ThinkingInColor

This concludes my book  Learning and Leading in Ministry.  You may read the full manuscript by scrolling to the the first entry in this category.

I wrote portions of this book in the captivating city of Prague , Czech Republic . Prague was home to the reformer, John Huss, who refused to recant his beliefs and was burned at the stake. His legendary Bethlehem Chapel in which he preached from 1389 to 1414 still stands as a moving monument to one of the great learners of history. As I visited the building, I could not help but notice that its simple architecture is remarkable in its contrast from the gaudiness that characterizes most of the churches built in medieval Europe . Yet, Huss was known to attract nearly three thousand people in a single service to hear his preaching, including the wife of Bohemian King Wenceslas IV, Sofia who regularly took her place in his audiences.

I call Huss a learner because he took most of his inspiration from another champion of the reformation, Englishman John Wycliffe. Upon extensively studying Wycliffe’s doctrines, Huss began preaching with great boldness against the prevailing dogmas of the Papacy. Although he was executed for his stand, his influence was not stamped out. People who called themselves Hussites, and other followers known as Taborites continued in Huss’s teachings. The Taborites founded the Bohemian Brethren, which later gave rise to the group known for its missionary zeal more than any people who have ever lived, the Moravians. This group set up a prayer vigil, praying for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for one hundred years! According to their writings, they experienced the gift of the Holy Ghost, similar to the event recorded in the Book of Acts. The Moravians came to the new world and established a mission to the native Americans here in Ohio . This fascinating history confirms the power of learning. May discipleship and learning never stop among believers.

Think It Through

Learn outcomes.

In 1884, coal miners struck the New Straitsville Mining Company over wages. In their protest, a small group of union members loaded coal cars with timber, soaked the wood with flammable oil, set the cars on fire and pushed them into a mine owned by the southeastern Ohio company. With unmined coal as fuel, fire quickly spread throughout the mine seams and shafts. Several days passed before it was discovered. By that time, it was too late. The mines had to be closed. The fire started by disgruntled workers still burns underground to this day. Some estimate the extent of the fire covers over two hundred square miles. Tales are told that nearby residents have boiled coffee and fried eggs on rocks above the mines. Plumes of smoke may still be seen on occasion. The fire stands as a testimony to the rash acts of the miners. Failure to think through the consequences of a hasty action almost always leads to disaster.

What were these miners thinking? Most likely they weren’t. Cerebration is painful. John F. Kennedy said, “ Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” We prefer action over thought. In fact, a considerable bias exists in our culture against people who think versus people who act. Because it is antithetical to emotion, we see thinking as an aggravation, an unnecessary delay, a mental hassle that forces us to suspend gratification until we suffer though a long and tedious ordeal of thought. In the case of the miners, raw anger evidently motivated them to rush past every mental checkpoint and do something that would show the bosses and the world how mad they were.

Most of the time, we think of leaders as those who act. We need a more refined concept, however, that differentiates between leaders who think before they act and leaders who act before they think. One can only speculate how many crimes, how many wars, how many tragedies, how many failures, how many broken relationships would never have happened had the perpetrators thought only a little bit more about what they were doing before they acted. The world would be a different place.

Critical thinking consists of three mental activities: reasoning, decision-making and problem solving. It forces the thinker to see more than one side of an issue, to consider new evidence that may debunk pet ideas, to reason from logic rather than passion, to support statements with evidence, and so on. Critical thinking leaves the comfort of hunches, memorized solutions, mindless gambling and lazy assumptions to wrestle with unfamiliar concepts and inconvenient data. My mind is made up; don’t bother me with the facts.

How do you know when you have thought something through? You will know when you understand how your action will change you as a person. You will know when you juxtapose the good that will be done against the harm that will come. You will know when you truly calculate the costs of the action you are about to take. You will know when you measure the losses against the gains. You will know when you eliminate your personal feelings, your prejudices and your own willfulness from the equation.

