First Week in the Saddle

Well, I’ve been the “boss” for just over a full week now.  I find the feeling is much different than I expected.  Being in charge of such a large organization is much more natural than I had expected.  It helps tremendously that I have a good, no, great group of immediate subordinates who know their jobs, are committed to the success of the organization and believe that the only way that others are going to be loyal to them is if they demonstrate loyalty as well.  

 

I’ve implemented some changes, but mostly I’ve been trying to adjust attitudes and thought processes.  In places where I’ve found situations and practices that are out of line with my priorities or our organization’s core values I have taken a direct action that I hope gets the point across without any misinterpretation of my intent, but trying very hard to do so without blaming or making the changes appear to be personal affronts.  I know that some feathers will get ruffled, but that is the nature of change – human beings get very used to their ruts.  Having to carve new paths is uncomfortable.  I understand that.  But if we don’t have constant improvement we’ll be going backwards.

 

At the moment I am facing my first issue with a subordinate who has apparently been caught in a serious compromise of professional integrity.  This individual is in a position where he has significant influence over a very important part of the organization – so much so that if I cannot trust his integrity, I’ll have to sack him.  Since this is the first such situation I’ve had to deal with, and the circumstances will unfortunately be flying through the rumor mill very soon, how I deal with this will set a tone for the remainder of my tenure.  I hope there are mitigating circumstances that I will learn about later, but at this moment, given what I do know, I don’t think that’s possible.  My immediate subordinates and assistants hold their integrity high enough that they won’t sugar-coat anything – so I’ll get to the bottom of this soon.  

 

Lessons –

• Right & truth fear no investigation.
• Individual gain at the cost of organizational integrity is a “lose-lose” situation.
• The boss needs to appear organized & in control at all times.  If I look rushed & hurried when I’m walking around the building I give the appearance of disorder and that my demeanor is being dictated by circumstances.  Every organization is a direct reflection of its leadership.  If the boss is in control everyone else will be, too.  The converse is also true.
• Give people your full attention when you give them attention at all.  Don’t go half-way.  I’ve found several times when someone wants to talk to me & I’m in the middle of something else, I’ve said, “Give me a moment so I can give you my full attention.”  I get to a good stopping point and then pay attention.
• When given the choice between paying attention to inanimate objects, such as paperwork and email or people, always choose people.

 

Dirk

 

 

 

 

New Direction for Blog

I’m taking this blog in a completely different direction.   This blog will now focus on leadership in all its aspects.  I expect it to be log and primer regarding leadership as I assume the helm of a mid-sized organization for a finite period of time – about two years.

 

Today was my first full day “in the saddle.”  It is surprising what it is like to be the man in charge of such a large organization – the authority and responsibility are tremendous.  I began the day by giving my staff a fire-hose rendition of what is important to me.  In a word, PEOPLE!  It is my goal for all the people in our organization to be RIDICULOUSLY SUCCESSFUL in what they do, both professionally and personally.  I want to get everyone excited about making everyone else successful.

 

Leadership always happens – and it isn’t always good.  Everyone’s primary leadership audience is themselves.  We must each lead ourselves well in order to lead others well.  In fact, when others see us leading ourselves well, they will naturally follow our lead, or, if they are in authority, will give us greater responsibility for leading others.  How we lead ourselves and others is completely wrapped up in our individual identities.  Why we do what we do is completely based on who we think we are or want to be.  

 

Right now I’m still in a whirlwind of getting settled.  The first big thing I want to do is change the environment of my office so that people around me see a visual difference in what is going on.  The previous chief is an excellent leader and ran the organization very, very well.  Now he’s going on to bigger & better things.  I’m just different, and I want to demonstrate that not so much by changing what other people do, but by changing what the chief does, and letting that filter down slowly.  

