Nothing will tempt the servant of God like the large amounts of money that flow into the coffers near the place where he labors. As the money comes into the offering plates–or through the mail or via bank drafts–his reasoning powers become tainted by those large numbers. He thinks to himself, “When I do well, the money comes in. When I do poorly, the money dries up. This is about me. The money is mine. I have earned it.”

That, or some variation of it.

My family was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the late 1980s when Jim and Tammy Bakker of PTL fame (or infamy, depending on one’s point of view) got in trouble and lost their multi-million-dollar ministry, with Jim serving a term in prison. Those who lived through that period may recall the sexual aspect of the downfall involving a young woman named Jessica Hahn. While that may have been the part of the story that caught the public fancy, it was the misuse of money which sent Jim Bakker to prison.

In most cases involving ministers, misuse of money does not end up with the man of God going to prison, but rather losing his ministry and his influence. The ongoing problem reminds me of the political corruption in my city of New Orleans–it is revealed so often, one would think the word would get out and the perpetrators would cease their lawbreaking; but it seems to go on and on, as though people are not paying attention and refusing to learn the law of nature which Paul pointed out to the Galatians a long time ago: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)

A pastor I know served as a trustee of one of our denomination’s boards, requiring him to journey to a distant city a half dozen times a year for two days of committee meetings. On his return, he would turn in his expenses to that agency’s business office, which would issue him a check a few days later. I served on the same board with him and followed the same practice. It was standard procedure. But then he did something else.

Continue reading →

Team members need a mechanism for telling you what they have found. Your co-workers must be allowed to tell you what’s not working. Unless you arrange a method by which they can voice their gripes and get their suggestions before the proper personnel, the entire system is in jeopardy.

Without such a system, they will still gripe and belly-ache and criticize, but not to you. They’ll do it behind your back and you will feel threatened and be tempted to respond harshly and it’s all downhill from then on.

You can spare yourself a lot of grief by working out a system by which your church members, your employees, your team members can talk back to you.

The design engineers need to hear from the salesmen on the road who can tell them the customers’ experience with the new gadget–what’s working and what isn’t.

At the end of one play and before the next one, the wide receiver must be able to tell the quarterback that he thinks he can beat the cornerback, that he’s noticed something that fellow does which will allow him to outplay him. On the next play, the quarterback throws deep to the receiver who beats his man and scores.

The employees need a method for giving feedback to the foreman or the office supervisor.

The pastor needs to hear from his team members–the ministerial staff, the office staff, the custodial staff, everyone–as well as from the church members.

Make no mistake, if members of the team see something that isn’t working, they’re going to talk about it among themselves. But it does no good, and may even undermine what good they are doing, unless they are allowed to bring the criticism to the person who needs that information and can act on it.

I said to the church, “We’ve put a blank sheet of paper inside your bulletin handout today. Write down any question you have about how things are being done around here, or any suggestion you’d like to make. Next Sunday night, I’m going to take a half-hour in the evening service and respond to as many of your points as possible.”

Continue reading →

When the Bible uses the word “comfort,” the Greek word (a form of “paraklesis”) is translated in two ways–sometimes as “comfort” and sometimes as “exhortation.”

There are two ways of encouraging a fellow. Sometimes a pat on the back does it; at other times it takes a kick in the seat. It’s a wise leader who knows which is required. It’s an even wiser leader who then knows how to administer just the right dose of the required treatment.

The coach on the sidelines walks over to two players who just muffed a play. This is his team and he knows these young men, so he is well aware what it takes to motivate each one to give his best. To one, he walks over and puts his arm around him. “Bobby, you can do better than that. Come on, man. I believe in you.” He walks over to the other one and yells, “Jason, what in sam hill do you think you’re doing? That was absolutely the sorriest thing I’ve ever seen on a football field! Now, get back in there and show me why I shouldn’t kick you off this team!”

Or something to that effect. Each coach has his own style.

I was checking out at the grocery store down the street and got in the slowest lane. When my turn came, I found out why. We had a trainee on the cash register and a veteran employee was showing her what to do. As the young woman, probably a teenager, rang up the first item, she held the key down too long and it registered that I was buying three of them. Now, the older lady was having to punch in the codes for reversing that action and clearing the printout. It was time-consuming.

I was working overtime not to be impatient, so I said, “Take your time. You’re new, aren’t you?” The teenager nodded, clearly embarrassed. The older woman said, “She’s doing fine. She just has too heavy a touch on that key. I did it myself when I was new.”

