Leaders are Readers

What are you reading? For pleasure? For professional development? For spiritual growth? Leaders are life-long learners. Leaders are life-long readers. Tell me what your reading and I’ll know a great deal about your leadership skills. I love to read. It’s how I learn. Give me the instruction book and leave me alone if you want me to put something together. Some books are quickly read and forgotten, some should be kept for reference. Other books are like loved ones or old friends who return for a visit after a long interruption. I began this year reading for pleasure, professional development and pleasure.

Book’s I’m reading for pleasure: I am reading five books currently for pleasure: three biographies, a recent new survey of the Second World War, and a chess classic:

Jon Meacham’s Thomas Jefferson: the Art of Power, Random House, 2012. I always enjoy Meacham’s books and this is no exception. In this new biography, Meacham describes the tension between Jefferson’s principles and his pragmatism. How Jefferson practiced leadership and used the levers of power is instructive for leaders at all levels today.

William Manchester & Paul Reid, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965, Little Brown and Company, 2012.  Having read the first two volumes of this trilogy I have waited for nearly 25 years for this final volume. Alas, Manchester died and it was completed by his friend Paul Reid. This final volume covers Churchill’s life through the first time he became prime minister during World War II until his death. All WSC did during this period was defeat Hitler, Hirohito, write his memoirs, and win the Nobel Prize for Literature for his five volume history of The English Speaking Peoples. Otherwise, he didn’t accomplish much. This final volume is worthy of the man called the “greatest Briton ever.”

The final biography I’m reading (or will read) at this time is Thomas Kidd’s Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, Basic Books, 2011. Kidd is an up and coming colonial historian of note and an important voice for young evangelicals today. Henry is one person all lovers of liberty should seek to know and understand.

I also plan to read, Andrew Roberts, The Strom of War, Harper Collins, 2011, a new survey of the Second World War. Roberts is no revisionist but provides a cogent narrative matched by faithful research and masterful detail. Since the death this past year of Sir John Keegan, a noted military historian, Roberts fills an important void.

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of my amateur chess career. I learned the game during the famous world championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. For several years my youngest son has been a serious student of the game. Now the pupil is outpacing the teacher! He is one of the best chess players his age in North Texas. He beats me two-thirds of the time. So now I have to change and upgrade my game. That’s why I’m spending time this winter with an old friend, I. A. Horowitz’s Chess Openings: Theory and Practice, Simon and Schuster, 1964. I have to remind myself I’m reading for pleasure and that I’m tired to getting the stuffin’ beat out of me. J

Books I’m reading for professional development: Like many others, I challenged my readers that the Church in the USA must re-think and re-deploy our strategy for cultural engagement. I’m not sure what we need to do to go forward. I only know that what we’ve done, ain’t working.  So I’m working through two books I hope will help be able to articulate a new strategy: Will Mancini, Church Unique: How Missional Leaders cast Vision, Capture Culture and Create Movement, Jossey-Bass, 2008 and Donald A. Carson’s, Christ and Culture Revisited, William B. Eerdsmans, 2008. I’ll be sharing insights and reactions on this blog as I work through these two books.

Spiritual Development: I am planning to teach a 10-12 lesson series from Deuteronomy in the spring entitled, “People of the Promise!” In preparation, I am re-reading another old friend, Peter Craigie’s The Book of Deuteronomy, Eerdsmans, 1976 in The New International Commentary on the Old Testament.

What are you reading? Let me know. Share it with others. Remember: Leaders are learners, learners are leaders.

Looking for Heroes in All the Wrong Places

Recently the Baseball Hall of Fame announced that no eligible candidates received the 75% of the votes necessary to be inducted this summer. There no were lack of qualified candidates: Barry Bonds, major league baseball’s all time leading home run hitter, seven time Cy Young award winner for best pitcher Roger Clemens, Raphael Palmero, one of only four players in all of baseball history with over 3,000 career hits and 500 home runs didn’t get in. (Willie Mays, Hank Aaron & Eddie Murray are the other three and all are in the Hall of Fame). Sluggers Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire didn’t get in either. Why did none of these former players get in?

The stain of the steroid era. They cheated, or least there is a very high likelihood they cheated.

I wished that were one part of this sorry story about our culture. But it’s not.

Lance Armstrong, the Dallas native and seven-time winner of the Tour de France, finally admitted what everyone had suspected for years and what the US Anti-Doping Agency reported last fall when they banned him from the sport: He cheated. Having beat brain cancer. He used illegal drugs and other techniques to gain an advantage over his competitors. He’s denied the allegations for at least fifteen years. He viciously attacked former friends, teammates and competitors who we now know spoke the truth: He cheated.

And now the bizarre story of Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o. It’s early in the news cycle on this story but it’s bizarre. This we know is true: his 72-year old grandmother died this fall. Then several hours later we were told that his girlfriend a student at Stanford, had died. Sports Illustrated, ESPN and the other major sports networks all reported this. Unfortunately, everything about the girlfriend was false. The Notre Dame Athletic Department once informed about this ‘hoax’ and immediately hired an outside investigator. They believe Manti was ‘catfished’ i.e. tricked by a sick joker into a ‘personal relationship’ through the internet and social media. Call me cynical but this smells worse than fish or relatives after three days. I’m sure no one thinks this had anything to do with his publicity campaign to win the Heisman Trophy as the best player in college football.

And finally, last week Subway Restaurants admitted that at times  their foot-long sandwiches were an inch too short! Can’t we trust anyone, anymore? Oh the humanity!

What’s the lesson here? It’s simple. Our culture looks for heroes in all the wrong places. Fame, celebrity and wealth doesn’t change the fact that we are  all fallen human beings. Celebrity only accentuates our faults. Sports, entertainment, and politicians will disappoint us.

Do we still have heroes today? Absolutely. In the Church they are legion: a pastor I know has served faithfully over fifteen years in a small town, 75 miles from a Wal-Mart; people like my Mother who served 22 years teaching second grade Bible study class; believers who faithfully serve God and worship Him every day. These are our anonymous heroes. No headlines. Just doing it.

But we also need public heroes to challenge and inspire us. The good news is we have them. We have them in abundance: If you know where to look.

In a day with an all-volunteer Army protecting our national interest around the globe, the men and women in uniform do heroic work, whether they serve in Afghanistan, the Pentagon or on a Coast Guard cutter in the Gulf of Mexico interdicting drug and/or human smugglers. They do what the vast majority of us will never do: place themselves (sometimes daily) between us and people who want to destroy us. Our cities and towns are served by ‘First Responders’: policemen, firefighters, doctors, nurses and others who run toward the danger, whether it be a crime, an accident or a natural disaster. It may include people who will come at their own expense to serve hot meals to a community hit by a hurricane, fire or flood. These are our heroes today.

Where else can we look to find real heroes today? The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut tells us we don’t have to look any farther than the schools in our community. At Sandy Hook we saw a principal, administrators and teachers place themselves between a madman and their students. We learned the principal ran to the sounds of the gun-----an act of courage that cost her life. That’s what heroes do. We still have plenty of them around.

You just have to know where to look.