These are quotes which stood out to me, possibly for use in a sermon someday. Their presence here does not mean I agree with them, it merely shows that I might want to reference them later. The default view is five random selections. Use the tag list on the right to view all quotes relevant to that theme.
ON SELFISHNESS & AMERICAN CULTURE "To bring [the Indian] out of savagery into citizenship… we need to awaken in him wants. Discontent with the teepee and the Indian camp is needed to get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers--and trousers with a pocket in them, and with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars!"- Dr. Merrill E. Gates (president of Amherst College) "The head chief [of the Cherokees] told us that there was not a family in that whole nation that had not a home of its own. There was not a pauper in the nation, and the nation did not owe a dollar… Yet the defect of the system was apparent. They [the Indians] have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common… There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Until this people give up their lands and divide them among their citizens so that each can own theland he cultivates, they will not make much progress." - Senator Dawes (author of the Dawes Act, which forcibly divided Indian lands formerly held communally) Selfishness is the root of civilization? Amazing what people reveal about their values in such casual statements. The above would be funny were it not for the whole sad history of government dealings with the Native Americans. The quotes are from "In the Absence of the Sacred" by Jerry Mander (Sierra Club, 1991).
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher entered Plymouth Church one Sunday and found several letters awaiting him. He opened one and found it contained the single word, "Fool." Quietly and with becoming seriousness he shared the letter with the congregation and announced: "I have known many an instance of a person writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of someone signing his name and forgetting to write the letter."
A decade ago, I became involved in leadership development within my denomination. I soon learned, however, the mental models, language, and metaphors I acquired, as an Air Force officer and corporate CEO were inadequate. An aggressive reading program focused on church leadership was disappointing; most materials spoke to a culture like my own. The good resources I found were little known and not readily available to most church leaders. I opened a "bookstore" to pull together resources available on leadership and offer them at a discount. My quest touched a need of many. Today, the market place is both rich and saturated; demand is strong, and church leaders have good access. Good books abound, but there are also a lot of "Ho-hummers." A lot of books promise "how to" answers. While potentially useful in the short term, such books tend to reinforce dependence on "authority", diminish the deeper learning that results from the hard work of personal discovery and experience, and postpone or cover over the real change that needs to occur. My denomination is littered with congregations that have sought to embrace any number of dynamic church leaders' materials and failed because their situation, personality, gifts, and call are not the same. Kurt Lewin said, "There is nothing quite as practical as a good theory." I believe that. In this series I will share with you the books that have provided me "good theory" and concepts, models, language and metaphor, and practical guidance and those who have simply spoken to my soul. Robert Greenleaf wrote Servant Leadership, A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness or see Seeker and Servant, Reflections on Religious Leadership, the Private Writings of Robert K. Greenleaf, by Fraker and Spears. I believe every church leader should read one or both of these books. Neither are religious both are spiritual. But both bring the Biblical image of servant as leader into our contemporary world. The transformative power of Greenleaf's thought is in the premise that leadership is best understood and evaluated by looking at the served and asking the question: "Are the served becoming healthier, freer, wiser, more autonomous and more likely themselves to become servant leaders." and the paradox of "servant" and "leader". Like many words in the leadership lexicon of today, "servant" is misused and over used. In Greenleaf's view a "servant" is not weak or powerless but power-filled. Control and conformity give way to growth and development. To understand Greenleaf I believe that you must also understand the Situational Leadership model Paul Hersey, and Ken Blanchard offer in Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources (5th Ed) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988. Servant leadership is not a style; it is a commitment to growth and development of people recognizing that people, their social context, their task at hand, and their "leadership" all differ. What works in one place will likely not work in another. Control and conformity may be appropriate but always as a means and never as an end. The key is continually asking the Greenleaf question and involving all the gifts present in responding to the answer. To me this is the essence of the model Jesus offered us. In The Name of Jesus by the late Henri Nouwen has been equally important because it helped me spiritualize Greenleaf in ways that spoke to my soul. Greenleaf's writings have also encouraged me to see the corporation, which is so fundamental to the social and economic fabric of our society, as a legitimate and necessary goal for Christian outreach. Historically, we in the church have defined ourselves against the state and society, yet today it is the corporate form that dominates our lives. Most churches seem uncomfortable dealing with corporations because it does not fit into the domains of private faith or public faith. Few writers have ventured into this arena (I will have more to say later on the need for churches to see themselves with new eyes). Greenleaf suggests that if we as a society are to care for people in such a way that they are becoming healthier, freer, wiser, more autonomous and more likely themselves to become servant leaders then we will have to do so through the various corporate (institutional) forms in our society. If such changes are to become reality, then we must begin somewhere. Greenleaf singles out colleges and universities, foundations, and churches as the places to start. Seminaries have an especially important role to play. One of my greatest challenges is to find the language and metaphors to clarify, assimilate, and communicate the ideas and concepts that fill my life. Models help me make