• Impact

    Wilderness Wanderings 2016

      Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings 2016: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life Happy New Year and welcome to Broken Leadership, the blog of Leader Formation International (LFI).  My name is Bill Lawrence, founder and president of LFI, and I want to take a moment to greet you and inform you concerning our early 2016 blog plans. I want to write a series of blogs on the subject Wilderness Wanderings: when a zigzag line is the shortest distance between futility and fruition. If you’re in any kind of leadership position, whether business or professional, educational or governmental, or—the most important—parental, you surely have wondered at times…

  • Impact

    Starting Over

      Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken January 1, 2016. A new year and a new start. Celebrations and all that fun. Resolutions and all that jazz. Bowl games and all that pizazz. A new slate and all that hope. But what do we do with everything we’ve written on the slate of 2015? Does it all just go away?  What if 2015 was a wilderness year for you as it was for me in some ways? The wilderness. Barren, empty, lifeless, colorless, solitary, unending hard sand, rock outcroppings, and rugged mountains. Hot in the day, cold at night. Far from the action, from the crowds, from life and…

  • Impact

    The Voice of a Proclaimer

    Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken The Voices of Christmas:  The Voice of a Proclaimer He came as a proclaimer out of the desert in the line of the great Wilderness Prophets such as Moses and Elijah. He was John the Baptizer, and he was fully consecrated unto God and filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. John was both radical and real, and it was this radical reality that drew people from cities all around into the wilderness to hear his message. At one point Jesus asked, “What did you go into the desert to see? A reed blowing in the wind? A man dressed in fine clothes?…

  • Impact

    The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness

      Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Clear the way of the LORD! Make straight a highway in the desert for our God! Every valley will be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low; the rough ground will be made level, the rugged places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all the people will see the salvation of the Lord. The LORD has spoken. From Isaiah 40:3-5, the greatest Christmas poem ever written Many American Christians today are running scared. America has lost its cultural salvation, and they have lost their hope. …

  • Heartprints

    God’s Power Tools – #7

    Our most powerful tool in teaching empowers and enhances the use of all the other tools. It could easily be compared to a battery; it powers and recharges all the power tools God has placed in our hands for ministry. Our seventh power tool is love. God’s desires a relationship through us with each child; His love will flow to us then through us to them. Like a lantern it will project His light and dispel the lies of darkness which bombard them daily. How do we learn to wield this tool, to cut a path through the tangle of lies embedded in a child’s heart? Only love can unlock…

  • Engage

    Las Oraciones de Mi Madre—My Mother’s Prayers

    I crawled slowly and ever so quietly towards the door of my mother’s room. Her weeping had awakened me from a deep sleep. I decided to go check up on her so I sneaked over to her room. I waited a bit and sat in the corner of the hallway where I could see her through the slightly opened door. I listened.   Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tú nombre.   I felt relieved. My mother, kneeling down beside her bed, prayed and wept. She’s talking to God. She’s having the same conversation as the night before. I decided to stay for a while so I could hear…