 

More later.  This shall be an exiting ride.  - Dirk

Another Superhero - Tom Valentine

A news item you may have heard hit very close to home last week. On Wednesday Feb., 13 U. S. Navy Special Operations Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas J. Valentine died during a high-altitude/high-opening (HAHO) parachute training jump in Arizona. His wife’s parents are the oldest friends that my parents have as a couple. They knew me when I was 18 months old. After multiple deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and having done much more than his share in the War on Terror, Senior Chief Valentine died doing what he loved to do – training with his fellow US Navy SEALs. You can read one of the many news reports here.

My family and I attended Tom’s funeral on Friday – held in the chapel and Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek in Norfolk/VA Beach. The chapel, which holds about 800, including overflow, was standing-room only. The service itself was a primer on the leadership style of Tom Valentine. I have asked for a recording of the funeral so that I can take notes on it and develop some of the concepts for my own use. The first speaker was Tom’s squadron commander. The admiration with which he spoke of Tom said even more than his eloquent words. At a funeral you expect the eulogies to extol all the positive virtues of the deceased. Those who spoke about Tom, however, clearly exceeded that mandate because of the tremendous respect he engendered in all of them for the way he lived his life.

In spite of the tremendous demands that the life of a SEAL puts on family, Tom’s family came first, and they adored him. Christina has lost her best friend and the father of two children who made Tom’s eyes light up. Their son loved to get wind that Daddy was coming home and hide in a tree in their yard in order to ambush him.

Tom’s leadership philosophy can be summed up by the following question and answer:

“At what level are you willing to participate?” The only answer Tom could give is, “All in – all the time.” In Tom Valentine’s world something worth doing was only worth doing with his whole heart. His total commitment to everything he undertook characterized everything he ever did.

For those of you who only know about Navy SEALs from the way they are depicted in popular media, you would not recognize any of those caricatures in any of the SEALs I have ever met, let alone the ones I have seen this week. Tom in particular was as unpretentious and humble as you could ever expect a man to be. He would not talk about what he did unless you dragged it out of him. He had no need to grandstand. He had a family he loved more than life itself and a profession that allowed him to serve his country in the most direct means possible – by taking on our enemies face-to-face. What could be better?

As the testimonies demonstrated on Friday, few people have ever done it better than Senior Chief Tom Valentine. A family, the SEALs and our country have lost a man who was a hero to those we would call heroes.

Though the following words are mine, I think they describe how Tom lived, and a theme I wish to embody,

“The world will little note our words. May it, rather, mark our deeds and judge us worthy of emulation.”

The Ineffective Church - Part 3

Now we move on to another absolute “given” in modern evangelicalism – premillennial eschatology.  If you don’t recognize the term, you’ll recognize the concepts:  The world will become more and more godless and evil.  All the Christians of the world will be “raptured” (taken to heaven at once), and a demonic “world leader” will emerge, probably from Europe, and unite the nations of the earth into a “one world” government.  This “leader,” known among premillennialists at the “Antichrist” will establish himself as a pseudo-diety and cause pagan sacrifices to be made in Jerusalem.  After a “tribulation” of seven years, the armies of God will return from heaven for one final, climactic battle on the plain of Meggido in Syria (from which we get the term “Armageddon”), in which the armies of the Antichrist will be defeated and God will establish his kingdom on earth for the “millennium.”  That’s premillennial eschatology in a nutshell.

 

There have been lots of books and movies made about this – starting with, “A Thief in the Night” in the 1960s – which scared me to death when I was about 10.  In the 70s there was Hal Lindsay’s film, “The Late, Great Planet Earth,” after his book of the same title, and more recently we’ve been favored with Tim LaHaye’s, Left Behind book series and movie. 

 

The effects of this eschatology are just as troubling as the marketing effects of freewill theology, but a lot more confusing.  The premillennial thought is that the world is getting worse and worse, more satanic by the day, but it’s supposed to be that way.  Eventually God will take his people out of the earth so that he can rain judgment on those who have rejected him.  After the rapture (a term which doesn’t exist in the Bible) the Holy Spirit is out of the world and there is no more free will.  If you’re “left behind,” you’re lost and can no longer “choose” Christ. 

