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Haddon Robinson 1931-2017
In 1960, during my senior year of college when I was accepted by Dallas Seminary, I saw a picture of Haddon Robinson and thought, “What can a guy that young teach me about preaching?’ He looked the same age as some of my classmates, and all the professors I ever had looked like professors, like in their forties and fifties. During my first two years in seminary Dr. Robinson earned his PhD from the University of Illinois, so I did not have any courses from him until my third year when I gave my first sermon to him. I had taken preaching courses already, preached several times, usually did well,…
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When a Leader Stops Leading
It was the spring of the year when leaders took their troops out to defend their territory and protect their country. But this spring David, Israel’s leader, did not take his troops into battle. He had spent seventeen years on the run for his life from King Saul when he lived in caves in the wilderness though he was no risk to Saul. He had opportunities to take Saul’s life, but he would not touch God’s leader. Now he was king and established in Jerusalem with a new and beautiful house, a gift from a very dear friend, and seemed to have no desire to live the hard…
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Starting Over
For those of you who have read this blog in the past, you have probably noticed that it has been absent for a while. This is the first time since January I have written a blog; it is also the beginning of a new and long-term series from Leader Formation. Why have we been silent for so long? I will tell you. On Sunday evening, January 29, I was meeting with a group in a business building and as I was descending a set of stairs. I fell down four steps to the marble floor at the bottom of the stairs and was knocked out. After ten minutes I came…
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Christ Only – And Him Crucified
Leader Formation Blog Today you will notice that we have a new title for our blog. We have decided to focus on the solution for leadership rather than the problem of leadership in our new blog name. Here is this week's blog post: Christ Only—and Him Crucified After Rome Corinth was one of the top cities in the Roman Empire. It was a major crossroads because virtually nothing moved in any direction across the realm without passing through Corinth. The capital of the Roman province of Achaia in southern Greece, Corinth was strategically located on the Isthmus of Corinth, and that made it an east-west and…
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A New Year’s Blessing for 2017
I remember a cartoon from my boyhood of Baby New Year and Father Time. We’ve all seen cartoons like that, I know. The one I recall had Baby New Year entering stage right, freshly diapered, in a top hat, with a bright smile, and wearing a sash with the new year imprinted on it. Father Time, on the other hand, was exiting stage left wearing a tattered sash, all bent over, almost slinking off, his robe torn and patched, all but stepping on his long, unkempt beard, scythe in hand, his job of mowing things down, as time does, finished. The hope in the cartoon is centered in the…
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Jerusalem, December 26, 4 BC—Ho-Hum!
What was life like in Jerusalem on December 26, 4 BC, the day after Jesus was born? Pretty much the same as it was on December 24 BC, the day before He was born. Herod Agrippa still ruled. He still put the innocent to death, forced his unwilling subjects to labor on his great building projects, and exercised his cruel will at the cost of all around him. Rome still exercised its ruthless rule, upsetting the lives of its citizens in order to get an accurate count of the empire’s population so they could collect the taxes they needed to fund wars, do public works, maintain the…
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A Mother’s Treasure
Recently Lynna and I flew home from Singapore, and, of course, we had to pass through security. We have gone through security in the toughest airports in the world: DFW, Kennedy, Heathrow, Tel Aviv, Frankfurt, Paris, Budapest, Hong Kong, just about every airport that is on some high level of alert due to terrorists. Since we’ve done them all and had every innocuous thing taken from us that could possibly be labeled high risk, we had no concerns as we approached Singapore security. We should have been concerned. I sailed through in no time flat and then discovered Lynna pulled aside as an agent tore through everything she had,…
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Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth War. Every decade of my life has been scarred by war. It seems to me that we have a constant longing for peace and a constant reality of war. It began for me when I was in first grade, just barely learning to read, and I used to spread the newspaper out on the living room floor, mostly to look at the pictures. I still remember one vivid scene from World War II of a US ship at sea spewing black smoke on its way to destruction. I also remember the wild celebration on VJ day, as all our neighborhood poured out of our…
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The Birth of Christmas: While Sheperds Watch Their Flocks By Night
One of the things I love most about Christmas is the cards we receive from many friends around the world who tell us what’s happened in their lives in the past year. When I was a boy my mom used to hang all our cards on the door frame between our living room and our dining room and I can still see the progression of those cards on that door frame until it was totally covered. Lynna and I keep a large basket full of cards in our entryway, a constant reminder of those we love and miss. One of the greatest themes on those greetings is that of…
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The Birth of Christmas: The son of god and The Son of God
The year was 4 BC, and much of Galilee was in turmoil. Caesar Augustus, the son of god, had ordered a census for tax purposes, and some in Israel had to go to their home communities to comply. So it was that an unknown couple, Joseph and Mary, from an obscure town called Nazareth of Galilee had to go to a small village named Bethlehem nearly 100 miles away. To complicate things even more, Mary was pregnant and about to deliver her firstborn son, Jesus. Caesar Augustus, Gaius Julius Octavius, was one of the greatest leaders in history. A brilliant administrator, a talented team builder, aware of his…
