When the second incident from a championship football game appeared on my consciousness, I knew it had to make this lineup.

In last Sunday night’s Super Bowl game, the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots, who were being touted as perhaps the greatest team ever to play this game and were undefeated all year, a phenomenal feat. With less than 3 minutes left to play, the Patriots had scored and pulled ahead, 14-10. Now, the Giants would get the ball back. But with the clock winding down, would there be time enough?

On the sidelines, Michael Strahan, leader of the Giants’ defensive squad that had harassed Patriots QB Tom Brady all evening long, kept spouting two numbers: “Seventeen” and “fourteen.” That would be the final score, he was telling his teammates. He was confident his team’s offense could score a touchdown and was doing everything he knew how to convince them of that, too.

When the game ended with the Giants on top by that very score, some who had heard Strahan pumping up his team credited him with a great deal of credit for the victory.

Faith is contagious. Unfortunately, so is doubt.

On Monday, January 7, of this year, the Ohio State Buckeyes played the LSU Tigers in our Superdome for the National Championship of college football. The next evening, after having read all our local sportswriters’ raves about the great victory LSU pulled out, I went on the internet to the Columbus Dispatch, the newspaper for the Buckeyes city. I read a few sports columns and then a host of comments from disgruntled fans. That’s where I learned something that stunned me, and to my mind at least, contributed to the Buckeyes’ loss.

One year earlier, the Buckeyes had played Florida for the BCS championship and lost. Afterwards, sportswriters and columnists jumped on the Ohio State team for being outclassed in every way. “They had no business even going to that game,” some said. Okay. Now, here’s what happened.

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Jerry Clower, the country comedian from Mississippi who kept us in laughter for a generation as no one else could, was once accused of having a big ego. “Sure I have an ego,” he would say. “Everyone needs an ego. If you don’t have one, go out and get you one! You’re going to be needing it!”

He was right, of course, so long as we bear in mind that by “ego” he meant a healthy self-respect. I spent a good deal of time with him and never saw any of the kind of ego we usually associate with “stars.”

David N. Meyer wrote the 2007 biography of country musician Gram Parsons he called “Twenty Thousand Roads.” It’s a sad tale of a lot of talent combined with too much privilege and money topped off by endless drugs and booze. I read it only because I had remembered Emmylou Harris remarking how much she personally owed to Parsons for his contributions to her art.

Toward the end of the book, Meyer is commenting on the difficulty of researching such a story. There’s no point in questioning the stars about what conversations and events. “For stars, nothing ever happened if it didn’t happen to them. If you want the details of the valence of a recording studio, don’t ask the guitar hero, ask the guitar tech.”

If you are the pastor of a church or in the ministry in any way, you may not need this reminder. In a perfect world, all ministers would have sweet spirits and servant attitudes and would be generous, faithful, and honest. Alas, it’s not a perfect world. Not even close.

When a pastor I know fell into sin–it was revealed that he had been a serial adulterer–and the public disgrace that accompanied that revelation, a former staff-member had an interesting insight into his character. “He let everyone put him on a pedestal. And man, he did love his pedestal.”

It’s not a good thing to say about our segment of the Christian church, but let a man pastor a great church (translation: congregations of thousands, budgets of millions, with public acclaim) and he will be idolized as more than he is by large numbers of people. If his ego is fragile and requires adulation, he will soon believe he is the greatest thing on the planet.

Some friends of mine moved across the street from Adrian and Joyce Rogers in Memphis. Dr. Adrian Rogers, now in Heaven, served the great Bellevue Baptist Church there for over 30 years and built an incredible record. He was on world-wide television and his books sold in huge numbers. One day, my friend Bob called to his wife, “Wanda, come quick! Dr. Rogers is taking his garbage cans out to the street!”

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The news this weekend concerned Starbucks, America’s favorite coffee shop over the last decade, the darling of investors, the standard of every startup business. They’re closing a hundred shops across the country due to declining sales.

An industry expert analyzed the problem as Starbucks’ forgetting their main line of business. He said, “You enter the store for a cup of coffee and you have to walk through the display of music CDs and then negotiate the displays of food. Eventually you get to the counter.” Meanwhile, he pointed out, the coffee shop down the street run by some locals does nothing but what Starbucks started out doing and which made them successful. Their following the model which Starbucks established is making the competition successful.

Year ago, I read where someone saw this sign in a store window in Dothan, Alabama: “Going out of business because we forgot what we were in business for.”

It’s a common problem of churches too.

Even though Paul used the expression as his goal for himself, your church cannot be “all things to all people,” no matter how hard it tries. And as its leader, neither can you.

You and your church would do well to analyze the community where the Father has assigned you, along with the special gifts and calling of yourself and your leaders, and out of that come up with the special focus of your ministry and your church.

I sat across the table from a group of senior adults at a local church which was declining in numbers, causing them a great deal of concern. My opinion is that the causes for this were many and their downturn was decades in the making. They wanted my advice and I gave it to them.

I don’t think they cared for it.

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You’re not smart enough, strong enough, or godly enough to handle everything life is going to hurl at you. Part of growing up and growing deeper involves learning that lesson. Fortunately for us, however, our Lord knew it from the start and made provisions for our weaknesses.

What He did was to give us our two best friends for the living of these days: the Holy Spirit as our Guide and the Holy Bible as our Light.

