I have learned through the years to look for four qualities in leaders, whether they are men or women. I look first for a searching mind: a person who is mentally alert, who has curiosity about life, who wants to learn all the time. Such a person is always reading, always listening, always thinking about what he or she hears, and trying to reason out what is behind it.

-Ray Stedman

This year’s inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame included arguably the best receiver ever to strap on a helmet: Jerry Rice.

I wonder…

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Life Long Learning

One of the values we have corporately is the value of Life Long Learning. To live out this value corporately it means that we as individuals must be committed to personal learning.
This week I had the opportunity to attend the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit. I intentionally carved out time in my schedule to be in a place that I could learn more about leadership and get perspectives from fourteen leaders around the world. The speakers were men and women I had heard or read about in the last year.
There was a common theme in all of their talks – never, ever, ever, ever, give up!
We as leaders face all kinds of trials (actually problems) each and every day. They are people issues, client challenges, we wrestle with an overreaching government bureaucracy, and on and on it goes. These trials can derail us from reaching our goals and being the company or person we envision.
I too face these kinds of situations and actually at times say to myself – is this really worth all this effort, pain and heartache? Is this really where God has me to serve? Am I really helping leaders be better leaders or helping churches strategize and envision their future well?
This week I had the opportunity for leadership development. I intentionally put myself in a place that challenged, encouraged, intellectually stimulated me, and gave me many tools for meeting the challenges I personally face. The result is that today I am renewed emotionally, spiritually and can move forward with new energy and conviction – to never, ever, ever, ever, give up!
All this happened because of a value in my life of Life Long Learning. Our values do matter!

Seems like every time I pick up a new book on ministry or read a magazine article on the same, someone mentions leadership development. While everyone is talking about it, I would love to see some examples of what that looks like in a church. I’m not so sure it’s happening as much as we would like. Bill Hybels says, “The church is the hope of the world, and leadership is the hope of the church!” If this is the case, and I think it is, then the Church needs to focus in a big way on making leaders as well as making disciples. Maybe the lack of leadership I’ve observed is key to the decline of the church and thus Christianity in America? Regardless, we at the Malphurs Group are focusing on leader development in the church and beyond, hoping to stem the tide of church decline.

Aubrey

Does anyone want to get that piece of mail that invites you to jury duty? I have postponed this inevitable day for months for one reason or another. But today I sit in a large room with about 30 other people waiting, waiting for another court to need us. The first was a criminal court and when we got there to “report for duty”, they said the case had been resolved. So we wait.

There are those times that we believe our time is much more important than this. That is exactly how I’ve felt knowing this day was coming, but as only God can do, he appointed this time for me to sit here and find that a dear friend I had not seen in a couple of years was just a few rows away. We caught up very quickly and found that she had faced some very hard issues over the past two years with one of her children. It was hard to listen to her story. I hugged her and let her know I loved her and would pray.  Then she was gone to due her “duty” as a juror.

So, this was not wasted time, this was God’s plan for me to meet her and for us to mutually encourage one another. It reminds me to be aware of what’s going on in the spiritual world around me. How selfish we become when we can only see our own needs. I am sitting here waiting and so thankful for the fact that God chose this day for me to be here to meet my friend. Perfect timing.

The issue of free will has always been at the forefront of theology. But recently, science has been making headway into its attempts to understand our decision making. The New York Times has an interesting article on free will.

If leaders are so good at…

1. Recognizing the need for change in their people, and
2. Leading change in their organizations,

…why are they often so blind to change in their own life?

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Change is one of the hardest things most people face in life. Sometimes it is slow in coming and we almost don’t notice. But then there are those times when it just smacks you in the face. You loose your balance. You grasp at straws for answers. You pray. You beg and plead for wisdom and wait.

Some people love change. Typically I am one of those. I like rearranging things in my house. I like to try new things. I like to see new places. And I love to see people change! But that doesn’t happen often enough.

Over the past weeks we have had some very hard changes in our family. These are changes I really bristle against. Most of us want our families to grow, but stay in tack. So when death or divorce or movement comes, it’s really hard.

God really has never promised us stability outside of him. So when things come our way that we are blindsided by, and they do come to all of us, where do we find the strength to “carry on”? Hopefully we run to the only One who offers to walk through difficult times with us. If not, we’re washed into a sea of worry and fear.

There are no simple answers, but moving forward through life’s many changes, changes us. And guess what, God is all about change!

It’s been said that while no one conversation will make or break a relationship, every conversation has the potential to alter that relationship’s trajectory.

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This morning, I read the following on Ray Stedman’s Daily Devotional:

In our travels, my family and I were privileged to be in various parts of the ancient world, where we visited many temples dedicated to idols. Though these temples had fallen into ruins, in every place a certain god such as Apollo, Venus, Bacchus, or Zeus had been enthroned and worshiped there. It suddenly struck me, after returning home, that though these temples have been abandoned, the worship of the god has not ceased. We have changed the names, but the gods, the idols, are exactly the same. There is the worship of Narcissus, the god who fell in love with himself. Is this not perhaps the supreme god of humanity: the worship of self, the exaltation of humans? The idea that we constantly hear set forth is that humans are so tremendous, so smart, so brilliant, so clever; they can do so many things. Yet we deny the continual evidence of our senses that the world is crumbling to pieces around us. We have the worship of Bacchus, the god of pleasure, wine, women, and song; the worship of Venus, the goddess of love, enthroned in Hollywood and all that Hollywood stands for; Apollo, the god of physical beauty; Minerva, the goddess of science. Everywhere we have enthroned science.

So, I thought of a little experiment to validate Ray’s theory. I simply visited the front page of DrudgeReport.com to see if the headlines matched what he is saying. Here are the results from just one page of browsing:

• James Camerons says BP are “morons who don’t know what they are doing” (Narcissus/Venus)
• Oil ball continues towards Florida (Minerva)
• Oil lek may continue until Christmas (Minerva)
• Porn actor goes on Rampage (Bacchus)
• Another Party at the White House: Paul McCartney sings (Bacchus/Venus)
• McCartney bashes Bush (Narcissus)
• Man Kills Kitten after it disconnects his video game (Bacchus)
• Spike Lee tells Obama how to handle the Oil Crisis (Narcissus/Venus)
• SURPRISE: Pacific islands defy sea level predictions; Islands stable or growing (Narcissus)

Lends credibility to Ray’s thoughts… Now, if this is one page on the internet, imagine the amount of god’s that are worshipped in all that media we encounter each day!