“So, do you like it?” she asked cautiously, expecting me to offer a less-than-approving comment.
“Like it? I love it!”
“Well, it isn’t the nicest house in town, but we worked to get it ready for you the best we could.”
I couldn’t say enough to assure the wife of the church trustee that this three-bedroom parsonage was absolutely wonderful. Compared to the apartments and, more recently, the 60-foot trailer we’d lived in during the past five years, this was a mansion!
I love avocados. They add a nice touch to a ham sandwich. And without them we wouldn’t enjoy guacamole with our chips. But avocados also provide a good metaphor for a healthy leader. Every leader needs a strong inner spiritual and emotional core, what I call a healthy spiritual immune system that helps us ward off leadership viruses like people pleasing, margin-less leadership, and inflexibility. Here’s how an avocado pictures a healthy leader.
In 1993 Tina Turner released the song “What’s Love Got to Do with It” as part of the launch of her biographical movie of the same title. The premise of the song is that “love”, the emotion, has nothing to do with the relationship she is singing about. In fact, love is pointed as an “old-fashioned notion.” Thankfully we know that love has a lot to do with relationships and it’s often the presence of pure, unconditional love that many people aspire to experience. Love remains a powerful and influential force in the world today and this includes the workplace. This becam
The night I found out Julie (real name withheld) had moved in with her boyfriend, my mind reeled in unbelief. Julie had been a regular in my women’s Bible study group and on our college leadership team. I couldn’t believe she had become a ‘lost lamb.’
Lost lambs are people we’ve been discipling or mentoring who choose to live in sin and walk away from the Lord. Here are some principles I’ve learned that might help you, too, deal with lost lambs.
I’ve learned to love God’s Word. I became a follower of Jesus a long time ago but often found the Old Testament to be somewhat challenging to read, especially the pronunciation of the Hebrew names. I found that I would skip over them or just skip certain books like Numbers to avoid them. God challenged my thinking about that several years ago. So, I started reading the Bible using an app that would also read to me as I read along. I concluded that if God put my name in His Book to tell a story, then I would want others to read my name and story.
When you’re hearing a new concept do you dig into what you don’t quite understand? Or do you let the fuzzy bits just pass by?
Sure, it’s not always possible to understand everything immediately when you’re learning to lead like Jesus. But it’s important to continue digging.
Dig until you get it.
Why? Because what you learn from digging might just change your view on everything in life.
Here’s a personal experience that reinforces this understanding.
We are bombarded with daily messages about having and using the right make-up, bath soap, toothpaste, or mouthwash. We are, expected to have the right smell, whiter teeth, and especially the right image. The internet, television, radio and print media tell us we should weigh less, be leaner and fitter, have a certain size or ideal body type.
Hmmm… “Crafted with thoughtful ingredients.” I pictured a group of people sitting around a kitchen table or hovering over a stove, testing one ingredient after another. They nod in agreement or argue about choosing blueberries over strawberries to make the perfect snack bar. Well, maybe not. But I know the company wanted me to believe they had put thought into its product, even if the package label was a bit over the top.
One of the many great blessings in my life was the opportunity to lead a chain of weekly newspapers at the tender age of 27.
It was a great blessing for me, but probably not so much for many of my colleagues on the payroll. They had the mixed blessing of being on hand to see me grow – struggle upon struggle – as a leader. Sometimes the hard lessons landed hardest on me. Sometimes they landed harder on my colleagues.
We’d like to share a special blog with you today that comes from a note our Lead Like Jesus office received from our South African National Representative, Jayson Naidoo. Jayson and his wife Trevonica have facilitated the Lead Like Jesus Encounter training nearly 50 times over the last 4 years. We hope you’ll enjoy reading where their journey began and the difference it has made in their lives.
