National Institute of Christian Leadership

New Year’s Resolutions …. Are They Worth It?

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:01:00 GMT

There are a lot of varying percentages when it comes to averaging the number of people that are successful in achieving their New Year Resolutions. Generally speaking, most people don’t achieve their resolutions and more often than not, most fail before they start. It’s an unfortunate statistic but does this mean that New Year’s Resolutions are not worth it? When setting personal resolutions, studies show that those set within a collaborative working environment where others can help hold one accountable will have a greater success rate than those just setting personal resolutions to achieve on their own. Here we will look at:

1. Benefits of Setting Goals In The Workplace

In any successful workplace you will see goals being set for both the individual and the team. Setting goals provides everyone with a clear focus on what they are trying to achieve and how they will go about achieving it. They clearly lay out the step by step process that breaks down how the overall can be accomplished and in ways that are achievable for everyone. They also provide guidance so everyone can stay on track and keep a steady forward movement. All of this is what leads to an increase in work performance. Even if goals are set on an individual scale, everyone working together to achieve their goals creates a motivated work environment where accountability is a catalyst to success; causing everyone to perform with greater productivity. Not only are individuals and the team as a whole successful but so is the company or organization.

2. What About Resolutions In The Workplace?

Resolutions in the workplace function a bit differently than the resolutions we commonly think of come New Year’s. Unlike a resolution created to improve or better an individuals personal life, resolutions set in the workplace are more unified. They’re a way of uniting everyone as a whole which potentially produces a more cohesive working environment and ultimately a successful one. Keep in mind that resolutions within a workplace are not the same as goals. Goals typically center themselves on numbers. Resolutions however, focus more on things like improving communication within the workplace and/or clientele, making it a point to celebrate team successes, creating a greater level of community within the work space, etc. They tend to have a personal edge making them more about quality, rather than quantitative value.

That being said, they can still function in similar ways to typical goal setting methods. As mentioned above, goal settings has its benefits. These very benefits are an outline to successful workplace resolutions as well. Providing clear focus on what the workplace desires to create, keeping everyone on track and working together with the component of accountability, mapping out a plan of attack on how everyone will achieve the resolutions they have set forth and gaining increased productivity while working towards these resolutions are all ways resolutions function in similar ways to goals. The difference is the collaborative effort and energy that comes from setting resolutions in the workplace.

3. How To Ensure Resolution Success

Goal setting is more often than not, a short term process where resolutions are about long term results. This is the first thing that needs to be understood when it comes to ensuring resolution success. The other is acknowledging that a successful resolution will always be about the process rather than the outcome. Whether its goals or resolutions, we often focus on the outcome, which is why most people end up failing their resolutions. We need to train our thoughts to look differently at these systems in order for us to achieve them. They need to be simple, measurable and achievable. Here is a list of ideas on how to set achievable resolutions in the workplace.
Determine Your Course: Break it down into steps. Make sure they are simple and our set up to create a habit rather than just a task. Habits stick with us. This equates to long term results. Setting practical resolutions will always increase the odds that they can be achieved.
Create Incentives: Giving someone or the team incentives to work towards, produces motivation. Not only are they pursuing the overall, they are enjoying themselves in the process. This can be done in simple ways like distributing gift cards to individuals/teams or taking everyone out for happy hour as a way to say, ‘ good work!’, ‘lets keep it up!’.
Put A Time On It: It’s important to have an end date for everyone to work towards. Think of these as steps. Each step can be broken down by giving it a time in which it needs to be met. Accomplishing small steps one at a time is highly effective in meeting the overall goal.
Make It Fun: Setting resolutions on their own isn’t what typically excites people. A small level of competitive play can be engaging and has the potential to create community. Ultimately, your looking for it to be a collaborative effort but this can be done not just by having everyone work towards specific goals but doing it together. Breaking people within the team into teams is one idea of implementing this. It also allows for accountability which is an influential factor in team success.
Take Notes: There’s always a new time for everything and the best way to go into something new is taking what you’ve learned from previous experience with you. Taking notes on what worked and what didn’t will help everyone the next time they create new resolutions.
Remember, it’s not about the overall outcome as much as it is about the process it takes to get there. Focusing on the day at hand and what it brings is the best thing one can do. The future will always be there. Todays moments, however, will not. Take each day one step at a time and you’ll find that your New Year’s resolutions do matter.

Why Pastors Should Attend Leadership Conferences and Seminars

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 23:36:00 GMT

Pastors should always be seeking growth and if that’s being done, conferences and seminars will be a part of what they take the time to pursue. If one is not, however, it’s never too late to start! Here are some key reasons why pastors should attend leadership conferences and seminars.

Strengthen Leadership Skills

Leadership conferences and seminars are a great way to sharpen your skills and gain new ones. These are the places where you will hear thoughts and ideas from leaders in your wheelhouse who know exactly what you face on the daily; giving you an opportunity to learn something new and be reminded of important principles that may have fallen from your forethought. You’ll gain practical and relevant advice that you can implement in your own leadership, allowing you to grow as a leader and as an individual.

Fresh Perspective

Everyone benefits from fresh perspective. Fresh perspective keeps things from becoming stagnant and stale. It allows for change, so that one doesn’t fall into the trap of doing the same thing over and over. A pastor knows that their congregation needs to be inspired and it’s fresh perspective that can provide that inspiration. Attending such things as conferences and seminars allows for opportunities to hear new perspectives on challenges leaders may be currently facing. It’s a place to gain insight on how to approach certain situations and issues; hearing from other leaders that can inspire breakthrough.

Connection and Inspiration

One of the perks with attending conferences and seminars is the networking piece. Connecting with those you may already know but don’t always have the time to see, as well as meeting new faces. Gathering with like minded leaders can be a breath of fresh air; knowing that there are others who understand your day in and day out. Some of the most valuable relationships come from these meetings; impacting who you are as a leader. Relationships offer support, accountability, encouragement and can lead to new opportunities.

On top of all this, connections are where we learn and grow. It’s through connections that we become inspired by others. There will always be new ideas, new information and new trends setting and it’s up to the individual as to whether they keep up on them. However, it’s important to keep in mind that a growing leader will impact those they lead to grow as well. People are not static. They want to be inspired. They appreciate fresh perspective, so pastors and leaders of all capacities can be more effective in their roles when they are pursuing growth and new inspiration.

Filling Your Well

It’s no question that a pastors role carries a large amount of responsibility. There’s a lot to carry in this line of work. Even with a strong team underneath you, the weight of leadership can be heavy. Taking the time to fill your well and be nourished yourself is essential. When it comes to conferences, one may think that this is just another to do on the list but the potential conferences and seminars have to pour into who you are as a leader is available. It’s simply a matter of one putting their check list aside and allowing themselves to be fed.

Though a conference isn’t the same as a vacation, it is a time where one can potentially recharge, catch a break or simply benefit from the change of pace. It’s a time where you can be re-energized to face the challenges ministry often carries. Spiritual burnout is a real thing and if one is not careful, the stresses one may face can land them here. Taking time for oneself isn’t just doing yourself a favor, its doing a favor for all those you lead.

The whys to pastors attending leadership conferences and seminars can be a long list. There are a lot of benefits to pastors attending such functions. The main objective is to spend time pursuing what will make you a better leader.

The Season of Presence

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:21:00 GMT

The Christmas season is upon us and there is much to be thankful for. It’s a time of celebrating the birth of Christ, enjoying the company of family and friends and taking the time to give a little extra during this season. It can also be a busy season filled with shopping, festivities, traditions and more, which is why the term presence holds so much meaning.

Our Savior Was Born

When thinking of this season we reflect on the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. The scene we are commonly familiar with, the Nativity scene, depicts baby Jesus asleep in a manger as animals and others come in to see him. Just within this scene we can’t help but to feel the significance of His presence. Watching how others came far and wide just to take a look. It was His presence that brought the three wise men to come and bring him gifts. Following after a promise and a star they set foot in search for this newborn King.

Others had heard of such a king being born that even the thought of Jesus’ presence caused King Herod to order all males under the age of two to be killed because of his fear that another king would be greater than himself. Yes, the presence of Jesus did not go unnoticed. Not at His birth or after all the years to follow. His presence was known long before His birth in the hearts of those that believed and when he fell asleep in a manger, His presence became known among all the earth.

Coming Into His Presence

As we get closer to Christmas day, our daily schedules can start to build up. Wrapping up our work weeks in preparation for the new year, finishing up our shopping for loved ones and even attending those late season Christmas parties can leave us feeling rushed in one direction or another. It’s easy to get caught up in the energy of it all and it’s part of the fun! But even with all the fun, we can find ourselves feeling burnt out even before Christmas day arrives which is why it’s a good reminder to take the time, whatever it may be, to come into His presence.

Imagine going back to the Nativity scene and thinking about all those that came to visit with Jesus. What it meant for them to see firsthand what God had promised so many years before. To think about what Mary and Joseph must have felt when a baby birthed of a virgin was tangibly before their eyes. How awe struck must they have been and yet overcome with such a peace. That’s what the presence of Jesus does when we take the time to draw near to Him. No matter what is going on in our lives, His presence gives us a peace that surpasses all understanding. We find ourselves taken up in awe and wonder of our Savior, our hearts moved in gratitude for all that He is and all that He has done. His love washed over us and we find ourselves in a humble posture of complete surrender and rest. This is just an inkling of what coming into His presence looks like and He woos us to Him for more.

May Your Season Be About Presence

It’s always amazing what the Lord reveals to us when we spend time in His presence. Often, it’s exactly the opposite of what we expect. As we are going about our to-do’s and checklists of life, God is calling us to yield, slow down and be in the moment. It’s not to say that He doesn’t have plans with our checklists, but it seems to be the least of His concerns as He always beckons us into His presence first. And if God is so concerned with drawing us into His presence then it doesn’t seem far fetched to think that maybe he desires for us to be more present in our daily lives as well.

The to-do’s and activities will always be there and Christmas will come again just like it does every year but the moments and the memories made when we take the time to slow down and just be present will not. It’s amazing what we discover when we decide to stay still. To enjoy those around us and even the hustle and bustle.

May your Christmas season be blessed and full beyond measure and may your season be about presence.

Influences Shape Us But Do They Define Us?

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 00:23:00 GMT

Who do you consider to be influences in your lives? How have they played a role in shaping who you are today? Have they been positive influences or negative? We all have been shaped in some way or another by those who have played varied roles in our lives. Our first role models being our parents or guardians. Before we even realized it, these people were paving the way to who we are today. Parental Influence

Studies show that from birth through the first five years of life are the most impacting years on a child’s brain development. This means that a child is most greatly influenced, positively or negatively, within this span of five years. Because parents are generally the ones who manage a child’s activities, a child’s social skills are typically determined according to the environments that the parent(s) expose their child to. Children are also affected by what they see within their environments. How parents interact with others, make choices and determine right over wrong all play a part in how a child develops and is influenced. Despite environments however, genetic influences still play a part in a child’s personality. Similarities between parent and child can present themselves through genetic predispositioning so parental influence is not the only contributing factor.

Understanding the Power of Influence

When someone is asked who their hero is or who they look up to they will almost always answer with the name of an individual who had the greatest impact on their life. That person is highly esteemed and regarded to this person. So it’s easy to see how parents can have such a powerful influence.

Interactions between a parent and child are the foundational building blocks of growth. Through these interactions a child learns the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, who they are and who they can become. Though genetic factors may layout a blueprint, they do not determine the direction of growth in a child’s life. The environment that a parent creates is ultimately what directs and instructs a child’s development process making them the greatest influence in a child’s life. This means that as a parent or guardian you have the power of influence; what you say or don’t say will shape your child(ren). What you do or don’t do has a strong influence on who your child(ren) become. Essentially you are a co-writer, creating the beginning chapters in the story of their lives. Luckily, this influential position will simply come down to you providing them with a loving and nurturing environment that offers them a sense of security. Studies have shown that these types of environments actually stimulate neural connections within the brain and are responsible for a child’s thought process, emotional well being and behavior traits.

Knowing Who We Are Outside of Our Influences

There comes a time in all our lives where we have the ability to make decisions for ourselves. This includes taking control of our mindsets, emotions and thought processes. Regardless of the environments we grew up in, whether healthy or not healthy, we get to decide who we become. Environmental factors definitely play a role in shaping who we are but as we mature and learn we begin to understand that we can separate ourselves from these factors; making decisions for ourselves towards what we currently value. This may mean we have to break free from certain ways of thinking if our environments were unhealthy and led us to unhealthy ways of thinking, but even this consists of personal decision making where we as individuals ultimately decide for ourselves. There’s a lot of power in being able to think and make decisions independently. One could even say it’s freeing. Essentially, this mindset is what allows us to step away from the negatives that influences have had on our lives and open the door to a healthier us.

What Shapes Us Does Not Define Us

Understanding that we are not limited to our environmental experiences and the influences they have had on us helps us to continue growing in a healthy direction. Here we begin to see that though influences may shape us they do not define us. We ultimately decide which direction to set course and have the power to turn the wheel in whatever direction we choose. Influences will still exist in our lives but we can regard them in wisdom; maintaining our individual personhood and growth as an individual.

Limitations almost always come down to mindset. Believing that we are held back because of our environmental upbringing, cultural upbringing or life’s experiences is a mental stumbling block that will ensnare the rest of our lives and who we can potentially become if we allow it. Therefore, it starts with a decision. What will we believe? What will we allow to define us? And what decisions will we make to set the trajectory of our life? Influences are powerful but even they do not hold the ultimate power of who you become.

What Does Christian Leadership Look Like?

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:36:00 GMT

Leadership skills will define whether an individual in leadership is successful or not. So where do you go to find the principles needed to ensure successful leadership? There are many sources but the truest source is the word of God. Here we will look at what scripture says and talk about how it relates to walking in Christian leadership.

Is A Servant

Matthew 20:26 says (paraphrased), “ whoever wants to become great must first become a servant”

Often times when we look at the natural order people follow, whether it’s with a job, a volunteer position or staff at church, we see individuals starting with smaller tasks and working their way up to overseeing larger ones. Parallel to this is leadership. It’s easy to envision ourselves overseeing large groups of people or fulfilling important tasks, but what we don’t always think about when it comes to being a leader is that in order to be a good leader we must learn to serve. Serving usually requires doing the jobs that go unseen. It exists in the giving of our time and energy where recognition is not usually given. It’s doing the tasks that others never want to do. It’s something that requires heart, rather than talent or gifting or more often the case; becomes about the heart, rather than our talents and gifting. God is always after the heart and even in leadership He is looking for the heart to be in the right place because He knows that everything will flow from there. (Matthew 15:18 “but the things that proceed out of the mouth come forth out of the heart”)

Looks To Other Leaders

Hebrews 13:7 “Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith”

It’s of great value to have people in your life who can speak into you; providing you wisdom, counsel and direction. Just having them in your life provides an example for you to imitate and live by. There are many great leaders out there. Some without holding that title publicly and it is worth your investment to build relationships with those who will not only lead by example but even greater, are willing to mentor you as a leader.

Much of what we learn comes through experience. Even if we go to college and finish out our degrees, it’s taking what we learn and living it that truly provides us with knowledge and understanding. This is exactly what leaders in your life will provide you. Their experience, which in turn will give you a greater knowledge and understanding of things that you may have never learned or even thought about on your own.

A common saying, ‘always respect your elders’ has existed for decades because someone knew the value that others can share in our lives. People who have walked different walks of life, have lived longer or simply just have a lot of life experiences have so much to offer if we are willing to listen. When we pair that with integrity, trust and like minded faith there is gold to be discovered.

Places Their Trust In God

Isaiah 41:10 “ so do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

What would Christian leadership be if it were not for our faith in our Creator. As much as this saying is true, we struggle sometimes when it comes to having faith in different areas of our lives. Being a leader doesn’t mean that we will not come across struggle or hardship. Gods word tells us to actually expect it. (John 16:33 “ Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows…) Being a Christian leader does mean however, that though there may be hardship we are to turn our sights to Him, trusting that He will make a way where we can’t. (John 16:33 cont. “…But take heart, for I have overcome the world”)

Walking in leadership will have its ups and downs. There’s a lot of responsibility to carry. For yourself and for others. Challenges will come, but as leaders who have faith in God we must always remind ourselves that we can lay it down at His feet and trust that He will make a way.

Helps Others To Lead

Philippians 2:4 “not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interest of others”

Good leaders don’t just lead, they teach others to lead as well. Leadership is a skill just as much as it is a gifting or talent. We can have the gifting within us but without the teaching and experience it may never come to its full potential. Our leadership therefore, rests on taking what is in us and growing that through our learning and experience. When we look at it through this perspective we see the significance in helping others to lead.

Just as people have come into our lives and given us learning opportunities to grow, we can do the same with the people in our own lives.

We find here that leadership is not just about ourselves. We may carry individual responsibilities but our role goes far beyond those and as the scripture above says, ‘we look out for the interests of others’. Everyone has the potential to lead. Whether they pursue that is up to them but if the people in our lives show a natural talent or desire to walk in leadership then that is our opportunity to pour into them what we have learned.

Walks In Humility

James 4:10 “ Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up”

When we look at everything that is mentioned above we realize that in order to walk those things out it will require something. Helping others to lead, serving people, trusting God; these are all things that can only be accomplished when we come to them with humility. Humility is all about laying oneself down with another in mind. Whether it’s laying down our pride as we come before God in trust or laying down our ego to help others rise in leadership, humility is at the root. It’s the catalyst to us operating with a right heart and what allows everything we do to flow from a healthy source.

Here in James it talks about humbling ourselves before the Lord and by this he will lift us up. There is so much truth to be gained in just this short sentence. When others seek to lift themselves up in leadership positions what they often find is that they fall. If they don’t appear to have fallen on the outside where it’s more noticeable, it’s almost always true that they have fallen within the inside where only they may notice. On the flip side of this, is the leader that rises to potential because they’ve placed themselves in a position of humility rather than ego or pride. Here they seek to serve others, lead others for others sake and above all else; serve God. Where one feels such an act is somehow stepping down, is actually an act that causes one to rise up.

There are many characteristics and principles that can define Christian leadership. Here are just a few that one can pursue walking in. As long as a leader has a hunger to follow after God and grow in who they are as well as the talents and giftings God has blessed them with, they are headed in the right direction.

Ownership- A Leaders Greatest Asset

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 23:14:00 GMT

Ownership is the act, state or right of possessing something. In the case of leadership, ownership is where one acts decisively, looks to solve problems, delegates tasks, abstains from blaming, takes responsibility and is objective when evaluating their own actions or events they are involved with. Leaders who operate within this context are committed to the process of learning, which attributes to the desire in others to step up and do the same. Leadership inspiring leaders. Here we will discuss why ownership is important and ways you can encourage those you are leading to take ownership.

The Why

The reason taking ownership is so important in leadership is because it begins a chain reaction amongst those you are working with and when others start to mimic this function, the organization, business or group environments performance is improved. Relationships amongst co-workers are strengthened which in turn boosts morale and overall work atmosphere. A cohesive partnership begins to develop because trust is established. A culture of learning becomes a catalyst for others to look for ways to carry new responsibilities. Tensions lessen, daily performance rates increase, organizational methods are enhanced and people begin to operate within new strengths because they’ve increase their learning potential through carrying out responsibilities that they wouldn’t have in the past.

On the flip side, when leaders shrink back from taking ownership for responsibilities, in which case blame is often a factor; employee morale is damaged, tensions rise, trust becomes obsolete, relationships are no longer healthy, organizational chaos ensues and performance rates plummet. Leaders who do not nurture colleague relationships, avoid delegating tasks, are indecisive, micromanage or do everything themselves will almost always fail to deliver. Healthy leaders proactively seek personal feedback and correct mistakes through taking a problem solving perspective rather than a judgemental one which helps everyone involved to learn from the experience and make the improvements needed for next time. Any environment where people are involved will grow, develop and achieve success if they lead through applying ownership in their daily tasks and decisions.

5 Ways To Encourage Others To Take Ownership

Let Everyone Have A Part In The Goal Setting Process

When those you are working with are able to be a part of the goal planning process they will naturally take ownership in completing the needed tasks to accomplish the goals. Combining efforts to set goals, plan activities and accomplish the vision at hand allows for individuals to step up and take ownership of what they feel they can successfully complete as well as stepping up in areas where they believe they can take on a challenge. This produces a stronger team bond as individuals thrive in completing tasks with the knowledge that they are all working together to achieve a common goal. When everyone comes together to share ideas, insights and creativity, the end product of their efforts is always more successfully played out than those who are mundanely carrying out tasks with no ownership in what they are doing. Productivity rises and so does the morale.

Delegate, Then Let Them Choose How They Accomplish It

Delegating tasks to individuals can be fairly easy when you’re aware of everyone's strengths and weaknesses. What often gets in the way is telling employees and staff how to go about their jobs. Once you’ve given everyone their responsibilities, let them decide how they want to approach completing them. Trust is a huge factor in building a strong team and keeping everyone working on the same page. If they happen to not fulfill their responsibilities successfully, brainstorm with them on other strategies and methods to get the job done. Sometimes all a person needs is a little bit of direction. Your trust in them to complete the task will far outweigh the task itself being accomplished. They will have learned from any mistakes they made and be able to carry that into future roles as well as have gained greater trust in you.

Trust!

Eventually, we will all have to trust those we work with. So why not start before you have to! You may find it to be a risk but risks are often worth taking as there can be unknown rewards. One way to show trust is by placing others in positions of authority that stretch their management skills. Providing others the opportunity to be leaders will raise up stronger leaders. Leadership skills develop through hands on experience. It requires practice, so let them have it! You’ll never know what someone is capable of until you learn to let go and trust.

Allow People To Solve Their Own Problems

This is huge! Learning problem solving skills is an asset for everyone. It’s easy to provide answers but listening and asking the right questions that lead others to solve their own problems helps them and you in the long run. Not only will they have the confidence to figure out future situations, but you’ll have less to manage as staff and employees take care of their own problems. Let them know that you trust their judgement and encourage them by sharing that you have faith in their ability to figure things out without you.

Pour Out The Accolades

We all thrive when we are shown appreciation and given a high five for a job well done. It encourages us to keep going and doing our best. When leaders acknowledge the hard work being done by staff and employees it builds team morale, commodery, trust and a desire to work even harder. Even when the results are not what you expect you can provide positive and constructive feedback. Let them know what they did well and provide ideas for improvement. Your staff may not always ask for it, but they are the ones that gain when constructive criticism along with genuine accolades are received. Growing in our skill sets and developing greater knowledge and understanding is only achieved when we are learning from those around us, which means we all have to be willing to not just share, but listen and receive. Giving accolades even for small accomplishments sets employees and staff on the right track for further growth.

Ownership may be exemplified through leadership but it is a model that everyone can have a part in that will profit both the leader and the individual. Applying ownership methods within any setting will enhance performance in a variety of areas; creating a high functioning, organized and thriving organization where every leader will agree that ownership is a leaders greatest asset.

Core Qualities of Principled Leaders

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 18:21:00 GMT

Are character qualities something you look at when it comes to the idea of leadership? Whether it’s yourself or a leaders influence over your life, character is more valuable in the role of leadership than power, position or influence. Here are just some of the character qualities that principled leaders can apply within their roles of leadership.

Strong Convictions

What does having a firmly held belief or opinion have to do with character? Strong convictions are the mindset of an individual; meaning everything they say and/or do originates from their convictions. Convictions guide us in our pursuits, giving them meaning and purpose. When you feel strongly about something, you find yourself personally committed to sharing, exercising and fulfilling that ‘something’ through. Everything we say and do becomes purposeful. Purpose is what keeps us going. It’s what keeps us pushing through even when we face opposition. Our ‘why’ is essential in carrying out the responsibilities we have as leaders so in order for those ‘whys’ to be carried out, we must be certain in our pursuits and commitments. Having strong convictions is an important character quality.

Accountability

Accountability is a responsibility. Whether it be to ourselves, others or to our Creator; accountability reflects our commitment to our own personal integrity. This speaks highly of what kind of leader we are or who other leaders are to us. Being accountable means one is willing to submit themselves to being evaluated to one or more individuals that are qualified to examine their attitudes and actions. Where we put our trust is essential in walking out our leadership roles. Having others in our lives that can give us feedback allows us to stay on track or get back on it. It provides us opportunities to grow where we may not have seen otherwise. It’s ones own humility that allows for personal growth through constructive criticism.

Humility

Humility is not something we ‘try’. It’s something we are. If this is a weaker area in your life don’t fret. We all need some work in this area but it’s not achieved through ‘trying’ to be humble. It’s achieved through the process of learning to know yourself and becoming secure in who you are. Who you are is a unique individual with a specific purpose over your life. Being secure in who you are means you understand that your uniqueness is significant and so are the purposes set before you. You’re not one to be self conscious about your decisions or actions, but rather confident in those areas and the direction you are moving because you no longer are having to strive. A natural byproduct of this quality is servant leadership.

Integrity

Integrity, in short, is moral uprightness. It means that a person is not tempted by their own desires or the pressures of others. They do not operate on the basis of self interest or gain. A person of integrity stands upon strong convictions and they do not waiver from them. For a leader to walk in integrity one must be consistent in actions, values, methods, applied principles and expectations. It’s a deep commitment of an individual to do the right thing regardless of the circumstances.

Reliability

A reliable person is often one who accepts responsibility easily. Regardless of the task, they see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. They enjoy productivity and even thrive in it. They welcome responsibilities and because of this they are known as hard working, trustworthy and dependable people. There are those who seem to only be willing to carry out a task if it is beneficial to them in some way. They desire to gain position, be noticed or receive an expected payout. Their purposes focus around self gain rather than the idea of serving. To serve is to look beyond oneself and do what benefits others. The irony in this is that serving actually blesses the person who serves, though they are doing it for everyone else. The character of reliability manifests itself when one looks outside of him/herself and eagerly accepts the responsibilities before him.

Principled leaders make it a priority to develop core character qualities that they may grow in who they are and take what they learn and share it with others. Quality leadership is never about the leader themselves, but the people they influence. Therefore, they are committed to developing themselves that they may be able to help others grow and develop as well.

To Lead is to Serve Part Two

Fri, 11 Oct 2019 22:19:00 GMT

Though the philosophy of servant leadership can be applied at any time, it reaches its full development over the course of stewarding specific traits and characteristics. Characteristics that are developed within each leader and then sown into the body of the organization or business. These traits and characteristics help shape the company or organization for future success. Characteristics and traits are as follows:

Visionary
Stewardship
Community Focused
Committed to Others Growth

Visionary

Part of being a visionary is not just imagining a bright future but foreseeing the steps it will take to get there. These steps are mapped out when one looks at past, present and future. Gaining insight by looking at growth indicators over the timeline of the company and having the ability to predict future occurrences. It’s important for a servant leader to imagine the possibilities of the future so that goals can be set and achieved as well as being able to reconcile with current realities when necessary. Having the intuition to step through a new door and close another is influential in the decision making process of a company. It’s also inspirational to the team as not everyone has the natural ability of a visionary. Where one has ideas, others have the capacity to implement them. Working off of one another’s strengths is what helps produce cohesiveness amongst a team as responsibilities are distributed according to everyone’s capabilities.

Stewardship

A servant leader is one who assumes the role of a steward over an organization or companies resources. It’s a role that takes responsibility for the planning and managing of all available resources so the organization or company prospers. Particularly, when it comes to team management. Stewarding personal responsibilities as well as relationships; stewardship is applied by focusing on uplifting the well being of each person within the organization ensuring an overall happiness in the working environment. Servant leaders who model this stewardship well are committed to selfless service, practice inclusiveness, embrace innovation and change, are team players and are quick to give others credit where it is due.

Community Focused

Creating the feeling that one belongs to something greater than themselves is something a servant leader aims for when thinking about their team. Having a sense of community within the workplace engages those within the company to give above and beyond what is typically asked of them. When people are poured into they naturally begin to pour back out and this example is brought to life when leadership fosters connectivity where individuals are energized simply by being around one another. If you were to ask someone if they like their job they are likely to say no but if one were to answer yes and you asked them why, they will almost always tell you its because they enjoy the people they work with. Community is pivotal when looking to engage individuals in a working environment. Studies have shown over and over that a deep sense of community has a measurable impact on employee satisfaction and productivity.

Committed to Others Growth

Commitment to building others up is a what a servant leader does best. Their focus is on how they can help and serve others so that those individuals thrive and in return, pour out that same motivation into their work space. Servant leaders are dedicated to the success of others, even to the point that they place others success above their own. In other words, a servant leaders mark of success is when others are succeeding. This can be achieved in multiple ways such as helping employees create a career path and providing them with what is needed in order to reach one goal to the next. Things like getting your team involved with community outreach programs fosters growth as a team and as individuals. Working one on one with individuals in the pursuit of growing areas they lack in or find themselves unequipped. These are just some examples of helping others grow and find personal success. The key is the leaders commitment.

When leaders operate within this style of leadership they tend to see growth from the inside out, which to some, is the best method of approach. Whether this approach is applied or not, a company or organization will always thrive when pouring into their team with the purpose of bringing out their best.

