Lead Well

Over the last several weeks we’ve explored four major problems with the church and what we should do about them . After digging into these issues, we’re left with the question, “Is this even possible?” The answer is yes, but getting there may be harder than we’d like to think. In Good to Great by Jim Collins, the author,  introduces the Stockdale Paradox. To better explain this paradox, I would like to quote the story told on pages 83-85 of the book. “Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner of war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisone...

We spend our lives following God. Doing His will and still bad things happen to us. It just doesn’t seem fair does it? Didn’t God promise us joy? Aren’t we under his covering as His children? Doesn’t he want to bless us abundantly? Why would God allow this to happen? We’ve all asked ourselves these questions before and many times there are no answers. Then the answers we do get, seem hollow and cliche. The fortunate thing is that we are not alone. People all throughout time have asked these questions. Just a cursory reading of the Bible would show this. Adam lost two sons. Noah watched all the people of the world die. Joseph was sold into slavery and jail. David was hunted and almost killed. Jeremiah was thrown into a well and left to die. Paul was given a thorn in his flesh. Jesus was crucified on the cross. There is one thing all of these men had in common. None of them wanted to go through what they did. Even Jesus, the night before he was crucified as...