The gift of opposition

John Ortberg has long been a fave writer and teacher. Great wit. Here's a short article at CT that talks about opposition in churches.

I especially love the "deacons vote for your speedy recovery 13-12" comment...

Jesus--the ultimate human?

There are broadly speaking 2 ways we tend to look at Jesus of Nazareth. There are those that tend to see him as Savior, and pretty exclusively speaking to the theological and moral issues of our day. In my estimation this is the dominant view in American Evangelicalism, and maybe in Christendom as a whole.

A second, lesser-held view is the idea that Jesus, as the God-man, is the ultimate human. He would have/could have been the the best at whatever he did. As my friend Rick Archer says, if Jesus had been an architect he would have been the greatest architect that ever lived. I like this theory, although I can see some obvious shortcomings. Jesus almost assuredly could not have been the best professional basketball player and the best horse jockey. At least not in the same incarnation.

But for me it brought up this question recently: what kind of politician would Jesus have been? More specifically, what would Jesus' foreign policy be like? There's been a lot of talk about foreign policy in our current presidential election, and given the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rightly so. Our standing in the world seems to have diminished recently.

Maybe a more pertinent question, since Jesus isn't president of the US, is what would he have our foreign policy be? How would the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth be applied to real world situations like foreign policy?

This is a difficult topic. It is what differentiates following the lifestyle of Jesus of Nazareth vs. letting Jesus save us and guide us in matters of personal morality, but not so much seeing his teaching and lifestyle impact societal, systemic thinking and acting.

At least anecdotally, you find more pacifists among New Testament scholars than other theological groups, purportedly because studying and focusing on Jesus' life leads to a "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies" pacificistic view. But I'm not sure. Jesus wasn't a pure pacifist--just ask the money-changers in the temple. And there's no way Jesus was some milquetoast, as pacifists are often viewed. But what would he have done if he was president of the US on 9/11? Of course you could make the case that if we were the kind of society that would elect Jesus to office maybe 9/11 wouldn't have happened in the first place. But that begs the question. How would Jesus lead in a post-9/11 world?

How do the teachings and doings of Jesus of Nazareth impact systemic issues like foreign policy?

God called, he wants his church back...

Another prophetic piece from my friend Keith Giles...

http://subunderground.blogspot.com/2008/05/god-called-he-wants-his-church-back.html

Skimmers

"We are on our way to becoming a nation of 'skimmers,' living off the risks of previous generations and constantly taking from the top without adding significantly to its essence. Everything we enjoy as part of our advanced civilization, including the discovery, exploration, and development of our country, came about because previous generations made adventure more important than safety."

Edwin Friedman, A FAILURE OF NERVE

I highly recommend this book. Friedman takes an honest assessment of what is required for true leadership and finds us lacking. More to come.

The emergence of diverse leadership

I was on the Strong Coffee blog this morning and responded to a comment about the sometimes competing values of excellence and diversity in our world. This particular situation was in response to struggles and challenges in denominational life for Texas Baptists. In his original post, Ken made this comment:

Suffice it to say that when excellence is supplanted by the pursuit of diversity, the organization will have some people in it who are simply not up to the task. It is not that they are bad people. It is that they are in over their heads. I know some of you will think I am racist, but I am just being honest as to what I have observed.

I definitely don't think Ken is a racist. But his comment made me think--is excellence a more important value than diversity? They don't have to be in competition with each other, but the reality is that sometimes they are in the short term. Over the long haul of generations, I do not believe that pursuing diversity is detrimental to excellence in organizational leadership. Here's part of what I wrote:

Second, while I don't believe what you said was racist, I will say that I believe the value of excellence does not trump the value of diversity. Yes, in the short term there will be OTJ training issues for those who have not had the kinds of experience in the worlds of church and organizational leadership that maybe a "more qualified" person might have. But I do believe that as a convention we must surf on the wave of diversity and not be trying to swim catch-up from behind. If the environmental ethos of the last half of the 20th century-both inside and outside the church-constructed obstacles that did not allow non-white Texas Baptists leaders to emerge and grow, we should not be surprised if there appears to be a dearth of "more qualified" leaders in those communities. We cannot spend several generations prohibiting ethnically diverse believers access to the experiences that lead to the natural emergence of leadership and then decry the apparent lack of experienced, qualified leaders to serve on the convention staff. The BGCT EB staff should be proactive in identifying, recruiting, hiring and training for convention leadership members of those communities who may not yet have all the experience to be "up to the task" but are emerging leaders and influencers in their communities. Yes, this may mean that someone gets in over their heads. But I have seen in my young life plenty of successful white ministers that have become ineffective as they moved into denominational or parachurch leadership roles. The Peter Principle knows no ethnicity.

Now let me state it here, I think there are some awesome leaders in the BGCT staff from all ethnic communities. I think that there is often only the appearance of a lack of quality because of the differing cultural values among diverse people. There are hundreds of illustrations of this, but perhaps none more poignant than the views of time vs. people in various cultures. Those who value time over people will make certain decisions that those who value people over time will not. This is NOT a matter of excellence, it is a matter of value, and the case can be made for either to be right or wrong, but usually they are just different. Diversity demands a gracious spirit to those kinds of differences, especially on the part of the dominant culture.

I'm not a proponent of hiring quotas, but I believe diversity is just as important as excellence when it comes to corporate values.

Thoughts on leadership at my church...

My church has started a leader's blog, and I put my first post today. In response to a question about the difference between discipleship, mentoring, and leadership...here's what I wrote:

There is a real sense in which your non-Walgreens [who was saying his most sought-after quality in people he hired was clarity] guy was whining for a world that is gone, and may not come back. Clarity--the world in the 19th and 20th centuries really believed that science would provide clarity to the mysteries of the world, only to have deeper mysteries revealed. Unfortunately, the modern church offered a reactive kind of "clarity" that was, as John Walters hints, unauthentic. I was there. When I was 22, there were 4,036 things that I KNEW clearly to be black and white. I spoke about them on TV, I debated them on the student union grounds. I was full of clarity. And now, almost 20 years later, I think I was wrong on many (most?) of those issues.

I now have about 4 or 5 issues that are non-negotiables for me (see, I don't even have clarity on how many there are!), issues that I will stake my life on and live or die by. I personally believe that discipleship happens away from the center of clarity and at the margins of life, where real life challenges faith and faith sometimes falters, sometimes steps up and responds, knowing God loves regardless of the circumstances.

Discipling, mentoring, leading--like most other words in our culture, they change in meaning with the times in which we live. They have meanings that we pour into them depending on the circumstances we're in. 10 years ago leadership was all the buzz, and, quite frankly, both inside and outside the church we hyped everyone up into thinking they were or could be leaders.
Unspoken common sense said "Uh, not all at the same time you can't."

Our lives have both intentional and unintentional impacts on those around us. To me, mentoring has an intentionality about it at least on the part of the mentor. Disciple, in its NT form, is an apprentice, something that our 21st century world has no clue about. We no longer apprentice ourselves to other people to learn a trade--that left with the onset of the industrial revolution and the rise of the modern university. Leadership is whatever Jim Collins, Tom Peters, Bill Hybels, John Maxwell or Bono happens to say it is at the moment.

The real truth for me is the management and mystery of our relationships. Management because there can be a "sweet science" to the intentionality we take to impact the world through relationships. Mystery because the reality is often that we are the proverbial blind beggars who have only caught a brief flash of the light and nourishment of God and we're groping in that direction, hoping we're moving rightly and not alone.