Read part one To Lead is To Serve part one

To Lead is to Serve Part One

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 18:53:00 GMT

Servant leadership is exactly just that. A leader who looks to serve others as their first priority. It’s about building up your team by placing their needs first in order to help develop them that they may be able to perform responsibilities at a greater level. Some believe that the most successful businesses, companies and organizations are ones that are built on the philosophy of servant leadership. Unlike traditional leadership, where the main focus is the thriving of the company based on the ideas and goals from the top of the pyramid, servant leadership focuses on personal development with the belief that this will ultimately pour out into individual performance creating a thriving atmosphere as well as a successful company. It negates the idea that one person operates in a position of power and instead collaborates, by sharing power amongst the team.

Keep in mind that servant leadership is not just something you do. It’s something you become. To be a servant leader one must embrace a different mindset for success. As a servant leader one must demonstrate certain traits and characteristics in order to successfully serve and grow their team. Some of these characteristics are as follows:

Empathetic
Active Listener
Awareness of Self
Promotes a Healthy Well Being

Empathetic

By definition, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In order to accomplish this one must develop enough of a relationship with someone to know what is going on in their world. Through relationship we are able to see into one another’s lives, sharing our experiences which provide us understanding. From here we are able to care and help one another as we empathize with what they are going through. People long for acceptance and to be understood. They want to be recognized for who they are. Building relationships where we can grow to understand one another allows us to encourage and lift others up, helping them to grow and thrive in every area of life. Developing the skill set of being an empathetic listener attributes to being a successful servant leader.

Active Listener

Often we hear of the values of communication but do we realize that one of the greatest components of communication is listening? Active listening, a skill in which one listens intently to what is being said and unsaid, is essential when it comes to developing good habits of communication. By listening to others you can help to resolve conflicts, offer counsel and impart training. Skilled communication and decision making are grounded in a commitment to actively listen to others. This allows for the leader to have a complete understanding of interpersonal situations and guides leaders in making the best decisions based on what they are dealing with. Along with listening to others, periods of reflecting on what is being communicated aids in the growth and well being of both the leader and their team.

Awareness of Self

Having a clear understanding of your own thoughts and behavior patterns ultimately affects how you relate to others. Awareness of personal strengths, weaknesses, values and feelings allows one to understand biases without allowing them to dictate decisions. It also helps to facilitate healthier personal and professional relationships as self awareness promotes relational connection points. Encouraging others to seek growth by finding confidence in their own personal strengths, weaknesses, values and feelings leads to a healthy morale and overall atmosphere in ones workplace. Though self awareness may grant one the benefit of inner serenity, the objective is that it lends to the ability to view situations with a more integrated approach; enabling one to step outside of themselves so they can interpret communications clearly and redirect thought processes as needed. Leading with this example promotes a healthy work setting allowing for open and productive communications.

Promote a Healthy Well Being

People under leadership desire for a sincere interest in their mental and emotional well being. By actively promoting emotional and mental health, leaders inspire a greater level of trust from those working for them. A workplace that promotes emotional and mental health has been shown to improve productivity, sustain high morale, reduce health risk factors as well as absenteeism. Almost every person can relate to having emotional hurts and pains as this is the human experience. Knowing this, we have an opportunity to step in as leaders and share in the healing process of one another's journeys. There’s a powerful thing that happens when two or more partner in the search for wholeness. Transformation. It’s out of this experience that one is empowered to live more fully; embracing the day to day with a positive mindset which then reflects in other areas of their lives including their working environment.

The philosophy of servant leadership has shown to have many advantages. In a day where more and more people are struggling with emotional and mental health issues and having to carry the weight of making ends meet, this philosophy creates a productive space where people can grow and thrive and quite possibly redirect areas of their lives outside of work for the better. Just like satisfaction in the workplace increases productivity levels, satisfaction in the workplace has the potential to produce positive effects outside of the workplace as well.

Read part two, To Lead is to Serve part two

Communication Skills Every Leader Should Have

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 21:49:00 GMT

There are many things that come to mind when we hear the word ‘communication’. From a leadership standpoint, communication is important as leaders oversee a group of individuals with the intent of motivating them to achieve reaching an overall vision. Effective communication skills are essential in order to deliver your messages accurately and successfully. As a leader, you want to foster a productive and fruitful working atmosphere as well as relationships amongst staff and personal, so it’s important that your communication skills are rooted in the values and culture of your organization. It is said that one who communicates well, understands and is understood. Some of the communication skills every leader should have are as follows:

Listening Skills

How often do you think of listening when the topic of communication comes up? If it’s not often or one of the first things you think about than your communication skills can benefit from implementing these skills. The greatest communication skill one can acquire is the ability to listen and to do so, ‘actively’. Active listening builds a foundation in relationships where everything else flows from. Respect, trust and understanding are gained when we implement active listening.

One might say that in order to lead, one must first listen. Though it may seem easy enough, listening is actually challenging for most as it requires the listener to stop and engage. Something that we don’t often do in our busy, go-go-go lives. Focusing our attention on the person(s) in front of us; we actively seek hearing facts accurately, listening for emotions behind them and consider relevant questions about what is being shared without becoming distracted. Not only is this a valuable tool for the leader, it models an example that those within the group then model themselves.

Complimenting Others

The old saying goes, “an apple a day, keeps the doctor away”. In other words, an act of kindness a day keeps the doctor away. Some of course would argue this theory but vast research has been done concluding that giving and receiving acts of kindness or other altruistic acts (in this case compliments) increases productivity, decreases stress and has beneficial effects on the immune system. A study at the Japanese National Institute for Psychological Sciences discovered that participants who received direct compliments for completing tasks were motivated to perform tasks better than those who weren’t. At Harvard University, a phenomenon was noticed as viewers who were watching a documentary film of Mother Theresa’s life work, experienced a noticeable increase in Immunoglobulin A levels, which is an antibody that plays a crucial role in the immune system. If a compliment can go as far as to positively affect an individual’s internal immune system, how much more would it then affect the attitudes, atmosphere and productivity of a daily work environment. A small act but one that wields a powerful effect on both the receiver and the giver.

Meeting Management Skills

Meetings. They seem to never end. So, if meetings are going to be a part of our every day expectations, what can we do to ensure they are efficient and as effective as possible. With the knowledge that meetings are conducted with the purpose of sharing information, problem solving, decision making and general tasks it’s important that every meeting is well organized ahead of time to ensure that everything can be accomplished in as little time as possible. Knowing that after every meeting, individuals have to fulfill everything that was just discussed, using time efficiently is crucial. Be organized, communicate with purpose, stay on track, encourage participation and end on time. With good meeting management skills you can expect improved communication, increase in productivity levels, solid teamwork and a boost in morale and overall satisfaction.

Non-Verbal Skills

Since 1872 scientific research has been conducted on nonverbal communication and behavior. Out of this, vast amounts of research have been collected on the types, effects, and expressions of unspoken communication and behavior. Most of the time these signals go undetected as we are not consciously aware of them, but they present themselves nonetheless. Non-verbal communication skills play a vital role in how we convey information to others as well as what we perceive from those around us. Facial expressions, gestures, body language, eye contact and even appearance are just some non-verbal ways we communicate. These and other non-verbal signals increase trust amongst an audience, brings an added level of clarity to what is being communicated and promotes engagement in active listening. If our purpose as leaders is to pour into others that they may model leadership characteristics themselves, leading to a thriving work environment and healthy relationships, then we have to be mindful of all the ways we communicate so that what we pour in can be successfully replicated.

Firm Delegation Skills

Delegation is key in maximizing productivity especially when there are deadlines. What is often seen are leaders not delegating tasks to various team members because they can’t step away from the idea that ‘they need to be the one to get the job done’ or more familiar ‘they are the only one who can get the job done’. An efficient team is one that is led by someone who knows how to clearly delegate tasks and more importantly, knows how to let go of their own tasks so others can help.

Delegating tasks is just one component of getting a job done efficiently. Developing a system that prioritizes which tasks come before others is essential. Also, knowing who your working with and assigning tasks based on the strengths of each individual helps increase productivity. It can be easy to delegate work to someone who has a lighter load, but that is not always the most effective approach. People naturally spend less time accomplishing something when they’re good at what they’re doing. Other tips to establishing firm delegation skills are providing instructions with the tasks at hand, being willing to teach skill sets where there is lack and trusting that your team can accomplish the tasks you’ve set before them. Firm delegation skills are a powerful managerial component in leadership. They will allow you to get results, manage time effectively, build morale, develop your team and lead to greater successes.

Great communication skills are foundational in every professional setting and even your personal life. Actively seeking out growth in the area of communication will always steer you closer to achieving the results you are looking for.

On Giving and Receiving: The Secret Love Life of Crows

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 16:06:00 GMT

Biblical metaphors relative to the laws giving and receiving include no mention of grateful crows, but a little girl in Seattle, Washington has proven they might well have done so. Eight year old Gabi Mann began sharing part of her lunch with the crows each day. No surprise there, I suppose. Countless people show the birds a little love at back yard feeders and with popcorn in the park. Not many, however, experience any crow reciprocity.

According to a delightful report by the BBC, little Miss Mann soon began receiving gifts from the grateful crows. As these tokens of affection have accumulated she bagged and labeled them. It has become an impressive collection to say the least. Bits of stone, pieces of hardware, colored glass, Legos and much much more fill Gabi’s amazing exhibit. Each one was placed carefully on the edge of the birdbath by a crow in evident gratitude for her generosity.

Ecclesiastes 11:1 admonishes us to cast our bread upon the waters and then promises that we will find it later. I wonder how it might read if Gabi Mann’s story were taken into account. “Share you lunch with the crows and they will bring you gifts.” I like it!

As we in the ministry try to teach on giving, finding a healthy balance is strenuous to say the least. Jesus certainly had plenty to say about giving, as in Luke 6:38. “Give and it shall be given unto you…” Every minister can and should quote the rest frequently before receiving the offering.

The point is this. We do not want to turn the lovely promises of Jesus and Ecclesiastes and the rest of scripture, into an arms length business arrangement with God. Ok, God, here’s some bread and I expect colored glass on the birdbath by sundown or you’re not God. That approach drains the joy out of giving. I believe the promises of God. We will never miss a dime given for His kingdom’s purpose. Our bread will come delightfully back to us on wave after wave of blessing. Yet we dare not become mechanical or, worse, manipulative.

There are many reasons to teach on giving and receiving. We want people blessed and giving is crucial to their being blessed. We want the Kingdom of God to go forward well resourced. Furthermore, we want believers to grow in their trust of God and His promises. Then there is the responsibility of”churchmanship.” As believers we are called to support the church with our prayers, attendance upon public worship, private devotion and, not the least of these, tithes and offerings. Ministers likewise are called to instruct the people of God in all these disciplines. Surely, however, ours should be a joyful journey as well as a disciplined one.

I want believers to know the child-like thrill of giving. Worship should never be drudgery but joy, and giving is worship. The life of faith is joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is into that aspect of giving that I most hope to guide others.

I am persuaded that the church which delights in giving, the church which sets God free to “bring their bread back on every wave” choosing waves as He will, the church which celebrates the adventure of giving will discover and revel in the delightful secret of the love of crows.

Little Gabi Mann never signed a contract with the crows. She just gave. The fun of her story, the real joy of it all is its serendipitous nature. Bread for colored beads is not a business deal between child and bird but a delightful journey into the joy of giving and receiving.

Some have tended to teach giving and receiving exclusively as a spiritual law. I’m not saying they are wrong. I believe in the promises of scripture. In real life, the blessing of giving, the true heart of giving with open hands and an open heart can actually be damaged by legalism. How much better to teach, give and watch, JUST WATCH, what God will do. Watch and see that he can bless it back to you in ways and through means that never occurred to you. Give with generosity and receive with delight in sweet and unexpected ways. Maybe this is the secret.

“Cast you lunch upon the ground and even the crows will bless you.” That’s not in the Bible but it’s pretty close.

Leadership and Competition

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 14:20:00 GMT

In reference to a news story from California I posted a column on The Leader’s Notebook (The Slaughter in Arroyo Valley – 01/21/15) which was somewhat controversial. Indeed, I knew it would be. I hope you will read it again or for the first time as the case may be, before you read on, but here is the thrust of it. I am concerned that the current American obsession with self-esteem is creating an atmosphere in which our next generation of leaders is too weak to compete, not because they do not know how to win, but because they cannot deal with losing.

Why should they know how to deal with losing? We have not allowed them to experience it. Hoping that a noncompetitive environment would make “everyone a winner,” we are at risk of creating weaklings who cannot graciously bear the pain of losing. The problem is that in real life, everyone loses occasionally. Sometimes folks lose badly, embarrassingly and the sting is genuine. Losing will not kill anyone however, and if dealt with properly, losing horribly can be highly motivational. If everybody gets a trophy, if everybody wins, what is the incentive to improve? It’s a form of “socialistic sports.”

The brief version is that a high school girls basketball team in California won their game by the incredible score of 161-2. The winning coach was suspended which I oppose if there are no circumstances beyond a lopsided score. As I said in my original piece, I do not know all the details but I do know that asking a competitive team to do less than their best just so the other team won’t “feel bad” is contrary to what I believe about coaching, which can be summarized as follows:

Play your best on every point. Give it all you’ve got on every play. Contest every inch. Never quit. Never let up. Never stop improving. Win or lose, walk out to mid-court and shake hands when it’s over.

n the real world, someone wins and someone loses. If a new and fabulous supermarket moves into town, it may very well spell the end for the quaint little mom-and-pop grocery that has served the neighborhood for decades. Should the supermarket take that into account? Should its employees do less than their best so the little store will not seem so poor in comparison? Should we all agree to occasionally shop at the mom-and-pop store no matter how inconvenient or expensive or limited it is, just so they won’t “feel bad?”

If I were coaching again I would never tell my players to let up, no matter what the score was. If my team was behind by 100 points with one second to go, I would tell them to play that last second as if they had a chance to pull it out. If my team was winning by 100 points, I would put my weakest team on the court and tell them to play as hard as they can. Letting up to let the other team score is condescending and bad sportsmanship. Griping when the other team wipes up the floor with you is sour grapes and bad sportsmanship.

Now a new story about coaching, a strange one indeed, recently appeared in the press. It seems that in Tennessee, two high school girls basketball coaches tried to intentionally lose to each other. It became so obvious that the referees admonished the coaches to stop trying to lose. After the game, both coaches were suspended. I know it sounds inconsistent, but though I differed with suspending the California coach for winning too well, I agree wholeheartedly with suspending two intentional losers.

Both teams and coaches knew that the winning team in their game would face a tougher bracket in the post-season. As a result, both teams intentionally played badly. For that, I would suspend them both. I do not believe in shaving points to assuage hurt feelings. I also do not believe in coaching players to deliberately lose, EVER.

Play to win; right up to the closing whistle. Play every game, every point the best you can. If winning puts your team in a tougher bracket, so be it. Winning coaches tell their teams they ought to play in the toughest bracket because they are among the toughest teams.

True sportsmanship plays to win, fairly, giving it every last ounce of effort right to the final whistle. I’m sure these two Tennessee coaches would say that what they were doing falls under the category of “strategic bracketology.” They are quite simply wrong. Only losers play to lose.

Apostolic Conflict

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 14:27:00 GMT

Imagine a scenario in which two widely known and well respected ministerial leaders have a serious conflict over which associate to hire, so serious in fact that they end their professional association and go their separate ways. Each then hires his own associate and they never work together again. Imagining such a story hardly stretches one’s creativity. It reads exactly like the petty conflicts that rupture ministries and make for sad headlines in the modern Christian press.

However, that particular story of ministerial conflict is NOT modern. Two thousand years ago, Paul the Apostle and his sponsor and mentor, Barnabas, differed on whether to take John Mark with them on their second missionary journey. Both Paul and Barnabas had seen John Mark’s pitiful failure on a previous journey. The young man had left the team in the lurch and gone home. Barnabas, the aptly-named encourager, wanted to scoop the youngster up off the sidewalk and give him a chance to redeem himself. Paul, however, was a type A choleric with NEVER GIVE AN INCH tattooed on his bicep.

Paul maintained that mollycoddling quitters was no way to do the dangerous and demanding work of first-century church building. Barnabas insisted that giving up on talented and anointed young people because of a failure was no way to do the difficult task of believer building. The conflict was beyond resolving and what had been designed as one mission team became two. Paul hired Silas and formed his own missionary team. Barnabas elected to “mollycoddle” John Mark.

Great leaders can have insurmountable differences of opinion and viewpoint. Both may still be great. Both may even be “right,” and for that matter, both may be “wrong.” The story of Paul and Barnabas is more than a cautionary tale about church squabbles. It affords some important insights.

First, in some conflicts there may not even BE a right and wrong. Neither Paul nor Barnabas was wrong. They had differing goals. Paul was focused on the sacred importance of the mission, while Barnabas was unwilling to leave a wounded warrior behind. Both were valid and important points of view, but both could not be the presiding value in the selection of a lieutenant.

Second, not every conflict will be resolved or even needs to be resolved at all. Sometimes there is no resolution. Two teams rather than one may be the correct answer. Having said that, the separation must be accomplished ethically. Paul did nothing to harm Barnabas. Every associate pastor has the right to leave. However, he cannot walk off with the money or the members and he cannot roll a hand-grenade in the door as he exits.

Finally, the long run view may reveal where in the conflict each party was “righter” or “wronger” than he knew at the time. When Paul and Silas separated, Paul, who had been Barnabas’ understudy, jumped to the head of the leadership queue. From that moment, Paul, not Barnabas or even Peter himself, became the preeminent luminary of the New Testament church.

That Paul’s ascendency was undoubtedly God’s will, hardly makes Barnabas wrong about John Mark. Were it not for Barnabas’ restoration of John Mark we might not have the Gospel of Mark. Likewise, but for Paul’s somewhat uncompromising talent development program, the New Testament might not include the names of Silas and Timothy.

No record exists of some later reunion at which Paul and Barnabas discussed their rift, but what if it happened like this? What if Paul said, “You see I was right about that journey.” What if Barnabas replied, “Yes, you were right about that. But I was right about John Mark.”

We do, however, have the New Testament in which Paul subsequently wrote of John Mark, ” I find him useful.” One cannot help but wonder if that statement brought a wry smile to Barnabas’ lips. NOW you find him useful, now that I’ve cleaned him up and healed him after you rejected him. Sure. NOW you find him useful.

As long as there are humans, even sanctified apostolic humans in church leadership, there will be conflict. God’s grace, His calling and His destiny is unique in each of us. Conflict is not always bad and it is not always resolvable. Yet it must be handled with grace and love.

Not long before he died, I asked Jamie Buckingham if he had some great truth to share with me. I will never forget what he said.

“Sometimes it is better to be kind than right.”

Mission, Vision, and Energy

Wed, 19 Oct 2016 14:11:00 GMT

First of all, I’m not opposed to mission statements. There. I’ve said that. However, having said it, I hasten to add there is little energy in a mission statement.

“Loving God, Loving People”

“Empowering People To Serve People”

“Worshipping A Caring God In A Caring Community”

Nothing wrong with those or a million others like them. VERY like them. The problem with such mission statements is their absolute lack of energy. Mission statements keep a church from jumping the track. Vision drives the train. Vision is the engine. Absent vision, the greatest mission statement in the world will gradually devolve into hardly more than a plaque on the wall or a banner hanging in the church auditorium.

Vision is exactly what it sounds like. When we look ahead a year, or five years or ten years, what do we SEE. That is vision and that is the energy source of leadership. Yes, we want to love God and love people. Absolutely. The question is, in doing that, what will we look like in the future? What is the vision for our facilities, our finances and our membership? Where are we headed?

The mission of the Hebrew people in the Land of Goshen was to be as faithful to God as they could be even in the context of slavery. The vision that energized them to leave 430 years of slavery was the Holy Land. Moses, their visionary leader, kept that picture ever before their eye. He described it vividly. He did not just say, “A swell place.” He said, “The Land Of Milk And Honey.”

No one will ever see the vision as well and as clearly as the leader. On the other hand, others will see the vision hardly at all unless the leader explains it, describes it and keeps it before the eyes of his followers. It is among the most important responsibilities of the leader to first of all grasp the vision, to really see it almost as if it already existed, and then to become the vision’s salesman-in-chief.

When the leader gets bored with the vision the air is out of the balloon. The energy is gone even though that venerated mission statement still hangs on the wall.

Again, I’m not opposed to having a mission statement. Your organization should have one and it should be known and respected by all. But the energy, the dynamic power that gets them up and moving; THAT lies in the vision. Your followers need to know that the mission is important and that it is important to you, but that can become stale and theoretical. It is when VISION fairly bursts from the leader, when everyone in the organization knows where they’re headed; it is then they feel the energy that will get them through the rough spots and on to whatever your Promised Land is.

Leadership in a Storm (2016)

Wed, 12 Oct 2016 13:23:00 GMT

In the light of Hurricane Matthew I want to offer some thoughts on: Leadership in a Storm

The seas of human life, so lashed as they are by storms of crisis and controversy, are where real leaders do their duty. Happily-ever-aftering only happens in the movies. Real life, and therefore real leadership, is actually one storm after another punctuated by brief and very welcome periods of calm. Once a leader finds the maturity and experience to face that honestly, the stormy seasons become immensely less stressful.

Until then, every storm feels like the “big one,” the once in a lifetime, storm of the century that just has to be lived over and after which “normality” will return. Inexperienced leaders spend useless energy trying to figure out why this particular storm has come. The bottom line is storms happen. Winds blow, and they toss good boats and bad the same.

Some storms are self-inflicted and they are the hardest to endure. I’ve caused some of those storms myself. Others are just part of living in a fallen universe. Things break, fall apart, go south and prove more fragile than we imagined. That is life, real life, and real life is not always smooth sailing. The night before the annual July Fourth city-wide celebration in your auditorium, the air conditioning goes out. Does God hate you? Of course not. Perhaps He just doesn’t like patriotic music and indoor fireworks. Again, of course not. Air conditioners just sometimes break. It’s that simple. It always seems that they break at the worst of times. On the other hand, when would it be convenient?

Here are some thoughts on leadership in a storm.

I. Listen to the Weatherman

Surround yourself with wise counsellors, experienced prognosticators who can read the signs and pay attention to them. Great leaders know better than to instantly cancel plans the moment some hysterical Chicken Little starts screaming. They also know that when the most level-headed, mature among the crew are advising caution, it might just behoove the captain to snuggle down in some nice, safe port and wait it out.

II. Trim Your Sails

Sometimes avoiding a storm is not possible. When a storm catches your ship at sea, forget speed. The destination can wait. When survival is the goal, pushing ahead with your travel plans can prove self-destructive. Great leaders know that when a storm threatens to rip away the main mast, more sail is hardly the order of the day. Visionary, faith-filled leaders despise whatever delays their exciting building plans, their huge staff transitions or their expansions or their whatever. Many great leaders are born with a need for speed. On the other hand, it is easier to endure the slight pinch of a momentary delay than to plunge ahead and experience the far greater pain of watching dreams wrecked by a storm. There is a time to sail on undeterred, and a time to trim your sails and just ride it out.

III. Lighten Your Load

When a storm gets bad enough, some things must be jettisoned. The higher the waves, the more must be tossed overboard. Every ship is carrying extra cargo. In calm seas that is ok. The more you carry, the deeper you ride in the water. The problem is that all that extra stuff uses up the margins of life and leadership. Ask yourself this question. How deeply in the water is my leader-ship and, for that matter, my life-ship riding? What is optional? What obligations, responsibilities and burdens am I able to handle right now, in these calm seas, which in a serious storm, I would not want weighing down my vessel? Do I have the maturity and good sense to lighten my load should a storm suddenly hit? Great leaders know their inventory. They know what is necessary and what is optional. They take stock ahead of time and they know which extras would go overboard in a typhoon.

IV. After the Storm Is Over:

The damage done can appear devastating. After Hurricane Charley, which nearly destroyed our house, Alison and I struggled to believe it will ever be right again. In fact, it was righter than right. In the long run, Hurricane Charley actually improved my house; new roof, new fencing, new landscape, new lots of things. When it was all finished, it looked better than ever.

After the storm, wait. Be patient. First, do what can be done easily. It will give you a sense of momentum. Take on the harder stuff in bits and pieces.

Finally, keep your eyes on the prize. Don’t fix your gaze on the damage because it can overwhelm you. Envision how much better it will all be.

Finally, have faith in God.

Hurricanes come and go, but in every storm that rages, cling with hope to the everlasting Rock of Ages.

Witches Without Feathers

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 14:35:00 GMT

When, after a long recess in missions, I came back to pastor again in America, I was asked not infrequently if I was ever afraid in Africa. My answer was always, “Not so desperately or so often as I am now.” If you want to be really afraid, pastor an American megachurch. In Africa, all the witches wear feathers. It is in church where you can’t tell the players without a program.

Power games have gutted churches, destroyed ministries, and left the wives and children of pastors in quivering dysfunction. These “games” played by ruthless, remorseless rebels are nothing other or less than witchcraft in all its evil. There is a bitter irony in evangelicals up in arms over Harry Potter yet willing to tolerate without a murmur witchcraft in the choir loft.

Witchcraft is the manipulation of spiritual forces through natural means in order to achieve a desired end. Some elements must be in place for witchcraft to work: a controllable subject, a manipulative “priest,” and some control mechanism, usually an idol. If the subject will not be controlled, that is to say, cannot be intimidated, frightened, or manipulated, the power of the witch is useless. Lose the control, lose the subject, lose the power. That is the secret of defeating witchcraft.

The curse causeless shall not come. – Proverbs: 26:2

In Africa I always teach that the blood and priesthood of Jesus protect us utterly from the blood and priesthood of witches, because perfect love casts out all fear, and the control mechanism of witchcraft is fear. Fear gone, witchcraft cannot curse us, hurt us, hinder us, or control us. Why then does witchcraft work in the choir loft?

The controlling idol, the mechanism of manipulation in the modern American church is “friendship.” The controlling fear is loss of position and relationship. The inner circle of witchcraft admits candidates only on probation to an office in the choir cabinet, perhaps, or acceptance into some elite level of leadership. This is reinforced with rewards such as dinner at the choir director’s house or a ski retreat with the senior leadership. Heady stuff, indeed, the loss of which would be grievous. Such perks can, therefore, become a controlling idol.

Witchcraft is about power, power to control the outcome, others, natural forces, or demons. It is a refusal to submit to God, to wait on Him, or to let Him determine the outcome. Witchcraft is the seizure of power illegitimately, the appropriation of that which is under God’s sovereign authority. Charms, spells, the stars, or magic crystals are all bypasses circumventing the will, purpose, plan, and timing of God. To know what is His alone to know and to bypass His will in the lives of other are witchcraft and rebellion against God’s authority.

That is the reason the Bible says, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft” (1 Sam 5:23). There is fundamentally no difference between the teenager who will not obey her mother, the board member who gossips about the pastor, and the wizard whose spells are designed to bring sickness upon his enemies. Rebellion and witchcraft are the twin sisters of darkest evil.

Furthermore, there is no “white” witchcraft. The fallacious premise of “good” witchcraft is that the motivation justifies the magic. Never. The witch who works a spell to make some boy love a certain girl claims innocence by comparison with the witch whose spells kill boys and girls. The distinction fails because rebellion, not results, is the issue. If a girl cannot will the desired boy to love her, and prayer fails, and God will not move, then what is the harm, she asks, in a little innocent love potion? Much harm in every way – the lack of faith, an unwillingness to trust, a refusal to wait, and rebellion against the manifest will of God spell witchcraft. No good motive can make it otherwise.

A businessman in a church I pastored used his adult Sunday school class to recruit members for a breakaway church. He twisted my words, quoted me out of context, and finally rejected the authority of the board. In a decision where the legitimate authority of the church ruled against him, he incited a knot of malcontents, excusing all his lies, false accusations, and rebellion as necessary because the pastor and board would not listen to God.

Another businessman in my church said, “Well, Dr. Rutland, he is a hard-headed man.”

“No,” I responded, “he is a witch.”

Baca: Valley of Tears

Wed, 21 Sep 2016 18:49:00 GMT

There are equal and opposite errors with respect to the Valley of Baca. On the one hand are those particularly irritating “faith” preachers, so called, who claim that a true saint has no business in the Valley of Baca. They are not only boorish but shallow and superficial. David saw it differently.

“Blessed is the man whose strength its in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. Who passing through the valley Baca …” (Ps. 84:5-6)

David wrote that a person who passes through the Valley of Tears is blessed! That remarkable idea flies in the face of modern, comfort obsessed cultural religion, but it is definitely a New Testament view.

“Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” ( 1 Pt 1:6-7)

No modern Christian has more graphically demonstrated a faith purified by fire than Corrie ten Boom. Can anyone imagine a valley of tears more horrifying than the Ranvensbruck concentration camp? To the Nazis she lost all her possessions, her dignity, and her entire family. Was it lack faith that put her in Ravensbruck? What an absurd thought! Or perhaps sin? Nonsense. The sins of others? To be sure. But why did she have to suffer? Why do any of us?

In the Valley of Baca, the question of “why” pales before the mere fact of the valley and its potential to purify us if we will let it. None of Corrie ten Boom’s worldwide spiritual impact, her books, her sermons, her ministry, none of it would have been possible without Ravensbruck.