Whether you pastor a church, run an office, or till a farm, you will frequently find yourself in situations beyond you, times when you need a wisdom more than yours, direction about choices facing you, and guidance for the labyrinth we call modern living.

The Holy Spirit. The Holy Bible. The Person of the Lord indwelling you and the Word of the Lord instructing you. It’s an unbeatable combination.

In his biography of Thomas Wolfe, Andrew Turnbull tells how the famous writer’s parents made the decision to marry. During only their second conversation, W. O. Wolfe proposed to Julia Westall. Protesting that she hardly knew the man, Julia suggested that they should open at random the book she was holding in her lap. They would let the book fall open, she said, then choose the middle paragraph on the right page, and let it speak to their situation.

Fortuitously or disastrously, depending on one’s viewpoint, the book opened to a wedding ceremony which contained the words, “till death do us part.” Three months later they were married.

We’ve all heard stories of people seeking God’s wisdom who tried that approach with the Bible. “I just opened the Bible at random,” they exclaim, “and my finger fell on that verse.” Almost always the verse has a completely different meaning than the one in which the speaker used it, but, they were convinced God had sent divine guidance for their situation.

There’s good news and bad news about such a methodology for finding God’s direction. The good news is that a Sovereign God may decide to use it. Throughout Scripture, we find God dispensing His wisdom by a fleece on the ground, the shadow of an apostle, and the casting of lots. My personal objection to this was forever quietened when I found Psalm 115:3. “Our God is in the Heavens; He does whatever He pleases.”

If He chooses to use a roll of the dice, whom am I to object?

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This principle is a twin to the previous one on training your people to become leaders. The fact is that no one is a leader all the time in every situation. When the biggest corporate head in America goes to church, the pastor is the leader and he is a member of the flock. When he attends his club, someone else is the executive and he is a dues-paying member.

Sometimes we lead; sometimes we follow.

In their book, “Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?” Gareth Jones and Rob Goffee wondered what goes into making a good follower.

One aspect of that issue was to find out what leaders expect from members of their teams. They came up with four answers.

1) “I expect my people to speak up and tell me what they really think.”

We get the impression from the inside tales of companies that failed scandalously such as Enron and WorldCom that this quality was missing in the executive offices. No one was telling Kenneth Lay or Bernie Evers that the company was in trouble, that his decisions were faulty, and that disaster was looming. They told the boss what he wanted to hear, and everyone paid dearly for this failure.

It takes courage. I’ve been there. The others in the room are either agreeing with the boss or keeping their mouths shut. And yet, you know that they all know the boss’ plans are wrong. They’re just not willing to lay their jobs on the line. Better to be quiet and still have a paycheck coming in. Enron’s and WorldCom’s executives kept their mouths shut and everyone lost their paychecks.

Bible students will recall that in Genesis 35, God changes Jacob’s name to Israel. Not a lot is made of that at the time, but anyone knowing the origins of those names sees a powerful point. The name “Jacob”–which comes out to something like Ya-a-cov in Hebrew–literally means “a heel-holder,” one who takes advantage of others, who gets a ride at their expense. “Israel,” something like Yitz-rael in Hebrew, means “one who wrestles with God.”

God was saying, “I would rather have you wrestling with me than taking advantage of your brother.” And don’t we appreciate that about our wonderful Lord!

It’s a trait of a good leader that he welcomes dissent. Not dissension, but dissent. If you think I’m about to make a mistake, tell me. If I hear you and then overrule you, you’ve done your part. If I am wise, I will value you highly for what you did—unless you are the dissenter on everything I suggest. In that case, I might suggest you find another place to work.

2) “I expect you to do your job well.”

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I once asked Pastor Mark Corts about his family. “I’ve never known such a group of overachievers. Your brother Tom is the president of Samford University; Paul is president of Wingate University. John Corts is the executive who runs the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. And you pastor one of the greatest Southern Baptist Churches in the country.” (That would be Calvary Baptist in Winston-Salem. If you know these institutions, you will recognize that this conversation happened a few years back. Mark is in Heaven now, and his brothers have retired.)

Mark said, “And our sister is a missionary; don’t leave her out.”

I said, “You had to have incredible parents. Tell me about them. What did they do to bring this about?”

As I recall, Mark Corts said, “They were simple, salt-of-the-earth people. They gave us responsibilities and expected us to meet them. In our teens, we all held part-time jobs. They simply expected us to do well.”

That probably was not the dramatic answer I was expecting. Surely, I had thought, the parents had a plan for raising bright high-achieving children. I could just see a sermon series or at least some great illustrations resulting from the insights from this son of such illustrious parents. But that’s all I got.

Reflecting on that conversation, I realize now that Mr. and Mrs. Corts were doing something that was indeed every bit as dramatic as I had hoped: they were bringing up their children to be effective leaders. They did that by assigning them responsibilities that increased in size and scope as they grew, and by holding them accountable.

“Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?” is the title of a book by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones. They wanted to know why leaders were in such short supply, particularly since every strata of this society claims to place a high premium on leadership.

The writers came up with two answers. First, organizations say they want leaders but structure themselves so as to destroy budding leadership and to discourage initiative. They reward blind obedience and promote those who know how to play the corporate game.

The second reason there are so few leaders is that we simply do not know much about leadership and how to produce it.

We will grant the second point, but I’d like to comment on the first, that organizations and businesses often stifle leadership.

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