"Who I'll Never Be" by Craig Groeschel

I’ll never be as a great a leader asBill Hybels.
I’ll never be as deep as John Piper.
I’ll never be as smart as Mark Driscoll.
I’ll never be as creative as Ed Young.
I’ll never be as passionate as Steven Furtick.
I’ll never be as funny as Perry Noble.
I’ll never write like Erwin McManus.
I’ll never preach on one point as amazingly as Andy Stanley.
I’ll never have as big of arms as Bishop Eddie Long.
I’ll never be as Purpose Driven as Rick Warren.
I’ll never be as positive as Joel Osteen.

Thankfully, I’m not called by God to be any of those people!

And neither are you!

Although I can’t be them, God has created me with the ability to:

* Cast a compelling vision and move people radically toward Christ.
* Recognize talent and gifts in people most overlook.
* Reach people for Christ who are far from God.

What are the top three gifts/talents/abilities God has given you?

Become a Human Lie Detector

How many times have you had a student or parent or whoever tell you something that made your spidey senses tingle. How can you tell if they are lying to you. It's easier than you think to become a human lie detector.

Look for Suspicious Behaviors

By themselves, each of these behaviors can just be signs of stress, or even a person's natural mannerisms. One can occur by chance, but when two or more of these behaviors suddenly appear at a moment when lying could be expedient, you should be skeptical. For example, when you ask a salesman how reliable that used car is, it suggests he's lying.

Here's the top eight list of suspicious behaviors:

1. A change in the voice's pitch.
2. A change in the rate of speech.
3. A sudden increase in the number of "ums" and "ahs."
4. A change in eye contact. Normally, one makes eye contact one-quarter to one-half of the time. If suddenly, at the convenient moment to lie, he's staring at you or looking away, beware.
5. Turning his body away from you, even if just slightly.
6. Suddenly being able to see the white on the top and bottom of a person's eyes, not just the sides.
7. A hand reaching, even if momentarily, to cover part of the face, especially the mouth.
8. Nervous movement of feet or legs.

Of course, in order to notice a change, you need a baseline. So you must first watch the person when talking about innocuous issues.

A Mixed Signal

Also look for mixed signals. When someone's telling the truth, her words, her face and her body language are all congruent. For example, if a person is honestly saying that she likes you, her face is usually relaxed, offering a gentle smile and warm eyes. Her body is calm and open. But when she's lying, something is usually inconsistent. In the most obvious case, she may be saying she likes you, but she's not smiling. She may even have a clenched fist. Better liars can muster a smile, but it doesn't look natural. Even better liars can put on a convincing smile, but their eyes aren't smiling. Still better liars can control their entire face, but their bodies seem closed or cold. Look for mismatches between words and body language.

When you've gotten a signal -- a change in body language or a mixed signal that the person may be lying -- ask for more information about the same topic. Are those same lying signs apparent? That can confirm your suspicion.

Of course, there's no foolproof way to detect lying. Some people are terrific at covering themselves up, especially if they are naturally emotionally flat or have practiced their lying skills over many years -- certain political leaders come to mind. But if you look for behavior changes and mixed signals at lying-expedient moments, you will improve your lie detecting skills.

MySpace gives pastor ‘prophetic’ edge

Last Sunday, pastor Irwin Alton, 62, preached against several specific sins during his sermon. Some people in the audience gasped with recognition.

"When he talked about skipping mid-week service to go to the lake, and buying a new boat when you haven’t tithed, I felt nailed to my pew," said one man. "It was like the Holy Spirit was speaking right to me."

But it wasn’t the Holy Spirit — it was the man’s own blog where he had posted photos of himself and his buddies on his new boat on a Wednesday evening.

Pastor Alton, who cultivates a reputation as a computer illiterate techno-phobe, is actually an avid reader of MySpace pages, blogs and personal websites of the people in his congregation.

"I appear, shall we say, un-hip," he says. "Therein lies my advantage."

Though he publicly refers to the Worldwide Web as the "Worldwide Waste" and e-mail as "sin-mail," in his home office is a bank of computer screens with more than 170 bookmarked sites — personal web pages, blogs, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Flickr and more. Each week Alton surfs the sites for hours to find evidence of questionable behavior by people in his church. He jots offenses down and incorporates them into his Sunday sermons.

He even checks the blogs of friends of people in his church. That’s where he found photos of Emily Dotson, 31, at a local sports bar. During the service last week Alton paused mid-sermon to say, "Some of you have been visiting places you shouldn’t be seen in as a Christian, drinking establishments and the like." Emily was taken aback.
"He was speaking right to me," she says.
She came forward and repented for being at the sports bar, even though she’d been celebrating a girlfriend’s birthday.

"I knew I shouldn’t have lingered in that environment," Emily says. "I could have gone in, said hi and left."

When mentioning sinful behavior Alton sometimes intentionally gets small details wrong, or remains vague.

"If I bat a thousand they might get suspicious," he says.
He never claims his messages are Holy Spirit-inspired, but many in the church believe they are.

"He’s right so often, it has to be God," says one man. "We all come to church because God is using Pastor Alton to address our particular situations. It’s phenomenal."

One family, the Bixbys, was tolerating their daughter’s college partying. Alton watched the girl’s MySpace for weeks before mentioning from the pulpit that "some parents need to get a lasso around their college-age children — and fast, before they do some real damage."

That week, the Bixbys called their daughter home to "re-establish patterns of good behavior."

"We felt that if God was merciful enough to speak prophetically through our pastor like that, we should take action," says the father.

For his part, Alton has no problem not revealing his sources.

"If they can’t make the connection between what I’m saying and what they’re putting on the Internet, then maybe God really is speaking to them," he says. "And they sure treat me with a lot more respect now."