Christians, Spirit-filled Christians, holy Christians of great faith do pass through valleys, and valleys are not the worst thing that can befall a Christian. It is not God, but Satan, the world, and some in the church who tell us that we are getting what we deserve. If we get what we deserve, hell will not contain us all.

If we can learn to embrace the valley experience rather than question it or rebel against it, we can more quickly find the blessing. I met quite an elderly man who told of his childhood drudgery working in a Boston sweatshop. During impossibly long hours at low wages under pathetic conditions, he labored in a button factory. His favorite job, he told me, was polishing pearl buttons.

“They taught us to hold them against a grinding wheel, turning them every which way until they were perfect. I asked the supervisor that was teaching me how I would know when they were perfect. That super taught me a great lesson. When the button no longer grumbles against the wheel, no matter how you turn it, it’s perfect.”

Perhaps Christian perfection is when we stop grumbling against the wheel of life. The other side of this issue is equally important. While it is true that Christians must occasionally pass through valleys, they must also pass all the way through. Just as some believers grumble against the wheel, others move into the valley and turn it into a campground, even build houses there and put down roots.

The besetting sin in the Valley of Baca is self-pity. Tempted to wallow in our sorrows, we tend to camp where we should not. “Passing through the valley of Baca” is no shame, and no sign of weakness, but pass on through. Let time and grace do their good work. Some who go into the Valley of Baca never come out because they refuse to let go of the pain we found there. It becomes, first, a part of them, then finally, their very definition. Unable to imagine life without their hurt, they clutch it to themselves.

Some years ago a minister friend of mine met a blind lady in the Los Angeles airport. He said, “Ma’am, I am a preacher who believes in miracles. Will you let me pray for your eyes?”

“You get away from me,” she snarled. “I waited on my husband hand and foot for thirty years. Well, now it’s his turn.”

For any one of a vast multiplicity of reasons, some enter the valley of tears against their will, but refuse to pass through. In the Valley of Baca, say it to yourself, over and over again, I will come out of this. I will come out of this! There is an end to this for me. I am not my pain. Say it when every step is agony, when you can hardly find faith to believe it yourself, but say it all the same. I am in this valley now. I will not live in denial and call it filth. But I will come out on the other side. I will not live in weak resignation and call it submission to God’s will.

Leadership When it’s Raining Catfish

Wed, 14 Sep 2016 14:13:00 GMT

Imagine if it rained not cats and dogs but catfish. Imagine that you are walking in Philadelphia when suddenly a wet, slimy blow to the side of your face and neck knocks you to the ground. Now try to imagine realizing that the unexpected knock down was delivered not by a fist but by a falling fish, a catfish to be precise, a foot-long, five-pound catfish. Unlikely, you say. I could not agree more. Yet that is exactly what happened to Lisa Loree. She was out for a morning stroll in the park when a catfish fell from the sky and hit her hard enough to knock her down. A five-pound weight, fish or fowl, dropped from any height at all is likely to deliver a wallop. Just ask Lisa Loree.

The assumption is that a bird, perhaps an eagle, accidentally dropped the fish. That is the most likely explanation. In fact, I cannot think of another. That the catfish had somehow taken flight stretches one’s imagination. On the other hand, if the fish had thus taken flight, what would cause it to suddenly lose altitude and so dramatically abort the mission?

Here is the leadership question: What to do when it rains fish?

I. Sometimes, out of the blue as it were, life hands you an unexpected blow, a slap in the face. Nobody likes it any more than Lisa Loree did. On the other hand, nobody is exempt. While no leader can anticipate such “catfish” moments, we can try to be prepared. Too many businesses and way, way too many churches are severely under capitalized. A rainy day fund, even if it never rains fish, is one of those things that isn’t needed until it’s needed.

Great leaders do all they can as early as they can to get ready for falling catfish. They expect the occasional unexpected rainy day, and when others are finished off by such a bolt from the blue, they shake off the fishy moment and move forward.

Furthermore, great leaders remain calm in the face of fish storms. Sufficient cash on hand to weather the blast is important. An unruffled presence of mind helps those around great leaders remain calm and carry on. Great leaders don’t just snarl their way through. They see the humor in getting bombed by falling fish and they give those around them permission to laugh.

II. There is no indication that poor Lisa ate the fish, and perhaps it was inedible, but in terms of leadership, that is exactly what I recommend. If you’re ever hit by a falling catfish, grill it. Great leaders see the opportunity for a cook out where others see only the unkindest fish of all.

A phenomenally successful business acquaintance of mine owned hundreds of thousands of square feet of warehouse space. When I asked him why he got into such a business, he said he never intended to. He was in the tire business and hanging on by a thread when a huge brand name competitor opened nearby and nearly wiped him out. Unable to afford keeping lots of inventory on hand, he found himself with extra space in the back of his store, which he rented to a paper company in need of a cheap warehouse. He quickly realized the real money was not in tires but in warehouses.

Great leaders know that when it’s raining stinky catfish, it may just turn out to be pennies from heaven. Sure, they prepare for the unexpected blow and try to stay calm. Then they look at the fish that just about knocked their brains out and tell the team, “Fire up the grill guys. We are going to have a fish fry.”

Reverence: Success and Value

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 18:49:00 GMT

Success and failure are not so much matters of what we learn or earn or own. Success is measured and determined by what we reverence. As worth is assigned to things in a society, the individuals in it will carve out their legacy of success or failure.

If virtue is reverenced, virtue increases. If virtueless success or characterless talent is admired above all, character breaks down. A dangerous step towards collapse is taken when obvious irreverence is touted as a virtue.

Modern American humor is frighteningly irreverent. In the light of the whole counsel of God, we must recapture the serious reality that there are some things that are not to be made fun of. What is sacred to God must not be funny to us. Americans tend to say, “This movie was profane, wicked, horrible, murderous, and pornographic, but it was so funny,” as though that excuses everything.

There are some things that are sacred, some things about which we simply should not make jokes. To jest of those things that are high and holy is to intrude dangerously on the things of God.

What is revered and how such reverence is demonstrated is important to a society’s character. In other words, appropriate objects of reverence must be chosen and given their proper values. Then appropriate means of demonstrating that reverence must be found.

Our society has cultivated a deliberate boredom, a cynical resistance to being amazed, to wonder at anything. Many Americans spend their lives bored with everything and are themselves, therefore, monumentally boring. There are certain things that simply demand a response. It is arrogant and self-centered to stand for the first time at the foot of Mount Fuji and say, “Ho hum, it’s about what I thought.” How much more interesting life is with a person who is unafraid to say, “I never dreamed it would be so beautiful!” There is something arrogant about a person who refuses to be impressed with anything. There are certain things in the presence of which I simply ought to be astonished.

Reverencing things outside myself takes my eyes of my own importance. When I develop the virtue of reverence, I cut away at my natural tendency to make myself the center of all things. The perspective that reverence returns to my life is not only spiritually important; it is also crucial to emotional well-being.

A contributing factor to the increasing madness of American culture is the decline of reverence. The loss of character in America, particularly the loss of reverence, is a subtle madness. Man, at the center of his own life, with all his problems and fears, unable to get his eyes off himself, is destined for emotional and spiritual collapse. Alone, man cannot stand the weight of himself.

Leadership, Relationship and the Bottomless Language of Manipulation

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:17:00 GMT

There are words which can be, and frequently are, used as a manipulative fulcrum and lever device to gain the upper hand in a relationship, company or a ministry. It is a commonly employed linguistic device which left unaddressed will bring unrelenting pressure to bear. The problem is that such words seem totally innocent, yet they camouflage a cruelly manipulative power play.

What words?

“More,” is one. “Enough,” is another. But these are just two examples. The issue is an open-ended “complaint” or “need” for which there is no specific answer, no real resolution. Such words are manipulative because they dig a bottomless pit. There is not, in all the world, enough efficient management, salary, love, affection, sympathy or whatever to fill it. Hence digging such a verbal and emotional pit keeps the other party constantly on the defensive, ever striving to meet an unmeetable need. That is manipulative.

Here is how it works and what to do about it.

Watch for language such as:

“You don’t love me enough.”

“I need more sympathy from you.”

“You weren’t tender enough with me.”

“You didn’t try hard enough to understand my needs.”

“This department is way under-funded.”

There is usually a veiled or at least implied accusation. Eventually it will be very blatantly stated but not at first. Notice however, it is not specific. It will be a blanket accusation. It will also be emotional. When pressed, the manipulator will have some list of specifics, which is nothing more than a self-justifying trail of “evidence” which when confronted with contrary data may collapse. Logical, specific answers to an emotional and non-specific accusation can be a match to the fuse. That does not mean you should not light the fuse; it simply means you need to know there may be an explosion.

Secondly, the vagueness of the need or accusation will force the unsuspecting into a defensive posture and put the crowbar in the hand of the accuser. Because the demand is open-ended, the accused will never quite meet it. They just keep stretching, striving to satisfy an unreasonable performance demand which is unhealthy to say the least, and will eventually be exhausting. In fact, the exhaustion factor is often what spells the end of the relationship. Unable to meet the need and fatigued from trying, the defender gives up. This gives the accuser all the proof they needed.

“There! You see? I knew it from the beginning.”

That is the reason manipulators leave a trail of broken, exhausted relationships behind them. They will see these as proof of how shallow and uncaring others are. They will never see their demands as having simply burned others out.

I have learned that the sooner this trap becomes obvious the better. Some years ago a paid nursery director at a church I pastored was driving me crazy. She never had enough of anything: volunteers, budget, supplies — ANYTHING. Being new to the game, I wanted to help her. I soon discovered what a bottomless pit is. Finally the answer came to me.

I waited until one Sunday she came to me and said, “I need more volunteers today.”

“I cannot get you more.”

“What?!?” She was horrified. This was obviously what she had long expected of me. “You don’t care about the nursery. You never have. Not really. You don’t care about anything but what happens in the auditorium. I knew you wouldn’t help.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. I said I cannot get you more. More is impossible. Three is possible. Eight is possible. More is impossible. I don’t how how many is more. Give me an exact number.”

She was dumbfounded, which frankly was a tremendous improvement. She would not even give me a number and finally went back to the nursery claiming that they could manage. I never again allowed her to make open-ended demands or accusations. Eventually she left my employ because she was a manipulator and specificity frustrates manipulation.

At another church I employed a very talented youth pastor who did a terrific job as far as the teenagers were concerned. He was, however, a handful for the others on the staff— especially me.

He came to me one day complaining that he was not “appreciated enough” for the contribution he was making. When I asked him how I could show my appreciation more, he said salary would be one way. I asked him how much he should make but he wouldn’t state a number. “How about my salary?” I asked. “Do you expect to make what I do?” Well, no, he did not expect that. “How about what your boss, Jim, makes? Should you be paid what your boss gets?” “No,” he said, but he should be the next highest paid in that department. “You are,” I said. “You are exactly that. The next highest paid.”

I will never forget his response. “Why are you making this about salary? That was just an example.”

“Ok,” I said. “You brought up salary. Give me another example.”

He said his rising attendance numbers, and they were rising, should be pointed out to the board. When I showed him in the board docket the exact paragraph which lauded his success, he was not mollified. He was, in fact, angrier than when he came in. These were just examples, he claimed, and I would not deal with how he felt. He was not with us long.

I will say, in his defense, he later wrote me a memorable letter of apology which I appreciated. When did he write it? When, as a senior pastor he struggled with a youth pastor of his own. Life is full of interesting… “turns.”

Specificity also makes the manipulator face the unrealistic nature of their demands. More may seem perfectly reasonable. Eight, when you say eight right out loud, the manipulator may see that is way too high a number. You don’t pay me enough, seems correct. Putting a dollar amount in place of “enough” may reveal that what they are paid is actually very generous.

This is also true in relationships. “You are not patient enough with me” is unanswerable. What should one say?

“When I do not seem to understand you, please explain to me in a different way.” That I can do.

“You are not romantic enough.”

How can I possibly answer that?

“Call me from the office. Send me flowers a few times a year. Take me on a date once a month. Tell me how beautiful I am every morning.”

Okay! Now I can make progress.

“You never take an interest in the house.” I don’t know what to do about that.

“I want you to start taking out the trash without my reminding you.”

“Gotcha! That I can do.”

To deal with the bottomless language of manipulation, always demand specifics. There is, however, a caveat. Manipulators do NOT like that. The only thing that can seal up the bottomless pit of open-ended language such as “more” and “never” and “not enough” is the anti-toxin of specificity. That does not mean it will be easy. It may very well be explosive. The issue is, as in most of life, short-term peace versus long-term health.

I cannot be more caring.

I can make the bed or change the baby or take out the trash.

I cannot pay you more. I can raise you 2.5%.

Don’t Tell People How to Do Things – Really?

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 13:52:00 GMT

On The Leader’s Notebook this week I am featuring a guest post. I may not do this often but every now and again, I may find something (or someone) I want to introduce to the Notebook’s readers.

This week’s guest is not only a business/leadership/marketing/management expert; he is also a personal friend and former colleague. Dr. Steve Greene has extensive experience in business and in business education. Dr. Greene was the dean of the college of business at ORU while I was the president of that university. Before his highly successful years at ORU, he provided excellent leadership at a multi-million dollar television company and a major restaurant chain. Today he is a blogger, publisher, speaker and a business consultant with an extensive clientele. Dr. Greene is also a member of the Board of Directors of Global Servants Inc.

Don’t Tell People How to Do Things – Really?
Guest blog by Dr. Steve Greene

I read Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, Killing Patton. Bad reviews aside, the book reminded me of a classic quote from General George Patton …

“Don’t tell people how to do things; tell them what to do and let them surprise you with results.”

Well, the good general has one thing right in his thinking: There is a surprise coming.

I suppose the General forgot about boot camp, otherwise known as basic training. The essence of basic training is to teach men and women HOW to do what needs to be done. “How” must precede “what.”

Aren’t you regularly surprised by what people don’t know how to do?

I truly believe that every business problem I have seen in my years in consulting and leadership could be traced back to a nexus of poor or nonexistent training. Leaders may speak about culture and policies during on-boarding, but a vacuum exists, in general, in the teaching of “how.”

Remember Lombardi’s classic opening to his training camps for the Green Bay Packers … “Gentlemen, this is a football.” His first few days of camp … for an NFL team … consisted of blocking and tackling drills. How many games were lost in the NFL this past season because of miserable blocking and tackling? Most players know WHAT to do but have perhaps forgotten HOW.

Our millennial leaders and those in development learn from YouTube and Google. If we pay close to attention to the training being delivered online, we will probably conclude the video creator was well aware of the HOW-GAP. YouTube has become a how-to library.

So leaders, how much time per week do you spend teaching the younger members of your team on how to do what you expect them to do? Please consider the following tips for training:

Frequency. I recommend no less than one specific training class per week. How would your ministry be changed with 50 training sessions this year? Transfer the HOW to your team with sustained, consistent effort.
Basics. Teach blocking and tackling. Do you have a “how-to-greet-visitors class?” Handshakes and eye contact seems to be a declining skill set. Start all training with the basic assumption that your team doesn’t know the basics. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with reminder training.
Train the trainer. Leaders frequently delegate training to someone who hasn’t been trained in the topic or teaching methods. Invest resources in the development of trainers.
Curriculum. Certainly, great libraries are available for training content. Be careful to review and edit ALL outside material. It’s much better for the leadership team to develop, write and conduct in-house training.
Read and write. Reading should be a significant component of all training. Since all of your team can probably use writing help, I recommend a written assignment be included at the conclusion of every class. Ask open-ended questions and review the content of the answers as well as the writing. My prophecy is that you will quickly see that training needs to happen twice each week.

And what’s a training session without a good devotion? Find a Bible lesson to tie in to every class. Pray for the Holy Spirit to teach the hearts and minds of your team.

The efficacy of your ministry will ultimately depend upon know-how.

Measuring and Celebrating Success

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 14:09:00 GMT

Nothing is more important to a turnaround than rolling up small, quick victories that build positive momentum and give everybody the feeling that things are indeed looking up. That change in attitude lays the foundation for bigger victories later on.

Financial advisers, when helping their clients get out of debt, often encourage them to start by aggressively attacking the smallest debt, paying only the minimum on the larger debts, even if the smallest debt has a lower interest rate than some of the large debts. Now from a strictly mathematical, financial perspective, you should always start with the debt that has the highest interest rate. In terms of pure finance, paying off a high-interest credit card balance is more important than paying off a twelve-month same-as-cash television purchase. But we don’t live as strictly mathematical or financial beings. We are also driven by emotional and psychological forces, and there is something very motivating about making that last payment on the television and applying that payment to the next-biggest debt, and snowballing up from there. A similar psychological momentum is important in organizational change as well.

But while the emotional boost of quick, early success is important, from the perspective of the turnaround leader, that boost is not the most important thing about early successes. Those quick hits give you the opportunity to show your team members that they can indeed trust your leadership. It is vitally important that you not only put your people in a position to succeed, but also connect the dots for them, showing them that they succeeded because they did what you told them to do. That may sound self-serving. Whether it is or it isn’t, I can tell you that connecting the dots for your employees serves them. It gives them confidence; they know that they didn’t just get lucky. They succeeded because they are part of a team led by an able leader. They succeeded because your plan is working.

When I coached football, I found that one of the hardest things to get a new lineman to do is to keep his head up when he blocks. It’s natural to look down as you engage your opponent. But a blocker who keeps his head up enjoys a huge advantage. It was one of the great pleasures of my coaching career to see one of my linemen get his first big pancake block after he learned to keep his head up. And every time it happened, I took great pleasure in saying, “See what just happened? You kept your head up like I taught you, and you see the results!” The real point wasn’t “See, I told you so,” but, “See, you can trust me when I tell you how stuff works.” That reminder made my player a better, more teachable listener.

So don’t be shy about taking a certain amount of credit for your employees’ successes. When members of your organization succeed, congratulate and praise them. Then connect the dots for them; remind them that they succeeded because they listened to what you were telling them. This empowers those who follow you by giving them more confidence in your leadership. They listened this time and success was theirs. Now they are more likely to listen next time.

The Holiness of God

Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:46:00 GMT

God is always I AM, always who He is. Still the question remains, is He a moral God? In other words, if holiness means to be consistent in nature, could a holy God by consistently bad? It may seem like a silly question to many, but, in fact, the question would make a great deal of sense to some non-Christians.

Consider these two philosophical propositions:

Proposition I: God is holy because He does not sin.
Proposition II: God does not sin because He is holy.

Both contain not only the same number of words, but exactly the same eight words, only slightly rearranged. Can such a minor reordering really change the meaning all that much? Into the narrow gap between these two statements, all human hope, can plunge into the bottomless pit.

If Proposition I is true, we envision God striving to follow the rules in THE GOD MANUAL. We optimistically reckon that He can do it. He is, after all, God. The problem is that if we define God as holy by His actions, we define in the horrifying possibility that His actions might change. As long as God does good, He is holy; therefore, if He ever does evil, He is not holy. If that should happen, the universe and our peace plummet into a black hole of terrifying possibilities. Consider an all-powerful God free to do evil at His whim,. That is simply too mind-bogglingly horrible to contemplate.

On the other hand, if Proposition II is true, God’s actions are the result, not the determinant, of His character. God is not what He does. God does who He is. Scripture is clear that love, for example, is not one of the nifty things God does, but it is the essence of who I AM is. His will for my life is not good because He decides in my particular case for it to be good. The will of God is Good, has to be good, must be good, because I AM is good.

In the trying seasons of life, this truth gives great hope. We are never in a tough spot because God got in a snit. Even in my darkest valley, even in chastisement, I know His will for me is good because of the holiness of God.

Fastening theology to a limited or wrong view of God’s holiness plays havoc with faith in every way. Prayer, for example, is crippled by error. Many, not only in the world but also in the church, are timid in prayer because of a misbegotten concept of God as the Cosmic Receptionist. God, the harried “answerer of all incoming calls,” labors night and day to respond. He can do it most of the time because He is God and because at any given moment, at least half the world is asleep. I even heard one pastor, a pastor mind you, say that he liked to pray at 3am because he had God’s full attention. If he was joking, it wasn’t funny. If he was not joking, he actually put into words what many subconsciously believe. Evidently if you pray ion an hour of peak calls, you may get a recording or a busy signal, or be put on hold, waiting with a deep need while listening to some recording of angelic elevator music.

It is God’s holiness, His completeness me-ward in perfect love, that makes me know I am God’s only concern. I never have the partial attention of a distracted God, hurrying me out of His office so that He can deal with the next case. I am I AM’s only concern, all He thinks of, all He cares about. All His creative power, all His love, and all His grace are mine. The miracle of omnipresence is not that part of a gaseous god is everywhere at once. That is not holiness. The glorious truth is that all of God is everywhere, all at once. I am God’s only project. So is everyone else, all at the same time. That is the joy of the holiness of God.

Rutland’s Law of Bankruptcy #1: An Increasing Share in a Diminishing Market

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 19:58:00 GMT

For some years now I have included that “law” in a lecture at The National Institute of Christian Leadership. I have also lectured on its balancing reality, called “outrunning your market,” but that is for another column. There are two questions you should be asking yourself right about now. What does the law mean, and how does it relate to me and my leadership?

It means that cornering the market on some product or service is not a business advantage if that market is disappearing.

Imagine the Acme Scroll company’s 1445 board meeting. What I know about entrenched thinking makes me believe that the largest scroll manufacturing company in Europe read about Gutenberg’s invention and the stir it was causing and said, “Well, they may sell a few, or even a lot of these printing machines, but there always be a need for scrolls.” Then some years later, the president proudly announced to the board that in the previous year every scroll sold in the all of Europe was an Acme scroll. The next year, Acme went out of business.

Kodak serves as a cautionary non-fictional example. When they were the last film company standing, were they gloating or were they terrified? I was not in the board room, but one must ask, did the disappearance of film catch Kodak’s executives by surprise? Was the board prepared and fore-warned or were they shocked and dismayed?

One wants to believe visionaries at Kodak saw it coming from way back and had a plan in place. However, when I recently drove past the vast but nearly empty Kodak plant in Rochester, NY, I saw very little sign of a plan B.

A shift is what causes a market to change or even disappear. There may be many such shifts. Here are three to which leaders must pay attention.

1) Technology shifts. The move from film to digital or from scrolls to printed books are just two examples. There are countless others, of course. I wonder who still has some 8-tracks and on what do they play them! Cassette recorders? Remember them? And what about phone booths? Remember them? In fact, it’s not just the primary product itself. There may very well be supporting products that will disappear as well. Somebody once manufactured the cords for telephones.

It is no honor to sell the last unit of some piece of technology that everyone else quit manufacturing a long time ago. I am not suggesting you should always try to be the first passenger on every train to leave the depot, but technology loyalty is useless in a world that is changing minute by minute, not decade by decade. There is a major difference between a fad and a trend and those who know the difference will survive.

2) Cultural shifts. Manners, style, decor and etiquette also change. Clinging to the classical too long, too dogmatically can make your organization and your way of doing business look antique even if you are actually on the cutting edge in other ways.

This can create a stuffy and even stifling internal atmosphere for your youngest employees. Even worse, it can cause a loss of customer confidence. You may have a splendid new, high tech product to sell but if your sales force is wearing Homburgs, spats and sleeve garters, who will listen?

3) Language shifts. The functional vocabulary of a market can change so dramatically that a failure to keep up can cause devastating damage. I do not want to be a slave to political correctness but there are some words which I simply no longer use.

Niggardly, for example, is a word that has absolutely no connection to the lethal N word. It just means stingy or as Mirriam-Webster defines it, “grudgingly mean about spending.” It is a perfectly good word that has no racial overtones whatsoever, and its loss to the English language is a shame. Even so, I will never use it again. Facing up to the prevailing ignorance and emotional volatility of the listening public, I have abandoned the benign old word. It’s better to just say stingy.

In business, communication or the ministry, sleeping through these shifts can be costly if not fatal. The church that uses hymn books or a slide projector is not wrong or bad, or, by the way, right. There is no right or wrong here. They may, however, look old timey and out of touch to the younger market they claim to want to attract. By requiring the girls in your Christian school to wear skirts you may hope to teach Christian modesty but the lesson may make absolutely no sense to any but your most legalistic clientele. Such a dress code may send a message that your school is outdated and therefore the education is second rate. MAY, I said. Before you lose your temper. MAY. Finally, the vocabulary you use in advertising or in the pulpit may be doing more damage to your growth than you think.

I am not young and I know that sometimes my own vocabulary is way to the right of “hip.” I have discovered I can only adapt it to a certain extent without a major reprogramming. Therefore I’m willing to sound a bit “classical.” It’s become a part of the Rutland persona. Having said that, however, I refuse to be the last preacher on earth to use the word niggardly from the pulpit. The market that would understand me may have already disappeared.

Can You Hear Me Now? – Listening in Life and Leadership

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 19:43:00 GMT

In the vast sea of contemporary communication pitfalls, the habit of emotional listening is perhaps the most damaging. Last night when Donald J. Trump was nominated for the presidency of the United States, I tweeted a few simple words. Here they are… WAIT…. first please let me ask you to just read the words. Try to resist the impulse to read anything into the words. Just read the words. Trump Tweet

I was not really all that surprised by some of the responses. Some felt the words were praise for Trump. They were not happy that I did not say it was a “horrible” event or an “embarrassing” event or a “disgusting” event, and because I did not use those words I was presumably campaigning for Trump. Others saw the words as an attack on Trump. How could I call such an “inspiring” and “thrilling” moment astonishing? And why couldn’t I get on the Trump train?

In just a few days, for the first time in history a woman will be nominated for the presidency. Do you know what I will tweet?

“Irrespective of what one thinks of Hillary R. Clinton, this is an historic moment.”

And do you know what will happen? Some will be angry because I called her nomination historic and some will be angry because I didn’t crown her queen of the universe. I expect it. I know it will happen. The reason is not because my tweets (BTW, I hate that word) are so hard to understand. It’s because we have become a nation of emotional listeners. We have little patience with clear announcements of fact or historical observations. We want words either dipped in acid or drenched in syrup. “What do you mean by that?” has become a rejoinder to virtually any statement. We want to read into simple, clear words some hidden meaning, some veiled threat or accusation and we listen with our nerves on edge.

I was the president of a university when Barrack Obama was elected president of the United States. In chapel after the election I said, “This historic election has seen the first African American elected president of the United States. This is an historic moment and we should pray for the new President.”

I had students who were unhappy and “disappointed because I endorsed Obama.” I likewise had students who came to my office to complain that I did not put enough emphasis on the historic struggle of African Americans and who was I to “announce the end of the that struggle?”

All I said, ALL I SAID was that it was an historic moment. The election of an African American to the presidency of the United States! You think that might just be historic? The problem is, that simple statement was heard emotionally. Some heard it as an endorsement. Others read into it a dismissive attitude toward to America’s historic racial issues. It was neither. It was simply a pretty obvious contemporary observation. I’m not whining. I’m just using these as examples to make a point.

It happens in marriages. It happens in offices. It happens in churches. It happens because we have become emotional listeners. We take offense where none is meant. We are certain of hidden agendas where none exist. And we fight back where no fight is offered.

The greatest listener of all time was Jesus. He heard people. Really heard them. He did not get His back up, take offense, get defensive or jump to conclusions.

The woman at the well said, “Why are you, a Jew, asking me, a Samaritan, for water?”

Jesus did not launch into defensive explanation for why the Jewish people felt as they did about Samaritans and why it was, after all, justified. He said, “If you knew who I was you would ask me for living water.” And in so doing opened up the door for a life-changing, theology-changing, Bible-changing conversation.

Here are five thoughts on listening.

1) Listen for understanding. Try to understand what the other person is saying. Instead of picking their words apart try to just hear what they are saying.

2) Do not be easily offended. That is a sign of lack of love.

3) Let things go by. Do not seize on words. The epitaph on the headstone of more than one marriage is a single word. “Gotcha.” Grace instead of gotcha works miracles in relationships

4) You don’t have to have an opinion on everything others say. I’m always amazed at people who feel that no matter who says something, no matter what the context and regardless of how little they know the person, that they feel they must comment. Sometimes I hear people say, I just have to say something about that.

Really? Are you sure? Maybe not. Maybe you just need to do as the Virgin Mary and ponder these things in your heart. Here’s a great rule. Ponder more. React less.

5) Finally, if you find yourself in a communication mine field and you absolutely must enter in, go slowly. Go gently. Feel your way in. Ask some questions. A bull in a china shop is a loud, messy irritant. An angry, hot headed, easily offended bull in a mine field is self-destruction waiting for one more step.

Anyway, Donald Trump’s nomination is astonishing. Whether you voted for him in a primary or will in the general election, consider the improbability of his rise to this moment. In my life time I have never seen anything like it. It doesn’t mean you have to vote for hm but he must be seen in the light of history. Likewise when Hillary Clinton is nominated that will be an historical moment that should be recognized. You do not have to vote for her to see the history of it for what it is. There. Those two statements should be just about enough to crank up some on both sides.

Great Leaders, Great Teams And The Conflict They Cause

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 20:10:00 GMT

Some years ago, while serving as a university president, I attended a conference for college administrators. I heard one president tell another, “I hate it when my vice presidents can’t agree. Sometimes when I’m trying to get what ought to be a pretty quick consensus on some issue, everybody in the room seems to think their point of view is the right on. I get so sick of bad group dynamics.”

