Leadership Courage Series # 34 Last time, I used the phrase “do what’s right because it’s right, whether it works or not.” I learned this from a friend, who says he learned it from the Lord. His wife had lost both her parents to cancer. One after the other. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. The impact was devastating. […]
Go First! (part six) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 33 As with much of this Leadership Courage Series, I’m indebted to Edwin Friedman’s excellent book A Failure of Nerve for this ninth and final leadership trait: Go first! Friedman says “To be a leader, one must both have and embody a vision of where one wants to go. It is
Go First! (part five) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 32 In the home stretch of this Series, we’re considering the ninth characteristic of those who would lead well in a culture overrun with cowardice. Early in this series we examined why comfort-craving, security-seeking, spiritless stagnation is common to the Church. Sad, when you consider how we behaved in the Book
Go First! (part four) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 28 Within a larger conversation concerning courageous leadership we’ve been examining the outworking of placing “an unreasonable faith in reasonableness” – a central tenet of much of post-Enlightenment Christendom in the West. I am indebted to Edwin Freidman’s A Failure on Nerve for illuminating this characteristic of the anxious, shallow, quick-fix
The Unreasonableness of Being Reasonable (part four) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 27 Pastor, who you are is more important than anything you say. Who you are is more important than everything you say! This Leadership Courage Series is a call to the courageous, risky life leaders lived in the Church of the New Testament. It stands in glaring contrast to the lifestyle
The Unreasonableness of Being Reasonable (part three) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 26 Edwin Friedman in his stellar work A Failure of Nerve challenges his readers to “disengage from an unreasonable faith in reasonableness.” It seems that the Church in North America is reasonable if it is anything, and that reasonableness has got us stuck. “Syncretism” is what scholars call it. I call
The Unreasonableness of Being Reasonable (part two) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 25 For a number of months we’ve been looking at Christian leadership from what I hope are refreshing and resourceful perspectives. The genesis of this entire series is A Failure of Nerve by the late Edwin Friedman. I am again indebted to him for sparking today’s thoughts with his charge to
The Unreasonableness of Being Reasonable (part one) Read More »
Leadership Courage Series # 24 Here’s a final look at the 80/20 Rule and its connection to the culture of cowardice in the North American Church. And, it may be hard to hear. Could it be that a distorted substitute for biblical grace has taken the Church? Consider how little the Church asks of Christians…
Undermine the 80/20 Rule (part three) Read More »
Why is it that the Christian life is such an adventure? What has your experience been, following hard after God, as best you know? In my life, I repeatedly find myself in dilemmas that are completely beyond my ability. This was far less common before I surrendered my life to Christ. Now, it seems, the
The Adventurous Life #3 Read More »
For the last eleven segments in a Leadership Courage Series that’s now twenty installments in length we’ve been investigating the challenge facing pastors today to stand with courage and clarity in a religious context that, for decades — maybe centuries — has become less and less courageous and clear. In this spiritual vacuum the greater
The Adventurous Life #2 Read More »