be pleasing to the Lord.

One of those responsibilities is to walk in the light of Jesus Christ. Jesus never wanted us to stumble throughout life as if in the dark. When you receive Christ as the master of your life and the savior of your soul, he promises to provide us with constant guidance and light the path of our lives.

Discovering the seven changes that begin to happen in us and through us, Dr. Matthew Lee Smith teaches the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Palos Verdes CA, by opening Ephesians 5.

As you open your Bible now, let’s listen in as Pastor Matt continues to show us how to enjoy transformation – beyond your wildest dreams!

If you’d like to comment on this episode or contact Dr. Smith you can do so in one of three ways:

  • leave a comment on this post,
  • or by emailing us at transformedpodcast@gmail.com
  • or you can call our voicemail line at 206-350-1566. Leave a comment that we can play on a future episode …

If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review at iTunes! Feel free to pass this episode on to a friend.

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How Would You Market A New Book?

You may have noticed that I have not been posting nearly as frequently over the last month.  The reason is that my daughter Tabitha and I have put the finishing touches on a new book.  It is done and I am really excited about it.  This is a book for anyone who longs to know God and desires to walk with Him in joyful and pleasure. It is very practical and I think inspirational.  The title is “In His Presence.”thumbnailimage1

We have been brainstorming ways to get the word out about this new book.  So, I thought I would see if you could help.  Leave me a comment with your thoughts or answering these questions:  How would you market a new book?  What creative ideas have you seen for getting the word out about a book? Are there ways that you would like to help us?

Thanks for your help!

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Transformed Episode #066 – Transformation Beyond Your Wildest Dreams! Part 1

Today, “How To” books fill the racks of local book stores. You can find cook books for people who want to cook; repair books for people who want to fix things; investment books for people who want a better future; parenting books for people who want to raise good children and relationship books for people who want lasting love and loyalty.

Yet in out text today, and in this book of Ephesians, we have a “How To” book for the life of the true disciple of Jesus Christ. The book can be called, How to Conduct Yourself In The Body of Christ, the Local Church!

And how should we conduct ourselves toward others? We are to imitate God’s love by interceding for them when they are in trouble; by comforting them when they are hurting; by encouraging them when they are discouraged; and by speaking well of them to others!

As senior pastor, Dr. Matthew Lee Smith teaches the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Palos Verdes CA, he shows us how we should imitate the love of God inour relationships with others.

Let’s listen in now as Pastor Matt teaches us how to enjoy transformation – beyond your wildest dreams!

If you’d like to comment on this episode or contact Dr. Smith you can do so in one of three ways:

  • leave a comment on this post,
  • or by emailing us at transformedpodcast@gmail.com
  • or you can call our voicemail line at 206-350-1566. Leave a comment that we can play on a future episode …

If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review at iTunes! Feel free to pass this episode on to a friend.

Sponsor: Go to My PC Try it free for 30 Days!

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Transformed Episode #065 – Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams!

Ask yourself today, “Am I truly a follower of Jesus Christ?” If your answer to that question is “Yes!” then ask yourself another question: “Where is my final destination?” “It’s Heaven!” you say. Then there is one final question: “Who are you going to Heaven to meet?” “Jesus!” Correct!

And what has Jesus promised to those who truly follow him on Earth? Ephesians 3:20-21 declares to us: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly / abundantly / above / all / that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

How does one possess this life beyond our wildest dreams? There are three major lifestyle changes that the true follower of King Jesus has made in order to have all that God promises to him or her!

Let’s listen in now as Dr. Matthew Lee Smith teaches the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Palos Verdes CA how to enjoy life – beyond your wildest dreams!

If you’d like to comment on this episode or contact Dr. Smith you can do so in one of three ways:

  • leave a comment on this post,
  • or by emailing us at transformedpodcast@gmail.com
  • or you can call our voicemail line at 206-350-0019. Leave a comment that we can play on a future episode …

If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review at iTunes! Feel free to pass this episode on to a friend.

Sponsor: Go to My PC Try it free for 30 Days!

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Transformed Episode #064 – Gifted Beyond Your Wildest Dreams!

God wants to put his church together! He wants his church to grow! In fact, we will learn today that it is the nature of the church to grow! If a church is not growing, then that church is sick!

God is so concerned about the growth of his church that he has presented every local church with a gift! THE purpose for all of these gifts is plainly declared to us today … spiritual maturity! Spiritual maturity is not a gaining of knowledge, but a giving of service. You know you are spiritually maturing when you are serving the local church body of King Jesus! When you are “pulling your load” and not “making a load of work,” then you are maturing!

As Dr. Matthew Lee Smith, Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Palos Verdes CA, we discover 5 special gifts God has given to His church!

Let’s listen in now as Pastor Matt teaches us all about giftedness – beyond your wildest dreams!

If you’d like to comment on this episode or contact Dr. Smith you can do so in one of three ways:

  • leave a comment on this post,
  • or by emailing us at transformedpodcast@gmail.com
  • or you can call our voicemail line at 206-350-1566. Leave a comment that we can play on a future episode …

If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review at iTunes! Feel free to pass this episode on to a friend.

Sponsor: Go to My PC Try it free for 30 Days!

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Transformed Podcast Interviews Daniel Henderson

strategic-renewal-personal-renewalcongregational-revivalleadership-restoration-igniting-the-heart-of-the-churchWe welcome to the podcast today, Dr, Daniel Henderson. Daniel is Founder and President of Strategic Renewal. After spending 25 years in rewarding full-time pastoral ministry, Daniel is now full-time with Strategic Renewal, freeing him to do more writing, lead prayer events, speak at conferences, raise money to help hurting pastors, and use his decades of local church experience to encourage renewal in every way possible. During his years as a pastor, Daniel embraced what he calls the “bonfire” paradigm, focusing on one local church as a model to help ignite other churches in worship-based prayer. Now he has more of a “brushfire” focus as he seeks to ignite fires of renewal across the country and around the world.

“Serving through Strategic Renewal is a true calling; the mission the Lord has put before us. The ministry is truly strategic and Christ-honoring. It goes beyond the superficial and ‘felt’ needs of society and powerfully encourages the very heart and life of the church. Renewal. Revival. Restoration. This cause is worthy of my very life.”

You are encouraged to contact Daniel at:

Strategic Renewal
PO Box 365
Forest, VA 24551

Phone: 888.326.4774

http://www.strategicrenewal.com

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Transformed Episode #063 – Power Beyond Your Wildest Dreams!

In Jesus, we have all the power we need to live beyond our wildest dreams! The reality is that many of us are often disappointed, thinking that walking with God is some how faulty! God promises an incredible life – but you feel powerless when there is a real need! But we also learn that the life beyond our wildest dreams requires the true disciple of Jesus Christ to draw deep into their walk with King Jesus!

In other words, if you want power beyond your wildest dreams, you are going to have to yield your lifestyle to certain activities that produce the harvest of God’s power – His love – in your life!

In this lesson, Dr. Matthew Lee Smith teaches the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Palos Verdes CA, that there are 5 non-negotiable actions that flow from our relationship with Christ … and these actions produce power … beyond your wildest dreams!

If you’d like to comment on this episode or contact Dr. Smith you can do so in one of three ways:

  • leave a comment on this post,
  • or by emailing us at transformedpodcast@gmail.com
  • or you can call our voicemail line at 206-350-1566. Leave a comment that we can play on a future episode …

If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review at iTunes! Feel free to pass this episode on to a friend.

Sponsor: Go to My PC Try it free for 30 Days!

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