Two Words

My life has always been marked by curiosity and a sense of adventure. Perhaps it’s because of the multiple moves our family made when I was younger. I was born in Ohio, moved to New Jersey, and then Southern California, and then finally to Texas. Not only is leaving your friends and home behind difficult, but I don’t have to tell you that each one of those places is very different from the other. Yet as I look back on each of those moves, each place held a key relationship or moment that would shape me into the person I am today. Along each step of my journey God was revealing to me the joy and adventure of following His leading. Perhaps that’s why verses like Romans 8:28 or Ephesians 3:20-21 have always been so important to me, as they reminded me God had a plan and each step on the journey had a purpose. In his book the Art of War, Steven Pressfield wrote, “Most of us have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” Maybe that’s why I get excited when I encounter people, communities, organizations, and ideas find themselves stuck. Often times, in those moments, the focus is on the resistance, but the Gospel reminds us that the old has gone and the new is here! I love to bridge the gap between the old and new; the now and next. Perhaps that’s why…

• When I’m driving and see an old empty building, I begin to imagine what new thing could revitalize that space to be a blessing to the community?
• I love to watch my children and dream about what God is calling them to be and do, and how to parent that makes that more likely.
• I walk around our house dreaming about knocking down walls, adding on a room, or reconfiguring our backyard.
• I love coaching my daughter’s soccer team, helping each girl discover their strengths and talents, and empowering them to leverage them in a way that helps the team be successful.
• I love to look for the next in which God is leading our church, so we might be His Kingdom blessing to our community and city.

The Gospel is that God has overcome the resistance bridging the gap between these two lives by making all things new. I want this for me. I want this for my family and friends. I want this for my community and for my church. And I want this for you. It is in this that I find the meaning to my two words, Navigating Renewal. No matter where I am and who I’m with, I want to help people bridge the gap between what is and what one day could be…what one day will be!

Matt exists to honor God and love others by leading people to see and respond to God’s transforming work in their lives.

Shane Stacey exists to help people actualize tomorrow’s dream by courageously ordering their steps today. It doesn’t matter if the vision is godly-parenting, building a disciple-multiplying culture, growing a business or learning a new skill–they all require some formulating. Formulating is the thoughtful development of the necessary steps, resources and relationships needed for a particular outcome. Every vision often requires a unique combination of similar ingredients–a reliance on God, a refocus of relationships, a reallocation of resources and a realignment of rhythms. Life is never formulaic but it almost always requires some formulating.

My signature verse has been John 15:16, where Jesus states that He’s chosen and sent us to “bear fruit that will last”. Combine that with the fact that through the Younique process I discovered my last name literally means “fruitful”. Fruitfulness means “to produce effectively”. Every life, every family, every team, every church has a God-given purpose–a unique kingdom contribution–that when focused has the potential to bring about lasting change. I love cooperating with God and those in my relational sphere of influence to produce that which will last beyond our lifetime–and, Lord willing to have a lasting echo into eternity.

Formulating Fruitfulness is an odd pairing yet they explain the tension I’ve felt through most of my life between the organic and order, people and processes, grace and intentionality. They motivate me to live my life with intentionality and with eternity in mind.

Stewarding Mission is about cultivating and caring for the mission of God and empowering the purpose within each individual to join God in His mission for maximum Kingdom impact. It is unlocking and unleashing the potential placed within the people of God to live with clarity the calling of God on their lives.

I believe that every person has their own uniquely God-designed AMAZING. It begins with being amazed by God and continues with joining Him in His amazing activity in the world. My LifeCall is to guide explorers to discover their AMAZING by demonstrating and championing sacred amazement.

Bill Mancini exists to honor God and serve people by helping to renew brokenness to a condition envisioned by the Creator.

I believe God vision/mission for me is to help catalyze pastors and churches to unleash their gifts, passion, and stories that will create movement makers proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom.

What does Maximum Expression look like? Everyone has within them a dream of what they could be if they only had a chance, if they only had someone to believe in them, to help them gain a foothold leading to success. I am one of those someones. I agree with you that you were born for greatness.

• You are one of a kind.
• You are uniquely wired to be wonderful.
• You are uniquely shaped for significance.

You are Younique! What’s your story?

• Where have you been?
• What have you done?
• How did you arrive at this place in this moment?

What makes you so different, so distinct?

• What lenses focus your view of the world?
• What gets you up in the morning and keeps you up at night?
• What context fits you best?

What’s next?

• Where do you go from here?
• How will you get there?
• What will you require to achieve this dream?

What stories will you tell your grandchildren one day?

• What giants will you dispatch?
• Which injustices will you resolve?
• How will you make the world a more loving and life-affirming place?

