The last 12 posts contrasted beastly and servant leadership, using scripture illustrations to show a great war wages for our allegiance. One side pulls individuals and nations toward evil and beastly leadership, characterized by lots of speaking, limited or poor…
American and Adventist leadership will be our next focus in this long series contrasting servants and beasts. As a review, the last 11 posts covered: Resisting Beastly Leadership: Flowers in the Darkest Hours contrasted Jesus’ representation of God’s leadership on…
Christmas celebrates God’s great love to the world. The gift of Bethlehem’s Morning was a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Jesus, Immanuel. God with Us. The King of the Universe stepped down to save his subjects. Jesus would win his…
We should anticipate that the “spouse” of the Lamb and the “spouse” of the Beast to reflect the approach of each of their spouses. And for the most part, they do. The Bride of the Lamb reflects the light of…
This is post 9 in a 12-part series contrasting servant and beastly leadership. This post reviews two symptoms common in beastly powers–lying and murdering. These symptoms are outward manifestations of a deeper disease process. We discuss those symptoms and the…
The Apostle John knew something about the contrast between service and lordship, love and hate, divine leadership and beastly powers. He intimately experienced both styles of leadership. First, his family of origin had “beastly” ways of relating. He and his…
For the several posts I have been using Kuronen, T. and Huhtinen, A. (2016). Un-willing is un-leading: Leadership as beastly desire. Leadership and the Humanities, 4(2), 92-107. I have used their work to explain the difference between good (lamb) and…
“They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb.” Revelation 14: God created humans with his divine image imprinted and implanted in us. And that was just…
God leads. That is my deep belief. He acts on his creation in love. That is my deep experience. God leads in more ways than we will ever fully be aware. Much of our ignorance of his ways to lead…
Daniel was sent as a servant-slave to Babylon. Daniel’s nation, Israel, had been destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar’s forces, but the real ruin started centuries earlier when they rejected God as a leader and asked Samuel to find them a king.…
Greenleaf’s 1977 classic Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness reminds us that the most important characteristic about anything—a cell phone, a boss, even a God– is service. Without good service none of them are…
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Trembling is an overwhelming, almost uncontrollable, “natural” response to deep cold, fear, emotional exhaustion, or…
Bad leaders have several ways to lead people astray but there may be only one good way to prevent that from happening. One way leaders lead us astray is when they appear “good” or “strong” but lack moral character and…
When Presidents come and go, the church needs to be the church. When Parties come and go, the church needs to be the church. When Nations rise or fall, the church needs to be the church. When Good Times lull…
I experienced the DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative this week. This training experience serves 50 urban faith based youth leaders from across the country with leadership development events and coaching. It helps them find sanity, refocus on trusting God, and create…
We can improve learning, ours and others. We can!!!! As an Adventist university teacher I feel deeply my inadequacy to teach and to learn. I get overwhelmed with how little I have learned and how limited the development of those…
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures…
Somewhere in my teens I developed a deep judgmentalism. I can’t blame my family. My parents gave us lots of freedom, were very non-judgmental and their positions as a teacher and a nurse, gave them skills of nurturing. I can’t…
The Influence of Democratic Republics on Morality Democracy has shaped the moral landscape of the west for centuries. It has led many to throw off monarchies and lose their interest in dictators. It has made the WEST suspicious when power…
If you live in the United States it is hard to avoid the vitriolic moral wars that characterize this year’s U.S. Presidential race. The police shootings of black men and the shooting of police has fueled an added moral fear…
I had one of those four and a half hour nights recently. I was running low on energy and high on bad attitude the next day. The next night was different. 7-8 hours of sleep does wonders for me. It…
We are in the middle of a 7 part series on power and authority in Christian Adventist Ethics. I first introduced power as the ability to influence and move people or things and authority as legitimate power. I argued authority…
Jesus and I are in the same line of work: redemption. At least that is the implication of Ellen White: “Education and redemption are one” (Education, 1903, p. 30). There are several ways people interpret that “oneness.” SAME: Jesus was…
This 7 part series is looking at authority in Christian ethics. My first post reviewed power, authority, and the disdain for both and the how ethics needs authority to makes its claims. Second, I used select passages in Matthew to…
Our pastor, Dwight Nelson, gave a wonderful sermon yesterday, January 30, 2016. It was on the Judge of the Judgment. For those who have heard him before, it should be no surprise that it was uplifting, biblical and well-delivered. All…
This second post in our 7 part series on Authority in Ethics uses Matthew’s gospel to discuss Jesus’ authority, the main authority in Christian ethics. The last post discussed power (ability to influence something or someone) and authority (legitimate power)…
The word “authority” does not usually breed warm feelings. People picture a prickly boss or government official rigidly applying a law or abusing power. Most fear freedoms will be taken away and rights violated when the “trump” card of authority…
A lot of people fear divine judgment. It is because they have a distorted view of God and what He can do on the way to and through judgment by his work of redemption. There is no option to avoiding…
Our university department trains leaders. We mentor leaders who face difficult and contentious conflict and have to make tough decisions. We have to train them to confront but also to find safe places to duck into. A safe place gives…
Yesterday, I heard a prompt from the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t on a major issue but it was wise advice that if received and heeded my day would have gone better. By the end of the day, I wished the…