relationships and community on Incompetence

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

Many of us struggle to know exactly what to pack when we go on our various travels. The Pilgrims in their voyage to the new world were no different. As Bill Bryson describes in his book Made in Americ...

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity..

If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you're serving in the wrong place.

Leadership is often a matter of failing people’s expectations at a rate they can stand.

When teams fail, they are almost always too big.

The skills have been lost of being present for and in another, and what remains is mistrust and violence.

Countless mistakes in marriage, parenting, ministry, and other relationships are failures to balance grace and truth. Sometimes we neglect both. Often we choose one over the other.

Whenever I have encountered any kind of deep problem with civilization anywhere in the world—be it the logging of rain forests, ethnic or religious intolerance or the brutal destruction of a cultural ...

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Communication usually fails, except by accident

I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.

Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.

Fear impairs our judgment, paralyzes our reason and leads us down the path of selfishness.

A great building will never stand if you neglect the small bricks.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

Evading self-acknowledgment of our faults enables us to avoid painful moral emotions: guilt and remorse for harming others; shame for betraying your own ideals; self-contempt for not meeting even our ...

A common trait of human beings is a fear of failure. Most of us find ways of coping with it, but whenever failure rears its ugly head, it’s difficult not to experience the sting of feeling like we are...

Knowledge, not improved and well employed, will only increase our condemnation at the last day.

A person who wields power cannot see truth; that is the privilege of the powerless.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Conversation would be much improved by the frequent use of three words: I don’t know.

A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God's.

Syndrome (formerly called Incrediboy) in the film The lncredibles is one example of envy’s futility and the envier’s inferiority, which together secure the inevitable lack of success in besting one’s ...

When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.

I was recently brought in to talk with a group of corporate leaders who were trying to manage a difficult reorganization in their company. One of the project managers told me that, after listening to ...

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is pos...

The biggest resentment I have is when they say Washington is run like a circus. If only it was so disciplined and organized.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

Lack of repentance is the root cause of powerlessness in the church, in this materialistic, self-indulgent age. There can be no spiritual power in a non-repentant church.