Of course, I did not say a single word but I walked away thinking plenty of words. What that president had, and which, from his own words, I must assume he did not like, was not bad at all, but good. Even if his team dynamics were bad, the health or toxicity of a group’s dynamics are the responsibility of leadership. I don’t suppose any leader enjoys presiding over team conflict but it is unavoidable and will be until the age of robots evolves a bit further. Absent of mindless automatons, there will be differing opinions in every team. The better the team, the higher octane the members, the more conflict there will be. Hire weak-kneed sycophants and you’ll have very few differences of opinion in the room. All your associates will spend most of their energy trying to figure out your opinion and whatever is left they will spend competing to be first on the bandwagon. On the other hand, hire strong-minded professionals with diverse knowledge sets, expertise, experience and backgrounds and they are hardly likely to be shrinking violets unwilling to speak their minds.

The “bad” thing about thoroughbreds is that they want to run. They don’t want to just sit in the barn and be hand fed sugar. On the other hand, the good thing about thoroughbreds is that they win races. If you want to win, surround yourself with winners.

Here are essentials for managing winners.

1) Team conflict is not bad. The best team members have the best ideas are willing for their facts and figures to be scrutinized. The best team members are not fearful of being proven wrong. They can be questioned without dissolving in tears. They are secure enough to know that if their idea is rejected it does not invalidate their place at the table. Great leaders are not afraid of team conflict.

2) Great leaders also protect the process from emotional toxicity. Conflict does not have to mean rudeness such as name calling, accusations, snide remarks or manipulation. The leader is the meeting referee. You have to know when to blow the whistle but you never want to stop the action. Great leaders know that the team must be protected from each other. If the air is allowed to become to toxic, your best people will keep their thoughts to themselves and THAT is the last thing you want.

3) Great leaders know how to facilitate the communication. To guide a team through conflict a leader must learn to translate and synthesize. Great leaders learn how and when to use phrases such as:

“I’m not sure that’s what she’s saying.”

“Let me say that back to you and you tell me if I’m hearing you correctly.”

“Look, he’s not attacking you. He’s just asking where you got those figures.” and …

“Ok. We’ve chewed on this for quite a while now. Let me say what I think we have decided and you people tell me if I’ve about got it right.”

4) Your team members must also know they’re safe with you. If it’s dangerous to disagree with leadership, folks will learn to keep their mouths shut. If telling the leader he’s headed in a dangerous direction is too costly, letting him drive over a cliff may seem a safer plan. Domineering and insecure mangers smother communication and silence their best and brightest. Great leaders don’t mind the conflict. They find the silence deafening.

Managing team conflict can be exhausting. It can also be the title to a gold mine. In a room full of winners, there are certainly winning ideas. The great leaders know how to dig them out without getting anyone killed.

Mercy for Yourself

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 16:16:00 GMT

Most people have a merciless expectation of themselves; they vow never to do or say anything outrageously stupid. Most of us learn the hard way that this is absolutely impossible – at least this has always been impossible for me.

I ran into an acquaintance I had not seen for some time and after a few seconds of greetings, I asked, “Well, how’s your wife?”

“Wonderful, I suspect,” he replied softly. “She’s in heaven where she has been for six months.”

What does one do at such a moment? Suicide is an option, of course. Just drop to your knees right in front of the offended party and open your veins. Keep repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” as he watches you go on to be with his wife, where presumably you can spend eternity apologizing to her.

Or you can just add yet another memory to the ever growing file of things you’ve done to make yourself feel like a donkey. Everyone has such a list. We try to forget the list. Suppression works in spurts, but sooner or later one of these painful memories will force itself onto the screen of our mental computer, reminding us of how utterly, abysmally, unforgivably stupid we are. That one incident (and remember, there’s a file full) was sufficient to prove it.

There’s only one cure: cultivate the ability to laugh at yourself. This is the mercy of mirth. Those who do not learn to laugh at themselves are doomed to merciless self-condemnation. A sense of humor insulates us against the blows of life. And a sense of humor is not knowing what’s funny, it’s knowing what’s funny about you.

One year, at our annual youth convention, a wonderful kid named Ian showed five hundred dreadfully serious-about-themselves teens how to laugh at life’s tragedies. Ian, who was born with only one leg, wore a sophisticated but strange-looking prosthesis. The first time I saw him in shorts, I knew that this handsome, calm young man was not at all insecure about his leg. But when he put the leg on backwards in the boys’ dorm and ran with the artificial foot facing to the rear, he brought the house down. Suddenly Ian plunged to the floor, grabbing the “ankle” of the prosthetic device as he howled in pain.

“I sprained my ankle!” he cried in agony. “Help me up, please. I sprained my ankle.”

Two boys tenderly lifted him to his feet as he winced at the painful sprain. Only when he winked did we realize that, of course, a person cannot sprain an artificial ankle! It nearly caused a riot of relieved laughter.

The really sad people in life are merciless with themselves, demanding mistake-free, idiot-proof, physically, mentally and spiritually perfect living. We mortals must mentally and spiritually perfect living. We mortals must have mercy. Psalm 103:14 says that God “knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” If God can remember that, shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t we cut ourselves some slack and learn to laugh at our failures and foul-ups along the way? Have a little mercy on yourself.

The Importance of Short-Term Wins

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 17:35:00 GMT

It is impossible to overstate the importance of short-term wins in the process of leading any team or organization through the rocky rapids of change. If you take over a team that went 2-13 the last four years, do NOT schedule Alabama for your home opener, believing God for a gridiron miracle. That not faith. It’s magical thinking. Instead, schedule Slippery Rock for your first home game and win big. Roll up the score. In other words, a small win is an infinitely better strategy than a showy loss.

In negotiating the headwinds of change remember that you will have resisters all along the route. Not may have. WILL HAVE. Some may rise up and fight you. They are not the problem. Those are the easiest to deal with. The silent resisters, the underground opposition are your real problem. Nothing shifts the tide in your favor like wins. A stream of small wins early is a great momentum builder. Plan them. Set up easy targets and hit them.

Here are six important ways to turn short-term wins into long-term leadership gains. This is leadership alchemy and is the key to turning the ship in the face of contrary winds. Each small win is a step to big success if you:

1) Celebrate small wins big. Do not yield to the temptation to wait for the big win before you celebrate. You just won the first home opener in four years? Great! That’s not the time for some limp announcement. Celebrate like you just won the Super Bowl.

2) Connect the dots between the win and the changes you made. This is NOT the time for modesty. Remind the team what you asked them to do and how it got them the win. This builds confidence in your leadership and in their ability to put into practice changes that make for wins. The next change you make will be easier for them to trust. You increased ( sales, attendance, revenue, whatever ) by half a percent. Great! Don’t wait. Celebrate now. Pop a cork. Sound a gong. Then at one percent do it again. And again at 5%. And again and again and again.

3) Take time to point out that the win justifies the pain of the change. I promise you some on your team did not like the changes. I also promise you they like winning. Talk pain and gain. And talk lots.

4) Analyze the results. What else needs to be changed? What can you add, invest in, shift, shrink, stop doing or do more of? Every successful change means more strategic change. Celebrate big. Then do serious analysis. Then change something else.

5) Use the wins to weed out resisters. The silent opposition will usually become more apparent as the wins and the celebrations pile up. They cannot remain on your team. Weeding the garden is not much fun but without it the old weeds choke out new growth.

6) Then shift the “neutrals” on the team to energetic positives. Some on your team are not opposed to your changes. They just want to be like Switzerland. At first, for awhile you can afford them. They are not the problem your resisters are, but they also don’t add much momentum. Energetically draw them into the celebration. Make them feel the joy of winning. Encourage their first effort and make it clear you expect more energy on the next level of changes. If they can get on your band wagon you have kept valuable team members on board. If the won’t get get there and get there quickly…return to number five and face facts.

I teach these six steps as one small part of a much more robust lecture at the National Institute of Christian Leadership. Leading change is seldom easy, but it is doable. Furthermore, this is not theory. I have proven that this recipe works. In fact I’ve proven it over and over again in laboratories as diverse as coaching sports to pastoring churches to turning around a failing college. I know these six steps can shift momentum in your direction and I would be honored to share this lecture and so much more with you at the National Institute of Christian Leadership.

The Geography of Dreams

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 19:24:00 GMT

God’s geography is not our own. With Him, the shortest distance between any two points may not be a straight line but a meandering trail that seems to lead in the wrong direction or in no direction at all. The delay, common to dreamers, from dream to fulfillment can be absolutely excruciating. No spiritual discipline is as taxing or, for that matter, so close to the heart of holiness as waiting, but that does not mean it is a pleasant experience.

That very season of delay, which we find so distasteful, may, however, be crucial to the plan and purpose of God. Such delays give God time to prepare us for the opportunity and the opportunity for us. While we wait, God is removing obstacles before us, which, if allowed to remain, would hinder or limit the dream.

Joseph, for example, received his dream at the age of seventeen. It is doubtful that at such a tender age he was prepared to become the prime minister of Egypt or to accept the obeisance of his family. His training in administration, both in Potiphar’s house and in prison, was good preparation for government service. Likewise, the experience gained in dream interpretation with his fellow prisoners was certainly preparatory to interpreting Pharaoh’s dream later. Furthermore, his commitment to holiness could never have been so thoroughly proven had he not been so cruelly tested by Potiphar’ wife.

Some years ago I met a young preacher with a passionate dream for crusade evangelism. He was attractive, dedicated, well spoken and, quite unfortunately, impetuous. He assured me that God had granted him a dream of preaching a great crusade in Atlanta. It is not my calling in life to rain on young people’s parades, so I rejoiced with him and assured him that God’s dreams are to be taken seriously and claimed with faith.

I also urged him to wait for the Lord to bring it to pass. I reminded him that the time between dream and fulfillment can sometimes be long and was always important. Urging him not to take matters precipitously into his own hands, I reminded him that if he shot past God he could get hurt.

I might as well have saved my breath. He stared at me uncomprehendingly with well-lacquered eyes, glazed with the fervor of youth and utterly untempered by any trace of mature wisdom. I could tell that he was not in the least receptive to my cautionary remarks. Indeed, I quickly learned that they were too late anyway.

He had already borrowed money, rented a massive auditorium, contracted with musicians and set a date for the crusade to being. All my management question about publicity, attendance and paying the band were met with blank stares, thinly veiled disappointment at my obvious lack of faith and bold assurances that God never fails.

God never fails, but humans frequently do. That young man was left with an empty auditorium, an upset band, and angry young wife and a substantial personal loan. I am confident t it was a valuable lesson for him, but my, oh my, what a needlessly expensive one, learned the hard way.

Likewise, it was a lesson learned the hard way by Abraham and Sarah. As Abraham’s God-given dream of a child seemed to fade, they grew more and more desperate until finally, like the young evangelist, took matters into their own hands. The result was a personal and historical disaster for which Abraham and Sarah suffered and for which the world still suffers.

When Sarah convinced Abraham to impregnate her Egyptian maid, Hagar, the resulting child was Ishmael, the father of the Arab peoples and the ancestor of Muhammad. An interesting and ironic sidebar is the fact that only four generations later the descendants of that same Ishmael carried Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, into slavery in Egypt, the birthplace of Hagar, Ishmael’s mother. Eventually all accounts get settled.

Wait on the Lord. Rush ahead of Him to birth an Ishmael, and you may regret it for a long time. The timing of God is just as important as the dream itself.

The painful delay also gives God time to bring the dream into focus. When it finally happens, when the glorious dream is there in your hands, before your very eyes, it may not be what you expected. This is because your vantage point is limited. Dreams are often symbolic, visionary and unclear at the beginning. Waiting, walking slowly and patiently while God works in His own time affords the dream opportunity to come into focus.

Are Leaders Born or Made?

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 20:28:00 GMT

I have spent most my life in leadership at one level or another. My leadership experience began in sports, playing, coaching and officiating. That season was invaluable, as was every subsequent phase of the journey in pastoral leadership, in the non-profit world, in business and in the academic arena. Every step was a laboratory of life and leadership. Then, as I began to teach leadership and management, I searched through all the seemingly random data this journey had provided in an effort to formulate transferable concepts. Had I just accumulated miles on my personal odometer or had I really profited from the trek? I knew where I had been and what I had done. The question remained, what had I learned and could I teach it?

Some say they have had forty-five years of experience when, in fact, they have had one year of experience…forty-five times. THAT I did not want. I wanted to learn from the journey, every step of the journey, including, and perhaps especially, my failures. When I started the National Institute of Christian Leadership, my desired outcomes were clear in my mind. “Keep it practical, keep it real and structure it in an understandable format for anyone at any stage of their leadership.” That was it.

Through all the years of teaching this material, of revising it and adding to it and constantly improving it, I continue to learn. It is interesting, however, that the first lecture in the entire institute is the one that has changed the least. That lecture is on the nature of leadership. Also interesting is the fact that out of the whole year of intensely practical instruction, this lecture is probably the most theoretical. Yet it remains one of the most popular things I teach.

I have to ask myself why. I believe it comes down to one question, one which intrigues leaders and learners alike: Are leaders born, or can they be made? That is the question. Those who consider themselves “natural” leaders are the most likely to be confident of the answer and dismissive of the question. They tend to respond out of their own experience. “Look, you’re either a leader or you’re not. You may learn a few management techniques along the way, but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

That line of thought is actually at the heart of why many natural leaders never really develop their potential. They feel no need to develop their natural gift. They learned early on what worked pretty well for them in elementary school, so they they just keep on doing in the board room what worked on the playground. This can actually cause their giftedness to devolve in some very tragic ways. The playground leader may become the board room bully. The third grade beauty who learned she could get what she wanted with a smile, may become a master manipulator.

I do not deny that natural leadership is a reality. What I do deny is that it is sufficient. There are leadership techniques that are highly successful on the grammar school monkey bars which will fail utterly on the sidelines of a college football game. Likewise there are leadership skills which work just fine in the locker room or in a huddle, which simply will not work in a staff meeting or with a group of upset volunteers. The natural leader should thank God for the gift within and spend the rest of their lives perfecting that treasure. We are called of God not to a single and primary shelf of glory, but from glory unto glory unto glory unto glory….

The counterbalance to that is the one who is not or, at least, does not see himself or herself as a natural leader. The question of leadership gifts versus learned skills may be dismissed by the natural leader with a confident smile and a cavalier shrug. However, the question may haunt and even demoralize those who view themselves on the lower end of whatever scales measure such leadership “gifts.”

The natural leader may enjoy the luxury of building on a genetic foundation. They should acknowledge the gift within them, be grateful, remain humble and add to their giftedness, discipline and maturity. Having said all that, the not-so-gifted are hardly disqualified. They can master skills that will drastically catapult them past the gifted leader who remains immature and undisciplined. I am absolutely persuaded, without any reservation, that while gifts are as wonderful as they are, successful leadership and management are not dependent on gifts alone.

This, then, is the balance. The “natural” leader, that kid who shines on the playground, must add to all that, discipline, maturity and learned skills. The rest of us, which, by the way, is most of us, are by no means left out. Because we see few of those “natural gifts” resident within us, we are not somehow disqualified from leadership. We can learn leadership. We can master management. We cannot make ourselves more gifted than we are. We can vault beyond our gifts or our apparent lack of them, to a place of solid, mature leadership.

Is leadership natural or can it be learned? That is the question. The answer is, YES.

Finding Fascists in the Strangest Places

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 19:04:00 GMT

The Portland Public School Board recently voted to ban from all its schools any book, magazine, pamphlet or other material that expresses any doubt about climate change. Students at DePaul University invaded a speech by conservative speaker, Milo Yiannopoulos , threatened violence and shut the event down, claiming that they simply should not be subjected to such outlandish ideas as his nor should he be allowed to speak on the campus.

When I think of American neo-fascists, I envision semi-literate, camo-clad thugs at secret forest camps training toddlers to shoot uzis. Certainly they do exist. Nutcase skin heads are certainly out there and they are dangerous. I do not deny that. However, as sad as they are, they are hardly surprising.

The real shocker, is finding fascists in respectable colleges, in libraries and on boards of education. I rather expect neo-fascists to be jack-booted neanderthals who cannot spell. I am surprised to discover that in modern America they are more likely to be 19-year-old sophomores studying the humanities at some of America’s most liberal universities. I am hardly shocked when I read of neo-fascists who are bearded ex-cons toting automatic weapons around clandestine guerrilla training camps. I am amazed to behold the modern phenomenon of professorial fascists toting Ph. D’s around Ivy League campuses.

This new tributary of fascism has arisen in the unlikeliest of quarters — liberalism, specifically university liberalism. Historically speaking, this is an absolutely shocking development. The academy has historically been a bastion of anti-fascism. Free speech, for example, has always been virtually sacrosanct on campus. “Say anything; express yourself, be as offensive or rebellious or vulgar or even treasonous as you like.” That has ever been the “fist-in-air” anthem of campus liberals.

Even beyond the boundaries of academia, America’s youth culture has traditionally been devoted to free speech. From song lyrics to magazine covers to comedians on TV, America’s young people have always celebrated free speech, often to the shock and distress of their elders.

It is amazing, utterly amazing, therefore that up from the ocean of liberal young people and campus elites comes a wave of new fascism.

Who could have predicted that angry fascists would arise from the ranks of rebellious students, dreamy academics, school boards and eco-sensitive scientists? Yet it is, in fact, in just such unlikely quarters that the new intellectual violence of fascism is thriving under the banner of political correctness.

Fascists are anti-free speech. They shut it down. They will only tolerate speech they want to hear. They are ruthless in their efforts to silence any dissent from their party line. They will riot and call it a protest. They will ban books and call it the search for “scientific truth.” They will demand anyone who disagrees with them be fired and call it social justice. Fascist tactics vary little from one generation or location to the next. And tactics aside, fascists share the same goal. Silence the opposition. End free speech.

The folks who riot outside the rallies of politicians they dislike are not protesters. The students who shout down guest speakers and claim opposing ideas are too painful and offensive for them to hear are not seekers of justice. The school board members who ban books offering alternative views of science are not purists.

What they are is fascists.

Courage: More Than Valor

Wed, 25 May 2016 18:56:00 GMT

Many miss the greater truth of courage by thinking of it solely in terms of bravery. Though bravery may be admirable, courage is far more than valor in the face of danger. Courage and heroism are not exactly the same. Acts of heroism may or may not be proof of true courage.

Heroism in the face of danger may be a temporary burst of instinct not reflective of true character. Some people are bolder than others by nature. Sometimes public heroes in war or athletics later live unproductive and even destructive lives. Such people were never truly courageous.

They were simply brave.

Furthermore, courage without character can descend into mere bravado. The difference between a hero and an obnoxious show-off is character. In other words, if their motives are selfish and impure, a “hero’s” actions may result from a lust for fame that overrides good judgment.

Beyond circumstance, past mere bravery, there is another kind of courage. The courage of true character uplifts a life. A warrior may fight valiantly, overcome overwhelming odds, brave all manner of danger, and defeat a superior enemy, only to plunder the city and murder its citizenry. Is he courageous? In every classical and biblical sense of virtue, the answer is a definite no. The fearless warrior who rapes and burns is not courageous. He is a brute. Courage, true courage, is about valiant goodness.

NY Human Rights Commission and Real Human Rights

Wed, 18 May 2016 14:53:00 GMT

The New York City Human Rights Commission has just ruled that bars can no longer refuse to serve alcohol to obviously pregnant women. It is worth noting here that the mayor of this same New York City, Bill De Blasio, tried to limit the size of a soft drink one could buy, pregnant or not. This intrusive effort was thankfully frustrated by a reasonable court. De Blasio is a radical liberal who would like to use the regulatory powers of government at every level to run the most personal parts of our lives. He and his ilk do not believe we the people have the good judgment to make our own decisions about anything, even what we eat and drink. Drinking a big gulp may be bad for me, but I am loathe to surrender the right to make decisions that are bad for me.

Having said all that, the point of this post is not really about civil liberties. It is rather about values. The paradox in these two stories is obvious and worth noting. One area of a city government, in order to prevent obesity and diabetes, wants to tell me how much soda pop I am allowed to consume, while another, in the same city, will not let bartenders to attempt to prevent fetal alcohol syndrome.

What is the underlying issue? It cannot possibly be the comparative damage done to human bodies. The nightmare of fetal alcohol syndrome far exceeds whatever may be caused by drinking too many Slurpies. Furthermore, if I slurp myself into morbid obesity, I did it to myself. If a pregnant woman marinates her unborn child in alcohol, the child had no choice.

THAT is actually the issue. THAT is, precisely why government such as New York’s is likely to continue making contradictory decisions such as these. Why would a regulation-happy liberal like De Blasio not jump at the chance to regulate what a pregnant woman can imbibe? The answer lies in a twisted values hierarchy. Here are just four convoluted precepts of this contemporary ethical confusion.

I. Government regulatory authority trumps individual liberty.

II. The rights of a mother trump the rights of an unborn child.

III. Hence, government can tell her she cannot ever gulp a Big Gulp, pregnant or not, but will not tell her she cannot drink alcohol because it may severely damage her unborn baby.

IV. Therefore the preeminent liberal value is not actually health, nor is it good government decisions, nor even wise regulations. It is a paranoid determination not say or do anything that would imply that the unborn ought to be protected— ever— from anything. Because if Big Brother, so obsessed over protecting me from myself, ever even hints at protecting a fetus from anything, the logical extrapolation of that impulse might be, horror of horrors, to protect its fundamental right to live.

These sad “values” inform even more absurd legal contradictions than what New Yorkers, pregnant or otherwise, are allowed to drink. Take for example the issue of an accident or violence causing the death of an unborn child. State attorneys generals are wrestling with what to charge someone with who murders a pregnant woman. Is it a double homicide? How can it be a crime to cause the death of “non-human” tissue? If the mother can legally abort that “fetus” deliberately, how can it be a crime to cause that outcome accidentally?

What about civil actions? Suppose it was not murder but, say, a car wreck that caused the termination of a pregnancy. Can one be sued for damages for doing accidentally that which is perfectly legal if done deliberately? If so, how can the damages be assessed? What might the losing defendant in such a civil action have to pay for terminating what was not even a viable life? It is hard to imagine such “tissue” loss is worth much of a compensatory award. As to punitive damages, what might they be? How could a drunk driver be “punished” for doing what the mother herself could have done with absolute impunity?

The possible convolutions are endless. A society reasons legally based on its fundamental values. When the lives of the unborn have no value, even the most invasive, regulation-obsessed, jurist may be forced into intellectual gymnastics that defy all reason. The EPA wants to regulate fish pond on private property to “protect the environment” from “selfish and careless” homeowners. They long for the day government can protect us from our reckless selves by regulating how much sugar we can consume. Yet unless our society values the unborn, those same jurists and bureaucrats will not even consider regulations that might protect an unborn child from being drenched in lethal alcohol.

The Power of Downward Influence

Fri, 13 May 2016 13:24:00 GMT

I once visited a pastor who had sawed the legs off the visitor’s chair in his study. He said that intimidated those who sat there, made them feel small, peering over the edge of the desk like insignificant children. This same man told me that when he met a business leader for lunch, he was always a bit late. His reasoning was that the less important person always waits of the greater. What folly! What prideful, manipulative, silly games! Is it any wonder that later some of those businessmen over which he had towered and whom he had made to wait voted him out in a major church revolt?

Jesus cared cared more for his influence upon the few closest at hand than for His image among the masses. The life of the leader, his character, and his servant spirit will do much to influence his closest associates. Here is the rule. The closer to the area of immediate impact, the greater the influence. A preacher may, even from so great a distance, have some small influence upon the bloke in the back row. His longtime associate, his secretary, and his kids know the real man, and upon their lives and souls he writes the story of his own character.

After the cross, after all their betrayals and denials and disappointments, the apostles became what they became in great part because of the influence of Jesus. As they walked in wisdom and grew in grace, surely, upon occasion, they saw Christ in each other. In the way one or the other would turn a phrase while preaching or pray aloud or even work a miracle, the others would surely smile at each other knowingly: “That looked just like Jesus.” “Your voice just then reminded me so of Him.” “That is exactly the way He used to do it.”

What they were, the giants they became, how they lived, and how they died were reflections of Jesus’ power. His influence upon them as well as His spirit within them was the power by which they turned the world upside down.

Not one of the apostles was ever a king or a prince or a president. None ever held any office or ruled a country or ran a company. Yet they lived their lives in power, His power. They served and gave and submitted themselves to God and humanity even as they had seen Him do. Theirs was never the power of the present age, but the timeless, mysterious, eternal power of the suffering servant

When they died – some by the sword, some in the fire, and one on a cross – they were not powerless victims. They were more then conquerors.

George’s Football and the Democratic Process

Wed, 11 May 2016 15:54:00 GMT

“It’s my ball and I will take it and go home if I can’t play quarterback.”

In a certain less-than-prosperous neighborhood in which I lived during junior high school, that was the profoundly irritating mantra of the only boy who actually owned a good football. We had other balls, but mostly they were ragged or too soft or had become waterlogged to the point where they were like throwing bricks. His family was the most prosperous, his house and yard the biggest and best to play in, and his football said “Official NCAA” right on it in big white letters. You just can’t ignore words like “Official NCAA.” We wanted to play at his house and use his football. The problem, of course, was that George, for that was his name, was far and away the worst player among us. Especially he was the worst quarterback among us, perhaps in the entire world as far we were concerned.

He was irritating, harshly critical of teammates far better than he and, worst of all, frequently intercepted. George never

won a single game in which he quarterbacked. The problem was he, nevertheless wanted to play quarterback. Always. Every game. And thereby hangs the tale.

The choice was always the same. Let him play quarterback or the rest of us go play with an ancient football in some overgrown, briar-cursed field. No one wanted that. At the same time, no one wanted to play on his team. No one liked him. No one wanted to play on a team that had no chance of winning. Yet if he wasn’t made the quarterback the whole game was banished from his yard and the shiny new ball was taken inside.

Some years ago I assisted a church though the pastoral selection process. Their pastor had retired and, after quite a vetting process, the search committee and I narrowed the field to the final two candidates. One group, the much larger portion of the congregation wanted the younger candidate. He was charismatic, obviously talented and creative but, just as clearly, less experienced.

The smaller group in the congregation, an older and more prosperous group, wanted, predictably I may add, the older candidate. He was also attractive in several ways. He was experienced, a good preacher and because he and his wife were empty nesters it might be assumed he could give more time to the church.

As far as I could see, the committee and I had presented them with two very good but very different choices. I felt either could do a good job at the church. The younger candidate could probably bring in more young families. The older chap had more mileage on his odometer and could probably hold the ship steady and pay down the debt. Neither was a bad choice, as far as I could see, and the search committee was proud of its work. The church documents required a congregational vote after both men preached on different Sundays.

The final vote was clearly and overwhelmingly in favor of the younger candidate. It appeared that the search process had come to a successful conclusion. Appeared, that is, until the older crowd who had “lost” the vote demanded their choice or they would leave the church. This was a serious threat because the church was paying the debt service on a new building and the crowd threatening to leave had most of the big givers.

I tried to reason with them. The search committee chairman tried to reason with them. Some of their own children tried to reason with them. Nothing we said made a dent. They were adamant. Their candidate or they were out of there.

Finally I asked them, “Are you willing for this church to go under if you don’t get the preacher you want?”

“Absolutely,” their chief spokesman said. “We are right. We know we are right. And when these people are facing bankruptcy they will know it too.”

My suggestion that they might consider staying in the church and help make the younger pastor successful was coldly rejected as a compromise which their consciences could not endure. Ultimately they left, and the church which remained did indeed struggle under the new, young pastor for some years before finally paying off the debt and heading into a new era of health and growth.

I thought of George. He did not really care about the game. He cared nothing for the rest of us. He also cared nothing about the opinions of the greater majority. He only cared about one thing. It was his football. He played quarterback or else.

The refusal to accept the process, the refusal to let someone else or even many “someone else'” make a decision I disagree with is a kind of democratic extortion. We will all vote but if the vote does not go my way, I will pout, be petulant and maybe even play on but in such a way as to make you lose. Then I will blame. Or I will take my football and go home. Then I will fervently hope you lose so you will see I was right.

The older members of that church took part in the vote and never claimed they had been cheated. They made no claim at all that the vote was rigged. They simply did not want to honor the outcome. They wanted their candidate or they would leave the church and gloat over its ruin. That is proof that they never really believed in the process clearly outlined in the church documents. If the process served their will, great. If it did not they were gone. And they left that group of young people and that new pastor to limp along for some years.

Here is the punch line.

If you believe in the democratic process going in, you should trust the outcome at the conclusion.

“What about all those people who voted the other way?” I asked the crowd that left.

“They are young and inexperienced and they are making a bad choice,” they answered

“We are older and wiser and they should accept our judgment.”

“But what about the vote? If you had won would you have expected them to stay?”

“Yes, of course,” they said, “But don’t you see that’s not the same?”

I did not see. I still do not see. They both agreed to abide by the results, but when the older, “wiser” group lost, they left. No, to be frank, I do not see.

Their only response to my every question was, this church is about to make a devastating mistake and we will not stay to endorse such a tragic failure. Our candidate did not win and we are going home, and we are taking our football with us. This new preacher and this group of young people who have voted so foolishly will go bankrupt without us, they said.

Why not stay and help that not to happen? I called after them.