John Maynard Keynes, renowned economist, was once accused of being inconsistent. He replied, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Most of us stick stubbornly with our opinions, even when they prove to be wrong. Your mind is as much a gift of God as your heart and soul. Stay humble, stay faithful, but think before you act. Your life’s outcomes will depend upon either your willingness or your refusal to think.

Model Moral Leadership

Learn righteousness.

The names and images cycled countless times through the news media: Kenneth Lay of Enron Corporation, Jodie Rich and Brad Keeling of One.Tel, Ltd., John Tyson of Tyson Foods, Gary Winnick of Global Crossing, and many, many more. Scandal, corruption and fraud blackened the eyes of a number of giant corporations at the end of the last century and into 2000. Economists and financial gurus can measure the immediate losses to partners and customers of these businesses, but no one can calculate the loss of good will and the shaken faith in America ’s financial community. Lots of theories and a few facts explain how these tragedies happened, but the single, most troubling thought that emerges from the mess is the immoral character of the leaders involved.

Do leaders live by a different moral standard than their followers? Yes. And no…well, yes. Leaders must be extremely conscious of appearances, of setting precedents and of representing their organization to the world. In that sense, the world measures them by a higher standard. Personally, they must live by the same code of morality as the rest of the people, with the exception that their lives will be much more visible than the average person. So, they can’t hide among the stuff as easily as others. Is it fair? Maybe not, but if fairness is an important question to a leader, he or she needs to get out of leadership. Corporate leaders who have been tainted by scandal have hurt us all.

Leaders, by virtue of their position, model the moral standard for the organization. The character of the corporate body rides on their shoulders. Taken together, their decisions, initiatives, adjudications, speechmaking, vision casting and approvals form the philosophy for everyone in the group. When the President of the United States walks onto the world’s stage, every citizen of this country stands in judgment. Lawrence Wharton, of www.leader-values.com, believes that the essence of leadership is moral behavior. Leaders exert their optimum force of influence through their character rather than through their knowledge. This is not to minimize the acquisition of knowledge, but it is to state that, in the final analysis, knowledge, strategy and all the components of running a business or pastoring a church will be a function of moral leadership.

This goes beyond the typical  warning to snoop on employee emails and check for padded expense accounts. Corporate motives and general strategies descending from the highest levels must continually be reviewed against the backdrop of morality. Why? Because, deviant ideas have a way of working themselves into the business processes with an innocent smile. Does the organization value winning over all other considerations? Does exploitation of either customers or employees factor into strategic decisions? Does the group look to the bottom line first before weighing the cost of decision in personal lives and the life of the community. All decisions, especially the hard ones, must be defensible in the light of moral principles. If not, a short term “win” can turn into a long term loss.

You cannot hide behind ignorance if you opt for immoral choices. Even the most complex decisions boil down to doing right things for right reasons. Unrighteous practices come back to haunt you. Righteous practices come back to bless you.

Pathway Dynamics

Learn adaptation

I am always surprised that people are so surprised about the things that happen to them in life. Surprise happens when what you think is going to happen doesn’t. God (it would seem) aggravates people on a daily basis with a pathway filled with dips and turns, rockslides and icy patches, potholes and one-lane bridges, all of it simultaneously tantalizing and frustrating. Motor vehicles come equipped with shock absorbers because any attempt to force the pathway to conform to the driver’s expectations meets with bone-jarring jolts. The pathway plays no favorites. It’s up to you to adapt to the pathway, not the other way around.

The pathway to a growing life is a dynamic, not a static experience. Yes, truth remains the same and principles stay constant, but changing circumstances and too many variables along the way insure that you will never really figure it all out. The best leaders practice something Emmett Murphy calls “strategic humility.” In Leadership IQ, he says, “What distinguishes such well-known figures such as Sam Walton and Andy Grove from others is their recognition of the truth in Igor Stravinsky’s words: ‘The awareness of one’s ignorance grows exponentially with one’s knowledge.’” The constantly changing environment demands that we stay humble and in a learning mode.

