Altitude: Your Next Move Changes Everything

By Michael Simone

Altitude will fly you over eight moves that will change the trajectory of your life. Altitude's theme is Your Next Move Changes Everything. The chapters reflect what every person struggles with: how to craft a life of meaning and purpose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Koehler Studios, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781938467776

Michael Simone

Michael Simone is the founding and Senior Pastor of Spring Branch Community Church, a mega-church with nearly 3,000 members in Virginia Beach, VA. His first ministry assignment, in 1972, was working with street kids, in East Harlem, NY. He teaches Religious Studies at Saint Leo University, South Hampton Roads Center. Michael is also Chaplain at the Virginia Beach Psychiatric Center. His doctoral work is in the area of marriage and family. He wrote the study guide for Couples Who Pray and has been a keynote speaker for The Fall Festival of Marriage. Michael loves baseball and played on the Field of Dreams movie site, Dyersville, Iowa. His passion is bringing faith and life together through speaking and writing. Spring Branch is a member of the Willow Creek Association and is a premier host site for the Global Leadership Summit. The author lives and works with his wife, Gail, in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Book preview

Introduction

YOU FLY THROUGH life at the speed of life. Your velocity blurs the edges of cognition. The afterburners are always on. If you're like me there are a few things you're trying to fix or unravel while zooming along. Doing that is never easy. So, how's it going as you rip through reality?

Altitude is the concept I use to describe whether or not life is working. I know some parts of your life are working and some parts of your life are messy. I know because that's how mine is. Altitude ultimately comes down to two pithy questions. Do you know who you are? Do you know where you're going? That being established at the fragile beginning of this book, I also need to tell you one thought stuck fast in my mind—"The best way to predict the future is to create it."¹ Peter Drucker said it. I believe it. Another way to read Drucker's thought is, your next move changes everything. I believe that, too. Altitude is gained or lost from the sum of your moves, as you are answering two succinct questions. That statement tells the story of my life. It tells your story, too.

YOUR NEXT MOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING

Let me tell you how those five words flew into my brain one spring day. It was one of those perfect afternoons in April. No showers in sight. It was a grand day for an old ball game. I picked up my father-in-law and drove to Williamsburg, from Virginia Beach, for a JV baseball game. My son was playing center field. The obligatory bag of peanuts was ready to cast her wickery husks on the ground. For some reason there was a small bench down the right field line, as if built there just for us. With our rustic box seats and crunching away, we watched possibly the sloppiest baseball game in history. No one could catch a ball. No one knew what to do with the ball. The score went back and forth, forth and back. Mercifully, that last inning arrived. The score was 8-7 in favor of the home team. There were two outs when my son came up to bat. He smacked a fastball up the middle. The tying run aboard, our spirits soared in hope of extra innings.

Then I realized what we were up against. Our weakest hitter shuffled toward the plate. Bat loomed bigger than boy. I sniffed the air, now turning cool in the fading afternoon. Trouble. I frowned and set down the peanuts. The first pitch was a rocket. Strike one! My son stole second base. The next fastball, like a bat out of a bad place, was never seen by the batter. Strike two! My son stole third. Tension filled the air. Would the unthinkable happen, or would we suffer the legendary agony of defeat? These are the moments we live for in sports. The pitcher looked in. My son took a bold lead off third. The batter hunched over home base trying to get in touch with his inner Babe Ruth. The pitch zoomed. Pow, shrieked the catcher's mitt! Strike three! Game over. I walked across the diamond toward my son who was walking toward me. He asked a question I'll never forget. How much did we lose by, Dad? Stopped in my tracks I responded, How much did we lose by? One run. You should've stolen home! I was stymied. He was in the game! He had a uniform on! He was on the team! But he didn't know what the score was! His next move could have changed everything!

Now, I don't know what would have happened if he had tried to steal home. He might have been out. He might have been safe. But I do know this. As he broke for home, old men would rise to their feet putting weathered hands over their hearts. Women holding babies would clutch them a little tighter, opening their mouths in astonishment. Kids playing behind the fence would stop pushing and throwing dirt to stare at this blur of red numbers, white pants, and silver cleats, racing toward doom or destiny. A magnificent slide! A billowing cloud of dust rising to heaven! The umpire shouts—and I don't know if he exclaims Safe! or Out! But I do know this—it would have been one heck of a finish to a baseball game!

Forty-two years ago, I made a move that changed everything. I was visiting a friend at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. One bitter cold February night, after meeting with the football team for a Bible study, the first Bible study of my life, I walked back to the dorm pondering who I was and where I was going. I was just passing through Indiana on my quest to find the meaning of life. I was committed to travel the paved and rocky roads of the world to find an answer to the riddle of me. But I was ambushed in hoosierland. I was embraced by God on a clear, starry night. My move of asking Christ to change me that night was a 180 degree turnabout. I hadn't expected God to show up in my brain like a fiery lightning strike. I wasn't prepared for an epiphany. But He's been showing up ever since with amazing consistency.