Absolutely not. Our quarterback or their bankruptcy; that is the only choice. So they left.

Whether it’s backyard football or a pastoral selection process or even, say, a national election, that’s just petty. Everybody has the right to campaign hard. Everybody has the right to vote. Nobody has the right to win.

Too Proud to Receive

Wed, 04 May 2016 16:39:00 GMT

I don’t know why, but I have always struggled more with receiving than giving. A friend of mine said it is a form of pride. With friends like that who needs enemies? Be that as it may, I just find it awkward to receive gifts from others. I love to give them. Generosity is actually a blessing to me. It’s in getting where I freeze up. Sometimes, especially if the gift is exceptionally generous, I have a hard time coming up with the right words. I have even had to go back later and try to give a better thank you and an apology.

Many years ago when times were very hard in Ghana, I preached at a poor village far in the north. It was summer and the heat of the Sahara was making itself felt in a terrible way. Still the people stood without a murmur for a lengthy service. Their response to the sermon was moving to say the least, and afterward several village elders made speeches thanking me for coming. The last man to the platform said the village wanted to bless me. At that, a woman came forward with a live chicken and a large loaf of bread. The chicken’s wings were tied back so I could hold it with one hand without being scratched. The unwrapped loaf was pressed into my other hand.

The abject poverty of the village was heartrending. I wondered how many other bread loafs there were in the entire village. How many chickens? I was horrified at the very thought that even one of these poor people might go without so that I might go off with a chicken.

I informed my African colleague, Samuel Odarno, that I definitely would not accept the offering. He immediately informed me that I most certainly would. He said it with a smile, but he meant business. He said there was absolutely no way I could insult these poor people. He explained that the entire village was proud that they could give a gift to me, and to decline it would undo everything God had done that day. I yielded, but I was miserable. My misery was mitigated a bit when they put the chicken in the trunk of the car. I was afraid I would have to hold it all the way back to Kumasi.

We rode in silence for a moment. Then I said, “Sammy, I just feel awful about taking their food. Look at them.”

“Obroni [white man], your cup runneth over and God did it. Be grateful. I fear you are not gifted at gratitude.”

He was right, of course, as he usually was. The Lord’s Prayer gives me the liberty to ask for bread. If God adds a chicken, that is His affair. Psalm 23 teaches me to rejoice in His abundance. I know there are those in ministry who use Scripture to justify extravagance and self-indulgence. The balance is in what Sammy said. Be grateful for the bread and be content. If God adds a chicken, receive it with gratitude. When your cup runs over, rejoice, and never, ever take it for granted.

Brand Recovery

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 19:32:00 GMT

A man on an airplane told me his organization was considering hiring on a “brand consultant.” This interested me since branding and brand recovery is something I teach on at the National Institute of Christian Leadership. As we talked further, however, I realized that he had several words very confused: brand, logo and tag line. Since that conversation I have come to realize that many folks, even in some sophisticated businesses, suffer considerable confusion in this area. What my friend actually was hiring was a “logo design expert.” It was not my job to define terms without being asked and our snippet of a conversation certainly did not afford us the time. What I couldn’t help wondering was if the company he was consulting with was confused. Surely the consultants will clarify the terms in the course of the contract. For the purpose of today’s Notebook: some brief definitions are in order.

I: BRAND

A brand is a promise, not a logo. No matter how creative and attractive a logo your organization can design or pay to have designed for you, it will do no good if your brand cannot deliver on its promise. In fact, if the brand is not respected, a nifty logo may actually rub salt in the wound of your disappointed customers. Nike’s brand is the promise of high quality sports shoes.

II. LOGO

An arty check mark is not Nike’s brand. Its a cool, simple, easily remembered and pleasing to the eye LOGO.

III: TAG LINE

Likewise, “Just Do It” is neither the brand nor the logo. A tag line is an advertising phrase, an ever-so-brief, punchy, memorable phrase. What you want from a tag line is an emphasized differentiation that will stick in peoples’ minds. If the tag line can become as famous as the logo you double your clout, but the two together cannot overcome a shoddy brand.

Take Maxwell House for example. Their famous logo is a tilted cup with one last drop of coffee escaping its lip. The tag line is even more famous than the logo. “Good to the last drop.” The combination of the two really works and has been an enduring symbol of a successful brand of coffee. In other words, the coffee itself is the real deal. A good logo and a great tag line cannot sell a bad brand of coffee, not for long anyway.

When a brand is damaged, recovery can be a complicated, painful and expensive process. A major callback can damage a brand. A scandal can really hurt. One type of brand damage has nothing to do with scandal or callbacks, but it can be just as difficult to overcome. That is gradual brand fade, usually caused by a failure to keep up with changes in culture, science, and markets. What causes such a collapse? Usually it’s laziness combined with arrogance.

Was there no one on the entire Kodak team who understood that film was disappearing? Were they completely asleep at the wheel? Apparently they just felt that no matter what happened in the camera world, folks would always need film. Uh oh. There are college students today who have never seen a roll of film, who may not even know what film is.

Whether it’s a chain of department stores or a Christian college or a church, brands can devolve into irrelevancy, promising what is desired by only a disappearing market. Dominance in a disappearing market is the doorway of brand death. A brand can also be damaged by scandal or product failure. A major brand of tires blasted with bad press had to fight back from being labeled “unsafe.” Changing the logo would have been an effete response to such a devastating brand-wrecker.

A Christian college whose brand became associated with financial mismanagement, theological confusion and faded glory faced brand damage in spades. Such a college had to find a way to change its image, improve its product, make its promise contemporary and communicate its differentiation among other such colleges.

What can be done in cases such as these? Here is a brief list of some actions that can aid in the process of brand recovery. I teach an entire lecture on branding and brand recovery at the National Institute of Christian Leadership.

1) You must, ABSOLUTELY MUST, know what is the prevailing public perception of your brand in your desired market. You’ve heard it said, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but I say, you may not know it’s broke if you don’t seriously want to know. Defending yourself is counter-productive. The perception of your brand among the public(s) you are targeting is essential knowledge for a brand recovery.

2) You must make the quality control changes necessary to get your product back online. Do what it takes. Now. Change personnel. Contemporize your product, improve delivery systems and above all things, FIX CUSTOMER SERVICE.

3) Get your message out and get it right. Public relations is indispensable after brand damage is done. Now you can deal with your logo. Now comes the new tag line. Now spend your money on advertising and consultants, etc.

The Supernatural Power of Loyalty

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 20:53:00 GMT

The redemptive grace of loyalty is so powerful that it can literally fill any situation with healing and miraculous blessings. Any force that powerful, however, cannot be violated without dire consequences. There are few virtues in the kingdom more honored by God that loyalty. Absalom’s doom was sealed by his disloyalty to David, but David’s loyalty to an unworthy Saul confirmed his destiny for the throne.

In the household of Naaman, a Syrian general, there lived a young Jewish slave girl. She had been captured by a Syrian raiding party. Stolen from her family, alone in a foreign land, she served as a personal slave to Naaman’s wife, hardly a circumstance to inspire loyalty. Even the most outwardly obedient slave might murder his master mentally. Yet this little girl chose to be loyal with her whole heart. Somehow her family in Israel had carved loyalty into her character at a tender age. Now a slave in Syria, her well-shaped character found genuine concern for the one who owned her just as he owned his horse.

When Naaman contracted leprosy, the slave girl told her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet [Elisha] who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy” (2 Kings 5:3).

Amazing! She sent him who held her captive to her home country, where she surely wanted to be. She sent him to be set free of his disease, though he held her in slavery. She genuinely wanted Naaman to be healed, and he was. The miracle that Naaman received by the ministry of Elisha would have never happened without that slave girl’s unlikely loyalty.

Grateful for miraculous healing, Naaman offered Elisha a large reward which Elisha declined. Elisha’s servant and understudy Gehazi shook his head in amazement. The Syrian had been miraculously healed! “Why shouldn’t Elisha be blessed?” Gehazi reasoned in his heart.

Elisha refused the luxurious gifts of the Syrian but Gehazi would not. He waited until Naaman was out of Elisha’s sight, and then he raced after the foreign general. Elisha had changed his mind, Gehazi explained to the Syrian. Two visiting prophets had arrived, and Elisha would now be happy to accept some gifts after all. Naaman was only too delighted to give.

Elisha, however, discerned the deception and struck the hapless Gehazi with leprosy. In other words, if Gehazi wanted the Syrian’s money, then by all means he should have the Syrian’s disease as well.

The greed of Gehazi is obvious. The issue of disloyal is more easily overlooked. For personal gain he misrepresented his employer’s motives. Acting out of self-interest, he denied his superior’s mobility, goals, purpose, and will. What an ironic contrast!

A slave girl’s character and loyalty brought a miraculous healing and blessing, while the disloyalty of a prophet in training brought scandal, disease, and death. Loyalty is a gemstone virtue whose luster, in a golden setting of faithfulness, brings glory to God and health to all it touches.

Leadership in a Storm

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 14:04:00 GMT

The seas of human life, so lashed as they are by storms of crisis and controversy, are where real leaders do their duty. Happily-ever-after only happens in the movies. Real life, and therefore real leadership, is actually one storm after another punctuated by brief and very welcome periods of calm. Once a leader finds the maturity and experience to face that honestly, the stormy seasons become immensely less stressful.

Until that threshold is passed, every storm feels like the “big one,” the once in a lifetime, storm of the century that just has to be lived over and “normality” will return. Such naive leaders spend way too much energy trying to figure out why this storm has come upon them. They agonize uselessly over imponderables. Why this storm at this time? Why me? Did I sail the wrong sea? Are the very elements conspiring against me? In other words, is this storm part of some supernatural conspiracy to sink me and my ship? The answer to all these is simple if not very satisfying. Storms happen. Winds blow. Waves driven by those words toss good boats and bad the same. The rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Some storms are the result of human idiocy, that of the leader and some of others. I’ve whipped up some of those. Self-inflicted storms are the hardest to endure. Others are just part of living in a fallen universe. Things break, fall apart, go south, and prove more fragile than we imagined. That is life, real life, and real life is seldom smooth. The night before the annual July Fourth city-wide celebration in your auditorium, the air conditioning goes out. Does God hate you? Of course not. Perhaps He just doesn’t like patriotic music and indoor fireworks. Again, of course not. Air conditioners just sometimes break. It’s that simple. It always seems that they break at the worst of times. On the other hand, when would it be convenient?

Here are some thoughts on leadership in a storm.

I. Listen to the Weatherman

You cannot stop storms from hitting but you don’t have to set out to sea with one on the horizon. When storm warnings have been posted, stay put. It’s often as simple as that. Controlling hurricanes is not a viable strategy, but listening to wise counsel is. In Acts, if the centurion had only heeded St. Paul’s warning in the first place, their ship would never have been caught out in the middle of the sea when the storm hit.
Surround yourself with wise counsellors, experienced prognosticators who can read the signs and pay attention to them. Great leaders know better than to instantly cancel plans the moment some hysterical Chicken Little starts screaming. They also know that when the most level-headed, mature advisors in the crew are advising caution, it might just behoove the captain to snuggle down in some nice, safe port and wait it out.

II. Trim Your Sails

III. Lighten Your Load

Avoiding Bad Partnerships

Fri, 15 Apr 2016 18:35:00 GMT

No man is an island. Good alliances in life can be a source of empowerment and resources for advancement. But bad alliances can be a destructive source of great pain. There are many things that can make for bad “partnerships,” and I use the term loosely to mean top staff, high-level employees, and business partners.

Partners with vastly different values and visions, partners with bad morals and bad marriages, and partners whose work ethic are at odds with yours make for long, drought-stricken campaigns. Even partners whose personalities are irritating, despite their helpfulness or even spirituality, can dry up the water in a valley faster than you think.

I always advise engaged or nearly engaged couples to think on these same things. Look past his curly hair; that will fall out one day. Look past her cute little figure. Four babies in eight years can cause that to disappear like flowers in a magic show.

Look past those things and see that mildly bothersome, tiny little habit that just barely makes you wince to notice it on a date today. In a dry and barren valley, years from now, when the curly hair and cute figure are gone with the wind, that habit, that irritating, monstrous huge habit will remain, looming like Mount St. Helens ready to erupt and blow the top of off the whole thing. Take the partner, take the habit too. Both may be in your life for a long time.

The worst kind of partnership, of course, is one that is mismatched spiritually. Righteous Jehoshaphat had no business marching off to battle with wicked Jehoram. There is a balance, to be sure. This does not mean believers dare not ever hire, do business with, or work for unbelievers. I know a man who desperately needed to buy a warehouse, but when a liquor company offered to sell him one, he balked. He asked me if he should buy it.

“Should is the wrong word,” I told him. “All I can say is that there is no sin in purchasing real estate from the sinful unless you cheat someone else or use it sinfully yourself.”

“Yes,” he objected. “But what about using my money to prosper them?”

“Look,” I explained. “We live in a complicated world. You buy groceries at stores that sell liquor. You fly on airplanes that give it away in first class and you stay in hotels that have bars. In the world is not the same thing as of it.”

On the other hand, a deep, lose bond in business or a relationship with an unsaved partner is rife with danger. The biblical admonition not to be “unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor 6:14) is disregarded at great risk. Be slow to link your destiny in the desert with another destiny uncommitted to the same God you serve.

Think hard and pray before you sign on the dotted line, say “I do,” or take on a partner. Will the ungodly be preserved because of you, or will you be destroyed or just be miserable because of them?

The Good Shepherd

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:15:00 GMT

When I was in undergraduate school, my Western Literature professor was a young firebrand atheist who made no secret of his disdain for religion. One day in class someone asked him what he thought was the greatest single poem ever written. He shocked us all when he answered Psalm 23.

“We thought you were an atheist,” someone called out.

“I am,” he answered. “Two years ago our baby died. My wife is a Catholic and insisted on having a priest do the funeral. I did not want any such thing, and I was very angry at her and that old priest. At the grave he prayed Psalm 23 and I, who believe not one word of it, felt deeply moved. Some unexplainable wave of comfort swept over me. I don’t believe in God but I believe in poetry. Any poem that can move you like that, against your will, is great poetry.”

I do not dispute his analysis of the poetry. Psalm 23 may very well be the greatest poem ever written. Where he is wrong—dead wrong—is the source of its power. The protection, comfort, and healing grace of its true author who spoke through King David is in every word. What my professor sensed, without being able to admit, was not a great poem about God, but the great God of a great poem.

Shepherds in David’s day would have guarded their charges against every predator. The only hope of the defenseless sheep was the armed guardianship of the shepherd. We are His sheep, and in the face of the forces of darkness we can rest ourselves in the knowledge that our God is on guard, and He is armed and dangerous. Yes, we must certainly use the spiritual weapons St. Paul references in Ephesians and 2 Corinthians. Yet what good are they if He who has given those weapons to us is not standing over us with His own mighty weapons in His hands? The heaviest artillery of satanic power is impotent in the face of the rod and staff of a God who is as terrible in battle as an army with its banners unfurled. A fire goes before him and burns up all His enemies. In the face of all that life and history and Satan himself can hurl at me, the Good Shepherd’s rod and staff comfort me.

Honesty in Communication

Thu, 07 Apr 2016 20:26:00 GMT

Honesty is correct relationship with the highest level of reality. God Himself is ultimate reality. Truth is sacred because departure from truth is departure from God. The issue of truth is crucial to what we believe to be true about God and life.

Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Those who operate in right relationship to ultimate truth live in right relationship to who God is. They reflect on the character of their Father. Those who deal in deception reveal who their true father is. Satan is the father of and the center of all deception on this earth.

There are two kinds of dishonest communication. The first is simulation; the second is dissimulation. Simulation is to seem to be what we are not. Dissimulation is to seem not to be what we are.

Simulation

Simulation includes all deceptive practices of image alteration. The craft of simulation includes such tools as exaggeration, make-believe, and hypocrisy. The image-conscious society in which we live hates truth and loves appearance.

An unspoken agreement of mutual deception rules the land. You pretend to believe my image, and I will pretend to accept yours. We both know it is not reality, and we both know the other knows it. Yet we agree to the silent mutual deception because it suits us both.

Dissimulation

Dissimulation is appearing not to be what we really are. This is perhaps the more common crisis of faith for the average Western believer.

Most Christians will never be tempted to deny Christ before a firing squad. Few, relatively speaking, will be tortured to denounce His name. Far more often it is by silence or a head nod or a knowing wink that the modern believer denies his allegiance to Christ. The hypocrite pretends to be what he is not. The compromised, lacking the courage of their convictions, deny who they are.

“Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’” the Bible says (Matt. 5:37) That may very well mean saying yes to Jesus when it is costly and no to the world when it is unpopular. The temptation will seldom be to outright denial but rather to minor compromises. Soft public denials are the coffin of bold and dynamic faith.

The Instinct for Dishonesty

The motivation for dishonesty is the instinct for self-preservation. The flesh says, “If I want it, I’ll steal it. If I am not, I’ll pretend to be. If I am, I’ll pretend not to be. If I want to sell it, I will not tell everything.” What can possibly shatter this powerful instinct?

Proverbs 22:4 says, “The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.” Babies are not born with the fear of God. They are born with sin and an instinct for survival. Parents, governments, schools, and institutions are to instill the fear of God. If they fail in that duty, how will character ever be engraved upon young lives? In every human heart there is the thumbprint of the Creator. It is a homesickness for the image of God.

The closer a man lives to reality and truth, the more fully this inner longing is awakened. “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32) is not simply a church slogan. It is the key to full humanity in the image of God.

Pontius Pilate, staring into the face of Jesus, asked his infamous question: “What is truth?”

Now listen to the answer of God: I am the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6).

In Defense of Ordinary Heroes

Tue, 05 Apr 2016 20:35:00 GMT

The inimitable Bill O’Reilly now fines his guests who use any of several shop worn phases. Notable among these is “at the end of the day.” Whether they actually pay up, I have no way of knowing. It may be a “theoretical” fine. However, watching O’Reilly from a distance, one tends to think they pay before they leave the set. He does not seem the type to let such miscreants off with a scolding.

While I have no power or inclination to fine anyone, I find that there are several phrases which have worn out their welcome with me. Not the least wearisome of these is “passion.” Apart from either romance with my wife or in reference to the Passion of Jesus, I hope never to use it again. It seems that folks everywhere now feel obligated to have a passion for something. Art, music and wine apparently top the acceptable list. I recently met a woman whose passion for Amish furniture would surely be shocking to the Amish.

No one is allowed to have an interest or, God forbid, a hobby. That would far too prosaic. No, it must be a passion. I am sure I will soon meet someone with a passion for passion fruit.

Where it becomes more than mildly irritating, however, is the way people talk about real life. Smug leadership gurus admonish us to “find our passion and pursue it.” While I may understand what they mean, I cannot help but think how such a platitude must grate on the nerves of folks who hold down quite ordinary jobs to support their families. I think how unreal talk of passion must sound to parents who work diligently, faithfully at tedious jobs in factories and high rise office buildings, who are not particularly passionate about slaving away over a hot keyboard or slapping lids on pickle jars decade after decade. These may not be passion-inducing jobs but they stay at it, not to finally buy that Jackson Pollock they have always dreamed of owning, but to pay for braces and mortgages and milk.

They are ordinary heroes, real life heroes, who live decently, sacrificially, hoping to give their children better lives than they themselves have had. They will not quit their jobs tomorrow, leave their families and head off to New York to pursue their passion for street mime. What they will do is get and go to work. They buy life insurance to take care of others. They try to save for their old age so they won’t be a drain on their grown kids, and they are grateful to God for what they have.

Young people in the West, particularly in the USA, are being made to feel that they must have a passion, deserve a passion. Should real life in all its vicissitudes hinder their pursuit of that passion, their only logical conclusion is that God, the universe, life, whatever, is horribly, terribly unfair. Passion is not a bad word. It is just not as good a word as duty, or sacrificial love.

I met a single father with a child in a wheelchair. Abandoned by his wife, perhaps to pursue her passion, he lovingly cares for that little boy. Their mornings start very early. You see it takes a long time to get the little guy fed and dressed and on the school bus for kids with special needs. His budget is stretched and his hopes for any romantic future are non-existent. What woman in her right mind, he reckons, would have a passion to buy into his life? The thing is, he does it all with a joy and a victorious attitude that moved me. What is his passion? The question has no meaning to him. In real life, he does what he must. He is not to be pitied because he never got to follow his passion. He would be disgusted by such an idea. He is not a pathetic figure. Far from it.

At the end of the day, he is a hero much to be admired.

Teaching The Incredible Power of Team Chemistry

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 20:03:00 GMT

I love basketball, but March Madness doesn’t usually affect me, or should I say INFECT me, all that much. I like the intensity of basketball. I especially enjoy it if one of the teams has some particular meaning to me. I served as the president of two universities where basketball fever was pretty intense. I certainly got intense. Referees! What can I say? But that’s for another column. Even so, I do not get all that revved up over bracketology. I seldom watch very many of the NCAA tournament games because I almost never have an emotional investment in any of the teams. However, I do occasionally find myself ensconced in my Archie Bunker recliner with a night off, plenty of not very healthy snacks and the relaxed mindset to just enjoy a game that’s not likely to give me a heart attack, horrible refereeing notwithstanding.

I recently enjoyed just such an evening when North Carolina played Notre Dame. North Carolina won and won pretty handily but that is not what got my attention. Both teams were wonderfully talented. I suspect several future NBA players were on the court that night. At least one player could probably play there right now. Yet neither was that what really engaged me. Great players. Excellent coaches. A terrific game. Yet I was enthralled with something else.

The chemistry of the North Carolina team was incredible. They were all talented. So were the Notre Dame players. Also I do want to say, both teams seemed to have good chemistry. Yet it was North Carolina that seemed to connect at an almost unconscious level. I had the feeling the entire game that every player on the UNC team knew where every other player was at all times. What makes a “no look” pass possible? Player A has to know without looking Player B is there, right where he’s suppose to be. Player A must also have confidence in Player B; that will catch such a pass, handle the ball and finish the play with a basket. That’s chemistry.

Every team in the NCAA tournament has some level of chemistry or they wouldn’t be there. The University of North Carolina team I watched that night seemed more connected, more melded into a cohesive unit than any team I’ve watched in some time. I’m NOT making a prediction. I’m out of the sports prediction business. When Buster Douglas whipped Mike Tyson that ended that. Anything can happen in sports, or this year at least, in politics. So I’m not saying North Carolina will win it all. They may lose before this can go to press. All I’m saying is that on that night, I saw a team that seemed to have some kind of magical connection. That is team chemistry and if they have that in the final four they will be tough to beat.

I said something similar to a man seated next to me on a plane the day after the game. His response, “I guess I see what you mean, but I would just call that good coaching.”

“

Sure,” I agreed. “But what that means is that to some extent or another, chemistry can be coached.”

Great leaders know that a team loaded with egotistical Lone Rangers and talented prima donnas can and often does lose to a less talented team with great chemistry. North Carolina has an embarrassment of riches as far as talent goes, but they have combined all that talent with chemistry. Without some talent, team chemistry will take you only so far. Great leaders will recruit the best players they can get. Still, at some point or another you have play with the players you’ve got. What then? Even if your team is not yet made of all-Americans, you can make them better than they ought to be. Chemistry doesn’t just happen. I’ve had teams with sweet chemistry that I hardly had to work at. I’ve also had at least one where it was a constant and often discouraging process. It won’t always come easy but chemistry can be taught.

Here are some keys to building chemistry in your team.

I. Teach and reward unselfishness. Praise the assist at least as much as you praise the fancy slam dunk. Praise the player who makes the others look good. Does your CFO work hard to make teammates successful? Or does she just want to prove she is smarter than they are? Teams with good chemistry are teams that know when give up the ball to a less talented teammate who is in a better place to make a better shot. Great coaches know a great pass is better than a good shot.

II. Teach them to praise each other. Your praise as a coach is important but when your players praise each other you’re on the road to championship chemistry. Encourage mutual encouragement and forbid, absolutely forbid the negative judgmentalism and back biting that destroys chemistry. One key here is to teach your most talked producer to be verbally encouraging to the others. THAT can be very infectious.

III. Teach them to appreciate each other’s unique giftings. The seven-footer must know that the little point guard who gets the ball up court is capable of ball handling he can only dream of. Likewise, the point guard who thinks he’s the whole show is a serious liability.

IV. Teach them to trust the program as well as each other. In other words, they need confidence in each other’s skills but they also need to know that what you’ve taught them, the offensive plays and the defenses they’ve practiced over and over again will work. They have to believe in each other. They also have to believe in you and what you’ve taught them.

I had the feeling watching that great UNC team that no matter what Notre Dame threw at them, they said, oh yeah, we learned all about this. We practiced and prepared for just that and we know what to do here. Furthermore, even if we don’t, the man on the bench knows and he will call a time out at exactly the right moment and tells us.

What I saw on the court in that game was a chemical compound that had been perfected in practice after practice after practice. Chemistry doesn’t happen on game night in front of a world wide TV audience. It happens in practice sessions when nobody is watching.

I do not know if UNC will win it all. What I do know is that team, that night, was greater even than the sum of its considerable parts. And THAT is chemistry.

Meekness: Success and Power

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 17:57:00 GMT

Perhaps, even probably, you have never connected meekness and success. In fact, you only really need meekness when you are successful and powerful. Meekness is the virtue of the victor, not the defeated. Misunderstood by many, meekness is often thought to be only for weaklings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Meekness is the supreme virtue of leadership without which power becomes oppression. Meekness is power under control. Christianity itself is a contradiction that turns topside down the world’s understanding of what it means to be successful.

Now in all virtues there is what might be called the conviction of virtue. That is what we believe to be true about it. Then there is its theater of operation. That is, some circumstance is necessary to put the virtue in action. Fear, for example, must be present or courage cannot be called into action. In the same way, the rise to power calls for the virtue of meekness.

A big boy hits a small boy. The small boy endures it quietly because he has no other option. Inwardly, however, he longs for revenge. Because he is submissive in the face of violence, we may mislabel him as meek. Yet he is actually consumed with murderous rage. He forgoes vengeance, but he is not meek. He is simply resigned. If, however, the small boy hits the larger fellow, it is the offended party who has the power. He can break the smaller boy in half, yet he bears it quietly. That’s meekness.

There are two words that taken together paint a completely wrong picture of meekness. Those two words are meek and little. We often say, “He is a meek little fellow.” We envision this man as weak and powerless. In reality however, we would be better to say, “What a big, strong, powerful, rugged meek fellow.” When we identify meekness with being frail, we pervert the virtue.

Meekness is rarely provoked. It is easily calmed. It is controlled and patient. It is willing to forgive when forgiveness will earn no reward. Meekness is love in the driver’s seat.

Everything was spoken into existence, and nothing that we see was made without the Lord Jesus. Unto Him all things will return. It is appropriate for Him to consider Himself as having full rights in the Godhead. He is the second person of the Trinity! Yet, having full authority in the Godhead, He laid all that aside and clothed Himself in mere mortality. Being found in the form of a man, He took upon Himself the likeness of a servant. (See Philippians 2:6-7.) (The word that is translated “servant” might even better be translated “slave.”)

Therefore, Paul encourages us to own up to Christ’s way of thinking. We are called to embrace His whole approach to living. Christ Jesus laid aside His rights as God to become not only a man but also a slave of men. Born in an occupied country under the authority of foreign soldiers, he was crucified by men who He had created. God, willing to lay aside his authority over the earth and become earth, is meekness perfected.

Victory in a Valley

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 20:15:00 GMT

Before we find victory in the last valley, we must, as David did, find the submitted faith to use the first person possessive. David did not say, the shepherd, or a shepherd, or even our shepherd. He said my shepherd. “the Lord is my shepherd” (Ps 23:1).

David envisioned a Savior who, between the twin escarpments of divine suffering and divine glory, is willing to walk through the valley of our very human need. He is more than willing to be my shepherd, to sleep where I sleep, to care where I slake my thirst, and to restore my soul. He is there to lead me, defend me, feed me, anoint me, and walk with me when death casts its shadow across my face. The only caveat is that I must let him.

There may be several reasons that some choose to walk alone just when they need him the most. The first is the most obvious. Unwilling to admit my sheeplike need for a shepherd, I may decline the comfort of his presence. I did a part of my early growing up on a sheep farm in Chesterfield, Missouri, and I have no romantic notions about sheep. They must be among the smelliest, most fearful, stupidest critters God ever made.

It is humbling to see oneself as a sheep, a needy, frightened, thirsty, fatigued, and defenseless sheep. We’d all rather be Jackie Chan than Barney Fife, but the pride that makes men stand alone also makes men do without comfort.

In the Valley of the Shadow of Death, pride can raise its ugly head just when we need God most. The waiting room of a hospital, with a loved one inside gradually slipping away, is the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When the doctor tells you that it’s cancer and there’s nothing you can do but go home and spend some quality time with your family. You just have a few weeks. That is the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Alone in your car where there used to be two, on the way home from the cemetery, that is the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Let God in. Plead with him to show you where and when to lie down, where to drink, and when to eat, and when to just keep on walking. Let him restore your soul, so ravaged by grief. Accept the food he puts before you while you eat and let him stand by, staff in hand, to beat back the enemies of fear and depression and loneliness.