I said to the teenager, “You’re blessed to have such a patient teacher. Not everyone is that good with new employees.” She nodded in agreement, and the older woman smiled appreciatively.

I happen to have a little personal experience along that line.

Continue reading →

Historians analyzing the greatness of Abraham Lincoln are frequently perplexed as to how one who started so far back in the pack with few natural talents and attributes managed to win the race, securing his place in history as the greatest of all our presidents. What was there about him?

I’d like to suggest that one key factor, particularly in the younger Lincoln, was the quietness of the world in which he lived and what he did with it: he thought. He read a lesson, then mulled it over as he walked from one village to another or as he did his chores. He did not do what the average person would do, read something and check it off the list and go on to the next lesson. What he read lingered with him because he focused on it and thought about it. Some say Lincoln never went on to new book until he had mastered the content of the one he was studying.

Imagine jerking up someone from the 21st century and plopping them down in the middle of, say, 1825, when Mr. Lincoln was 16 years old. His first sensation would surely be of the overwhelming silence. No freeways with heavy traffic 24 hours a day, no planes filling the skies, no radio, no television, no phone, no trains, and very few factory whistles if any. To be sure, everyone else had the same amount of silence and the same absence of distractions from pure, deep thought as did Lincoln.

The difference is that Lincoln used the quietness wisely; he thought about things.

Blaise Pascal observed, “All the evils of life have fallen upon us because men will not sit alone quietly in a room.”

Continue reading →

Until a few days ago, the chairman of the board of trustees of Roger Williams University in Rhode Island was 80-year-old Ralph Papitto. In fact, this gentleman had served on that board for 40 years, and over the years had contributed some $7 million to the school. It’s a private school, perhaps a religious institution since Mr. Williams was a Baptist and, if I remember my history, was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Providence which was the first of its kind in the new world.

The point being that, by all appearances, Mr. Papitto was a powerful man who was trying to do good with his life. And in a sense, in his own mind at least, he was untouchable. He had money and position and needed nothing from anyone, he thought.

One day a few weeks ago, the trustees received a complaint that the board was not diverse enough. No minorities sat on the board; it was all white men and a couple of white women.

Well sir, Mr. Papitto did not like outsiders telling him what to do with his school. He made some derogatory remark about the criticism and in the process used the N-word.

That’s all he did. Used the N-word. And I don’t mean “nuclear.” I refer to the racial putdown, the well-known expression called the ugliest racial slur and the most inflammatory term in the English language in a couple of references I looked up.

After the board meeting, when three trustees took exception to what Papitto said and called for his resignation, they themselves were kicked off.

Continue reading →

If ever a time and situation cried out for leadership, New Orleans following the double disasters of Katrina and the flooding which followed was the place. To the puzzlement and frustration of most people, our mayor discovered that what he did best was talk. He made grandiose claims, issued reports, and pronounced major projects, none of which came to fruition. Because he was handsome and articulate, soon he was on all the televised news programs and being invited to speak at national forums. Around the country, a lot of people were impressed by this well-spoken leader. Only on the local level did we know the truth: he was a non-leader if ever one existed.

Watch the political scene in America these days and be amazed at the failure of leadership at every level of government. The typical scenario calls for elected officials and those running for their offices to engage costly polling operations to find out what the public wants. Then they package the results as their offering to the citizens. It’s the very definition of non-leadership. That old line comes to mind: “There goes the crowd. I must rush to their front, because I am their leader!”

How many games would a football team win if they paused between every play to poll the team and take a vote? Or even worse, to poll the fans in the stadium and find a consensus? A perfect recipe for disaster.

How many battles would an army win if the officer polled his troops on the best course of action in every situation, then took a vote. No one would do much of anything.

How many gains will a business make if the boss asks the employees, “What should we do now?”

Continue reading →

If you count on and need the support of the people you lead–and who doesn’t–it is absolutely essential you keep them informed on situations and up-to-date on circumstances. They will be reluctant to make great sacrifices based merely on their allegiance to you.

Tell them what’s going on.

This week, as I write, the president of the Baptist seminary in our city sent a letter to hundreds of the school’s supporters across the country. In the single page missive he outlined the financial situation for the seminary and the post-Katrina recovery which is 90 percent complete. He pointed out what the American Association of Theological Schools estimates the typical year of seminary education to cost and laid that alongside what the six schools of our denomination spend per student, and finally, contrasted that with the much smaller figure for the New Orleans school.

