Show Your Work

Today, we have Rick Veenstra share with us about the importance of “showing your work.”

Recently, our team was asked to read a book titled Show Your Work. As a result of reading that book, we became convinced it was important to do the kind of thing we are doing right now. We believe that because we are Christians, we ought to be good stewards of the life that God has given us and the life energy that we have. So it ought to be shared, because we should show what God is doing in and among us.

And then secondly, learning is learning. If we are learning about leadership in the Church, why should this not be shared beyond our context of the Great Lakes Region, and the Reformed Church in America? If we are learning valuable content or knowledge, why would we not share it? For example, I have personally learned that being coached by a competent coach multiplies my leadership effectiveness by two or even three times. That’s an exponential increase in effectiveness, simply by being coached once a month for an hour by a trained, competent coach. We should all be sharing that more broadly with others rather than keeping it within the 200 churches of the Great Lakes Region of the Reformed Church in America.

One way to do that is by following our next step, utilizing the modern age digital world. I’ve learned through Show Your Work, and through our experience with younger leaders, that if your work or what you are learning does not exist on the internet in some form, whether it’s a blog, a facebook page, twitter or even a website, then it does not exist. Who knew? But this is reality in the world in which we find ourselves. I’m sharing this with you all because hopefully this information I have learned will have some value in the digital world as well as in your lives.