associations and organize my thinking in coherent ways. The Hersey-Blanchard model for situational leadership has been foundational. Another important model is the Technical- Adaptive Work model Dr. Ronald Heifetz offers in Leadership Without Easy Answers, Harvard University Press 1994. Heifetz writes of senior government leaders and ordinary people facing major decisions. Sometimes their work is "Technical" where the problem is understood, the solution and implementation clear, and the responsibility to often; however, "Adaptive Work" is required. "Adaptive Work" is undefined work where continuous learning is required to understand what is happening, solutions and implementation strategies are unknown, and is it not clear who is responsible. "Adaptive" work is hard work. It requires leadership, it requires a commitment to seeing the potential in people and seeking to develop it, it requires creativity, and it requires a willingness to honor difference in how we think and the commitment to enter into dialogue. The leadership challenge is to connect the source of meaning in people's lives with the challenge they face. While leadership is not limited to people with authority, authority is an invaluable asset in helping an organization work adaptively. Authority enables you to manage the environment, direct attention, define reality, manage information, frame issues, choose the decision making process, and influence the presence and essence of conflict and whether and how to unleash it. The absence of authority allows you to deviate from the norms of authoritative decision-making and focus on specific issues. People who exercise leadership from the "foot of the table" lead across the boundaries of formal organization in networks. Without authority you can shape the stimulus but not the responses, spark debate but not orchestrate it, have a front-line feel but not the broad sense of the multiplicity of challenges. Leadership must draw attention to an issue not embody it. Just as leading with authority requires protecting the voices of dissent; the leader without authority needs to listen. Over the years I have worked from both the head of the table and the foot and along the sides. Heifetz's discussion of leadership with and without authority has been a powerful insight for establishing expectations and boundaries. I find the root of the difficulty many organizations have in responding to change is that they do not differentiate among the type challenges they face and wind up attempting to apply technical solutions to adaptive work and vice versa. Click here for the books mentioned in this article: Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness by Robert K. Greenleaf http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0809125277/leadershipnetworA Seeker and Servant: Reflections on Religious Leadership: The Private Writings of Robert K. Greenleaf Robert K. Greenleaf,Larry C. Spears (Editor),Anne T. Fraker (Editor) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0787902292/leadershipnetworA In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri J. M. Nouwen http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0824512596/leadershipnetworA Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald A. Heifetz http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674518586/leadershipnetworA
You heard what happened to the banana, didn't you? When the banana left the bunch it got skinned.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66364,00.html You Can't Ignore My Wrath By Kristen Philipkoski 11:07 AM Jan. 24, 2005 PT You can try, but you can't ignore that angry voice yelling at you, or anyone else. Whether it's your dad, your girlfriend, your sister or a stranger, you must pay attention. Human brains are just wired that way, according to a study published in the Jan. 23 issue of Nature Neuroscience. Wrathful voices trigger a strong response in the brain, even when we are trying not to pay attention or the comments are meaningless, say researchers at the University of Geneva. Researchers at the University of Geneva found that the human brain is unable to ignore surly voices, no matter how much the brain's owner might want to.The circle shows the part of the brain activated by angry voices. Researchers at the University of Geneva found that even when study subjects tried to ignore angry voices, the brain's superior temporal sulcus showed enhanced activity. The brain appears to place a high priority on processing urgent sounds, like angry voices, that might indicate a threat is present. So, try as we might, when someone is angry the brain cannot avoid noticing, regardless of what the fuss is all about. "The new finding (is) that the influence of attention cannot diminish the brain activity associated with certain types of salient input: in this case, angry voices," said G. Ron Mangun, a cognitive neuroscience professor at the University of California at Davis, who did not participate in the research. This tells us that the brain will give priority to potentially important sensory signals, allowing them to penetrate our otherwise engaged minds, Mangun said. Didier Grandjean and his colleagues collected brain scans from people while they listened to both angry and neutral voices making comments that were irrelevant to the listeners, then compared the results to responses to neutral speech. Using functional MRI technology, the researchers could see what part of the brain was activated by the surly sounds. The angry voices increased activity in the superior temporal sulcus, a brain region associated with voice recognition. Even when the subjects were told to ignore an angry voice played to one ear and asked instead to listen to a neutral voice played to the other ear, the MRIs showed increased brain activity in the superior temporal sulcus. Previous studies showed a similar fundamental brain response when subjects saw angry or fearful faces. "The paper by Grandjean and colleagues cleverly pits attention against emotional relevance, and uses fMRI brain imaging to investigate whether or not attention can override the registration of highly emotionally relevant verbal input," Mangun said. "They find that ... this influence of attention cannot diminish the brain activity associated with certain types of salient input: in this case, angry voices." The research could have implications in learning more about normal, as well as diseased, brains, Grandjean said. "A better understanding of how the brain implements emotion and attention is crucial both for our understanding of the interactions between emotion and attention in normal individuals," Grandjean said, "and for the identification of potential cerebral dysfunctions in pathologies with affective disorders such as social anxiety, autism, schizophrenia or depression."