Here is the uncomfortable truth: Humans run to a much slower evolutionary clock than our inventions. To use an engineering term, we are the “gating factor” that keeps a process from running faster. It...
Change invariably leads to loss, loss to grief, grief to anxiety and, finally, anxiety to hostility. We need therefore, to acknowledge grief. We need to understand and choose to walk with the grieving...
Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...
Why is change important? Why do we avoid it, even when it means experiencing much more pain staying stuck? Writer Ann Lammott explains: If we stay where we are, where we’re stuck, where we’re comfort...
A mind is more like a pile of millions of little rocks than a single big boulder. To change a mind, we need to carry thousands of little rocks from one pile to another, one at a time. This is because ...
Picture this: you are just about a year into your first call as a minister. Everything seems to be going swimmingly. You caught up with a seminary friend over the weekend and you slightly brag about h...
Exodus 18:13-27, Judges 6:14, Psalm 23:1-3, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 20:25-28
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.
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...
When I teach on the dynamics of real change and maturation, I often describe a “furnace of transformation” each of us must pass through for the sake of growth and refinement. I’ve never seen real grow...
Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 23:11-12, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 1 Peter 5:2-3, James 1:19, Proverbs 15:1, Philippians 2:3-4
On Monday morning, February 2008, every sports page in the world heralded the New York Giants’ astonishing Super Bowl upset over the undefeated New England Patriots. And the big story within the story...
James 4:1, Philippians 2:14, 1 Corinthians 14:33, James 1:5
Conflict in Ministry Have you ever whispered to yourself, “I didn’t sign up for this?” I confess those words have passed through my mind more than once over the years. When I started out in ministry...
Colossians 3:12-13, Matthew 5:44, Ecclesiastes 7:9, Philippians 2:3-4, James 3:17, Proverbs 15:1, 2 Timothy 2:24-25
The key word in our definition of a disagreement (an unacceptable difference between two perspectives), isn’t “difference.” It’s “unacceptable.” Once the clash between perspectives becomes unacceptabl...
The Messy Middle In his classic work Transitions, author and professor William Bridges shares an excellent anecdote about life in crisis: it can happen at any time and in a myriad of ways. It also de...
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...
The animal behavior scientist Temple Grandin, who achieved significant success while struggling with autism, has this to say on the subject of progress: People are always looking for the single ma...
Matthew 6:31-34, Luke 10:41-42, Philippians 4::6-7, Ecclesiastes 12:13, Proverbs 3:5-6
Life has become a smorgasbord with an endless array of dishes. And more important still, choice is no longer just a state of mind. Choice has become a value, a priority, a right. To be modern is to be...
John 17:1, Philippians 4:6, James 5:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Matthew 6:6, Acts 6:4, Mark 1:35
It’s no secret that too many evangelical leaders are captivated more by business culture than biblical culture, spending more time absorbed in strategies and effectiveness and relatively little time i...
Dan B. Allender, in his book Leading Character, tells the story of a friend whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. He kept news of his daughter’s illness to himself, fearing that his employees wo...
The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...
In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form...
Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. ...
Proverbs 22:1, Luke 16:10, Philippians 2:4, Romans 12:10, Psalm 15:2
In his book A Better Way to Think about Business, the late business philosopher Robert Solomon, a student of business jargon, speaks of having been struck by the imagery that peppers many [business] p...
Some people find themselves stuck in a rut. Without challenge or new opportunities, they begin to sound like Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoons: “Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll p...
Titus 1:7, Psalm 131:1, Galatians 6:3, Matthew 23:12, Philippians 2:3, James 4:6
In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the sobering truth of what happens to many leaders when they climb the “ladder of success”: The ground at the foot of the ladde...
Philippians 3:13-14, Matthew 11:12, Galatians 1:10, Daniel 3:18, 1 Corinthians 1:27, Acts 17:6
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
The Double Helix, James Watson’s 1968 memoir about discovering the structure of DNA, describes the roller coaster of emotions he and Francis Crick experienced through the progress and setbacks of the ...