Although I had no idea what they were doing to me when I was a young student, I found out that scope and sequence described the pathway to learning complex subjects. For example, I learned a little of American history in the fifth grade, a little more in the eight grade and in grade eleven, it was covered comprehensively. Mathematics and the sciences get similar treatment. Same stuff, but much more in depth. Why is it done this way? Because secondary education students have cognitive skills to process information and grapple with issues that primary students have not yet acquired. It only comes with time. So, just because you’ve had American history once doesn’t mean you know what it’s all about. And, just because you’ve encountered a problem or two in life doesn’t mean you know everything there is to know about the final destination or the process to arrive there intact.

It doesn’t matter how old you are or how far you’ve come, you have not been this way before. Your experience has only qualified you to understand yourself to some degree; it has not licensed you to manage your pathway. As you negotiate the turns, curves and obstacles that constitute your pathway, you will change. Whether you move on enlightened or angered, helped or hurt, wiser or more puzzled, dead or alive depends upon how you react. Any reaction that suspends the learning experience, like anger or despair, brings your journey to a halt.  You will not progress until you get these reactions in hand, overcome them and go on.  And, when the road that unfolds before you meets the distant horizon, you cannot be sure which way it goes from there.  You can be sure of only one thing:  another learning opportunity awaits you.

M. Scott Peck begins his The Road Less Traveled with these profound words, “Life is difficult.” It will never get easy.  Your guiding light must remain your faith in God and your commitment to lead your people into their best future.

Stay On the Hook

Learn self-analysis.

Your intentions were honorable from the get go. You had no malice, no nastiness, no thought of things turning out bad. It seems grossly unfair for you to be faulted when you were only trying to do your best. “No good deed goes unpunished.” The old adage careens through your mind. Of course, with slits for eyes and lips curled down with disgust, others take exception to your view. They blame you.

The human spirit recoils from taking blame. It’s social suicide, for one thing, not to mention the hit we take on money, job, possessions or career. But pride is the biggest reason that we loathe it. We despise looking bad in the eyes of others. And so, we do whatever we can to avoid it. If we can get others to share the blame, or if we can shift it all onto someone else, we relieve ourselves of the denigration that blame brings. In fact, the temptation to blame others is so strong that for many people, it is an instinctive first response to a problem. What is wrong with them? Can’t they do anything right? I get so tired of these clueless people I have to deal with. If we can’t reasonably blame other people, we resort to equipment failure, inclement weather, poor economic conditions, our medication or the ridiculous rules that govern the whole process. Anything. Anyone but us. Anyway, it’s not my fault.

But don’t take yourself off the hook too soon. Blaming someone else can become the worst thing you can do to or for yourself. Psychologist Thayer White calls it the “blaming others disease.” He says, “[Blaming others] is one of the major neurotic (i.e., skewed) reasons why we join groups. They often provide refuge for us with like-minded people who will agree with us that our problems are out there instead of within. If there any perceived truth in our blame of a particular target, then we are often quick to place all the blame on that target. This excuses us from looking at ourselves. How convenient!”

Blaming others suspends the vital process of self-analysis. It’s like an indulgent parent always bailing the child out of trouble. The kid never learns anything except that doting Mom or Dad will take the consequences when he or she gets into trouble. When you successfully shift blame to others, you forfeit the opportunity to examine your self, and you doom yourself to perpetual jerkdom. Yeah, it’s a word. At least it is now.

Should you take the blame for everything bad that happens? Of course not. That’s a psychological horse of a different color. But when something does go wrong, you must always take an objective look at yourself as the first order of business. Did you do something, say something or make a decision that caused the problem? Did you or do you operate out of a wrong set of assumptions? Did you fail to do your homework? Did you misread, misunderstand or misapply a rule? No oversight is too small to dismiss as insignificant.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Shouldering the proper blame and making the subsequent changes to correct the problem will always be the best way to go. Stay on the hook until you do.