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Rabbit Stew




Christian Leadership in real time.

This winter I am determined to do a rabbit stew, I have never done one before but it is what my grandmother used to call real food. When I think about those long cold winters evenings, I think of food that warms you and fills you up, it satisfies you and gives you a glowing feeling of contentment. This is what the idea of rabbit stew does for me.

In my last blog I looked at why so many young Christian leaders lament the fact that they don't seem to have enough time. I proposed two simple rules;

Rule One: Let your yes be yes and your no mean no. This will help release time and also empower others to do the work for you.

Now we come to the second rule, Rule Two: Learning the difference between watching the time and real time.

When I was in business I would watch as we came to the end of the day as people began to wind there work day down and the nearer it got to 5.00pm the more they would glance at their watches. All day they had worked to their appointment and meeting schedule, they were dictated to by what their calendar told them they needed to do. When the time came, they would grab their bags and head for the door rushing to see  who would be the first out of the office. They were what I called clock watches.

Young Christian leaders need to learn that they should not be dictated to by their diary and their watch. I believe that leaders need to spend at least 60% of their time strategically thinking. That is that they should spend time thinking about the vision God has given them, be having conversations with people about those thoughts and then action those thoughts. This type of time is called real time, because you are spending time accomplishing a future right here in the present

It has been estimated that when Senior Christian leaders spend just as little as 20% working with real time rather clock watching, then strategic thinking conversation and action can result in over 80% of the plan being successful.

I know that when you first start out you can't always do this but the sooner you learn rule one the sooner you can start to put into practice rule two. This is real food not fast food takeout. This is genuine rabbit stew.

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