I have questions. You have answers. I am process. You are content.  Together, by God’s grace and in his strength, we can empower you to live the life God has dreamed for you since before the world began. He has been thinking of you and this moment from eternity past. He is awaiting your best thinking, your finest planning, your ultimate contribution. What does your Maximum Expression look like? Let’s discover it together. Let me cheer you every step of the way. Let your life honor God and serve others as big as you have always dreamed!

Catalyzing is a great descriptor for how I do what I do. Because of my background in chemistry, I know specifically how a catalyst works. It reminds that I don’t create change in people or organizations, that is between the person and God. But I do come along side and help that change proceed faster and with less energy. Development is what I am looking to catalyze. Development does not just mean change.  Development means change with peaks and valleys, learning and unlearning, broad spaces and times of testing. The journey of development can be depicted with an s-shaped curve and it is the adventure I help people and organizations embrace. My two words came to me pretty easily. As I walked thought the Younique process and considered what specific thing I brought to every room, they just seemed to emerge. Since then. my two words became a focal point for me to guide my life based on who God created me to be, beyond the expectations or desires of others. Over the past few years they have helped me know what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to. That has been invaluable. But the greatest thing that my two words have given me is permission to be who I am. To recognize that God made me in a specific way and that I don’t have to be all things to all people in my vocation has been empowering. Also, my two words help me guard against my life drifts – the motivations of my heart that can undermine the work of God in my life. They remind me of what I am created to do even if no one notices. I can honestly say that I would not be where I am today without the journey of uncovering my two words, and unpacking how they name my future.

As a life coach, I recognize the potential in people. It’s my job and passion to help them grow to reach that full potential. In my spare time I recognize the potential in a blank canvas or piece of wood and create something crafty and beautiful out of it. I recognize potential in every situation!

I see magnificence in God’s creation. In the people He’s created and the diversified, spectacular physical world. It is a holy magnificence that each person has, despite the fact that it might appear buried, undervalued, or not worthy to the beholder; Jesus-follower or not. Pointing people to His glory in and around them is the manifestation of my two words, Unveiling Glory.

I am called to help people discover and explore God’s dream for their future. I find joy when I see “the light come on” in someone’s life as they discover ways to walk on a faithful journey with Jesus. “Illuminating pathways” means that I will hold the light for you while you peek down the path, check the compass, clear the obstacles and take steps of faith. It means that I am an assistant, handing people the tools that they need to clarify the vocational calling that God has created them to fulfill.

Going through the Younique Journey experience has given me more clarity in my life than any other process in which I have had the opportunity to participate. Regardless what roles I have had either personally or professionally, I can see my two-word calling demonstrated throughout my life: Cultivating Transformation.
Now that I have clarity in my calling, every day I make decisions, determine choices, and schedule my time according to these two words. As I look at a day, a week, a month, or even a year, I continually ask myself, “Is this action or activity cultivating transformation in my life or the lives of others?” If it’s not, “why am I doing it?”
As I think about the 20-30 years that I have left to serve Jesus, I want each day to be fully engaged with my calling. I want to serve others through the exercising of my gifts and talents. I want to maximize the impact I have on the world.
Won’t you join me as you live into your calling?

In biology, symbiosis describes a relationship in which each party gets something from the other. In mutual symbiosis, everyone gets what they need and it is a win-win. In the process of discovering symbiosis I help people and organizations create win-win relationships between people, ideas, and processes. Often times, circumstances that seem contradictory or conflicting just need to be better understood in order for things to work together. Discovering symbiosis is all about finding the win-wins in life by enabling individuals and organizations see how they can collaboratively engage with each other in pursuit of a common goal.  

The meaning of Susan (Lily flower) + genealogy research about the faith and life of my 3rd great grandmother who I am named after + discovering my own faith story and calling.

Friends of mine started referring to me as a People Whisperer in the mode is a horse whisperer several years ago. That came out of a previous nickname, “The Velvet Hammer.” Apparently, they thought I could share tough news to people in a way that they could receive it. Whispering came out of that context. Progress, even in the smallest amount is the thing that fuels me. If there is no progress, I get a little antsy. When you put those together, you get Whispering Progress. I love to invest in people who have the ability to change things.

Whether writing or speaking, I want to say just the right thing, just right. So “articulating perfection” has two meanings for me. For one, it means expressing something perfectly. For another, it means opening people’s minds to picture the perfection that is coming: the new creation of the kingdom of God.

To a lot of people, “perfection” is a dirty word. I say, let’s take it back from the devil. Perfection isn’t something we achieve but something we receive—it’s God’s promise to us. My calling is to show you!

The first of my two words came directly out of Life Younique’s Passion 360 exercise, where I asked close friends, coworkers, and family “what three words you would use to describe what I am passionate about.” My closest friend, Eric, responded with “deconstruction.”

