Week 47 Leaders of History

Week 47 and it sees me share some insight that I think is timely.

The whole name of this blog reflects an aspect of leadership that I think is core. Leaders discern the times. We live interpreting reality by keeping ourselves understanding how reality flexes and flows. We are students of tomorrow as well as students of today. We are map readers. We are connectors to history, ensuring we move forward not jettisoning the past. We are pioneers.

This causes me to constantly read books that examine culture.

Enter book number 129 on this topic (approximately!).

Christ Among The Dragons @ James Emery White.

As a church that is majorly involved in some global partnership and entering into the minefield of justice issues (courtesy of an excellent organization called International Justice Mission ....listen in on Sunday November 28 @ Redeemer's Church as we hear first hand from an IJM staffer) there was a line that White wrote that jumped out the page and drew me into reading his book:

Younger evangelicals are straying from core ideas, such as biblical inerrancy, core issues, such as opposition to abortion or gay marriage, and core alliances, such as the National Association of Evangelicals. Simply put, there is no longer a shared core. Truth is increasingly accepted as relative, an emphasis on social justice is rapidly supplanting previously focused concerns on social morality, relational and missional networks are becoming more generational in makeup, and older models of church and parachurch are being replaced with emerging communities that tend to defy traditional ecclesiastical standards.

Some of what White writes is exactly us - especially his comments on social justice over social morality.

White's book then goes on to examine four arenas that used to bring Evangelicals together and now threaten to drive us apart.

Personally I don't fly the Evangelical banner as as high or importantly as White. Not that i reject it, I just hold it in a lower priority and prefer the term Orthodox to Evangelical. (This could be another blog for another time.) But the four arenas are worthy of exploring.

1. The nature of truth and orthodoxy.
2. Cultural engagement and the evangelistic enterprise.
3. Christian community and civility.
4. Identity and character of the church.

White suggests these four arenas will unify our Christian witness and (at the core of his thesis) determine whether we are renewing ourselves for a new generation or falling from great to good, or even worse.

Leaders should read this book, and these kinds of books. We need to remain Men and Women of Issachar.

Week 45 - and the leadership scandal of global food aid.

Week 45 ....and every time someone walks into my office they normally comment on the stack of books sitting on my desk. Partly I use the books to hide behind. I can position myself behind the books so that anyone walking into the front office trying to catch my eye ...I can avoid. Not very 'pastor like' but in many ways what I do is not the classic role of 'pastor' that was around when they designed our church offices and made sure that the 'pastors' office was right at the front door!

But its not primarily used to hide behind - they are the tools of my trade.

The tools help me unpack biblical exegesis; they help me find illustrations and analogies to help me preach in a more creative way; they keep my theological antenna hot as I process new theological thinking; they guide me on procedures and methods when I'm struggling to work through something.

.......but the best use of the tools is when I read something that disturbs me.

It's how I'm wired, and I think its how most leaders are wired. Conforming to common thought is boring, exploring new thought, expanding our minds to new ideas is what fuels us, energizes us.

If I go a week without a new thought ...... I begin to shrivel up, I get cranky, I double my reading for the next week ....or, I order a really theologically edgy book!

So it arrived last week and I began to read it. The book is called ENOUGH: Why The World's Poorest Starve In An Age Of Plenty @ Roger Thurow & Scott Kilman.

This one got me going .....one of these books that I couldn't put down.

Did you know that during the 2003 Ethiopian famine - the one that featured Band Aid etc - the US shipped millions of tonnes of grain to Ethiopia ....while homegrown Ethiopian grain rotted in storage sheds in Ethiopia.

The bottom line fact of much of US Food Aid is that the aid is designed more to see the US prosper than actually help the struggling country its shipped to.

The powerful US farm lobby have enforced a 1949 congressional rule that US food aid must be grown in the US and they can't buy locally grown crops. This ensures that American farmers receive annual payments to keep growing bigger than needed harvests and have a route "to get rid of their excess commodities". But the foreign countries in crisis most often need cash to help their farmers farm and their farming in turn fuels the countries economy which in turn moves it out from requiring aid.

The Food Aid bill ....keeps countries needing aid and keeps US farmers growing more crops than they need both depressing prices (hurting smaller farmers) and relying on aid payments which kills indigenous small foreign farmers.

Basically, while the US's generosity has grown (half of all international food aid is provided by the US) - it has had as much to do with self-interest than global benefactoring.
Interesting statistic - the size of American generosity is tied directly to conditions on the American farm, not the Ethiopian, Kenyan, Malian or any other struggling nations farms.

Many times, in multiple situations our helping actually hurts.
Many times, in multiple situations .....American farmers, and Midwest economic prosperity, need hungry Africans!

Go on read the book - well written, carefully documented and trying to guide us to a better solution. If you read that one, another helpful book on helping is entitled When Helping Hurts: How To Alleviate poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself @ Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert ...a required read for any people in our church travelling with us to our global partners.

But this whole strange, disturbing equation got me thinking of leadership.

How often do we as leaders make decision about the whole but really only to impact the leader?

How often do we use decisions to better ourselves and not better the church or organization?

How often do we need a crisis or a failure to always be there to necessitate our existence? Do we ever generate one to justify our leading?

The book was a stimulating read about why people are still going hungry in a world where there is more than enough food.

The book stimulated thoughts about cycles of dependency that we create to warrant our leadership roles.