 

One contradictory aspect of this way of belief is that we, as Christians, are, in essence, “painting a sinking ship.”  If we’re about to be taken out of this world that’s bad and getting worse, why should we put much effort into spreading God’s good rule over the planet?  Why would we bring children into a world that is supposed to start really hating and persecuting Christians all over the place?  Why would we plan for leaving a godly inheritance and establishing faithful families when all the “end-times” profits, er, prophets, tell us that we’re on the brink of the Apocalypse?  On one hand we say, “Jesus is King,” and reigns over the universe, but then we say that satan is still ruler of this earth, and his power is supposed to grow until Christians are taken out of the world.  So why do we fight it?  Which is it?  Is Christ supreme and sovereign or not?  When we add an apocalyptic view to freewill theology we come out with a real mess of what Christians are trying to do.   One truly negative result is the apparent constant search for a political personality to stem the tide of unrighteousness. 

 

Those who hold to premillennial end-times theology might be surprised to learn that prior to about 1830 orthodox Christianity had no concept of this idea.  Before that postmillennial or amillennial theology was considered truly biblical.  The rise of premillennial theology mirrored the rise of freewill theology in the US.  Charles Finney, whose flamboyant and flaming oratory was responsible for the beginning of “tent revival” meetings, did more to push these errors than anything else.  I’ve heard of a seminary where Charles Finney’s methods are studied and critiqued for his overt and premeditated use of emotional manipulation to produce “pep rally”-type responses from the audience – and the instructor only uses Finney’s own writings to condemn his methods. 

 

Premillennial eschatology has affected our modern English translations of the Bible.  A key example is in Matthew 23:36 where Jesus Says, “Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation,” (ESV).  Many translations have a note with the word “generation” saying that the word could mean “race,” indicating that the Jews will still be on the earth when these things happen.  The funny thing is that there are no other places in contemporary (1^st century) Greek literature, let alone in Scripture, where that word is translated in any other way but to mean “generation – the generation of people who are alive right now.” 

 

So here we have a major problem.  Either the translation is bad, Jesus was wrong, or everything that Jesus predicted did happen to that “generation.”  When we get to the book of Revelation, where premillennialists hang their hats, we have a similar problem in the first three verses of chapter 1.  In verse 1 we have the words, “..the things that must soon take place.”  In verse three we have, “for the time is near.”  We clearly have an issue with time proximity to the writers of the New Testament.  Premillennialists brush these issues aside with nary a hint of perplexity.  “Soon is relative in the space of eternity,” they say.  “Peter says, ‘God is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.’” (2 Peter 3:9 – ESV). 

 

Well, if Jesus really meant that generation, and John really mean “soon,” and if they were true, then what possible historical event could we have missed that might have accounted for all the prophecies that the premillennialists stand upon?  How about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the accompanying horror of the Roman siege that preceded it?  There are tremendous, logical, historical and biblical reasons for believing that the “tribulation” of which premillennialists speak is, in fact, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. 

 

There are many well-respected Christian scholars and preachers who hold to postmillennial or amillennial theology: John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, and Alistair Begg, just to name three.  However, even if you remain as steadfast in your premillennial view now as you were when you started reading this, please consider the contradictory and counterproductive effects of the American church’s “end-times” views and how we can fix that. 

 

“Fly high & roar loudly”

 

dvdk

 

The Ineffective Church - Part 2

It has become a “given” in Christian theology that, though no one would openly question God’s complete and total sovereignty over the affairs and fates of men, that in some mysterious way God gives everyone a free will to choose or reject him.  The cornerstone of almost all evangelism is that each individual must decide whether to intellectually assent to the claims of Christ or not.  The competing doctrinal viewpoint is that God’s complete sovereignty includes his predetermination and election of those who are to be his for eternity. 