“We’re not fighting for our survival,” he pointed out, but the day-to-day expenses of utilities and insurance have increased alarmingly and put the seminary in a difficult situation. He was asking for contributions to the general fund. The next day I wrote a nice check and sent to this outstanding school which has played such a key role in my own life and ministry.

Every denomination has its own way of operating, but a motto in Baptist life for many generations has been “tell the people.” Dean Doster, past-executive of Louisiana Baptists, likes to say, “Baptists are down on what they’re not up on.” No doubt it’s true of other religious groups also.

I believe that axiom and have the battle scars to prove it.

That’s why I did what I did and how I got into trouble.

Continue reading →

It sounds so right: “I expect nothing less than perfection from you. We have the highest standards in this church (or company or family).”

Many years ago, “Psychology Today” magazine ran an article titled “The Perfectionist’s Script for Self-Defeat.” It was one of the most practical and helpful things I had ever found.

Here’s a woman on a diet. She has done well for two weeks now, avoiding the danger foods, eating only the prescribed meals. She has lost 7 pounds and can already feel the difference in her clothes. One day in a moment of weakness, she eats 3 potato chips. Just 3. But she is so overwhelmed by guilt and the knowledge that she has broken her diet, she gets discouraged about the diet and goes on a binge. By the end of the day she has consumed 3 bags of chips and a half-gallon of ice cream.

Anything wrong with eating 3 potato chips? Not at all. The problem was the impossible standard of perfection she erected for herself.

Continue reading →

Many years ago, when I was a young pastor and a seminarian, my wife and I caught the movie, “A Man for All Seasons,” Robert Bolt’s account of Thomas More in 16th century England. I was transfixed by Bolt’s depiction of this man whose integrity and personal strength in the face of pressure from King Henry VIII stood him head and shoulders above his generation. After seeing the movie, I read everything I could find on St. Thomas More.

I didn’t have to read very far before discovering More to be a far more complex figure than the play had made him out to be, one who would have had citizens who believe as my denomination does burned at the stake. That took the shine off his character for me. However, I love the movie so much I own it, and have bought the book containing Bolt’s play. Memorable lines from the play have made many an apt illustration for my sermons over these decades.

In his introduction, Robert Bolt pays tribute to the chief characteristic of Thomas More that made him who he was. “As I wrote about him, (More) became for me a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off, what area of hmself he could yield to the encroachments of his enemies, and what to the encroachments of those he loved.”

He knew where he began and where he left off; what a fascinating way of putting it. Knowing himself so thoroughly, More was able to turn down all kinds of bribes and threats thrown his way to entice or coerce him to violate his own conscience. He ended up paying for this kind of steadfastness and integrity with his life.

The ancient Greeks made much of the importance of a person knowing himself. We don’t hear much about it these days, which is a shame, because many a heartache and tragedy in life could have been avoided by a person truly knowing himself.

Here are some questions to help us know ourselves and to decide how well we do.

Continue reading →

It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. For the past several months, I had been the weekend clerk-typist for the Pullman Company, dispatching porters and conductors to various runs in and out of Birmingham, Alabama, and keeping up with the whereabouts of all sleeping cars in the state. It was a great job and usually so quiet I was able to get a lot of studying done for class. Mac Chandler, passenger agent for the Seaboard Railroad, had invited me to work for him that summer, taking ticket reservations over the phone in his downtown office. There were only three other people in the office, all of them veterans of that work, and professionals.

I wish I knew what Mr. Chandler had noticed. He was a quiet man who took in everything around him, while speaking little and, alas, chain-smoking. One morning he walked over to my desk and handed me a little booklet. “Joe,” he said, “I thought you would enjoy this. It has some excellent points in it.”

The booklet was entitled “Tact.” Mr. Chandler was the personification of the virtue.

Today, I cannot recall a single point the booklet made. But I remember distinctly reading its pages, feeling “this is so right,” and taking to heart its points. There’s a line in the Proverbs about “a word fitly spoken” being like apples of gold in a silver setting, which I take to mean “of great value.” (Proverbs 25:11)

Undoubtedly, I was just right for a great lesson on tact and Mr. Chandler’s act in matching me up with the booklet was one of the most helpful things anyone has ever done for me.

Yesterday, as I write, our daily newspaper reported on two men of prominence. The first is featured on the front page as the recommended candidate to become president of a major university in our state. The other was president of a local department store chain and is described in his obituary. The contrast is worth noting.

Continue reading →