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Troublemaker or Truth-teller?
I tend to see the big picture when presented with ideas. I can usually anticipate potential problems and possible reactions. I envision what it would take to develop an organization to put an idea in place. I consider the feelings and concerns of various groups involved. So when someone presents me with a done deal decision, my reaction is to bring up possible ramifications or problems. It’s part of my processing the news, but it does serve to push back when the issues have been ignored. What I see as thinking wisely, however, others see as troublemaking. Several years back I was shocked to hear that I had been…
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What Are You Selling?
Before I got into ministry, I spent many years as a salesperson. I learned so much about life while I was in sales and I find myself constantly finding similarities between sales and ministry. I thought for fun I would share some of those with you today: #1) You win some – you lose some! You are going to have days where you nothing goes right, people mistreat you, your lesson falls short, you make a change and you feel as if your volunteer staff, the kids and the parents are all going to hang you from a tree. Those days happen and if we let the evil one get in our heads,…
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God’s Comfort For Mourning Leaders
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken When Blessings Abound Series The Beatitudes Attitude: Passionately Pursuing Christlikeness Through Desperate Dependence on Him { God's Comfort For Mourning Leaders } Blessed are those who mourn . . . (Mt. 5:4) How can God comfort mourning leaders? Few of us would, especially if their sin tore our hearts apart, left our lives in ruins, and created suffering for us. Yet comfort is exactly what He offers those who mourn for sin.However, we must understand God’s kind of comfort because there are many false comforters among us today who do not take God’s holiness seriously, so they don’t take our sin seriously either.…
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Time Savers, Life Takers
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken You have the watch, we have the time –African proverb Well, Apple has the watch anyway! Mac has taken a bite out of the apple with its heart measuring, health monitoring, run pacing—and, oh yeah, time telling—watch. There’s a whole new world of time savers available in any language from IOS to Android to Windows. And there’s all those other tech time savers like DVRs, online banking, texting, caller ID, and navigational tools, Yes, and Evernote and Dropbox too, both of which have cost me more time trying to figure out how to use than they ever saved me. That’s my problem, I’m…
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Fifty-Five Years Ago this Week
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Fifty-five years ago this week I flew from Philadelphia to Dallas to become a student at Dallas Theological Seminary and enter into the great adventure that transformed me from a rough edged kid into a pastor, professor, and mentor. Amazing! So many rough edges remain, but grace has worked through them despite my flaws. Three influences at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) laid the foundation for God’s grace in me, and I want to celebrate these influences for His glory… 1. My fellow students, peers who taught more than anyone else, perhaps in all my life. I sat in the classroom with some of…
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Mortunity
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Huh? Mortunity? Is that a word? Bet you’ve never seen that one before. I hadn’t until I got it from a friend who made it up while talking with me recently. I was telling my friend that in this year 2015 I have had the greatest sense of mortality ever, that this awareness has colored my thinking and has been a drag on my decisions.I have three things that won’t lie: my birth certificate, my passport, and my mirror—and these all combine to say I’m mortal! At the same time, I have never had greater opportunities, from ministry expansion in Romania and Ukraine,…
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Truth: Does it Blind or Break?
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken As long as truth is theory it blinds. As soon as truth becomes real it breaks. This is something I’ve learned across the years of my life. When I first graduated from seminary, I knew much truth. I could answer nearly every question in some way, often with biblical support. What I could not see was what I did not know. I still can’t, but I’m better at seeing some of my blind spots than I used to be… Every once in a while in my teaching preparation, I go back to an old file and review previous work on a particular passage.…
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Garissa
5:00 AM, April 2, 2015, Garissa University College, Garissa, Kenya. For sleepy heads it’s time to roll over and get a few more hours of sleep. For all nighters it’s time to grab another cup of coffee and push a little harder. For serious students it’s time to get up and review for today’s exam. For party types it’s time to find a bed somewhere and sleep it off once again. For committed Christians it’s time to gather for prayer. For al-Shabaab it’s time to kill. For Josephine, student leader of the Cru movement on campus, it’s time to die… The Christians gathered at the appointed time, 5:00 AM, under…
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Not Your Grandmother’s Lumbago
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken With friends like us the cross hardly needs enemies, although it has many. Think of how we distort the cross. Many of us probably heard our grandmothers say, “My lumbago is killing me. It’s my cross. I must bear it.” Right then, before we knew what the cross was, we knew we didn’t want one if it made us feel the way Grandma felt. Or it’s presented to us as some horrible struggle we must endure because we follow Jesus. Now it’s true that the cross can mean rejection and persecution for the cause of Christ, but there’s more to it than that……
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Wall Breakers Anonymous
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Sooner or later all of us hit the wall of inadequacy. There are no exceptions, no escape. There’s only denial, cover up, and futile efforts to break through, get over, get around, or dig under this utterly unexpected roadblock in life. The problem is everything we’ve done before doesn’t work. The barrier may be a career killer or a family struggle or a relationship block, but whatever it is, it matters to us, and we want it to end NOW!But nothing we do makes any difference because this unexpected and unwanted hindrance remains. We try all our tried and true methods, but they…
