Friday, July 11, 2008

New Leadership

Have you ever noticed how they keep writing books on leadership? If you've read more then 10 good ones you'll know that they have a lot of the same things to say. Here and there you see a creative approach, but in a lot of ways they're using different phraseology or simply have a different emphasis. Have you ever noticed how it seems that the newest leadership books are the ones that finally have it all figured out? Or, how each book seems to offer THE solution?
I'm finding, like the author of Ecclesiastes, that “nothing changes under the sun.” People are still people and God is still God. He set the perfect example of TRUE leadership in His Son and that is the first place we should look when wanting to define what good leadership is. Lately I have been studying His word with an eye for leadership and I keep seeing that people are writing and rewriting the same principles in the new books that get released, but they've been in the Bible for thousands of years!
Another really cool thing is that the Bible doesn't just show us the life of the perfect leader, but also gives us glimpses of good leaders who made mistakes and of bad leaders who were redeemed in the end (as well as bad leaders that just stayed bad) and we can learn about leadership FROM THEM TOO! Isn't it great when we can learn from those that have gone before us? That's one reason I am really liking Frank Damazio's book "The Making of a Leader." In it he examines the lives of Jesus, Joshua, Samuel, Paul, Elisha, David, Timothy, etc. to find out what God has to tell us about leadership from their lives...very interesting...could it really be that there is nothing new under the sun, but that old principles are simply applied to new contexts?

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Ice

Today Sarah and I went with our friends Matt and Zach Bigwood to See Wall-E. The movie was alright, but before going in Sarah decided to buy some snacks. As she's paying for her stuff she decides to ask for some water and found out that apparently Cinema 6 can't give away a cup of water...here's the funny part, their response was: "but I can give you a cup of ice." Seriously, what am I going to do with a cup FULL of ice? Am I going to shake it until it melts and then slurp it in very small increments as I watch the movie? Or am I going to crunch on it in between handfuls of popcorn? Anyway, I decided those were bad ideas and I took the cup of ice and went and filled it with water from the faucet. Not realizing what I had done Sarah thought she would be nice and pour some of her pop into my cup. As soon as she started pouring she started spilling and thought to herself, "wow, he really did fill this cup with ice" and proceeded to take a sip. The whole time I was watching the screen and didn't notice what she was doing. As I reach for my cup she whispers "It's really watery" and I'm thinking "that's cuz it's water!" :-) Then I took a drink of this disgusting tasting 95% water/5% coke combination and realized what had happened and subsequently had to finish my cup of nasty flavored ICE water. :-) All this because they couldn't give away WATER! :-)