An elderly woman in a country church lost her husband of nearly sixty years. After the funeral, her family stayed with her for a while but, at last, the time came for them to go home. They begged her to come, too, but she was a proud woman and she said she would be all right alone. She didn’t need anyone! The next Sunday she told me about her first night alone in more than half a century.

“That night there come a terrible storm. The branches was a bangin’ on the windows and the lights went out. I finally found a candle and got it lit, but searching around in the dark, I like to broke my leg. I was scared and lonely, but I was too proud to cry or beg the Lord. After a while, it got so bad I was shakin’ all over like I was freezing cold. I got under the covers and started crying ’til I couldn’t stop. Then I just said, ‘Jesus, help me! Please help me.’

“Then someone came in the room and sat in the rocker. I couldn’t see him real good in the dark, but he spoke to me. He said, ‘Go to sleep, child. I’ll sit up.’ Just like that, I felt so peaceful, I just went to sleep. Now, preacher, here’s my question. Do you think that was an angel?”

“No, Agnes,” I said. “I don’t think it was an angel. I think it was a Shepherd.”

There is another reason some are reluctant to let the shepherd into the valley. Ill-informed about the Lord’s attitude toward our suffering, many needlessly fear his scolding and condescension. They can almost hear him saying, if you had done what I had said, behaved better, prayed more, or had more faith, you wouldn’t be in this fix. Oh sure, now you want me to be your shepherd.

To paraphrase Wesley, if that is the voice of your God, then your God is my devil. The woman taken in adultery was smack in the middle of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. One word of condemnation from Jesus and she would have been stoned to death. Instead, Jesus comforted her, forgave her, and led her out of that valley and on to a new life beyond it.

On another occasion, that of Lazarus’ death, we gain insight into Jesus’ response to our very human grieving. Jesus actually delayed returning to Lazarus when news came of his friend’s grave illness. This was to allow time for Lazarus to die and be buried. At Jesus’ return, Lazarus would be raised from the dead. Jesus knew about the coming resurrection when he returned to Bethany; he was not somehow in the dark. Yet when he arrived at Bethany and found Mary and Martha grief-stricken, weeping, and hurt with him for not coming sooner, he did not scold them or draw away.

“Jesus wept.”

How that brief verse invites us to call on him in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He will not chide us over the graves of our loved ones saying,

“Quit this stupid crying! Don’t you understand, they will be raised when I return? Now dry it up!”

He tenderly comforts us with the hope of the resurrection, but he is not disgusted with our grief now. When we weep, he weeps with us. Listen to the voice of him who bears our burdens as his own. Yes, the resurrection is coming. Yes, you will see your friend, again. Yes! But today you are hurting and I hurt for you. You are weeping and I weep with you.

Are you in the Valley of the Shadow? Let him in for he is the resurrection from the dead, who, for now, weeps with the living.

Newton, Leadership and the Price of Momentum

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 20:14:00 GMT

“Bodies at rest remain at rest. Bodies in motion remain in motion.” Sound familiar? I am quite certain you have heard and quoted Newton’s First Law of Motion many times. Nowadays it is most often quoted in respect to exercise, which, since I am disinclined to do myself, I find irritating. Yet, it […]

The post Newton, Leadership and the Price of Momentum appeared first on National Institute of Christian Leadership .

The Nevertheless of Obedience

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 16:57:00 GMT

“Bodies at rest remain at rest. Bodies in motion remain in motion.”

Sound familiar? I am quite certain you have heard and quoted Newton’s First Law of Motion many times. Nowadays it is most often quoted in respect to exercise, which, since I am disinclined to do myself, I find irritating. Yet, it is actually one of the most important laws of physics.

This law explains, among other things, why seat belts are important. In a moving vehicle, your body is also moving. Hence, if the vehicle stops your body wants to keep moving —- right out through the windshield!

Newton’s Second Law of Motion is not so oft-quoted, but you know it by common sense or at least by observation.

“An object at rest will not begin to move without the application of an unbalanced force, and neither will a body in motion change speed or direction without just such an unbalanced force.”

Ok. So what? And how, exactly does any of that apply to leadership?

At the National Institute of Christian Leadership, I teach one entire lecture on The Physics of Leadership. For the purposes of this brief post I will not attempt to recount that whole lecture, but instead offer a few insights on “Newton and the Price of Change Leadership.”

1) The status quo is an implacable enemy. “Things as they are” is a powerful reality which grips employees, teams and whole organizations. Churches and companies alike are subject to this law. Once they have stopped, they tend to remain stopped. In other words, it is much easier to keep the ball rolling than it is to overcome the law of inertia.

When I first became the president of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, we experienced several years in a row of sudden, rapid and unfamiliar growth. As a result we had to build and build fast to keep up. We were not as much building to cause growth as we were building to handle it. The challenge was that to some on the campus, “unfamiliar” growth was uncomfortable growth.

In a faculty meeting one “uncomfortable” professor asked, “When will we cap enrollment?”

I was shocked by the question and I fear, in retrospect, I did little to hide my horror at the very thought. “Never!” I answered. “Never, ever, ever. Not even for a single semester. Not while I’m president. We have spent a huge amount of energy to get this old tub up and running and I do not want to spend the same energy twice!”

Looking back on it, I know my tone was a bit more emphatic than I meant it to sound, but I make no apology whatsoever for the answer. Once a team or leader has spent the energy it takes to overcome a stall-out, it takes much less energy to keep it going. Leaders who let it stall again do so at their own peril. The second start up will cost you more than the first one. Is your organization in motion? Great. Keep it moving. Park is not a very productive gear for leadership.

2) Newton’s Second Law: Without the application of unbalanced force an object will not change speed or direction. In other words, great leaders know that real changes in the speed or direction of an organization will not happen just because someone announces it. It takes force, force greater than the inertia that holds it where it is. What this means is that change leadership is costly.

Start ups and turnarounds are not for those unwilling to spend the time, energy, power and resources to make them happen. A start up is an exciting adventure. It’s not a laid back, nine-to- five, when’s my vacation kind of an adventure. The only thing more “expensive” is a turnaround. The organization which has ground to halt is not just sitting there waiting for a leader to come and goad it into momentum. The halted organization grips its own death, clings to it and fights any effort to get it alive and moving.

Inexperienced leaders cherish the unlikely hope that if they yell, “Arise and follow me,” a great cheer will answer and excited followers will leap into action. Do not think to yourself, “My order to mount up and attack is what they’ve been waiting for.” It’s not what they’ve been waiting for. What they’ve been waiting for is someone to come along and reassure them that where they are is actually, really a good place to be and if they will sit still, it will all come out ok somehow. That’s what they are waiting for.

And THAT is exactly the opposite of what will save them. The force of your vision, your energy and your leadership, a force greater than the stagnation and inertia that holds them in place is NOT what they want. It is what they NEED.

I invite you to join me for the rest of the lectures on the leadership of physics, and all of the National Institute of Christian Leadership. I promise you a challenging experience that will touch you deeply and change the your life and leadership. I would be honored to host you in the NICL. Come find out why hundreds of pastors, three college presidents, denominational leaders and business people from around the world have attended TheNICL.com

The Power of Practicality

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 21:42:00 GMT

The National Institute of Christian Leadership was carefully designed with practicality as its preeminent and presiding value. I have developed every page of the NICL material with one idea as my true north. Keep it practical. That was the foundation upon which the NICL was created and it remains my singular determination. I continue to tweak the dials, constantly trying to enrich the material, add to it, carve out the superfluous, and improve the presentation.

This year-long program is now fuller and better and uses more sophisticated technology than ever. There are, for example, well over 275 individual graphic presentations from which the lectures are presented. Hundreds of leaders in business, the ministry, education and even politics have attended and graduated. Many have gone on to seek graduate degrees from multiple universities.

Three college presidents have attended. An Oklahoma state senator attended, as have pastors of mega churches and, in fact, churches of every size. Business persons from real estate to publishing to construction have attended and found the NICL invaluable. Students have commuted (four times in the year of the NICL) from multiple countries including Brunei, Myanmar, Albania, Israel, Canada and Australia among others.

Why? That is a serious question. Why do leaders who are incredibly busy with jobs and companies and large ministries take the time to attend the NICL and subsequently describe the program as “the most important educational experience of my life?” Why would the founder and owner of one of the world’s most prominent Christian publishing companies say the NICL “transformed my company?” Why are more than one hundred pastors bringing the Institute to Australia in 2016? Why?

I believe the answer is “practicality.” I try to steer clear of platitudes and vague theories of leadership and opt instead for practical management techniques that were proven in real life laboratories. What leaders want to hear, need to hear is, “This was the problem. This is what we did and these are the reasons it succeeded… or failed, for that matter.” Though failures are a lot less fun to talk about, I do talk about them because that is reality.

In leadership and management, devote yourself to the two values of reality and practicality, and those whom you lead will rise up and call you blessed. This is especially true of your youngest staffers. They don’t care what your title is. They have little regard for protocol and politics. They do NOT want theory from some book you’ve read. They want to know what you know and they want you to tell them the truth.

Ever had an idea that flopped? Don’t hide it. Tell it. Tell it and take the blame and tell them why it flopped and they will love you for it. At the NICL, I tell the story of a small group evangelism program that I wrote for a mega-church I pastored at the time. It didn’t just fail. It failed utterly, horribly, beyond my darkest nightmare. Every class loves that story. I don’t enjoy telling it all that much but they just lap it up.

Your followers know you’re not perfect. They do not expect perfection. They want the benefit of both your harshest and most gratifying experiences. They want reality. They want truth, even tough truth. That’s why they come to the National Institute of Christian Leadership. That is also why your youngest and most promising employees stick with you. They want your story, your wisdom, your experience. They can see the miles on your odometer. They want to know what you learned on the trip.

For more information on the National Institute of Christian leadership call Daniel Prince at 407.333.7106, or visit thenicl.com

Department V. Department: Leadership and Internal Tension

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 22:15:00 GMT

Why do the speed-to-market folks struggle so with the people up in legal and accounting? Why does the church administrator think the music director is the anti-Christ? What makes a security guard so deeply resentful of a professor who just wants her classroom unlocked for an evening class?

Unless you have a team of one, such internal tensions are absolutely inevitable at one level or another. The particles inside the team moving in what feels to them like different directions cause friction in the clouds which can quickly turn into thunder and lightning. When moving inside the relatively enclosed “space” or your organization’s structure, one employee or department can very easily cause pain for another employee or department. This happens when individuals or whole divisions on the same team lose track of their shared purpose and become trapped at a merely functional level. In other words, functionaries clash when they do what they do and forget why. Functions can be so perpendicular that those who do those functions crash into each other at the intersections.

Think again about the security guard and the faculty member. She call the security office and says, “Look, I have a class at 8:00 pm in room 301A and it’s locked. Please send someone immediately to unlock. I have thirty students stranded in the hallway.”

Instead of an apology and a gracious, “I’ll be right there,” she gets a begrudging agreement to come unlock whenever he can manage to get there. Why is he so angry?

He’s angry because he sees his job as locking the buildings at 6pm. He has done that and now along comes some idiot college professor who wants a room unlocked at 8pm. How dare she? He just got that room locked at 6!

The problem is he has forgotten his purpose; facilitating the educational process. He only knows his function; locking doors. He forgot his purpose was to enable her to teach. He only knew his job was to lock the doors. Her need to do her job in a room he had just locked ran contrary to that. That is all he cared about. When employees forget their purpose and remember only their function, they can get pretty cantankerous with those whose functions inconvenience or contradict theirs.

What to do?

The leader’s role is to periodically remind everyone what the team’s purpose is. Be specific. Massage purpose down into the deep tissue of the organization. Make sure that your team’s culture celebrates purpose above function. Any organization can train employees and volunteers what to do. The “what team” may quickly degenerate into pretty lethal internecine warfare. It is the “purpose team” that will work together in true excellence. Any team can know what to do. The great teams remember why they do it.

Here is a parable.

The mayor met with citizens willing to form a volunteer fire department. He handed out written assignments to each of them. One was responsible for the hoses. Another given the responsibility for the maintenance of the engine. A third was to answer the phone and a fourth was to drive the fire truck. The volunteers read their assignments and excitedly answered in turn when the mayor asked, “What is your job?”

The first one said, “The hoses.”

The second one exclaimed, “Engine maintenance is my job.”

The third said, “Mine is to answer the phone and you can depend on me.”

The fourth spoke right up with pride. “My job is to drive the fire engine.”

“No! ” shouted the mayor. “You’re all wrong! Your job is to fight fires!”

Great leaders teach their teams that purpose trumps function.

Purpose in Life

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 22:38:00 GMT

“His servants shall serve him” (Revelation 22:3)

God only knows the billions of dollars and countless kilowatts of emotional and psychological energy that have been wasted by people in search of purpose. Many plunge through relationships, jobs and avocations in a frantic madness that is both terrifying and tragic to watch.

A weekend farmer who once lived near us let his new BMW roll backward into his lake. How this happened we were never quite sure, but he swore he had backed up into the lake to get his fishing gear out of the trunk. When he got out to go around to the trunk, he accidentally left the car in reverse. At least that was his story.

What we do know is that he then backed up his new tractor to the lake in order to tow out the submerged BMW. When he got down to attach the two chain, the tractor rolled back onto the BMW, smashing the front in and driving it even further into the muddy lake bottom.

Unwilling to admit defeat, he then ran a line underneath the tractor from a winch on the the rear to the crossbeam on the barn. But the weight of the tractor, now hopelessly enmeshed in the bumper and grill of the nearly destroyed luxury car, was greater than he realized. He watched with horror as the winch inexorably cranked the line in under the tractor, pulling the barn roof into the lake on top of the two stranded vehicles.

Many Americans do the same thing every day. In their search for meaning, they pour vehicles, possessions, wives, husbands, hobbies and addictions into the bottomless lake of their own unfulfilled lives. The insatiable demand for more, whatever that means at the moment, will finally pull the roof down. Nothing will fill a life that, like a black hole, sucks up money, pleasure and other people. I think of all the articles in various magazines that promise an explained life to any woman bold enough to break free of the traditional trap of husband and children. Domesticity is the great male lie, they say. Then I meet a hard-eyed businesswoman on an airplane who tells me at fifty-four she is twice divorced, childless in both marriages, chronically depressed and worried that she is addicted to sleeping pills. “Getting it all” can mean winding up with nothing.

And then there are the male-oriented articles that fuel the engine of drivenness, pushing male executives up the steel rails of success. Just as empty, equally addicted and riddled with guilt, they seduce their secretaries, trade luxury cars and buy real estate in a desperate effort to silence the frightening voice that keeps whispering, “This is not working. This is not working!”

True meaning in life comes from being owned by God. For the servant of God, ownership provides definition and explanation of purpose: servants serve their master. How incredibly simple! We are not what we own or earn or learn or even feel. We are his forever. And to be allowed to serve God is an act of divine mercy. God does not have to let me serve. I am, at my best, unprofitable, unworthy and ineffective. God has a voice. People have heard it. He does not need mine. Many of us learned in Sunday school that God has no hands buy our hands, but it isn’t true. He can say, do or make anything he wants without my help. In allowing me to serve, he is not being merciful to the world. He is being merciful to me.

I have a friend who once prowled the elite corridors of power as a top executive in a large corporation. He was saved as an adult, and his values were transformed. Now in retirement he tutors math to children at an inner-city elementary school. I asked why, and he said, “It’s simple. I need to serve. I have a paid-for lake house and a luxury car and more money than I can spend. But when I kneel down by a student’s desk and help her learn to do long division, I come alive. It’s the greatest work experience I’ve ever had.”

“The real question,” he added, “is not why I tutor. That seems obvious to me. The question to me is, why would God let me? I’ve been a pretty tough hombre. Why would God give me moments of such tenderness and fulfillment with these children? Why would he do that?”

Mercy – God’s wide mercy – restores us with purpose.

Excerpt from
Streams of Mercy
b y Dr. Mark Rutland

Should Christians Go to College?

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 01:39:00 GMT

Some Christians are ‘too spiritual’ for higher education. Take my advice: God can use a few sharp minds.

While history waited, while souls perished and Israel languished under the yoke of Gentile oppression, the Messiah prepared in anonymity. Humanity would have hurried Him to His destiny, bypassing a boy’s bar mitzvah and leaping over lessons in language and life. Not God. For only three years of public ministry God took 30 years to shape Messiah’s private self.

Jesus might well have complained about the irrelevant parts of his long preparation. Carpentry? What has carpentry to do with ministry? Yet He waited, learning, growing in favor with God and man. Private preparation for public presentation was God’s plan, and Jesus’ quiet submission to it was crucial to the Messianic mission for which He was born. By my calculations Jesus must have spent about 1,560 Sabbaths sitting in a synagogue listening to a rabbi who knew less about God than He did. A natural predisposition of youth is to plunge in and “just do it.” Yet, time spent in preparation, often through a process predetermined by others and filled with apparent irrelevancies is, never wasted.

Some young people question why they should take college courses in economics or literature when all they want to do is get on with their callings. Jesus, who studied carpentry in preparation for the cross, saw it otherwise. Among the more frequently asked questions by youths eager for the fray is why they should go to college when the world is waiting for the Word through them. Their excitement for the task is commendable, and certainly God can use the foolish to confound the wise. He is God. He can chop down a tree with a banana. On the other hand, think of what He might do with a sharpened axe.

One young man asked me why he should go to college when we await Christ’s imminent return. “What if Jesus comes and I’m in college?”

“He can find you at college,” I explained.

Certainly when Christ returns we want to be found doing His will. His will, however, may be to get educated and prepared. If Christ comes and finds us diligently preparing for a future in ministry and leadership that will not come, will He be disappointed?

No, not when His clear command is to “study to shew thyself approved” (see 2 Tim. 2:15, KJV). Those found patiently, obediently studying shall be approved. Perhaps there will be less approval, if Jesus tarries, for those who hasten ill-prepared and understudied toward less of a future than they might have known.

Other objections to the long and expensive process of education are more anecdotal. What about Simon Peter? He never went to college. No, but he was certainly educated in Capernaum’s Hebrew school. His house was literally around the corner from the synagogue. Beyond that, three years in ministry training with Jesus were preparation indeed for apostolic leadership to come. No fallow intellect wrote letters so rich in truth and so perfect in language as 1 Peter and 2 Peter.

Evangelists and pastors of great productivity and anointing yet lacking in formal education can be pointed to. They are to be honored. Education is certainly no substitute for anointing.

But there are also plenty of examples of how God used the wonderfully educated to see His glory. Paul was educated, supremely educated, in the finest school in Jerusalem. Martin Luther had an earned doctorate and was a university professor. It was, in fact, at that particular university–in an atmosphere of informed thought–that the Reformation began.

At yet another university, Oxford in England, three young scholars studied together, patiently prepared together and prayed together. All three, each in his own way, changed their world for God and for good. John Wesley, Charles Wesley and George Whitefield were those Oxford three, and without their contributions England might have been consumed in a murderous fire like the French Revolution. Multilingual and broadly educated, John Wesley wrote intelligently on a variety of subjects from theology to family life, even publishing medical books that were widely read in his own time.

The youth of today, staring at the high-tech horizon ahead, would do well to realize that the future spiritual leadership of the post-modern era will need to be as educated as the generation they hope to lead.

Matching historical anecdotes seems silly, but across the board, notable exceptions stipulated, God has used educated men in wonderful ways. This is certainly not to say that He does not and cannot use the uneducated. It is to say that most of us, most of us who are not notable exceptions, need all the education and preparation we can get. The uncut diamond, precious but rough, resists the cutter’s work. Multifaceted, it will be even more valuable, but a diamond in the rough, knowing it is a diamond, resents the hard edge that improves its beauty.

Some may say, yes, that’s correct if you want to be an engineer, but I want to preach. The congregations of the 21st century are growing in sophistication. A college degree is the high school diploma of today.

Congregations will expect their pastors to be at least as educated as they are, and broadly educated, not just possessed of biblical-theological knowledge. Educated listeners, congregations who are computer literate and politically savvy, will more and more demand pastors who understand the integration of faith into every realm of life. They will be less and less patient with ungrammatical, uninformed sermons that reflect a limited worldview and ignorance of general knowledge.

Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill is full of references to Greek poets. Paul, one of the most educated men of his day, able to move from language to language with facility, wove the pagan poets into a gospel message to reach the heart of a faithless and confused people.

All the education, all the language studies, all the years spent in Gamaliel’s school were part of the man, Saul of Tarsus. They were in his arsenal, familiar weapons in the hands of a well-trained warrior. Paul, likewise, was a multitalented, well-educated weapon in the hands of a mighty God.

One practical reason for the expense and hard work of getting educated is value added. The goal, of course, is to be a better, more professional leader, to go more effectively through every open door. The problem is that without the proper credentials, certain doors of utterance may never open.

Some may say academic credentials are worldly stuff and that they care nothing for such things. Perhaps not. Others may care, however. And those others may not be all wrong. They may believe that virtues such as discipline and perseverance, which tend to make for successful college careers, are also good reasons to hire. Education is no substitute for anointing, but young professionals being interviewed may discover that those doing the hiring expect both.

Beyond these more pragmatic concerns is a greater issue. What are some of the deeper benefits of Christ-centered higher education? One, of course, is obvious–education, or at least a better chance at it. There are those who have never been to college and never graduated high school who are supremely well-read and well-rounded. However, the odds are in favor of the system, with its required reading and classroom lectures.

To meet the academic standards of a Christian liberal arts university one must learn to write clearly and to think critically. To do so in an atmosphere of spiritual intensity and intellectual challenge is a broadening, deepening and edifying experience.

A Spirit-filled institution of higher learning is not just about making better preachers and lawyers and doctors. It is about making better servants of the Most High God.

The question is, what if Jesus comes tomorrow? If He does, I am content to be found pouring into eager young lives the knowledge and wisdom that may transform them into the Wesleys and Whitefields of this millennium.

Money Is Not Evil

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 01:31:00 GMT

Our character is revealed in the way we handle the finances God entrusts to us.

I think the church has often failed to communicate a balanced view of prosperity. On the one hand there are the hyperspiritual who say money is altogether evil. Get it away from you. Give it away. Do not have anything to do with it. It is nasty, dirty and filthy, and it has a spirit in it that will get you.

Then when a need arises to pay for something in the church, they will ask folks to give money. You see, having told them how bad it is, they now ask God to give the congregation enough of it to support the church.

On the other hand, others say that God is a God of riches. God wants to bless you, and if you are right with God, you are going to be rich. Therefore, if you are not rich, it must be because you are not right with God.

Stranded in between these two extremes is the great body of people who are living day-to-day on the money that they can earn while trying to provide for their families and improve their lives. What can we say to them?

MONEY IS NOT EVIL There is nothing inherently evil about needing or having the finances to get by in this life. John Wesley had a magnificent equation for this. He said to earn all you can. Earn it righteously. Earn it in a way that brings no shame to people and no shame to God. Earn all you can.

Second, save all you can. Now, saving all you can does not mean hoarding it. It means setting limits on your lifestyle so that more is made available to the kingdom of God and doesn’t go up in the smoke of mere consumerism. Saving all you can is crucial to frugality.

Earn all you can. Save all you can. Then Wesley adds the missing element: Give all you can. Frugality saves to give. Greed gives to get. Frugality plots and plans, schemes and denies self, and sacrifices in order to give more next year than this year.

I want to suggest that you have a family meeting. Ask yourselves, “What can we do to give more than we gave last year? Is there any way we can live a more modest life, something we can do without, some excess we can lay aside to make a greater investment in the kingdom of God than we have ever made?”

I believe that is pleasing to God. It will focus your family’s attention on the things of the kingdom and draw their eyes away from the power of mammon.

FREE TO BE FRUGAL It may not be immorality that finally erodes our national character. It may be the price of designer tennis shoes. Frugality is the strength of character that will set us free from the terrible grip of mammon.

The prosperity of God is a great blessing—a dangerous one, but a great one. If properly used, prosperity can do much good. Hoarded or squandered, it corrupts character and destroys families. The right way is to work hard, serve folks joyfully, save frugally and give generously.

10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 21, Part 2

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 01:24:00 GMT

Read part 1 10-things-i-wish-id-known-when-i-was-21

5. Brokenness is the doorway to wholeness. This mysterious paradox was hidden from me at 21. I feared brokenness. I ran from it, and when it got too close fought it off with all my might.

If I had but known brokenness was the key to my healing, it would have lifted such fear from me. I thought it would maim me at least and maybe even kill me. Now I know that there is very little real wholeness that does not emerge from real brokenness.

6. Truth is liberating and devastating. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” My friend Jamie tacked on, “But first it will make you miserable.”

How true. There is a phrase popular among many young adults that I quite like despite my usual distaste for pop jingoes. It is, “Keep it real.” I am not sure of all that is meant by it, but I know what I mean by it.

I wish I had known not to fear the truth about myself. I wish I had known that the temporary misery of the truth was worth going through to find the freedom that it brings.

7.Learning is greater than education. I am a university president, and Oral Roberts University (ORU) is a great university. I am not saying that higher education is unimportant. What I am saying is, I hated getting educated.

At 21, I was a miserable college senior. I was a miserable student from the first grade right through high school and on through three degrees. I was miserable because I did not understand the connection between education and learning.

If I were 21 again, I would still go to college. But this time I would go to learn not just to graduate. I would unleash my curiosity, embrace the process, worry less about my grades and enjoy learning.

How strange that I love to learn at the age I am now. I read voraciously—any subject. I want to know, to understand, to go deeper. If I were 21 again I would take that to college.

8. Giving is sweeter than gaining. I believe in the laws of the harvest. If there is any place in the world that understands “seed faith” it is ORU. Seed faith is not a new idea to me. I believed it at 21. I practiced it and am blessed today because it is real.

Yet I wish that at 21 I had known the sheer joy of giving. I know God will bless us when we give, and sometimes we have made this merely a method to gain. I wish I had realized the joy of generosity. I would have given more and delighted more in the good that giving does and less in the returns it provides.

9.Forgiveness doesn’t fix everything. Not the happiest truth I wish I had known, but it’s among the most sobering. Had I known this I might have been less callous, less reckless and more mindful of the cost.

There are things, relationships and hearts that once broken cannot be fully “fixed” by forgiveness. The wound, the uncaring and insensitive word—they may be forgiven, but the damage from them may never quite be right again.

When I was 21 I just wanted to be forgiven. I wish I had known to do less damage.

10. Prayer is more powerful than persuasion. In all of life, at every age, conflict is an inescapable reality. I wish I had known younger that in conflict and crisis talking to God works better than talking to people. At 21, due perhaps to youthful arrogance, I thought that I could talk my way through everything.

Self-sufficiency, a dangerous habit, breeds prayerlessness. The older I get I find that crisis drives me faster to my knees and more slowly to the phone.

I have seen God turn hearts around, change organizations and melt opposition by prayer alone—when no persuasive speech could have made a difference. If I were 21 again, I would spend more time talking with God and less (far less) persuading others to do what I want.

I wish I had known more than I did at 21. I might have considered one or two of these truths, but I doubt I would have fully appreciated their value.

I do not think I want to be 21 again. But if I had to, if some evil genie made me go back and live it all over, then these are the things I would want to know and the things I would want to believe.

10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 21, Part 1

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 01:23:00 GMT

You might think you’re smart when you get out of college, but I suggest that the real education is only just the beginning.

In an Amish kitchen in Bird-in-Hand, Pa., in the heart of Dutch country, I saw a sign I’ll never forget: “Too soon old, too late smart.” When I saw it, I thought it was memorable but hardly meaningful. I was 21. Now the words are meaningful, but I can barely remember the farmhouse. I am 64.

Sometimes I have the fantasy that I will sit up on my deathbed and cry out, “Oh, I get it,” and lie down again and die. The Amish have it right.

Recently a friend said he wished he were 21 again. The thought held little interest for me, but he made an intriguing counteroffer: What if you could be 21 and know what you know now?

That held more allure, but it begged a question: What, if anything, do I now know that I wish I had known at 21?

I came up with 10 things, none of which I think I would have placed on my priority list at age 21.

1. Inner healing is greater than outward success. It is probably impossible to arrive at 21, let alone 64, without wounds in the inner person—deep wounds that need God’s healing grace. The more I see of inner healing and the more I face up to my own inner wounds, the more I wish I had let Messiah touch my deepest hurts earlier in life. That childhood hurt, that hidden outrage, that long-suppressed horrific memory can lurk like a monster in the basement waiting for years, even decades, to rise and wreak havoc.

Hiding the monster, denying that it’s down there, is a dangerous game. The temptation is to create an alternative reality where success and accomplishment and appearances seem so very real and the monster but a mirage. If I were 21 again I would bore down into the inner world of me and find Christ’s healing touch in the darkness under the floorboards.

2. Mercy is greater than justice. I have found that many in the church want the wayward to “get what’s coming to them.” Too often, there is a shortage of mercy among the followers of Christ, who blessed the merciful in His most famous message, the Sermon on the Mount. Were I 21 again, I would learn and practice mercy, knowing that later I would need it.

Churches, boards, denominations and individual believers who hanker for justice when a colleague stumbles may be planting for a bitter harvest. They gloat over the sins of others, humiliate the fallen and demand their administrative pound of flesh.

Competitiveness and legalism are the death of mercy. Mercy makes love real, acceptance and understanding a practice, and tenderness a way of life.

