Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
All games involve score keeping. The rules of scoring in any game tell the players which achievements count; what to do in order to be a winner. Monopoly players keep score with money; football player...
If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources...
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...
Hebrews 11:39-40, Jeremiah 1:5, Philippians 3:14, Galatians 6:9, Matthew 25:21
In his landmark work, Habits of the Heart, the sociologist Robert Bellah describes thee distinct orientations people take with respect to their work. The first orientation is to see your work as a job...
Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
We can prostitute our very souls in our attempts to be successful. We can sell out, cave in and go morally bankrupt chasing the god of success. Knowing this perilous potential, Jesus himself warns us ...
Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
In Part 1 of this series ( Climbing the Pastor's Ladder: Holy Ambition and Escaping the Comparison Trap ), we looked at the ladder of pastoral advancement and the trap of comparing ourselves t...
Have you ever heard of a Stradivarius violin? It’s the gold standard of violins—instantly recognizable and famously expensive. These aren’t $29.95 instruments. One sold for $1 million, another for $4 ...
When every option is available to us, we don’t actually have freedom; we tend to shut down. I experienced what sociologists call choice overload (or paralysis) and decision fatigue. If you’ve ever tri...
If a man is forever concerned first and foremost with his own interests then he is bound to collide with others. If for any man life is a competition…then he will always think of other human beings as...
Mark 8:36, Matthew 16:26, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, Mark 4:18-19, Mark 10:43-44, Matthew 19:23-24, Matthew 6:19-21, 24-34, Luke 12:13-21, Luke 12:32-34, Mark 10:24-25, Hebrews 10:25
The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...
Many years ago, I watched a documentary on the remarkable ministry of Mother Teresa among the poverty-stricken people of Calcutta. At one stage there was a moving exchange between her and the commenta...
Worthy goals are generally motivated by something deeper than success. In her conversations with Nobel laureates, [researcher Xiaodong D.] Lin said she has found that “they all have insatiable passion...
Success is the key they hand you when they like you. It doesn’t matter why. They just give you the key that unlocks an upscale condo, triggers the powerful purr of your new Mercedes, and accesses ...
Success offers a hoped-for future goal. Excellence provides a striven-for present standard. Success bases our worth on a comparison with others. Excellence gauges our value by measuring us against ...
My Aversion to Self-Help Books & Their Gurus but Why I Recommend This One! I am not one for “self-help” books. I know that I probably could use some more personal coaching advice, but… my habit ...
We pastors don't drive fancy cars or rake in the dough (most of us, anyway). But there is still a temptation to a skewed version of "holy success" that we need to watch out for, the idea...
I’m a college professor — I have been for almost a decade. I work reasonably hard at my job, and I think I do it fairly well. In fact, in my honest and solitary moments, when there’s no occasion false...
J.B. Phillips was a successful pastor and prolific author in the mid-twentieth century. He was a colleague and friend of C. S. Lewis’s, and it was Lewis who personally endorsed Phillips’s translation ...
In his famous 1934 campaign for the governorship of California, the author and activist Upton Sinclair took an unusual step. Before the election, he published a short book titled I, Governor of Cal...
Galatians 1:10, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 23:1-12, 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, James 4:1-10, 1 Peter 5:1-11
All of us struggle with our own desires for accomplishment and ambition. Christians especially find it difficult to discern their own worldly ambitions vs. following Jesus’ comand to seek first the ki...
Proverbs 16:20, Nehemiah 8:10, Philippians 4:4, John 15:11, Psalm 37:4, Matthew 6:33
If you observe the people around you, you’ll find most individuals follow a formula that has been subtly or not so subtly taught to them by their schools, their company, their parents, or society. Tha...
Paul give us an excellent example of what looking at people from a worldly point of view looks like in Philippians chapter 3: If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, ...