 

Without getting too deeply into the arguments for both viewpoints, I would like to discuss the effects of freewill theology on the current iteration of the American church and ask if what we’re doing could rationally be called biblical.  Before doing that, however, I need to address the two greatest arguments against the doctrine of sovereign election.  The first is that the concept of election necessarily precludes evangelism – the spreading of the Gospel.  That is known in theological circles as, “hyper-Calvinism” and is not in keeping with the dictates of Scripture.  We are called to give an account of our hope and live our faith before those who don’t believe as a clear testimony of what we believe.  Furthermore, Scottish Presbyterians, who hold to election as tightly as anyone, have historically been some of the most pioneering missionaries the modern church has ever known. 

 

The next argument is the fear that if God preordains who will be his, then there are those who might want to be his who would be excluded from his kingdom.  That is also an error.  The concept is that those who demonstrate a desire to know God in his fullness have already been drawn to him by the inexorable power of the Holy Spirit.  The desire to commune with a perfect, holy God cannot originate from sinful, corrupt man.  That desire can only be placed in him by God alone.  

 

However, even if you can’t stomach the concept of divine election over free will, please stay with me because the issue is not the doctrine but its effects on the church and how it impacts our culture.

 

If we hold to the idea that faith is a result of individual intellectual assent, then that means that I was presented with options and I chose to believe in the claims of Christ.  When I then look at my responsibilities to share the good news with others I look at how I came to believe (intellectual assent) and realize that I need to sell the Gospel to others.  If we look at the mainstream evangelical church in America today, I think we can see that we’ve taken freewill theology to its logical conclusion – marketing faith as if it were a commodity on the open economy.  I’m sure many of you have received mailings from churches in your areas that aren’t much different from ads for car dealers.  If you want to see just a terrible example, browse through the website for “reality church” in Virginia Beach at this link. 

 

Take a look at the popular TV preachers.  What do they preach?  It’s all “feel-good” ego-centric patter focused on individual “fulfillment,” as a person.  Being accused of preaching a “health & wealth” gospel is no longer a stigma among the clergy – it’s a badge of honor.  Go into your local Christian bookstore and just try to find a single book, let alone an entire section, on solid theology.  If you can you are in the great minority.  But you can find racks of books on how God wants to fulfill your dreams at the local grocery store. 

 

It’s all a sales job that we’ve convinced ourselves is part of how we need to evangelize.  It’s all hogwash.  What we think of as the “fine print” of the Christian life, you know, the passages where Jesus said things like, “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me,” “Whoever wishes to save his life must lose it,” “Narrow is the path and straight is the way, and few are those that find it,” and, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, because I have overcome the world,” should actually be in bold print in the pages of Scripture because Jesus did not preach a life of ease to his disciples.  Instead we focus on the “positive” statements of Jesus, “I came that they may have life, and that more abundantly,” and ignore the tough parts that Jesus promised would be part of life lived in obedience to him. 

 

Even the idea of using modern marketing/sales techniques to get people into our churches should sound reprehensible.  The problem goes back to our theology, though.  Are we recruiters for Christ, with a quota to fill, or are we his ambassadors?  I have done both in my life – first as a military recruiter and then as a member of the diplomatic corps in a foreign land.  I will tell you that being a recruiter is miserable.  On the other hand, being an ambassador is completely different – especially in a place where people know that there is a better country and I represented it.  If I had had the privilege of handing out visas, I never would have been left alone.  Everyone from that country that found out that I represented the United States wanted me to help them get here.  It wasn’t my reputation; it was the reputation of our country.  We should be working to build up the reputation of Christ and his church to such a point that those outside the kingdom will be flocking to us asking how to get a visa. 

 

Next – Pre-millennial eschatology and the contradictions of apocalyptic faith

 

“Fly high & roar loudly”

 

dirk

 

The Ineffective Church - Part 1

“Evangelicals.”  “Born-Again Christians.”  We seem to be everywhere.  The term, “mega-church” didn’t exist ten years ago.  Now huge churches seem to be popping up in big cities everywhere.  Depending on the survey you choose to believe, there are between 70,000,000 and 100,000,000 Americans who classify themselves as “evangelical,” or “born-again.”  With such a large portion of our country apparently similar, the big question should be, “Why is the Christian church so completely ineffective – not only in influencing our society, but simply in ensuring that those within the church remain faithful to the values we claim to hold. 