3. Kindness is better than being right. Just before my friend Jamie Buckingham died, I asked him for a word of wisdom. He said, “It is better to be kind than to be right.”

At 21, I advocated my positions too aggressively. I argued with an eye toward winning, unconcerned about the heart of my “adversary,” who may not have been adversarial at all. I made debate a contact sport. In preaching I let the bad dog off the chain, to the applause of the gallery.

Should time travel be mine and were I to be back in the land of 21, I would be kinder and less concerned with being right. Too many young adults give little thought to kindness.

They Twitter hurtful words like poisonous birds. Their humor is mocking, acidic and unkind. And they are more concerned with being thought clever than with being kind. The value of gentleness has declined on the world market; if I were 21 again I would wish to know the worth of a kind word.

4. Serving is better than being served. Encircled by their entourages, the “success” merchants of modern Christianity place high dividends on being catered to. When I was a pastor, the church I led invited a singing group to come minister. Their list of special demands, including a particular type of orange cut into equal fourths (I kid you not), was five pages long. We canceled.

I wish I had known at 21 how hollow is all that outward stuff. I wish I had known that caring, not being cared for, is what Christ had in mind.

I wish I had changed more diapers instead of leaving that to my wife. I wish I had served more meals, carried more bags, held more doors and lightened more burdens.

Read part 2 10-things-i-wish-id-known-when-i-was-21-part-2

The Key to True Power

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 01:19:00 GMT

Jesus overturned every worldly idea about power when He introduced the concept of servant leadership.

The Master’s question was breath-catchingly direct, and upon the tender flesh of their innermost unspoken desires it fell like a glowing coal. He said to them: “Do you wish to be the greatest in My kingdom?”

Unprepared, they hesitated momentarily, but their eyes revealed the desperate passion in their minds. No moderated tone, no downcast eyes, no contrived reticence could hope to hide the truth. Beyond their power to express it, more certainly than they wanted the Master to know, being great was the wonderful unattainable for such as they.

Never having known greatness, never having tasted power over more than a leaky fishing boat, they longed for it as impoverished children ache for the sweets of the wealthy. But a taste, but a crumb of the mysterious recipe, and they would know the secrets of the powerful. Until this pregnant moment, what Herod and Caesar had tasted–the daily fare of magistrates, centurions and priests–had been ever beyond their reach.

The promise in the Master’s question, in His eyes, in the portentous atmosphere of the room, drew them close. The light of lust was in their eyes. At last they were to know the unknowable, to possess the prize denied the poor and lowly, to be the men to whom others turned, to be bowed to and not to bow, to be feared and not to fear.

“What, Lord? Tell me the secret of greatness.”

“Why you? Why should you be the greatest among us?”

“I said nothing about being the greatest.”

“I am the eldest. I should be the greatest.”

“I am the most educated in the Scriptures. Who can deny it? None of you. Let it be me, Lord. Tell them that I shall be Your deputy and put the matter to rest.”

Their bitter quibbling erupted without warning, filling the room with anger and turning their eyes momentarily on each other. Now they looked back to the Master, and, seeing in His eyes that strange faraway gaze they had come to know so well, they fell silent.

“The kings of this world would lord it over their subjects. Tyrants or benefactors, they still want the same thing.”

“What, Lord? What do they want?”

“Control. But you are not to be so. Do you see how I serve you bread and wine? Who is greater–the servant or the served? You see that I serve you. Serve each other. That is the secret of greatness in My kingdom.”

Rising from His seat, the Master took a basin of water and a towel and began to wash their feet.

“Like this,” He said, as He knelt before them, taking their feet in His hands to bathe away the dirt. “Do it like this.”

And they were ashamed.

The Servant Leader

The spirit of Christ is the spirit of ministry. It is in serving, healing, blessing and binding up that the children of the King most resemble their Father.

The spirit of Babylon and of Rome is the lust for power, the power to lift up or sweep away, to own, to kill and to make the lowly fear. Whether in a day laborer or a corporate king, the spirit of Christ is servanthood, ego-crucifying, self-denying, others-centered servanthood.

The power of servant leadership lies not in position but in motive. The CEO of a massive corporation, holding great responsibility, may “wash his employees’ feet” by seeking their benefit in business.

There is no conflict between a well-managed business making a profit for its stockholders and one making a good life for its employees. There is no room for exploitation in Jesus’ model of servant leadership.

The servant leader is still in authority even as Jesus was when He washed the disciples’ feet. No one in the room doubted who the leader was. Because He authentically ministered to their needs, no one resigned, no respect was squandered and no face was lost.

Servant fathers will still discipline their children. The servant CEO will still make decisions, sometimes decide for layoffs, and will dismiss employees who fail to meet company standards. He will never browbeat, threaten or manipulate. He will not withhold money or praise or encouragement.

The servant leader stoops to anoint his followers with the oil of gladness and never stands taller than when he kneels to wash their feet. His power rests in servanthood, not in dominion. Far from losing power in serving, he is enriched by it. He goes from strength to strength not by bending others to his will, but by sacrificing that they might be blessed.

What does servant leadership really mean in practical terms for a CEO or a college president? Does it mean that the CEO is out in the parking lot washing his employees’ cars every day? Does it mean that the college president makes the beds and cleans the bathrooms in the dorms?

No, it doesn’t mean that. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet once, and the fact that it is recorded is the surest proof that He did not do it every day.

Being a servant leader is about being genuinely interested in the well-being of those entrusted to you. It means treating subordinates with respect and securing the dignity of all. To reduce Jesus’ model of servant leadership to random acts of servitude is to trivialize a great truth.

To make foot-washing merely ceremonial is to risk ritualizing the call to practical servanthood, thereby separating it from real life. Authentic servant leadership is indeed sacramental, and does, in fact, mean practical acts of kindness, but it is so much more.

Servanthood is a mysterious spirit with power sufficient to break proud hearts and humble the high and mighty. Infinitely more important for leaders than for servants–an attitude more than an action–the power of servanthood is very near who Jesus is and who He was on the last night before He was crucified. Loving Him, we grow like Him.

Like He did, we serve. Serving, we know His power. Empowered, we change and heal whom we serve.

Jesus cared more for His influence upon the few closest at hand than for His image among the masses. The life of a leader, his character and his servant spirit will do much to influence his closest associates.

Here is the rule: The closer to the area of immediate impact, the greater the influence. A preacher may, even from a great distance, have some small influence upon the guy in the back row. But his longtime associate, his secretary, and his kids know the real man, and upon their lives and souls he writes the story of his own character.

In the way one or the other would turn a phrase while preaching or pray aloud or even work a miracle, the others would surely smile at one another knowingly: “That looked just like Jesus.” “Your voice just then reminded me so of Him.” “That is exactly the way He used to do it.”

What they were, the giants they became, how they lived and how they died were reflections of Jesus’ power. His influence upon them as well as His spirit within them was the power by which they turned the world upside down.

Not one of the apostles was ever a king, prince or president. None ever held any office, ruled a country or ran a company. Yet they lived their lives in His power, serving and submitting themselves to God and humanity as they had seen Him do. Theirs was never the power of the current age but the mysterious, eternal power of the suffering servant.

When they died–some by the sword, some in the fire and one on a cross–they were not powerless victims. They were more than conquerors.

Leaders Must Cultivate a Rich Inner Life

Sat, 23 Jan 2016 01:14:00 GMT

A decade ago I went through the darkest time of my adult life that threatened my marriage and my leadership. It was a classic case of leader burnout. For me, it was an eclipse of the sun.

The problem was that I lost touch with my own core connection on the inside. My deep love for my God and my wife became compromised. I became an angry, dark soul at home. I made bad choices and barely held serious depression at bay. In public, I hid my loneliness and torment. At home I didn’t.

I wasn’t the first leader to experience the toxic syndrome of outward success and inner failure. Tragically, I won’t be the last. What I now know is that you can turn it around—by the grace of God.

And with a loving wife, I got through it. A wise counselor helped. A couple of true friends were indispensable. There were many days when bailing out was a temptation. It certainly looked easier than hacking on through a dark jungle of depression. But hack we did. Now that I’m through it and on the other side, I am grateful for what I learned. Here’s the short list of those lessons:

Success can be toxic. You need to know that. Not just hear it or read it—know it. Someone once said the only thing worse than failure is success. The thinner you are stretched on the surface, the more toxic your inner life becomes. Don’t be deceived about this.

Go back on the inside. Are you spending most of your leadership energy on the outside? Then go back on the inside. Remember those things that are real. Hold to them. Do them again. Carve out time for your soul, your true self and your most precious relationships.

Before a marriage can be turned around, reality must be faced. How unhappy is your spouse, really? How wretched are you to live with, really? How long has it been since you sought your self, your soul or your God, really?

Turnaround will require emotional investment and time. Kindness. Humility. Servanthood. They are expensive and require deep investment. The main thing it will cost you is time. That precious and limited commodity, which too many leaders spend in all of life’s elsewheres must be reallocated. There is no quick way to turn a home’s culture from toxicity to wholeness. Time is medicine, and it works—but often at what feels like an excruciatingly slow pace.

Being self-aware and vigilant to monitor your inner self is non-negotiable. You have to develop something substantial and meaningful—a rich inner life that keeps you in balance. Unshakable values keep you even-keeled. Protect yourself and your family to preserve what makes you human and whole.

Stay free in God’s hand. This is the most important truth I have learned about staying healthy as a leader. There was only one thing that kept me sane during those hard years I spent as pastor of Calvary Assembly. Every Sunday morning, as I walked to the pulpit I prayed, “Lord, I didn’t ask for this position, and I don’t have to have it. If today is the day to leave it, I’m good with that.” That realization kept me loose. It kept me from acting out of fear. It made it possible for me to make hard decisions. When I made mistakes, that liberty made it possible for me to keep going. Of course I preferred success to failure, but I did not live in fear of failure.

If your sense of self or identify is completely tied up in your role as leader of your organization, you won’t be able to keep a loose hold on your position. I know this firsthand. What we grasp most tightly becomes deformed. Your church or organization doesn’t define you. If you can keep that in mind, you can bring your unique vision to bear on the church you are called upon to lead.

Do Not Lose Your Vision: Interview with Dr. Steve Greene

Thu, 17 Dec 2015 21:50:00 GMT

Hear Dr. Mark Rutland’s interview on the Greenelines leadership podcast with Dr. Steve Greene.

Learn how you can become a stronger leader and relaunch your skills. Don’t fall into three downward leadership principles on vision, energy, and function. Dr. Mark Rutland shares his years of experience as a leader, pastor and president of a University to help you out of these downfalls.

CLICK HERE to subscribe to the Greenelines podcast FREE !

Leadership Lessons from a Life Well-Lived

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:06:00 GMT

When I was in high school, lo these many moons ago, I earned the money to buy my first car working at the local Foodland. Until closing most nights and all day Saturdays, I stocked shelves, swept floors and carried groceries out to the cars of those who requested that service. I do not regret those long hours and I have never forgotten some of the valuable lessons learned. I’m sure some of those lessons would sound like mere platitudes to many today. Such as:

“Hard work is the key to success.”

“Be diligent in small beginnings and God will raise you up.”

“Save your money and you can work your way to a better life.”

The thing is they all turned out to be true. I knew I was not entitled to a car. I knew no one, least of all my father, was going to buy one for me. I knew the fact, or at least I thought it was a fact, that “all the other boys dads were buying them cars,” was not going to influence my father to buy me one. Not even for a second. I knew all this. If I was going to have a car I was going to have to work hard, save my money and go get one, which I did.

I learned other things as well. When my friends would come by the store in their nice clothes, driving their dad-bought cars, I struggled with self-pity. Why was I cleaning up spilled grape jelly in aisle six while they were out having fun? Why were their first cars late models with nice interiors and radios that worked? Why was mine a beat-up, two-door 1953 Chevy with ripped seats, no radio and no handle on the passenger side door? Why, to honk the horn, did I have to ground a wire against the metal on the dashboard, sending sparks flying? Why indeed?

Partly, the answer was that my father was not financially capable of buying his kids cars. In retrospect I now believe that had he been prosperous to buy me a car, he still would not have done so. And he was right.

My father was a real man. He went into the army, became an officer and served with distinction. After the Korean War he had a variety of jobs and worked hard at every one of them. We moved around a lot, it’s true, but he was never unemployed. He was self-taught, self-motivated, selfless. He lived and worked for his family, and, later in life, for the Kingdom of God. As I said, he did not spoil us. Hardly. He taught us. He showed us how to work. My most memorable of his sayings was, “I can learn it,” whatever “it” was.

Once he bought, built and ran a saw mill. When I say he bought it and built, that is not a contradiction. He bought the thing in pieces – literally in thousands of pieces. It was a pile of rusty gears and screws and wheels and a massive blade on a jumbled heap. When my mother saw it she burst into tears.

“That’s our saw mill,” she wailed. “That pile of junk?”

“”I just have to assemble it,” he calmly replied, which he proceeded to do, from scratch, without directions. He, who had never even worked in a saw mill, put that thing together and became an expert sawyer.

He was a builder in the builder generation. He was a great example of the greatest generation. He built homes with his bare hands. He later worked with me at Global Servants for nearly twenty years and built buildings for the mission work on two continents. He designed and constructed our first mission house in the jungle of Peru. He designed and oversaw the construction of the first building at House of Grace in Thailand. And he and my mother helped put that home well on the road to success. When I needed someone to move to Thailand and get House of Grace up to the next level they never hesitated. My mother, who is healthy, keeps her own home, and still works part-time at 91, was no small part of that amazing life journey.

My father, Don Rutland went home to be with the Lord last week and he will be sorely missed by his wife of nearly seventy-six years, by his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and the many, many people who knew him and loved him. I am grateful beyond words for the vast array of lessons he taught me. Not the least of these was the value of work.

When I turned screen and saw my friends’ fathers buying them nice cars, I told my dad I was sixteen and I also needed a car. He never argued with me. He just said, “You’re absolutely right. You need a car.”

That’s the last I heard of that until I got a job, worked hard, saved my money and paid cash for my first jalopy. Thanks, Dad, for all the lessons, not the least of which was that the Foodland is a great place, a splendid place, in fact, to launch a life of work and service.

In honor of Don Rutland

1922-2015

A Good and Decent Life Well-lived To God’s Glory

Ancient Hebrew and 21st Century Flex-Leadership

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 06:00:00 GMT

Great leadership is multidimensional. The facets of the jewel of leadership are wonderfully on display in the Hebrew Bible. Nuanced words used at different places in the Old Testament reveal different aspects of leadership, or perhaps different types of leadership needed in different seasons. Some may say leadership is leadership but that is certainly not the case. Speed, pace, tone, volume; all these and other variables determine what leadership means in various contexts. I have identified multiple Hebrew words used in different places to speak of different aspects of leadership. I believe there are six such words.

I. Balak- (Job 38:28) “Does the rain have a father or who has begotten (Balak) the dew?”

Balak means to bear or bring forth, to create. The creative leader is productive. He is causational, not just maintaining but generative. This is the rainmaker leader to be sure but also the leader who unleashes the creativity of others. Often unconventional or at least innovative, this creative leader appreciates the opportunity easily missed by more conservative thinkers. This leader is also more likely to “beget” other creative leaders.

The major factor which can inhibit this aspect of leadership is fear and its expression which is conformity. The fearful leader will miss opportunity, play it safe, has a low risk tolerance and may well cause stagnation in his own organization. Such a leader may also squelch innovative leaders in the organization and send them looking for a more creative environment.

II. Nahal- (Psalm 31:3) “You are my rock…. lead me and guide(Nahal) me.”

This beautiful word bespeaks the perfect picture of the servant-leader. To use an old railroad expression, it summons the image of the conductor. Caring for those in his stewardship, genuinely concerned for their well-being and making sure they arrive safely where there should be, the good shepherd of Psalm 23:2 leads (Nahal) us in the paths of righteousness.

The major inhibitor slowing the leader’s ability to develop Nahal is self-interest. The authentic servant-leader guides his charges sacrificially.

III. Nahag- (Psalm 5:8) “He drove (Nahag) all his livestock ahead of him…” NIV

This is the aspect of leadership nobody wants to mention anymore. It means to drive, to push forward, to urge onward the reluctant or plodding. In this touchy-feely age of ever so soft leadership language, Nahag is out of fashion. The problem is that there will be times when the leader needs this tool in the box. It must be used sparingly and, of course, as gently as possible. None the less, there are times when every leader will have to firmly nudge followers on, sometimes at a pace they find difficult and demanding.

The prime inhibiting factor in the use of Nahag is loss of focus. The distracted leader, not sensing the urgency of the moment will fail to press the team on. This means energy subsides and opportunity, which with a momentary season of straining could have been achieved, will tragically be missed.

That is the first three of the six Hebrew words for leadership. I teach a full lecture at the National Institute of Christian Leadership entitled Ancient Hebrew and the 21st Century Flex-Leader. I hope this brief snippet intrigues you. Let me also invite you or someone whose leadership you care about to take part in the NICL.

Decision Making: From Referee to CEO

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 06:00:00 GMT

One way of stating the leader/manager’s job description is actually “senior decision maker.” I think that among the biggest and most disconcerting of all the surprises that I had in moving, lo these many years ago, into the senior executive role was the constant barrage of decisions that demanded an answer:

What do you want to do about…?
When should we…?
How do you want…?

Volley after volley of questions, small and consequential, lobbed into my lap like mortars, became at times excruciatingly oppressive. This was not entirely new to me. I had first experienced some of the challenges of decision making as a leader in sports, first as a player, then as a coach and finally, and most illuminating of all, as a referee.

I learned some great lessons in that arena. First, rapid analysis and high-speed decision-making. When you crouch down in that huddle and those other guys look to you to call a play, getting lots of feedback and taking time for research is not an option. Just call something. Make the best decision you can and go for it. That was my job as a quarterback. Then. Few if any plays were sent in from the bench in those days and the exotic hand signals so widely employed nowadays had not yet become the fashion. It was largely on the quarterback. I was often the youngest and smallest guy in the huddle. I had to think quickly. What is the situation? What is the best thing to do? Call the play and run it. In many ways that experience was a great advantage in later situations of leadership.

As a basketball referee, that instant analysis-response mechanism came in handy. Watch what is happening, decide what to call and blow the whistle. Simple, hard, fast and VERY PUBLIC. The stands were filled with kibitzers all certain they could see better from the bleachers than you could right down on the court. And half of them were angry at you all the time. Again, great preparation for later leadership.

As I moved from referee to executive, I discovered some of those very skills, though sometimes still useful, were just as often counterproductive. I found I needed to approach decision making as a CEO with a somewhat different mindset. Here are few of the tools I found useful as an executive decision maker.

I. Training my staff to discern which decisions can appropriately be made at their level without my stamp on it.

This is a bit of a dance and the process may not always be smooth. I do know this. The executive who wants an effective executive staff has to have a pretty high tolerance for some mistakes in the learning process. After a mix up, you teach. Look, I don’t need you to buy a surplus aircraft carrier without my approval. Then again, hey, I don’t want you to call me about paper clips. PLEASE! Just buy them. Some objective benchmarks will help, such as dollar thresholds, PO’s, etc., but hiring people with good judgment and empowering them to make decisions is even more important.

II. Learning to ask questions.

You do not have to be the smartest guy on your leadership team. In fact, if you are, you probably haven’t hired “up” as you should have. On the other hand you have to know how to ask, whom to ask, and when to ask. Get the right people in the room. Keep pressing for a better understanding. What else do I need to know? Who has a different view on this? Is there something I’m not thinking of? These are valuable questions and ones that the true servant-leader can ask without embarrassment. The arrogant and insecure leader, terrified that anyone in the room might see that he doesn’t know everything, will discover too late that they knew it all along.

III. Taking responsibility.

When it comes right to the moment of the decision, as the kids say, “Ok, you de man” (or woman as the case may be). Information gathered, team analysis made, questions asked — all that — still at the end somebody calls the play. That’s you, the executive decision-maker. Approach the moment with some humility. Tell your team that if you’re wrong you will admit it and take the blame. If you are right you will pass praise along to them. It’s ok for you to be wrong occasionally. Everybody knows you’re not infallible. They mostly want to know you know that. They also want to know you will be loyal to them and share the spotlight when the applause starts.

IV. Cultivating a thick hide.

This is the place where my years as a referee helped the most. There is no decision, absolutely no decision that will be universally endorsed by all your various constituencies. If you cannot stand the harsh criticism of uninformed armchair quarterbacks, stay out of executive leadership. As a referee I had to make instant decisions while being watched by huge, angry crowds and stand by them while mockery and derision rained down from the stands. You will never come to the place where none of it ever hurts. You can cultivate a hide thick enough to endure most of it with a sense of humor.

After I left an institution where we enjoyed no small success, a mid-level employee was promoted by my successor. He was quoted in the newspaper as saying something to the effect of, “It’s nice to be on team that makes decisions together. Rutland didn’t ask; he just made the decisions on his own.” That really hurt. At first. Then I realized, that’s how it felt to him. I did ask of course. I just didn’t ask him. I had a very effective executive team that made quality decisions together for years. He just was not a part of it. Oh, well, you gotta laugh. What would be the use in defending against such an accusation? None.

Timing and Leadership

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 06:00:00 GMT

The teenager who wants to borrow her mother’s car needs to learn not to ask in the moments just following her mom’s long and harrowing commute home from work. The employee who wants a raise should never ask right after the boss has announced that the company is in a cash flow crunch and everyone needs to tighten their belts. Timing may not be everything but it ranks right up there.

The Leader’s Notebook wants to give you some questions to ask yourself on timing that may help your appeal, request or proposal enjoy a greater likelihood of success. None of these are fool proof and even if your answers are right on all of them, you may still hit a wall, but at least you will know it probably wasn’t because your timing was bad.

I. Is the person to whom you are appealing in a good place?

When Queen Esther was appealing to the King for the protection of her people, she made sure that he was well fed, royally entertained and in a jolly mood. Try to check out the environment. Is the “boss” or whomever you are reaching out to stressed, fatigued or distracted? Is the office quiet? The hour right before the end of the day is usually an unfortunate choice. That is when folks are the most likely to be tired and irritable.

II. Is your own internal timing right?

In other words, are you prepared? Are you in command of the rationale for this proposal? Do you have your facts correct? Are they in a sensible, logical order? Have you taken the time to sharpen the presentation? Have you foreseen possible questions and objections and can you head those off at the pass? Never try to make a serious proposal when you yourself are out of order emotionally. Go in when you are calm, collected and in control of your emotions.

III. Is the external timing right?

This is called situational timing. Making a high-risk business proposal to your company when the economy is collapsing may actually be a high-risk decision. Catching the tide is just as important as having a well-built vessel. Many a great idea has been DOA simply because it came to the floor at a bad time atmospherically.

IV. Is the timing right to close the deal or just cast the vision?

It is extremely important that you know the end game when you launch the proposal. Timing and desired outcome are essentially connected. An attorney trying a case has to know when she is outlining the facts, when she is trying to prove them and when she is demanding that the jury decide in her client’s favor. If she gets those in the wrong order, a perfectly attainable verdict may be lost. Sometimes you want to close the deal, nail it down and walk out with the check. Sometimes you just want to plant an idea in someone’s mind. If you rush to the decision point you may regret it. A delayed “yes” is far preferable to a hurried “no.”

Prepare the environment. Set the other person or persons at ease. Make sure you and your case are well prepared and ready for prime time. Be aware of what is happening beyond that room. Is this a good time for this idea nationally, economically, and in the broader realities of the organization? And finally, what is their time for in this meeting? Is this the one and only chance? Give it everything you’ve got and do the deal in this one meeting? Or is this not “the” meeting but the “first” meeting?

One of the best selling diet foods of the 1970’s was a lozenge called Ayds. When the AIDS epidemic began in 1981 no one at the company seemed to see the inevitable problem. Even into the 1980’s Ayds, the “candy” used as their sales line, ” Ayds helps you lose weight and keep it off.”

Really? No one saw the problem? Apparently not. Then when it became horribly obvious to even the most oblivious executives at Ayds they spent time and lots of money, LOTS OF MONEY, on marketing research to rebrand Ayds. Their brilliant solution was Diet Ayds. Honest. That was what they came up with. It was also the end of Ayds. Bad timing combined with stubborn resistance to historical reality can be lethal.

Good timing is more than luck. It is research, flexibility and asking the right questions.

Meekness: Character and Power

Tue, 17 Nov 2015 06:00:00 GMT

Excerpt from
CHARACTER MATTERS
by Dr. Mark Rutland

Its young men gone to death or in prisoner of war camps far in the North, its heartland in ashes and its agriculture and industry destroyed, the South, in 1865, was shattered. Postwar poverty and a deep sense of shame and defeat gripped the states of the former confederacy with economic and psycho-social depression.

The victorious North had not escaped the horrible civil conflict without its own wounds. The rolls of the dead and the wounded filled whole pages of the northern newspapers. The federal army had won a Pyrrhic victory at best. Then, as reports of the atrocities in camps such as Andersonville became more public, the screams for revenge grew louder and more demanding. Many in power wanted the defeated South crushed and humiliated. The army and the congress wanted the conquered rebel states occupied, gutted and forever stripped of full participation in the republic.

Lincoln, as war-weary as any, with as great a reason for vengeance as they, would have none of it. Whatever demeaning and vindictive excesses were perpetrated during “reconstruction,” none were Lincoln’s fault. The South had rebelled, had cost the lives of thousands and had devastated a generation for the sake of an unjust and immoral cause. Lincoln, with the power to punish them bitterly or even to return slavery for slavery, longed instead to return the wayward safely to the fold.

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States, had the South at his feet after Appomattox. His closest advisors, even his own cabinet urged him to step on the naked throat of the defeated Confederacy and press down. Only his meekness, his refusal to use his power in unrestrained vengeance, saved the South and the nation from a postwar nightmare even worse than it was.

Lincoln, long known for his honesty, proved the depth of his great and noble character with meekness. In his second inaugural address, with the rebellious states of the confederacy on their knees and the union clamoring for revenge, Lincoln boldly called on Americans for healing love:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

– Abraham Lincoln (1865)

The Knockout Game and America’s New Subculture of Sociopathy

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 06:00:00 GMT

Criminal behavior is nothing new. Since Cain used a rock to bash in his brother’s skull, the criminal element has been a constant. Until Jesus comes it will not go away. Certainly America has had more than its fair share of vicious hard cases. From the outlaws of the old west, such as John Wesley Hardin to the likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, the cold-blooded mass murderer is hardly a new monstrosity.

There is however a chilling new development in America that may reveal something just as concerning, in its own way, as the cannibalism of a necrophiliac like Jeffrey Dahmer. The mass murderer, as horrific as he is, does not really represent, or does not necessarily represent a change in the culture in which he lives. He is an aberration. He is apart from the culture he lives in, is hated by it, feared by it and is ultimately punished by it.

Contrast that with Nazi Germany. In the World War II era, Germany was a sociopathic state, a culture of murder. Having successfully brainwashed itself into conscienceless mass murder, Germany killed those it considered less than human. Jews, of course, headed the list, but there were plenty of others including Gypsies, the mentally retarded and those whom the Nazis considered social and political enemies, such as communists and homosexuals. The greater horror however was that it was official government policy, not the actions of a crazed gunman hopped up on drugs. It was mass murder as national loyalty, as patriotism condoned, not censured by its surrounding culture. The commandants of SS murder squads and the guards at concentration camps were given medals, not sent to prison.

There is no such thing as a culture without virtue. Every culture has qualities it considers virtuous and it lauds those who act consistent with those virtues. A society does not become sociopathic because it has no virtues but because those virtues are changed. When courage is redefined as the ability to murder the weak and defenseless without hesitation, the culture produced is sociopathic by definition.

Of course, not every German was in agreement. It might be argued that the Nazis were a subculture that had highjacked Germany rather than a reflection of its true heart. Even if that dubious argument was to be accepted, it must be also said that there was no prevailing cultural devotion to true courage, at least not enough to stop the Nazis. To put it bluntly, there was no clear German cultural commitment to the sanctity of life. Where that is missing a sociopathic culture is inevitable.

Years ago I debated on the radio with a “pro-choice” rabbi. I asked him if he believed in the absolute value of human life and he brazenly said no. He said, “I believe in the quality of life.”

I was horrified and I said so. “Look,” I said, “That is the very argument the Nazi judges used to allow forced sterilization of the mentally retarded and finally extermination of the Jewish people.”

“Are you calling me a Nazi?” he shouted.

“No,” I said, “I’m just saying the world is upside down when rabbis think like Nazis.”

He was so angry that the moderator had to stop the debate. The great truth of the absolute sanctity of life, irrespective of its apparent “quality” or productiveness or any other variable, is what keeps a culture or a subculture from descending into sociopathy. If life, any life, is not sacred then murder quickly becomes virtue.

There is a new “game” now hitting the streets of America. Knockout. It means what it says. Someone steps out of a group; it never happens alone, and without warning or provocation attempts to knock out a bystander with one punch. It has caused death and injury in multiple places and seems to be growing in popularity. It is a way for a member of the pack to demonstrate his “virtue” of violent disregard for the personhood of another. It is quintessential sociopathy. Violent, remorseless, conscienceless and lacking in the ability to see the value of someone else.

