Hans Googer

The other day my friend texted me a question. I told him that I did have a response but I needed to hop onto the computer for it. From the computer I can type a response more quickly than I can on my phone—so most of the time you text me, I’m replying from the computer. In fact, my phone doesn’t often stay by me, so it isn’t uncommon for me to miss a call from someone I’m texting because they assume my phone is on me (it isn’t).

On days that I get up early (there haven’t been many this year) I’ve likely responded to my first email or text before 6am. I have a side hustle doing grading for Dallas Seminary. I tell students that I try to turn around any emails within 24 hours and, if easy to address, right away. My students have my phone number and know that if they have a question about the course, they can text me.

“Don’t call me,” I say.

“I don’t even answer the phone when my wife calls.”

(That’s actually not true, but the hyperbole helps drive home the point.)

I put a high value on responsiveness—both personally and when I see it in others. I don’t want to waste people’s time, so I don’t try to reach out to them for something I don’t need. Hearing, “Thanks for the quick reply,” brings me a lot of satisfaction. I know who, in general, is going to turn around a quick response and I appreciate it a thousand times over. (Also, if I don’t respond, there is almost always a reason why—even if that reason is just that I don’t want to respond.)

But, as you can likely see, this value is a two-edged sword. . .

Continue reading “Responsiveness: Such a Fast Turnaround that You Get Dizzy”

When I was in high school, I worked at an ice cream shop. I’d drive the family minivan to work after school (usually around 5pm), relieve the owner, and close the store down. For me, the pivotal moment in closing the store wasn’t counting the money, being sure the ice cream was covered, or making certain the store was clean. No, the pivotal moment for me was locking the door.

I can confidently say that I never left the door unlocked. How do I know? Most nights, after leaving, I’d wonder if the door was locked, then I’d turn around, drive back and check. One time I was already home in bed, and I couldn’t actually remember locking the door. I got out of bed and drove back to check.

The door was always locked.

While such a scenario might just come across as me being a bizarre high schooler, it’s all part of a value that has been developing in me over many years: responsibility. Someone else might call this “ownership” (I debated calling it ownership when I started writing the first post in this series.)

Responsibility is good, but it has its downfalls. In this post, you’ll get to see how this value plays out in my life—in ways good and ways not so good.

Continue reading “Responsibility: Getting Things Done (and Being Done in)”

I sometimes find myself frustrated. It’s a mild frustration—nothing most people see—but it is present nonetheless. The frustration could be at home, amongst church ministry, in a meeting or a conversation among friends.

Being frustrated is easy; knowing why you are frustrated is hard. Often, rather than try and diagnose why we are frustrated we simply assume our frustration because of something someone else did wrong (good place to start, right?, with what other people did wrong). We know, though, that there’s usually more to the story.

2020 has been a year for me to try and track down my own personal frustrations that show up in leadership and figure out what is going on. Here’s what I’m discovering:

Frustrations often come when your personal values clash with the personal values of another.

Further than that is the fact that these values might be expressing themselves in you positively or negatively—and you might now know what is going on in the moment unless you really think about it.

So that’s where this series will be going. I’ve spent some time trying to articulate my own personal values, how they operate day-today, and how they might help or hinder as I lead. Today, I’ll simply summarize those values and from there I’ll start showing the upside and downside to each one.

Continue reading “Your Values: How They Help and Hinder Your Leadership”

So COVID-19 has taken the world by storm and is uniquely addressing how we live life in Texas—as well as basically anywhere. The city is largely shutting down for at least two weeks as we all attempt to “flatten the curve” (most of us not knowing what that meant until recently).

Many churches have stopped meeting for a while—with the large majority of church gatherings exceeding the recently-established 50-person threshold, while all of them fail to keep people from being in “close contact” with others. Never fear, many churches have small group gatherings that meet in homes throughout the city. We got this . . . right?

Then, today happens. And social gatherings of 10 or more are encouraged to cease for at least the next 15 days. That’s a while. So how do we address this?

Continue reading “Leading Small Groups when Even Small Groups are Canceled”

There is a general principle in my house: if there is a significant game on for a team that we have a rooting interest in, we can stay up and watch it. School the next day? Doesn’t matter. Game goes past midnight? That’s fine. The kids (and parents) can go to sleep when they want, but they are free to watch until the end. Parenting—in large part—is about memory-making, and we love these memories.

One of my favorite memories (up until recently) was watching all of the 2017 World Series with my family. Game 7 is where the principle applied. We didn’t own a television at the time—I think we had Youtube TV or something like that and would watch the games on a secondary computer monitor on our kitchen counter. My oldest was the only one who had the stamina to watch until the end.

It was awesome. Until it wasn’t.

What we know now chances my perspective forever—and basically every sports fan’s perspective. As I’ve watched press conferences and player interviews and read commentary upon commentary I’ve tried to figure out where I landed with it all, and I think I figured it out:

The Astros should forfeit their World Series Trophy and Altuve should do the same with the MVP.

Let me explain . . .

Continue reading “Sign Stealing From a Sports Fan (and Pastor’s) Perspective: Forfeit”