Saturday, December 22, 2012

What do the Hobbit, Sandy Hook and CCCA have in common?

We all know about The Hobbit and many of us in the USA on the East Coast know what Sandy Hook means.  CCCA, however, may not be a familiar acronym to you.  It stands for Christian Camp and Conference Center.  Bethany Birches, where I work, is a member.

So here's what the Hobbit, Sandy Hook and CCCA, especially this video, have in common: they all show us what we already know.  That life isn't safe. And furthermore, a meaningful life requires risk, challenge, struggle.

I love this section starting right here.  Take a look...

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Servant Leadership, Marketing, Jesus

Reading a post today from Tanveer Naseer's blog I found the stuff of Jesus. I love when this happens!

In this post he's talking about Peter Drucker and an ancient book ('Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War'). In the book, a father asks his son: "Tell me how best to get a man to do something that must be done..." The son replies with an answer that is inferior. 

 The father's reply:
“’Simply take care of those you lead better even than they would or could take care of themselves. Always put their needs before your own.’”

Jesus said (as recorded in Mark 10):
Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else.

Think leadership that changes things.  Think people like MLK, Ghandi, Lincoln. More recently, we have Steve Jobs who was a bit of a tyrant and was not a slave to others but was certainly a slave to his vision and arguably his customers, or at least his idea of what they would most like.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Original Sin AND BLESSING

From one if my fav blogs - Generous Matters - Excellent post:

” . . . before there was original sin, there was original blessing. And that blessing, aided and abetted by the living Spirit of God, is still a powerful force in the world. Each and everyday, we’re invited to make a choice: we will see lots of things – beautiful and terrible, wonderful and awful, good and bad, encouraging and discouraging. Which will we focus on, remember, and share with others? Which, that is, will we really see? Much hinges on our decision.”

David J. Lose, Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary and Director of the Center for Biblical Preaching, from his blog In the Meantime



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