One teenaged girl asked about the death of a homeless man by such an act said it was “playing that got out of control.” She did not mention the life lost. Only the “stupidity” of the game. Horrible.

This sociopathic subculture was inevitable, in my opinion, and my sad prediction is that it is not the end of horrors but the very beginning. When unborn babies mean nothing, who does? Soon the homeless, the poor, the weak, the elderly and the defenseless mean nothing. Will the knockout game soon give way to the murder game? God forbid. I hope not, but I do not really see what will keep it from happening. If young thugs can punch an old man on the street for fun, why isn’t the next step to kill one for even more fun? Nazis. They are sociopathic Nazis that are the bitter fruit of a culture gradually shrinking its concept of life’s inherent value.

After the murder of a young girl in his high school, a principal made the statement that it was a tragedy for such a promising and lovely girl to be killed so senselessly. That statement misses the point entirely. Would it have been less tragic if she had been slow, or crippled, or ugly or anything? Her death was not tragic because she was promising but because she was a person. Her murderer’s remorselessness is tragedy upon tragedy.

If the unborn are just fetuses, then why aren’t the elderly just targets? Nazis in the streets are at the end of that line of thought. Our hope is to guard the value of every life: born, unborn, feeble, sick, disagreeable, inconvenient or unproductive. Life is what the Nazis devalued. They made murder the business of government. Is that any worse than making murder a game?

America, particularly the American church must teach about life, its value, its hope, its purpose and its sanctity. The issue is not just anti-abortion, or anti-anything. Not really. It is the value of life. All life.

John MacArthur, Cessation Theology and Trainspotting for Cave Dwellers

Tue, 03 Nov 2015 07:00:00 GMT

The arrogance of making experience into a theology that trumps Scripture is exceeded only by the arrogance of making lack of experience into a theology that trumps Scripture.

In Irvine Welsh’s dark Scottish novel Trainspotting, a bum living in an abandoned train station tells others he is watching for trains. Of course it is useless. It is useless there, at least, in that abandoned station. Trains still run elsewhere in Scotland. Just not there.

Here is a simple truth: Just because trains don’t run past your house doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as trains. Furthermore, if there are no trains where you are, why not check out other, more active train stations? Trainspotting for cave dwellers is dismally disappointing business, and train denial is absurdly arrogant.

I was in a remote village deep in the Peruvian rain forest when a jet coursed through the sky overhead. The chief asked if that is how I came to Peru, which launched a long, comic community discussion of air travel. The kibitzers around us joined in with ludicrous comments on how airplanes looked and worked, all of which were utterly absurd. Finally I paced off what I thought were the dimensions of a 707, which may have been as far off as their ideas were. When they realized what I was showing them could have held every person in their village, the arguments and denials went up in intensity. Finally the chief raised his hand and spoke what to this day seems like great wisdom:

“I have never seen an airplane except up there in the sky. I cannot imagine what something like that looks like on the ground. They look very small to me in the sky, but birds look smaller to me in the sky.”

His own wife objected, “Why should we believe this man?”

He answered her with a question: “Why should we doubt him? He got here somehow. I hope someday to see an airplane on the ground. Until then I will just wait.”

Remarkable and memorable wisdom from a man who lived in a hut.

Cessation theology, so-called, is, astonishingly enough, exactly what it denounces: completely nonbiblical. There is absolutely no clear biblical statement that the gifts of the Spirit have gone anywhere, especially away. How could they go away? What could that possibly even mean? The Holy Spirit has not taken the last train for the coast. The gifts are His gifts. They were not the possession of the apostles nor of the church in any time or location. Where the Spirit is, the gifts are.

Why those gifts are more or less visible in action at various periods of church history is a valid question—a profoundly convicting question. Why they are sometimes, perhaps even frequently, misused and abused is another valid question—an even more convicting question. Gatherings of concerned and loving believers should be held to sort through these painful questions and others.

Denouncing all who dare to believe in the validity of biblical gifts in this and every age is a cave-dweller’s point of view: Because I have never seen a train, there are no trains. It also smacks of an incredible conceit. “If God were going to manifest His gifts anywhere in any time among any group, it would surely be now among me and my friends.” Hmmmm.

On Jan. 6, 2012, an American conductor driving his train 30 miles an hour too fast wrecked while texting. A Spanish conductor who wrecked his train was talking on the phone at the time. On Aug. 13, the pilot and the co-pilot of a British airliner both fell asleep in flight. Fell asleep! Other pilots have been caught napping, flying under the influence and even landing at the wrong airport. Yet despite our outrage at such shenanigans, we still board airplanes and ride trains. We do not deny their existence, and we do not assemble conferences denouncing all pilots as reprobate frauds and all those who trust them as misguided fools.

It is sophomoric and dismissive to discount the validity of anything—any philosophy, faith or belief—on the grounds that some or even many of its proponents are other than what they should be. This is the very reasoning that atheists use to dismiss Christianity because of the Crusades or the war in Ireland. Imagine how ludicrous it would be to dismiss Calvinism out of hand because some organizations have espoused unbiblical stands on moral issues such as the ordaining of homosexuals.

Many years ago, I pastored a country church in Georgia—several of whose members still doubted Neil Armstrong ever walked on the moon. Despite the fact it was televised—or perhaps because it was—several folks in my church denied the reality of the entire event. Nothing could convince them otherwise. In part, they were simply dubious of the government and reckoned anything on television was no more “real” than Bonanza. An even stronger factor in their disbelief, however, was the fact that the very possibility of such a thing as a man on the moon was beyond their wildest imagination. Because they couldn’t imagine it, they also could not imagine anyone else could imagine it, let alone make it happen.

The insularity of unimaginative country folk with regard to space travel is excusable if a bit humorous. The willingness of educated sophisticates in the body of Christ to assume God has withdrawn the gifts of the Spirit simply because they have not seen them lately is outrageous. To castigate those who claim to have seen them as charlatans or beguiled ignoramuses is reprehensible.

One cessation writer blogged, “Some of my best friends are charismatics.” Really? I mean, really? It is always the most prejudiced who claim that among their “best friends” are blacks or Jews or whomever it is they then proceed to defame. Such a statement is simply an insult.

Furthermore, it is not only insular to dismiss the operation of the gifts out of hand, it is also ethnocentric at a level as to verge on racism and American neo-imperialism. The current flow of God’s Holy Spirit is a worldwide reality.

There are African villagers who cannot read one word of anything written by American Calvinists but who move in New Testament power and for whom there is no other normal than the gifts of the Spirit. They would certainly be surprised to hear that Americans in megachurches have announced the gifts have been withdrawn. “You cannot find the gifts?” they would ask. “Come to Africa. They are here.”

Finally, one apologist for cessationism writes that “God has decided” the season of the gifts is over. Are you sure? If false prophecy is blasphemy—and it is—then announcing what “God has decided” without finding the decision clearly—clearly—announced in Scripture is certainly dangerous business. How does he know what God has decided? He assumed he knows what God has decided because surely God would not use someone else, somewhere else. Surely. If that writer has not seen a train for a while, then surely the trains don’t run anymore, anywhere.

The problem is the Bible never says the gifts would stop this side of heaven. That is the crux. Show me in the Bible. That is the bottom line.

Trainspotting is difficult business in a cave. Sitting around a campfire with blokes who live in the same cave telling each other trains no longer exist is just as likely to produce narrow-gauge thinkers who accuse others of blasphemy and excuse their own spiritual envy.

Get out of your cave. Get out in the world. Meet those who believe in trains—who, God forbid, claim to have actually ridden on them, as unimaginable to you as that may be. Instead of justifying your position by propping up pathetic and bogus straw men whom you delight in setting fire to, why not engage in meaningful discussion with heavyweights?

Get out of the cave where you and your cave-dwelling friends clap each other on the back and congratulate yourselves that you can see charlatans for what they are. Open your eyes to men like Dr. Paul Walker, Dr. Jack Hayford, Tommy Barnett and Dr. Doug Beacham. There is a big world outside—just outside the mouth of your tiny and dark cavern. Be brave. Go on, be brave. Step out into the light and just see what is out there.

Keeping an Eye on Quality

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 06:00:00 GMT

Excerpt from
RELAUNCH: HOW TO STAGE AN ORGANIZATIONAL COMEBACK
b y Dr. Mark Rutland

The late quality expert Philip Crosby offered a definition that changed everything for me. “Quality,” he said, “is meeting expectations.”

That hit me like a hydrogen bomb. If quality is simply a matter of meeting expectations, then there is no objective standard of quality for anything. That is not to say that there is no such thing as quality. It simply means that most of us think about quality in the wrong way.

Knowing that quality is a matter of meeting expectations is freeing in many ways. In another way, it binds us more closely than ever to the responsibility to communicate with others in our organizations—and with our customers and clients.

What makes a quality shoe store? Well-made shoes? Good customer service? Low prices? It all depends on the customer’s expectations—expectations that are set in large part by the owner of the store. Picture this: Bob opens a shoe store in the poor part of town. He calls his store “Bob’s Pretty Good Shoes at an Affordable Price for the Working Class family.” A single mom from the neighborhood drags her three boys through the door of Bob’s Pretty Good Shoes and is greeted by a butler holding a silver tray. He offers her a flute of champagne to enjoy as she browses the hand-tooled Italian shoes (starting at three hundred dollars) that line the tastefully accoutered walls. Is Bob’s Pretty Good Shoes a quality shoe store? No, because it sets up one set of expectations and delivers on another set of expectations. Bob may be proud of his Italian shoes and his fancy butler, but as long as he’s telegraphing that his store is the place for affordable shoes, he can’t call it a quality store. Another way to say it is that his brand (his promise) is a deception.

Much more damage in the world results from people leaving their expectations unspoken. In many cases, they don’t state their expectations because they assume their expectations are self-evident and don’t require stating. This happens all the time in marriages. Two people get married carrying all these unspoken expectations. Each thinks there’s an objective standard for what anyone should expect from a spouse. Neither states his or her expectations because, well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Make me happy. Fulfill me. Give me lots of sex. Cook for me. Make me secure. Don’t change. Change completely. When such expectations aren’t met (and how could they be?) it leads to quiet seething, punctuated by the occasional outburst of anger.

If the key to quality is meeting expectations, you owe your employees a clear explanation of exactly what you expect. There is nothing unfair about telling your secretary that you expect all of your letters to be flawless. Griping behind her back about her making you look stupid with those typos and misspellings in your letters—that would be unfair. Your secretary may think she’s a quality secretary because she answers the phone well. She has no idea that you couldn’t care less about how she answers the phone. You’ve had it with her, and she thinks she’s the best secretary ever. That falls on you, not your secretary. It’s your job to state what you expect, not your employees’ job to guess.

Myth and Momentum

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 06:00:00 GMT

How an organization thinks about itself is largely a function of senior leadership. Self-concept is critical to success at varying periods of the organization’s history. This truth is easily observable in sports. Furthermore, it is commonly observable. One team, the unanimous underdog comes onto the field with a wild passion, an almost crazed determination. Their opponents, the prohibitive favorites, seem stuck in low gear. They just cannot seem to find the inner fire for which they have in the past been famous. What happens? Why does a team that is so much “better” suddenly lose to a team they ought to have beaten easily, and which if they played a series might predictably defeat nine out of ten times?

There are all kinds of factors, of course, and no one explanation is sufficient, but I believe the number one answer lies in an organizational communication failure between the coach and the team. Somehow the coaching staff failed to impart the correct self-concept. Many coaches and leaders think this is done by convincing the team they are winners.

That is true in part but there is much more. When this becomes just so much rah rah, when the word “winners” becomes hardly more than a motivational poster, it loses the fire. The team must know what the mission is, must buy into it and must understand and embrace “why” they win, exactly what kind of winners they are. They also have to know who they are and they have to believe it. You might call this the team’s internal mythology.

In other words, there are different narratives/myths of victory for different seasons of organizational life. The “underdog” narrative is a passion to prove something. We are tired of being looked down on. This is our chance to show the world. The Masada mentality is heroic defeatism and it won’t work. That narrative says, we know we are going to get killed out there tonight but let’s do so bravely. Your people have to believe that Rocky really can whip Apollo Creed, that the Bad News Bears will win, that it’s David’s night because Goliath is doomed. Not just that. Goliath deserves what is about to happen to him. He ought to go down. Your team has to believe it’s their turn to win and Goliath’s turn to crumple like a ton of bricks.

Now what about the prohibitive favorites? They need a different narrative/myth to carry them onto the field. The wrong one will sink them. Many teams try exactly the wrong myth. They begin to believe they deserve to win. That is entitlement and it never works in life, or leadership of business. It creates spoiled brats who underestimate passionately hungry underdogs and suffer internal squabbles that erode team unity. Prima donnas are listening to their individual stories, not the organization’s tram narrative.

The narrative that works for the perennial winner is the struggle to dominate. How dare they? Who do they think they are? It’s not that we deserve to win but we refuse to lose. We hate losing. We simply will not allow our enemy to be the cause of our having that painful reality. Furthermore, any team that tries to inflict losing on us is the enemy. That is is the “myth” that serves the reigning champion who wants to win the crown again and again and again.

The best team is supposed to win. Isn’t it? Yes, but what does “best” mean? After all the practicing and the play books and talent evaluations, it may very well be the team that comes armed with the best internal myth that walks off with the victory. The model of the perennial winner, the dynasty coach and team is Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers (c. 1959-1967). He convinced that team they could, should and absolutely must outfight any opponent because they could not bear to lose and could not bear it because losing was anathema. He never told them they deserved to win. He convinced them that losing was for losers who would not “leave it all on the field.”

The quintessential underdog coach/leader and team was certainly Herb Brooks and his band of amateurs who were the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team. That team defeated the “unbeatable” Russian national team, went on to beat Finland and won the gold medal. Their victory over Russia was internationally known as the “miracle on ice.” Was it a miracle? One sportscaster described it as being the same as team of Canadian college boys defeating the Pittsburg Steelers.

The secret was Herb Brooks narrative that they were a team of destiny and that they were players of destiny. He told them,” You were born to be players. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.” That narrative and a sense of almost desperate national pride was the secret formula of the greatest hockey upset of the 20th Century.

Here are questions every leader needs to ask themselves.

1. What season is my organization in?

2. What wrong narratives are they believing? What dangerous myth are they believing? Do they think they are entitled? Or do they believe themselves to be losers? How do I blast that narrative out of their minds and hearts?

3. What is the narrative/myth that is required at this time in our history?

4. How can I “sell” it to my team? How do I say it? Communicate it? Get them to believe it and buy in? How do I find the strength and energy to keep believing it myself and keep on “selling” it until they receive it?

I believe there is a vast difference between being a knowledgeable coach of talented players and being a passionate and inspiring leader. A coach who is nothing but a technician will seldom coach inspired teams. The great leader is the one who can tell the right story the right way until the team makes it come true.

I Saw Three Ships

Fri, 02 Oct 2015 18:06:00 GMT

Of all the Christmas carols beloved of millions, one makes absolutely no sense to me at all. It is a folk song, so there is no one to blame, and its staunchest defenders appeal only to its traditional place in the catalogue of Christmas culture. It apparently was created in Derbyshire, England sometime in the 17th century and the melody is an off-spring of “Greensleeves.” It is beautiful to hear especially in a choral arrangement. The problem is the lyrics.

In most forms the words make reference to ships sailing in to Bethlehem. That is a bit problematic since that Holy City is land-locked. I suppose that some village minstrel in the 17th century jolly old is to be forgiven for envisioning Bethlehem as a far away and exotic version of Portsmouth. Then there is the issue of the ships. We’re they carrying the wise men? Perhaps they were actually camels, the ships of the desert. Really? That’s a stretch. Someone suggested they represent the Trinity. On ships? The Trinity? Oh, come on!

No, the bottom line is, “Three Ships” is a sweet old tune we will continue to sing at Christmas and simply ignore the fact that we have no idea what it means. I’m okay with that and I will bask in its beauty at Christmas and simply not think about it too much. In fact I am actually pretty adept at not thinking overmuch about anything, especially obscure things.

However, I bet I know what YOU are thinking right at this moment. Why is he writing this now when Christmas is hardly on anyone’s mind? I am choosing the metaphor of three ships for a lesson on leadership and the meaningless old carol came to my mind. That’s it. So, forgetting Christmas until it’s colder, consider with me three ships and leadership lessons they offer.

I. The Costa Concordia
On January 13, 2012, Captain Francesco Schettino drove his ship up on the rocks just off the shore of Isola del Giglio, an island northwest of Rome. I referenced this wreck in the introductory pages of ReLaunch .

What went wrong? Well, basically everything. Schettino was evidently distracted entertaining a girlfriend and was actually showing off by veering off course to sail close to her homeland…way too close. When leadership is distracted, ego driven shipwrecks are entirely too predictable. Stay focused and stay on course. Sudden changes in direction are dangerous, especially if the waters are not familiar to you. Hidden dangers may wreck all you’ve accomplished when all you had to do was steer clear. The rocks did not swim out and attack the Costa. Distracted leaders looking to impress the onlookers are far more likely to hit the rocks than the focused captain doing his job and staying on course.

The greater problem with Schettino’s leadership was not even the wreck, as bad as that was. It was the crisis management which followed. He and his crew at first refused to face reality and then when they did they panicked. More than thirty lives were lost, some were never found, because crew and captain acted in selfish disregard for the passengers. In a crisis, especially one of your own making, remember that the innocent passengers are your first responsibility. Stay calm. See to their safety. And above all things face reality early. Denied institutional reality can push response so late that the damaged is actually made worse. Facing it is the crucial first step to fixing it.

II. The Bounty
The most famous mutiny in naval history must surely be that on board the H.M.S. Bounty, and Fletcher Christian the most famous mutineer. Mutiny is rebellion on a ship and has traditionally been punishable by hanging and several of the Bounty mutineers were in fact hanged. Bounty’s captain, William Bligh, also comes in for a major part of the blame, especially from Nordoff and Hall, the co-authors of the famous book. Why?

Bligh was so harsh and unreasonable that many felt he drove the mutineers to their actions. Bligh’s paranoia made all ship-board rule breaking about him and fueled his harsh disciplinary response to any perceived disobedience or disrespect. The Captain Bligh syndrome is the disease of the small-minded and insecure. Great leaders know what to ignore, what to laugh at, when to laugh at themselves and when to discipline, not harshly but with firm compassion. Petty Captain Blighs who lash their followers to make themselves successful are often the cause of mutinies, not the cure.

III. The Bonhomme Richard
On September 23, 1779, a small squadron of American ships led by the the 42-gun converted merchant vessel named the Bonhomme Richard engaged a larger and better-armed British force and its flagship, H.M.S. Serapis. The Bonhomme Richard was certainly no match on paper or on the sea for the 50-gun warship Serapis. Except for one variable. Leadership. The commander of the sluggish, undergunned converted merchant ship was a certain determined and resourceful captain named John Paul Jones.

At one point the overconfident captain of the Serapis, a smug and condescending aristocrat, called on Jones, the fifth son of a Scottish Gardner, to surrender. Jones’ famous reply as reported by a junior officer is cherished American naval lore.

“I’ve not yet begun to fight.”

Jones, even with his major cannon silenced by withering fire, out maneuvered the British vessel, eventually even lashing his own ship to the Serapis where the fighting became hand to hand. At last an American seaman managed to throw a grenade into the Serapis‘ magazine. The resulting erosion ended it. The British captain surrendered and Jones’ place in history was secured. He is still known today as the Founding Father of the American Navy.

Jones displayed creativity and determination in a desperate situation. He was able to inspire those around him to believe that the battle could still be turned around when logic said it was over. Furthermore, he fought from disadvantage to victory. The spoiled and entitled want the best, the most powerful, the advantage to them at the start of the contest. The sense of noble struggle is too often despised in favor of certain victory over a lesser foe. Why do powerful Division I teams schedule Eastern Kentucky A and I for their home opener? Easy victories make fun homecomings.

Real life and real leadership does not often come in so tidy a package. Outgunned, overmatched, and underestimated is where real leadership finds its worth. Great leaders know that when others see absolutely no possibility of a victory, the battle has just begun. When you’re outgunned stay calm. Refuse to be intimidated. Be creative. Look for an opening then attack with what you do have rather than whining about what you don’t have.

Facing Institutional Reality

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 12:59:00 GMT

Excerpt from
RELAUNCH: HOW TO STAGE AN ORGANIZATIONAL COMEBACK
b y Dr. Mark Rutland

Before Interstate 75 was built, drivers traveling to Florida went right through the middle of Corbin, Kentucky, on Highway 25. Every day hundreds of them stopped at Harland Sanders Café for a bite of Colonel Harland Sanders’ fried chicken. But when the interstate was complete, Highway 25 went quiet, and Sanders’ Café was left high and dry. Colonel Sanders was at a crossroads. He could hope for the best and ride his near-empty restaurant all the way down, or he could pursue another vision for his restaurant.

Colonel Sanders’ fortune grew out of the disaster that ensued when I-75 bypassed his hometown. He hit the road and started recruiting Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees across the United States. It all began with a clear-eyed look at a situation that had changed completely. That willingness to face reality is not as common as it should be among leaders.

There’s an old joke about a Southerner in a bar who was going on and on about the superiority of the Confederate army. The South had better generals, he said, and more fighting spirit, and they were better shots than the Northern soldiers. “The South could have beaten the North with cornstalks,” he concluded.

A nearby patron, growing impatient with the loquacious Southerner, asked, “Then why didn’t the South win the Civil War?”

“Because the North wouldn’t use cornstalks!” the Southerner answered.

As this joke suggests, the Confederacy’s greatest problem in the Civil War was a tragic refusal to face its reality. The South rushed into a war against a vastly superior force in large part because it believed its own PR.

True, the Confederacy had the great generals. True, Southerners had plenty of fight and home field advantage, if you can call it that. In their own minds at least, they had a cause they believed in. But none of that changed the fact that the North had well over twice the population and nine times the manufacturing capacity. No amount of generalship or fighting spirit was going to outweigh that kind of advantage in manpower, horsepower, steel, and iron.

The leaders of the Confederacy were not alone. In dysfunctional organizations, very few leaders are willing to face the reality of their situations, and it often leads them from disaster to disaster. Companies say they are on the cutting edge—maybe even believe they’re on the cutting edge—when they haven’t changed in years or, in any case, haven’t changed nearly as much as everybody else around them has changed. They don’t take the time to really drill down into the facts. The highway has bypassed them, and they won’t face it.

Leadership Confusions II: Function or Purpose

Sun, 13 Sep 2015 19:39:00 GMT

When I designed the Mission-Function Vertical Axis, I was seeking for a way to demonstrate visually the connection between the “lowest” function in an organization and the mission that presides at the top. I have been delighted through the last few years to see how many leaders in both the church world and in business have expressed how it helped them. It is now a regular and indispensable part of the teaching at the National Institute of Christian Leadership. Last week and this week in The Leader’s Notebook, I am considering some points on the continuum where confusion causes arrested development of the organization and can lead to serious problems.

I will not treat the Axis itself in any detail. For that you have to attend the NICL, where I go through it step-by-step and deal all the points where confusion can most easily set in and hinder the organization. (For information on the NICL please go to thenicl.com ).

Last week, The Leader’s Notebook addressed some of the very dangerous barriers to growth which can arise when tactical thinking crowds our strategy. This week, the Leadership Confusion to be looked at is that between function and purpose. The mixup between tactics and strategy attacks at the top of an organization and eats away at its long range success. When function forgets purpose the attack is more basic, right where the rubber hits the road-at the very place where your organization touches your customers and/or constituency.

Ever wonder why the “first contact” folks in some organizations, such as receptionists and parking attendants sometimes seem so contrary to its stated goals and advertised persona? It’s actually quite simple and can be devastating. Those people who perform the organization’s basic public contact jobs clearly know what they do. They just don’t remember why. And that is exactly the problem. Bad first impressions are most often the result of a gap between function and purpose.

Example: Old Uncle Bob, as he is known, has cooked hot dogs for the church youth group for twenty-five years. Faithfully. He has never missed a Wednesday night in all those years. The youth pastor advises Uncle Bob that the kids have requested they switch to pizza. Bob is furious and threatens to quit. The youth pastor is stunned and confused. He needn’t have been. Bob is still doing “what” he has done for years but he has lost track of the “why.” The purpose of the hot dogs was not to give Bob a meaningful place to volunteer. It was to create a fun, wholesome atmosphere that made teens feel loved and cared for. This year, pizza says that, but Bob won’t change because it has become about Bob.

Your paid staff and volunteers, especially those who deal directly with the public, must constantly be reminded why they do what they do. How do the greeters at the door, the parking lot attendants, and the receptionist who answers the phone further the vision? The leader has to know the answer to be sure. But real sustainable success comes when the lowest level functionaries in your organization can tell you exactly why what they do leads to the accomplishment of that vision.

Function is important. Obviously your folks have to do what they do. Purpose is what keeps them on track with the promise of your organization. The bank teller who does her job but is rude to the customers is that bank’s worst problem. Worse than interest rates, or regulators, or bad loans. She has fallen into the gap between function and purpose and she will take customers over the side with her. The angry parking lot volunteer at a local church has already nullified everything that will happen in the service that day before visitors can even get in the door.

In training staff and volunteers for function, never fail to connect it to the vision. The indispensable bridge between function at the bottom and vision at the top is purpose.

Leadership Confusions I: Strategy or Tactics

Sun, 06 Sep 2015 19:39:00 GMT

For use in teaching at the National Institute of Christian Leadership, I designed a model called the Mission-Function Vertical Axis. Many NICL attendees have expressed how important that teaching became to them. Here in The Leader’s Notebook, I will not give an exhaustive explanation of the axis itself, but this week and next I will discuss two points of confused organizational thinking which can occur along that axis and which will cause stagnation and other problems. Many organizations live at a tragic level of confusion over two elements of the axis: strategy and tactics.

Tactics are the use of available resources for the accomplishment of a task. In other words, how do I use what I have to accomplish what needs to be done in this circumstance? Tactical thinking is not about keeping the circumstance from happening again or even understanding what caused it this time. Tactics answer a basic question. What is the best way to resolve this now given the resources at hand?

Strategy, on the other hand is the comprehensive set of plans and goals designed to further the long range vision. Strategy asks a totally different question from tactics. Tactics asks, “How do we fix this?” Strategy asks, “How do we get where we want to go? How do we best move this organization toward the fulfillment of the vision?”

Example:

A hostage situation in an apartment house has drawn the police to the street below. There they urgently debate possible solutions. Shall they storm the building or negotiate? What about a sniper? Those are tactical questions and they require tactical thinking. They are not dreaming of ways to reduce crime in the city, except, I suppose, one kidnapper at a time. They are about this hostage situation.

Meanwhile across town in the mayor’s office another group has assembled. Religious leaders, the NAACP, the head of Parks and Recreation, the school superintendent, and a variety of charitable organizations are all there at the mayor’s invitation. In a series of meetings of which this is but the first they will be discussing how to reduce crime. The hostage crisis across town is not the purpose of their meeting and if they get bogged down in wrangling over how to deal with it their strategic purpose will be lost. They are there to reduce crime, not rescue a hostage and arrest a criminal.

Way too many businesses and organizations live at the tactical level. I say this with some hesitancy. Churches are among the worst offenders. Pastors and church elders (boards) spend way too much time and energy trying to figure out how to deal with plumbing problems and way too little thinking about how to fulfill the vision of the house. Or worse still, way too little time sorting out what the vision even is.

Why? Frankly, tactical thinking is easier and renders faster results. A sense of immediate accomplishment feels good. We fixed the women’s toilet. Good for us! That momentous accomplishment feels better faster than when we spend time considering long-term strategic ways to get this organization to a place of maximum potential. Strategy seldom renders the immediate and immensely satisfying results of an unstopped toilet.

Generals Eisenhower and Marshall were consummate strategic thinkers. While the Allies lacked even a toe-hold on Europe they were strategizing how to win WWII, and even how to win the peace to follow.

None of this is to say tactics are unimportant. To be sure, both are needed. Both are hugely important. When the 101st Airborne was trapped at Bastogne, Patton charged to the rescue. To the troops freezing at Bastogne, the rapid tactical response of Patton’s Third Army Cavalry units was more immediately important than post-war strategy. AND it got headlines! But Eisenhower and Marshall had been planning the conquest of Europe while Patton was still trying to turn things around in North Africa. That’s strategy.

The leader who cannot respond quickly and creatively to crises will lose too many short term battles and followers will lose confidence. But the leader who lives at the tactical level will never be able to move the entire team and the organization itself forward toward long range goals. Indeed, he may never be able to formulate such goals and may well lose sight of the vision. In which case his followers definitely will lose sight of it, which is not simply a crisis of confidence but a potentially fatal catastrophe. Organizations that just keep trying to handle one crisis after another, fixing stuff, battling through to one Bastogne or another, will finally bog down.

Whenever, you see an organization or institution that turns the corner and moves toward victory, you can know that leadership was able to respond with cavalry actions when rescues were needed while not allowing themselves to be distracted from the greater comprehensive plan.

Tactics are for now, for solving the immediate problem in the best way possible. Strategy is for tomorrow, next year, ten years from now when today’s crisis is long forgotten. Tactics win battles. Strategy wins wars and worlds.