It’s the “Peter Pan Principle:” boys who don’t want to grow up.

Tony leads engineers designing the stuff the Air Force uses to defend America.  A leader valued by the Department of Defense, he also serves to lead a variety of companies in developing internships to equip budding engineers soon to graduate from Cal State, Fresno.  He does that on his own time.

But that’s not his true passion.  Tony sees the crisis of an America without fathers and he is moving to change the world.  His vision is to transform a generation, one boy at a time.  He leads his church in working to turn boys (of whatever age) into men.  He’s paying attention to what’s going on in our culture, and he’s not content to let somebody else solve the problem. 

Tony’s not delusional.  He knows the difference between a pipe dream and a vision.  (He's an engineer after all.)  He’ll tell you, unless we’re praying, we’re just playing games.  He recognizes that if God doesn’t move, we are all lost.  He also knows that a praying people can move the hand of God.

You may think he’s crazy.  I think he’s inspired.  And I think he’ll change the world because it is the Lord who is at work in him to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Kingdom leaders come out of unlikely places.

There’s the single mom who volunteers at Head Start where her pre-schooler gets a hand up.  She gets asked to be on a local committee, simply because she’s rarely late and never misses.   Her simple faithfulness gives her influence.  She’s a budding leader in the community, but at church she’s overlooked.

How ‘bout the Hispanic janitor at work?  Nobody sees him, but he sees everybody.  I’ll bet he has got some insight into the lives of people we bump into everyday, but never really see.

If we are reading the Bible well, we realize that it was the people everybody else overlooked who became the church and changed the world.  Who might you see if you looked just beyond the focus of the world?  How might you build into their Intimacy with God and instill in them a Passion for the Harvest?

    Yet, a new study from the Barna Group identifies an underlying reason why there is little progress in helping people develop spiritually: many churchgoers and clergy struggle to articulate a basic understanding of spiritual maturity. People aspire to be spiritually mature, but they do not know what it means. Pastors want to  guide others on the path to spiritual wholeness, but they are often not clearly defining the goals or the outcomes of that process.

I knew that I was right, but its even worse.

barna