Eric and I became acquainted in 1999 while attending a Willow Creek church leadership conference. He was struggling with his role as a husband and father, and I offered to sit with him in his confusion. Later we served together as small group leaders and took weekend camping trips together with our sons. For several years we had a standing monthly meeting at a favorite pizza pub. But he had never used the word “deconstruction” before, that I could recall.

I called Eric shortly after he sent his three words. “What do you mean by ‘deconstruction’?”

“It’s the closest thing I could come up with,” he said. “When I’m entangled in a bundle of confusion, you help me take a step back and sort through the issues so I can consider them one at a time instead of all at once.”

Life Younique affirmed that I have been deconstructing chaos for much of my life. It gave me the tools to articulate my calling. Life Younique opened my eyes to the value of naming things as a means of gaining power and authority over them. In naming my LifeCall, LifeCore, LifeScore, and LifeSteps, I am empowered to filter out the many things I can do and focus my resources on the one thing I must do.

I am called to honor God and serve others by Deconstructing Chaos: excavating truth, exposing grace, and drawing people closer to the Divine. And the closer you get to the Divine, the more clearly you reflect God’s irrational, unconditional love.

Motion is so satisfying! I love doing, acting, contributing, making things happen. But more than motion itself, I love helping people and organizations to remove barriers and overcome obstacles so they can keep moving. Empowering begins with a relationship, a mutual commitment to know and be known. Deepening the personal bond between team members and building community is at the heart of my understanding of empowerment. When trust is cultivated, then risks can be taken and new heights realized! My best day is when I can be a part of overcoming obstacles and realizing a dream or achieving a goal. That’s why my Younique two words are Empowering Momentum!

Entering the Younique process I had an overall sense of my purpose being one that engaged relationally with others with a desire to see them live whole lives. Yet there were several gaps for me in what that looked like and how I could truly own that purpose in the everyday of my life. Journey 1 brought several revelations one of which was the meaning of my given name and in the process paved the way to greater clarity of my call. Heather is by definition a “flowering evergreen plant that thrives on peaty barren lands, as in Scotland.” One of the reasons this hearty plant survives is that it clings closely to other plants as it grows. Connecting this special meaning to all of the insight gathered within my sweet spot of passion, ability and context, I began to understand what it is that I am always doing in everything I do. Cultivating is language that communicates a posture of both faithfulness and dependence. A gardener or farmer recognizes their part of tending and drawing out plant life from the earth is completely dependent on a greater source that ultimately provides the means necessary for that new life. Cultivating, as the first of my two words, reminds and motivates me that in each moment, within each relationship, with every responsibility given to me I can step forward confident of my purpose AND provision as one who nurtures AND challenges others. Cohesion was an interesting word choice for me considering that it is a physics term and I am not remotely a science person. Nor is it simply a matter of alliteration. Cohesion is “the action or fact of forming a united whole” and in physics it is “the sticking together of particles of the same substance”. These two definitions together communicate the idea of “sticking together to become whole”. For me the beauty in this language is the focus on what is happening in the process of becoming whole. A challenging reality for us as individuals and communities is that we are fractured and scattered in so many ways that we were not created to be. The longing in my heart is for people to know they were not designed to live divided lives but rather ones where every aspect is bound to, redeemed and shaped by, their Divine Designer. In the same way I want to spend my life spreading the glue of the gospel that unites the differences that we have a tendency to allow to become battle grounds within communities. Cultivating Cohesion is meaningful and motivating language to me of something God has purposefully designed in me to do with endless energy in every single area of my life. The words are personal to my unique self and rooted in the truth of THE good news that anchors and empowers me to step daily into my LifeCall as a follower of Jesus.

David Loveless exists to love God & love others by helping church leaders integrate healthier personal and professional identities, so they live more fulfilling and fruitful lives. I’ve found in my life and the 1000’s of leaders I’ve worked with over the years, that everyone wrestled each day with identity. The wrestling match of identity is found in seemingly contradictory things that they feel, believe, and have experienced. I’ve discovered that a significant part of becoming more whole and healthy, both personally and professionally is to the ability to integrate all the parts, instead of trying to live in denial of one or the other. Jesus said…. “you all have wheat (good) and weeds (not-so-good). Don’t pull the weeds.” He knew that the healthiest people learn to integrate and live in the tension of all their polarities:

• We have both a true identity and a compulsive one
• We have both personal and professional lives
• We have access to the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world
• We are two but we can become one
• We are human and divine
• We are to engage in rest and work
• We possess both perfection and imperfection
• We have both the long-term dream of Jerusalem yet a short-term plan of Babylon

I am called to encourage, heal, equip and propel brothers and sisters in Christ, so that they can be co-creators for the manifestation and advancement of the Kingdom of God in history