 

In this muli-part series I’m going to address what I believe to be major errors that cause the Christian church to be so ineffective.  Once again, these commentaries are aimed directly at Christians themselves.  The errors I will address build on each other and have reached such a crescendo that they dilute everything that the church does. 

 

The “errors” I will discuss touch on aspects of what I call, “Evangelical Correctness.”  I am taking direct aim at issues that many, if not most, in the evangelical world will consider basic fundamentals of faith – but none of which have any basis in historical, orthodox Christianity.  Some, no doubt, will accuse me of heresy.  Before you criticize, though, I ask that you ask yourself if your objection is really as biblical as you think it is, or if your reaction is mostly emotional because I have tipped a “sacred cow,” to which you might have attributed too much importance.

 

The first “error” – Simplistic, juvenile interpretations of English translations of the Bible.  Orthodox Christianity places supremacy on the Bible as the Word of God.  What Christians refer to as the “Old Testament” are the Jewish Scriptures (the law, prophets & poetry) and have never been questioned by the church fathers.  It wasn’t until late in the fourth century A. D. (no, I will not use the secular “C. E.” on this blog) that agreement was reached as to which books to include in what we now refer to as the “New Testament.”     The doctrine of biblical inerrancy is called, “Verbal plenary inspiration.”  Orthodox Christian doctrine states that all of Scripture, the 66 books that make up the Old and New Testaments were fully inspired by God in the original languages.  It’s the original languages part where we in the American church really blow it.  Once we start translating the Bible into other languages we have to be very careful about misinterpretation.  Those misinterpretations can cause significant doctrinal errors to creep in simply because the language into which Scripture is interpreted is not as precise as the original.  The Bible also had significant cultural and historical nuances to the original audience that are necessarily missing upon translation.  Thus great care must be taken to ensure that doctrines are based upon the original meaning of a particular passage in its intended context to the original hearers. 

 

One simple example of this error is the translation of, “world” or “earth” in the New Testament.  The original Greek words used can mean, “entire known world,” “the Roman world,” “the ungodly system of society,” “all of creation,” or “a single country,” among others.  This means that all the verses that talk about the “world” can have significantly different meaning.  Perhaps better known is the fact that when we see the word “love” in the New Testament the original word could be one of three words in Greek.  Another example is the word “life” in the New Testament, which can be at least one of two words in Greek – “bios” meaning living, breathing life, from which we get the word “biology,” and “psuche,” meaning the essence of life, the seat of emotional being, from which we get the term “psychology.”  Thus when Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13 ESV) it is significant that the original word is “psuche” not “bios.”  Laying down your “bios” for someone else is a one-time event.  You do it, you die, it’s over.  Laying down your “psuche” is a continual denial of self for others – it is a lifelong commitment to selflessness. 

 

The above examples don’t even touch upon nuances of word order and vernacular that can have great impact on what a passage meant to the original hearers or readers.  We put huge stock in our contemporary English translations, and for good reason.  Most of them took many biblical scholars many years to translate properly, and often with extensive linguistic notes that we rarely bother to read.  We also forget that the interpreters also had their own doctrinal biases which may or may not reflect upon their work. 

 

Why is this interpretation so important?  I believe the simplistic interpretations of Scripture account for significant theological errors which have the American church mired in doctrinal confusion. 

 

Next – Part 2:  Dispensational freewill theology and the marketing of the Gospel.      

 

Christian Political Activism - "Sharia-lite"?

In trying to keep with my conviction that the evangelical church has so much housekeeping to do that it should tread very carefully into the arena of secular culture, today’s entry is yet another introspective look into what I consider some of the major problems we need to wrestle with inside the born-again Christian community itself. I realize that many Christians consider political activism as such a part of their faith that they may reject what I’m saying here out-of-hand. Please, please, if you fall into this category, have the courage to consider what I’ve written. If you can argue my points biblically, please respond and educate me.

