success on Leaders

Most leaders focus on how to succeed in a task. A far better approach is to focus on who you are.

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...

Pride, and its more serious cousin, narcissism, really shouldn’t have any place in leadership circles in the church. When I became a serious follower of Jesus at a teenager, Philippians 2 became one o...

Success is handing the baton to those who come behind us and cheering them on as they run farther and faster than we did.

"Not Against Flesh and Blood..." There is an unspoken battle that every pastor faces—a battle not against flesh and blood , nor merely against the seen forces of ministry challenges, but...

Sometimes, older relatives find it hard to grasp the success of their younger family members. Shortly after Woodrow Wilson’s victory in the 1912 election, he visited his elderly aunt. “What are you do...

Why did Moses strike the rock? He was a man of faith, whose life had been characterized by trust in God (see, for example, the description of Moses in (Heb 11:24-29). So why did he fall into unbelief ...

Success is a Long Obedience, Not a Quick Climb Let me start with this: I am predisposed to believing that the ideal church size is relatively small.  Eugene Peterson has often been quoted as saying h...

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...

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...

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. –George Bernard Shaw Problems w...

An old joke can sum up the failure nicely: It’s said that Thomas Aquinas was once brought into a great city where he was to meet the pope. He saw huge churches, clerics in ornate garb, and great armie...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith provides an important analogy about the importance of spiritually preparing ourselves for the adversity and challenges that come with su...

Since I was very young my life has been dominated by two strong voices. The first said, “Make it in the world and be sure you can do it on your own.” And the other voice said, “Whatever you do for the...

In 1878, when William Booth’s Salvation Army was beginning to make its mark, men and women from all over the world began to enlist. One man, who had once dreamed of becoming a bishop, crossed the Atla...

People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all themselves. But in fact they are invariably the benefici...

His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority with us leaves us no other choice. And his presence in heaven gives us our only hope of success.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

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 ...

Father, we confess to boasting in success and security. We have denied you rather that desire you. We have cowered when we needed to be courageous. Jesus, we long to be people who follow you, no matte...

None climbs so high as he who knows not whither he is going.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

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...

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...

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...

Writer Philip Yancey notes that toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein removed the portraits of two scientists–Newton and Maxwell–from his wall. He replaced those with portraits of Gandhi and Sch...

The pressure to succeed is greater than it has ever been—People feel that they must pursue that goal been…people feel that they must pursue that goal even if it means crawling over the bodies of cowor...

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

Teams with a vision also perform better. Abraham Maslow is well known as one of the most significant psychologists of the last century. His research into high-performing teams found that the most stri...

Harold Kushner wrote about a very bright, driven pre-med student at a very competitive college. While traveling in the East the summer before his junior year, he met a guru who said, “Don’t you see yo...