By LeRoy Lawson
Bill Hybels, Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).
As a rule, I don”t promote leadership books. Most of them seem like the same old same old, prettied up in new packaging.
Sometimes, though, rules are made to be broken. So I”m breaking one. If you are looking for an easy-to-read, common-sense set of principles that can lift your effectiveness to a new level, try Bill Hybels”s Axiom.
PROVERBS, NOT TRUISMS
My appreciation rose when I learned from these pages that Hybels holds in high regard another of my favorite books on the subject, Steven Sample”s The Contrarian”s Guide to Leadership. Sample is required reading in my leadership courses, because he has found, as I have, many so-called leadership truisms simply aren”t true. Hybels has learned the same lesson.
Axiom consists of 76 pithy minichapters, each worthy of quick reading and slow pondering. If Hybels boasts a little too often of his successes, just wait: fortunately he has stumbled enough to make his super-competence bearable by the rest of us. The reality is that Willow Creek”s pastor has earned the right to be read.
Even if you don”t have his charisma (and who does?), you can still profitably apply his principles. Here are some of my favorite chapter headings:
Hire Tens. People will never rise higher than their leaders, so hire tens, not fives.
The Three C”s. When you hire, never compromise on character, competence, and chemistry. They have to be honest, they have to be good at their job, and they have to be able to get along with the team.
Keep Short Accounts. If you can”t forgive””quickly””you can”t lead. You can boss, but you can”t lead.
A Blue-Sky Day. Here”s the key question: “What would we do to advance the kingdom of God if there was nothing to stop us from doing it?”
Sweat the Small Stuff. As we used to say, “The devil is in the details.”
Facts Are Your Friends. So don”t be afraid of them. Your denial, after all, won”t make them go away.
Admit Mistakes, and Your Stock Goes Up. And you”ll sleep better.
Are We Still Having Fun? No explanation needed.
Read All You Can. Of course you”d expect this one from me.
There are so many more. You may not agree with all of Hybels”s principles””although if you disagree, you”d better be prepared to defend yourself. The man knows what he”s talking about.
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WATCHFULNESS, NOT TRUST
David Wessel, In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke”s War on The Great Panic (New York: Crown Business, 2009).
Another man who knows what he”s talking about is David Wessel. In Fed We Trust, his title tells us. But do we? Should we? Or more specifically, should we have trusted back in 2007″“09 as America”s economy (and with it the world”s) teetered on the brink of another Great Depression? Should we have trusted the country”s most powerful money managers to pull us back from the edge?
In Fed We Trust not only evokes the motto on our coinage (“In God We Trust”) but also reminds us of Jesus” stern warning: “You cannot serve both God and money.” We do, though. And our trust in and servitude to money sent the country into a panic (the Great Panic, Wessel labels it).
With IRAs collapsing and home equities vanishing and jobs disappearing, we discovered, often bitterly, that we could not trust in money. Or in the Fed. Or, some were wailing, in God.
Wessel, The Wall Street Journal”s economics editor, has kept a reporter”s eye on the Federal Reserve Board for two decades. Probably no one is better qualified to spin this cliff-hanger of how Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, teamed up with Henry Paulson of the Treasury and Tim Geithner of the New York Fed, among others, operating without precedent or plan, jerry-built their responses to emergency after emergency. They constantly underestimated the size of the looming tragedy, rushing in at the rescue with slashed interest rates, forced mergers, risky bailouts, stretched legal authority, newly created billions, and inventive political machinations. In the end, they kept the “ship of state” afloat. At least for now.
The captain of the ship, or at least the lead player in Wessel”s drama, is Bernanke. An academic caught up in Wall Street”s power crunches, Bernanke is an acknowledged expert on the Great Depression. Dreading a repeat of that disaster, he determined he and his cohorts would do “whatever it takes” to prevent another.
You”ll recognize the major players in the ongoing drama: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, AIG, Fanny Mae, and Freddy Mac. How the mighty have fallen””or been propped up.
As I write, the worst appears to be over. The economy is creaking back to life. Housing seems to be recovering. The Fed”s next challenge will be to mop up all the excess liquidity so its hoped-for rebound doesn”t overshoot into inflation. It takes a heap o” tinkering to make an economy trustworthy. Can we trust the Fed to manage it?
And if it can, to what end? So we can have another booming economy? I repeat: to what end?
Jesus had it right: if something really matters, it”s in God, not the Fed, we should trust.
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A NEW LIFE, NOT A NEW SYSTEM
Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007).
In matters that matter, it pays to pay attention to Brian McLaren. In his book (Everything Must Change), this pastor/prophet does not pull his punches: what is required “is not a new system of belief patched into an old way of life; it is a new way of life that changes everything.”
I read this book and In Fed We Trust at the same time, a jarring juxtaposing I heartily recommend. Wessel”s breathtaking report of Wall Street”s near collapse and the resulting bruising Main Street suffered is, in the end, somewhat self-centered. It”s about us: our money, our broader economy, our unpaid bills, our rising unemployment. Things are bad and could get worse””for us.
But what about them? McLaren considers the world”s top crises, the sources of nearly universal suffering: the world”s prosperous few versus the poverty-stricken majority; the justice systems” protected few versus the discriminated-against majority; the safe and secure few versus the hunted and ravaged many; the spiritually smug few versus the majority living with little hope in this world.
What he pleads for is a new kind of community, one based on justice, peace, equality, and compassion. What he believes is that the life and message of Jesus hold the solutions to the world”s seemingly insolvable challenges. He is convinced Jesus took (takes) seriously the Kingdom of God as the antidote to the Kingdom of Money (theocapitalism, he calls it).
What struck this reader as I made my way through the two books was a surprisingly obvious similarity. Wesser leaves no doubt that if we are not to have another Great Panic, a great reformation on Wall Street (and Main Street) is not an option; it”s a necessity. McLaren, moving beyond money to the very existence of the human race, believes a great reformation of morals, of justice, of stewardship, of our definition of human is also not optional, but essential””and the God-ordained reforming body is the church. If the world is to be saved, then, in the church everything must change.
You may not agree with everything McLaren proposes. If not, though, then what”s your solution? More of the same? Do you think the same has worked so far?
LeRoy Lawson is international consultant for Christian Missionary Fellowship, a contributing editor to CHRISTIAN STANDARD and a member of the Publishing Committee. His column appears here at least monthly.
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