The Leader Who Prays

I recently wrote an assignment for a seminary class on pastors and prayer. The book I refer to is The New Guidebook for Pastors. Here is snippets of the paper that I thought would apply for those in leadership.  Read. Respond. Resound. Have you ever noticed a newborn baby? Have you thought about all the ways the parents of that baby act/react to every need of the infant? The baby without the parents is helpless. The baby wakes, the parents are there, the baby cries and the parents provide. The baby is hungry the parents feed. And the baby is dirty, the parents wash. The baby represents the believer. We like the baby are dependent on a heavenly Father. He provides for our daily needs. Without God, we are helpless. Jonathan Edwards said, “Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life.” The authors expressed two venues of prayer which are personally and collectively.[i] The authors provided 2 passages of Scripture to support their writing, however I have provided to passages that I feel better illustrates the importance of personal and collective prayer. Personal: Matthew 6:9-15, "This, then, is how you should pray: " 'Our Father in ...

If Leaders are Learners… Failure vs. Success

Hey everyone, this post is called Failure vs. Success. This morning a came across a video from an ad agency ceo and he says something interesting about his company and how they deal with failure. Watch this: Most of us have grown up hearing that we learn from our mistakes/failures and in-turn become better people or leaders. Alex Bogusky, says that his company doesn't even acknowledge failure. Think about it, what if your boss, or if you are the boss, goes around and simply erases all failures from the company walls, files and memories. To me, this sounds like a GREAT boss to work for! However, if my boss never allows me to understand my failure, and just erases them all, what have I learned? What will I learn? So the QUESTION is: Do YOU believe that leaders learn from success or failure? (LEAVE A COMMENT) To me this topic is oozing with spiritual meaning. Do we, as believers, know someone who takes our failures away? Do we have a book that gives of understanding of ...

If Leaders are Learners… Traits

…then what are they EXPECTED to LEARN?  This is the second post in the series, if leaders are learners... In this series I will explore the art of leadership and what exactly leaders need to know to be effective. I will examine common practices of leaders, a few traits of leaders and what happens when a leader stops learning. In this post, I will be defining leadership from a Christian perspective, feel free to join the conversation and post your experiences in leadership in the comments section. Before we begin with traits of a leader, we must define what we call, traits. There are three broad types of traits, Biological, Cultural and Physical. Biological traits, involve genes and characteristics of an organism. Cultural traits encompass the characteristics of a culture group. And Physical traits are specific to an object and its characteristics. There are many other types of traits, however we will look at Physical traits. So, if physical traits pertain to ones characteristics, then what characteristics are needed to be an effective leader? When talking about leadership, the question that always arises is when is one a leader? To put it a different way; Does one learn to become a leader? ...