Respect Yo' Elders!

Not the best mentor/mentee relationship

An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. – Titus 1:6-9

Today’s Reading: Jeremiah 22-23; Titus 1

Amongst my close group of friends I have one named Larry. He is the oldest of us, and by oldest I mean that he is merely a few months older than the rest of us. This of course does not prevent him from referring to himself as our elder.

(In related news he wore a cowboy hat

We Are All Leaders

Those who guide this people mislead them,
   and those who are guided are led astray.
Therefore the Lord will take no pleasure in the young men,
   nor will he pity the fatherless and widows,
for everyone is ungodly and wicked,
   every mouth speaks folly. – Isaiah 9:16-17

       

Today’s Reading: Isaiah 9-10; Ephesians 3

Being a leader is no joke.

 People aspire to leadership roles for a multitude of reasons. Some folks want to help as many folks as they can in whatever given enterprise they are engaged in. Others simply want to get paid. Others want power. They love the feeling that they get when they can stand before a crowd of folk hanging on their every word.

But leadership is serious business.

Female Leaders: They're Fantastic!

I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church in Cenchrea, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and assist her in whatever business she has need of you; for indeed she has been a helper of many and of myself also.

Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Likewise greet the church that is in their house. – Romans 16:1-5

Today’s Reading: Psalms 97-99; Romans 16

At the end of Romans Paul starts giving shout outs to random folks in the church. I’ve always found these chapters to be fascinating as they reveal to me hints about how the early church worked. In these shout outs he leads off by giving all kinds of props to women. In fact a third of all the shout outs are to women.

The women must have been holding it down jack!

When I look at the passages above it is clear to see that women held important leadership positions in the church. The church at Rome was told to assist Phoebe in whatever business she had need of them. The Romans were told to greet the church in the home of Priscilla and Aquila.

Paul clearly viewed these women as powerful assets to the church and as people worthy of authority.

So what happened? How come so few of our churches are led by women? What happened to this very visible presence of female leadership in our community?

Sure, there are many women who are pastors and leaders in churches. I am not trying to pretend that female leadership does not exist at all, but at the same time let’s not front here. Don’t Paul’s shout outs indicate a role of leadership for women that for a LONG time disappeared in the church?

I think so.

I’m no Church historian so I can’t break down exactly why this may have happened. I’m sure it is some mixture of age old sexism, pulling out individual passages in the text to substantiate said sexism, and many other factors that have led to the perpetuation of our male dominating society.

But one thing is clear… women are clearly as capable of leadership as men are. Holding women back from these positions is not only wrong, but also detrimental any organization, entity, or society that chooses to do so. According to the World Bank “societies that discriminate by gender tend to experience less rapid economic growth and poverty reduction than societies that treat males and females more equally.”

Must this not also be true for churches and other religious institutions? Wouldn’t it be more efficient, not to mention just and right, to utilize 100% of the potential human resources rather than roughly half?

Some might say that men hold the majority of the leadership positions because that is precisely what the people want. They would rather follow a man than a woman.

That’s hogwash.

This is a paradigm that can and needs to be broken. I can’t wait to see what the church will look like when women are granted the leadership roles they deserve. I imagine that so much of what we hold true about our faith would be changed by this shift. By becoming more loving and accepting of women we will naturally become more capable of loving and accepting others as well.

So I just want to take a moment to thank Phoebe for all that she did some two thousand years ago. Her life is a reminder that we have a lot to learn when it comes to how we view women in our communities.

Let’s continue to grow and learn by acknowledging everyone’s potential to contribute to the good of all. 

Crisis of Leadership

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. John 10: 11-13

Today’s Reading: 2 Chronicles 1-3; John 10:1-23

A friend of mine on Facebook posted this article from the Wall Street Journal yesterday. In it, the author suggests that there is going to be a huge economic crash in 2011 because Obama is not going to extend the Bush tax cuts. The rationale is that since the wealthy are aware that taxes will increase significantly next year they are taking all of their profits in 2010 to avoid it and will have a higher percentage of their assets in non-taxable entities come 2011 and beyond.

Based on this logic the author argues that 2010 economic numbers are deceivingly high and the 2011 numbers will be exceptionally low causing a double dip economic hit…

Eh…

Ok, there are are a host of other reasons why the economic could tailspin in the future but he has a point. However, there is something inherently problematic here. Aren’t these titans of business and Wall Street the same folks who led us into this recession in the first place?

You might counter me by saying that Joe the Plummer is going to do the same thing but let’s keep it real, the average investor is not savvy enough to make this move and their assets are not large enough to really move the needle here.

This is about the fat cats.

As I followed the news in 2008 and 2009 I couldn’t help but to see the tragic irony in all of this. The same people who got us into this mess were the folks we relied on to get us out of it.

For my not so economically literate friends out there let me make a comparison that illustrates the point.

So we’ve got this oil spill going in the gulf right? It’s not so fresh.

But who are we relying on to fix the problem? THE SAME PEOPLE WHO CAUSED IT!

This is what makes the problem so frustrating. We are angry for the screw up, we are infuriated by images of oil soaked wildlife, and to add insult to injury, it is all the more infuriating that the firm that caused the problem is best suited to solve the problem.

Long after the oil leak is plugged and the news cameras stop recording the wildlife and the communities in the gulf will remain mired in the muck caused by this catastrophe.

In both the oil spill and the economic meltdown the leaders who caused the problem knew that they were engaged in reckless behavior. And in the end, regular folks will have to fit the bill.

We need to really think about the folks that we put in places of leadership. Are they good shepherds who will work tirelessly to make sure that their organizations benefit society as well as their bottom line? Or are they bad shepherds, who are all about the cash until the wolves, of their own creation, send them running for the hills with their profits in tow.

The biggest problem that we as a people face today isn’t the economy or our rapidly deteriorating environment. Our biggest problem is our crisis of leadership.

QUESTION OF THE DAY!: What are the characteristics of a good leader? What are some examples of good leaders and why? They can be from history or your personal life. Let's figure this out y'all!