The bottom-line premise of this entry is that if American Muslims were as openly, politically active as evangelicals, we all would be a bit freaked-out – especially the Christians. Why do we expect our non-Christian fellow Americans to react any differently to us than we would to Muslims doing essentially the same things?

“But wait,” you say. “Our nation was founded on Christian principles. The great pillars of our government were formed when American society was overtly Christian in nature.”

My response? “Your point is well made, but it proves the opposite of what you think.” Our Founding Fathers worked excessively hard to create a secular governmental structure in spite of the fact that most of them took their faith very seriously and the society around them was openly, and in many places, monolithically religious and Christian. They saw no need to create detailed moral codes because they expected that common morality would continue to be reinforced by the church to keep people on the ‘straight and narrow’. They intended the moral uprightness of society to keep government in check, not the other way around. By trying to get government to enforce biblical moral statutes we are, in essence, admitting that the church cannot do its job within the culture and asking government to step in.

In my blog of 2/4/08 (here) I took Christians to task for being so politically active that we are actually scaring the people we claim we’re trying to “love” into the church. Since that entry I’ve had two more events which have convinced me of that fact.

Both of my new “events” happened last Thursday. In my office I heard an NPR interview with Norman Lear, the well-known television producer of shows in the 1970s such as “All in the Family.” I heard this Jewish man say that he left television because he wanted to produce a movie about Christian political activism because he was scared by what he saw happening with Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart becoming entrenched in politics. In his words, “The mixture of politics and religion scared the hell out of me.” You can listen to the interview here. Since then he has been a liberal political activist with an organization that has registered thousands of new voters. How do you think most of them vote?

The second event happened later that morning when I was talking with a colleague who just happens to be a black, catholic democrat. He and I have a terrific working relationship that is based on sincere mutual respect. The respect has risen to such a level that we can discuss race, faith and politics without any of it being personal. As a result there is great honesty. When I mentioned to him that I thought that my fellow evangelicals have gone too far into political activism, he really opened up. He said. “Evangelicals scare me because after they get what they want politically, then they’ll come after me (as a catholic) because of the whole ‘idol worshipping’ thing…” How could I argue with him? Though he has very conservative political views, he cannot stomach aligning himself with Republican conservatives because of all the evangelical political baggage is wrapped up in it.

If you still don’t agree that we in the Christian community have gone too far, consider this scenario: Muslim communities in the US begin to push for elements of Sharia law to be introduced. They start slowly, trying to get modesty laws passed in beach communities. Then they begin to build momentum. Next they push for “health taxes” on pork and push for prohibition on alcohol in their counties (nice precedent we set). They elect conservative Muslim representatives to Congress from districts with large Muslim enclaves like Detroit and the DC metro area of Virginia & Maryland. Muslims become more active in the country and start demanding that their cultural values be more respected.

It’s a bit scarier that way, isn’t it? Well, I really think that’s the way many of our non-evangelical countrymen see us. They think we want to impose some type of “Sharia-lite” on the country, and they’re scared. Too often we give them good reason to think that way.

Just because there is no law against something we would call sin doesn’t mean that we need to institute one. As long as law doesn’t require us to sin we need to be much more careful about the laws we say we want to have written. How quickly we forget how bitingly Jesus himself treated the Pharisees – and they at least kept their hypocrisy within their own community. We share ours openly with the world and wonder why the church is so weak, has so little positive impact on our culture, and we are known more for what we’re against than what we are for. I’m not the only one saying this. Read a recent article from World magazine (a conservative Christian publication) about it here.

I do not advocate that we become like the Amish, retreat from society and become apolitical. What I am saying is that we can live our faith in a much purer manner when we don’t try to wrap government up in it. We can execute our biblical responsibilities to government by learning and holding fast to both our federal and state Constitutions, and being upright citizens in our communities – so upright that our unbelieving neighbors will have to wonder what makes us so different. Then they just might want to hear about our faith.

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:12-17, English Standard Version)