So here I am, knowing that your next move changes everything, because I've lived it into my fifth decade of faith. I've seen a church sprout and grow out of the most confusing time in my life. I've seen an organization caring for orphans in Nicaragua explode from my heart. I've seen water, for a village in Togo, gush because of an unpredictable lunch with a friend in Copenhagen. And I've experienced daily the wonder, miracle, and mystery of what happens when you make the next move with Him.

Inside you'll find eight critical moves for creating your life. Air Traffic Control sections will help you land your plane. My hope is for you to grab or invent your next move. My prayer is for you to create your future. May you find out who you are and where you're going. May you gain Altitude all your days.

Michael Simone

Virginia Beach, Virginia

Your First Move

Desperately Seeking Altitude

I don't believe

for a second

that success is just about

self-motivation. If that were all it took,

all any of us would ever need is a little pep rally

now and again and we'd soar to the stars.

But after all the rah-rahs and the warm feelings

wear off, it's ultimately about action.

When you strap into your jet, you have to push up the

throttle and then release the brakes to take off.

Lt. Col. Rob Waldo Waldman

Never Fly Solo

YOU GET ON A PLANE. You get off a plane. You've adjusted to TSA screenings. You daydream as you get patted down. You log miles and collect points. You're moving your personal body system over oceans, mountain ranges, and the occasional metropolis. But with all the aerial gymnastics, questions float in the air. Who's flying your plane? Are you going anywhere significant? Are you desperately seeking Altitude?

We've grown up in a generation where something that was steeped in science fiction is now humdrum reality. We don't raise an eyebrow or look up as the flight attendant's rote safety announcements annoyingly interfere with our Kindle concentration (I know my seat can float. I know to blow into the little tube thingy). In our oblivion, we fail to appreciate the most startling of realities—we're in a can being hurtled through space at four times the average Daytona 500 speed.

PHYSICS LESSON

We fly by gaining support from the air, and we defy gravity by using static lift. We gain speed by increasing power (or thrust), which also determines Altitude. As we ascend, engines work more efficiently, we get where we are going faster, and we rise above the majority of turbulence.

So, why the physics lesson? Well, there's a lot of similarity between Altitude and relationships. We all ride the skies of relationships. Relationships take us up and bring us down. There are rumbling takeoffs and scary nosedives as we hope for safe landings in life. Altitude is all about getting the answers to your wobbly relational questions. And you have questions. We all do. Altitude is the way you live your life. You either keep learning and growing (thrust) and safely get to your destinations, or you find your flight has been canceled. You're grounded until conditions clear up. How long you're grounded might just be up to you.

Altitude has a spiritual altimeter and compass. One indicates the level of connectedness with God; the other gives you the coordinates of where life is taking you. Together, those readings tell the stories of your flights. There are times when we look at our instrument panel and it seems like a bunch of dials we can't make heads or tails of. If we're honest, we have to admit that our spiritual lives are oftentimes the same way. Who God is and where life is taking us can feel like a mystery.

So, let's take some flying lessons and explore the skies of your relationships. We all need to find out who is flying our plane. The future depends on it.

FLIGHT PLAN

It pays to take spiritual flying lessons. You'll be glad you did when it's foggy or when you come in for a landing and there's snow on the runway. Learn to fly right and you can even set ‘er down on a patch of dirt if necessary. Some of us old-timers know there are a lot of potholed airstrips in the flight plan of life. There are creaky wings and landing gear bumpedy bumps, too. Most of the time you need all the help God can give, as you pray for safe relationship landings. Let's begin by looking at a man who thought he was an expert pilot but came up desperately seeking altitude. His name is Solomon. This is the story of his flight.

Meaningless! Meaningless!

   says the Teacher.

"Utterly meaningless!

   Everything is meaningless."

What does man gain from all his labor

   at which he toils under the sun?

Generations come and generations go,

   but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets,

   and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south

   and turns to the north;

round and round it goes,

   ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea,

   yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from,

   there they return again.

All things are wearisome,

   more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing,

   nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again,

   what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,

Look! This is something new?

      (Ecclesiastes 1:2-10)

So, Solomon, a brilliant guy, says, Take a look around. Take a good look. Peel back the layers of life. Go ahead. There's nothing there. Trust me, I've looked at it. I've thought about it. I've gone through this over and over again in my mind. I wish it wasn't so, but life cannot pay off for you. It hasn't paid off for me. Life wears me out.

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. (Ecclesiastes 1:14)

Then he gives the back story. He says in essence, Let me show you how I got here.

I thought in my heart, Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good. But that also proved to be meaningless.

Laughter, I said, is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish? I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with