All the easy problems have pretty much been solved. What’s left is complexity that requires more than a narrow lens. I pity the politicians who are asked to resolve complex issues in a 90-second time frame during a debate. The list is long: hunger, infectious disease, refugees, undocumented immigrants, climate change, transnational crime, human trafficking, gender identification, religious freedom, terrorism, widening income disparity, Wall Street, lobbying, purchasing the presidency.
February 17, 2016 By 4 Comments
February 24, 2015 By 18 Comments
Peace-Mongers and Spineless Leaders
Mega-churches explode in overnight growth, build big, borrow big, and explode big as they collapse. Compassionate non-profit ministries, rich in compassion, often drown in red ink. Christian colleges groan and die under the weight of complexity in a competitive world.
Why is it that people who intend such good through the creation of non-profit organizations often close the doors of the same organizations in embarrassed shame?
The Americanization of Christianity has shaped a religion that is, if anything, nice. Offense is intended toward no one. Being liked is the quest. Overlooking incompetency, arrogance, or laziness is easier than confronting it. And the result is that such organizations spiritualize their problems rather than confront them. They form a culture in which sabotage works. And given the human propensity toward evil, organizations eat the fruit of the culture they nourish.
Edwin Friedman writes in A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix
In any type of institution whatsoever, when a self-directed, imaginative, energetic, or creative member is being consistently frustrated and sabotaged rather than encouraged and supported, what will turn out to be true one hundred percent of the time, regardless of whether the disrupters are supervisors, subordinates, or peers, is that the person at the very top of that institution is a peace-monger. By that I mean a highly anxious risk-avoider, someone who is more concerned with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of consensus, a middler, someone who is so incapable of taking well-defined stands that his disability seems to be genetic, someone who functions as if she had been filleted of backbone, someone who treats conflict or anxiety like mustard gas – one whiff, on goes the emotional gas mask, and he flits. Such leaders are often nice, if not charming (pages 13-14).
Serving as president of a Christian university, I can testify to the gravitational pull of the niceness. Rather than making hard choices, leaders are asked to make people feel good. “Forgive the person; he meant well.” “Love covers a multitude of sins.” “Don’t make waves.” “If you step out on a limb, the cost could be your job.” I’ve heard them all as excuses for not doing what is right for the organization.
The Americanized gospel has shaped us to expect the blessings we desire without any suffering en route. If we’re nice, we deserve to have it. A gospel that does not confront our selfishness, our narrowness, our incompetency, and our arrogance eventually forms us to be saboteurs of any leader who dares stand on conviction that disagrees with ours.
We have grown our own terrorists. Our institutions collapse, not from evil without, but from a cult of niceness within.
June 24, 2014 By 2 Comments
Is College Worth It?
Is college worth it?
This seems to be the big question these days. You know my prejudices before reading the rest of this post. And if I wrote only from the perspective of worldly wisdom, my answer would go like this:
The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else has reached a record high. “According to the new data, which is based on an analysis of Labor Department statistics by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, Americans with four-year college degrees made 98 percent more an hour on average in 2013 than people without a degree…. The decision not to attend college for fear that it’s a bad deal is among the most economically irrational decisions anybody could make in 2014.” (David Leonhardt, The Upshot, May 27, 2014) The value of a college education has never been higher. Trevecca students graduate with an average debt less than the price of a mid-sized used car and will go on to earn half-a-million to a million more during their lifetime than their non-degreed peers.
But this answer, while true, bows to the wrong God. Money has been elevated to a position once held by God, the ultimate justifier. President Obama and the US Department of Education are rolling out new requirements that the incomes of college graduates must be tracked for proof that they make money. The one common religion that encompasses the entire world is the pursuit of wealth. Now the only sanctioned reason for going to college is to make more money.
While I am committed to an education that enables a graduate to do great work, I believe the reason for a Christian university is much more radical. We are training cultural and economic missionaries who invade every field of human work with an alternate view of reality. Our graduates believe that the kingdom of God comes as we do the will of the Father on earth as it is done in heaven.
What if there was a college that graduated people marked by the character of God, whose work ethic was driven by their moral values, and whose concern for the neighbor made the world more just and gracious?
What if there was a college that taught its graduates how to make a life?
I went to one. I work at one. It’s called Trevecca. And it’s worth every penny.
December 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A Great Christmas Gift
What will you give your teenager for Christmas this year?
As parents of three daughters, Denise and I faced that question many times. And when each daughter reached her senior year, we found ourselves looking at funding the next chapter of her story – college. It would be the largest single expense item that we had encountered to date. Our Christmas savings plan would not cover this gift. What do we do? Do we look for the cheapest option, the live-at-home path, the online alternative? Or do we take a deep breath and consider the kind of formation we are purchasing for our child?
