exodus on Competence

Understanding Jesus’ economic interest and competency should not be surprising when we remember that Jesus spent the majority of his life on earth learning carpentry and running a small business. In J...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Mixed Loyalties Diving straight into 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 without giving a nod to 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:2 gives a strange impression, because Paul’s point...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Mixed Loyalties Diving straight into 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 without giving a nod to 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:2 gives a strange impression, bec...

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather have these because we have acted rightly; these virtues are formed in man by d...

Resilience is not something that can be mustered in a moment of “rising to the occasion.” It is formed over a long period before the crisis of testing so that it can continue the transformation during...

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession, and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas. Especially strong thinking powers (...

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Peter Drucker suggests that we should always sustain two streams of learning and self-improvement. And though he is speaking specifically about work and career, what he says is equally applicable whet...

Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it’s a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they’re beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or the...

If your success is defined as being well adjusted to injustice and well adapted to indifference, then we don’t want successful leaders. We want great leaders who love the people enough and respect the...

Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, of building a personality beyond its normal limitations.

Ambiguity may keep people up nights, but anyone seeking exquisite simplicity in his or her career ought to look for a non-leadership position. Leaders, by definition, have followers. Followers need di...

We should aim for rational confidence in these sorts of pursuits because certainty is a mere will-o’-the-wisp. Finite minds simply can’t pull it off. Though the distinction between aiming at certainty...

We might not say we believe a Jesus-plus-our-efforts idea of the gospel, but when we place our performances on the pedestal of personal progress, we’re not relying on the grace of God. We’re worshipin...

Resilience is not about becoming smarter or tougher; it’s about becoming stronger and more flexible. It’s about becoming tempered. Which takes us back to the blacksmith’s shop. Tempered. Let the word ...

Leadership is not about problems and decisions; it is a profoundly relational enterprise that seeks to motivate people toward a vision that will require significant change and risk on everyone’s part.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Clutter is the enemy of clarity.

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.

[Jonathan] Sacks comments on this passage, tying it back to his study of adaptive leadership concepts. In the first occasion, Moses was faced with a technical challenge: the people needed food. On the...

The truly inventive state of mind approaches the plane of consciousness you’d hope to attain if you were driving down an icy highway and skidded into the path of an oncoming truck ... concentration is...

Christian character is not an act but a process, not a sudden creation but a development. It grows and bears fruit like a tree; it requires patient care and unwearied cultivation.

The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp...

The challenge each of these faced in their deconstruction—and what we may face—is walking the tightrope between becoming our own person and honoring our past. In The Homeless Mind , sociologist P...

We might say that convictions are firmly held moral or religious beliefs that guide our beliefs, actions, or choices.

I can lose my job; I might be released from a position. My career can come to an end when I retire from the organization I work in. But my vocation comes from God; it remains and is not in the end som...

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t...

As any parent of small children will tell you, children have an amazingly acute sense of justice. Even the most fractional disparity in the distribution of the most trivial family good will be met wit...