Dare Great Things For Christ

One of the reasons many Christians don’t feel comfortable assuming the role of leadership is that we think it makes us egotistical.  Following, obeying, complying, and supporting seem much more consonant with Christianity.  But why do so many of us equate those terms with a lack of leadership?  By looking at the Virgin Mary as a model for leadership, we can see that a big part of being a leader is...

Many gifted people struggle with the temptation to draw all the attention to themselves.  The allure of leadership is that it puts us in positions of power and therefore esteem in the eyes of others.  A leader who is Christian needs to resist this of course and dedicate themselves to really enhancing the lives of others around them as a servant.  In this fourth of our thirteen part series on Mary,...

Something special about every act of leadership is that it makes us alone.  The famous phrase, “it is lonely at the top” applies well to leader in every state.  But is this just an accident?  Or is it in fact a blessing?  When Mary was chosen by God to be the Mother of God, she had to fill the task no one else could fill.  But she embraced it as being chosen by God and therefore holding His hand i...

If we look to sacred scripture for examples of great leadership many names come to mind:  St. Paul, St. Timothy, St. John, but what about the Virgin Mary?  Doesn’t her life have anything to teach us about leadership?  Independently of the various faith traditions out there what can we learn about leadership by looking at the life the bible presents us?  I think we can learn a lot.  In this second...

Applying our Catholic faith to the demands of leadership today is a demanding and sometimes harrowing experience.  We look around to see if someone has done it before - where our models could be found -  and when we look for models we need look no further than the Virgin Mary to find the very best of them all.  This could be surprising.  What does Mary have to do with our modern situation?  Our ne...

How did Jesus Christ form his apostles to be bold proclaimers of His word?  One way was by sending them where they thought they could never go – into the darkness and into fearful places armed with nothing more than his word and the powers of His priesthood.  And yet they were not alone.  In fact he promised that he would be with them always.  Doesn’t he do the same with us today?  In this final s...

There’s a lot written about leadership today and one of the most popular themes is the question of how to motivate people to follow.  It seems like pretty much everyone agrees that people like to follow winners.  That doesn’t surprise me considering the fact that our Lord himself gave that lesson to his apostles.  He is the ultimate victor and he sends his apostles forth to proclaim His victory. ...

Being afraid is a normal response in front of things that are threatening to us.  The problem is not that we have fear – the question is whether or not we’ll allow that fear to become a catalyst for something greater, for courage, or whether we will allow fear to paralyze us.  When Christ formed his apostles he taught them to stare down there fears and he did this by facing everything before them....

It's lonely at the top.  How many times have we made that statement about our own situation as a leader or had other people remind us about that truth?  It almost makes us ask the question about whether Jesus ever felt lonely and it begs the question as to how he prepared his apostles for the solitude that would be a part of their life as a leader of the church.  When we look back at hos Christ pr...

There are many philosophies about leadership out there and some of them hold that failure is not an option.  Many leaders in fact are afraid of making mistakes.  However, when Jesus Christ formed his disciples to be apostles to the nations, to be bold proclaimers of his word, he welcomed their mistakes.  The gospels famously recount many of the mistakes the apostles made while they were with Chris...

Anyone who has achieved any level of success in their life knows that much of their success is a result of hard work.  And yet at the same time hard work is hard to do.  Many people don’t see the importance of hard work in forming the character of a leader and yet when Christ formed his twelve apostles he shared the labors of evangelization with them.  And he invited his apostles to embrace labor...

It goes without saying that our culture today is facing a crisis of truth.  Ideas and customs we once held dear are being questioned and our young people seem to be bereft of sure guides for what life is all about.  But was it that much different at the time of Christ?  And how did Jesus respond to the difficulty of the people of his day to embrace truth?  When Jesus formed his twelve apostles he...

Following the way of the Lord obviously is the right thing to do.  It’s a good thing and should make us happy.  Why then is it so often marked by difficulty?  Why wouldn’t God make our path an easy one?  If we go to the New Testament we see that actually it never was easy and when our Lord was forming his disciples to be bold proclaimers of his Word he formed them through challenge and difficulty....

When it comes to making leaders nobody does it better than God himself.  Studying what scripture tells us about how Jesus himself trained leaders is the ultimate pattern for how we can advance in leadership today.  In this ten part series I want to study the elements that are essential to this leadership formation.  Prominent amongst those many features is the fact that Jesus formed his apostles t...

When it comes to learning how to lead no one can teach us better than Christ.  And for Christians who are trying to lead their world Christ is the ultimate and best reference point.  So how did he do it?  When he had his disciples to form in order to make them the leaders that he wanted them to be – how did he approach it?  In this first of a ten part series we try to answer those questions.  And...

A leader could have the best strategy in the world but if he’s unable to make a choice on how to implement it his strategy will be meaningless.  And yet is precisely here that many of us struggle.  Making a choice seems irrevocable and sometimes choosing one way in preference to another seems like closing the door on perfectly good opportunities.  But then again not choosing is also a choice and i...

In the Gospel our Lord tells us to be as cunning as serpents and as simple as doves.  What does it mean to be cunning as a serpent and how could our Lord possibly want us to be cunning?  Anyone involved in leadership knows that leaders need to be strategic.  They need to think ahead of the curve and find a plan for achieving the great things that they set out to do.  Could this be what Christ mean...

The ability to cast an effective vision is much more than coming up with great ideas.  Ideas require planning in order to be effective and planning requires choice and focus.  But as we all know our choice and focus can sometimes be wrong.  That’s because strategy itself depends upon our awareness.  Being alert, being aware, and being attentive is the secret for making great plans.  Let’s take a l...

One of the most important aspects to any leadership is your ability to have ideas.  Casting a vision and showing where we want to go is essential to have anyone follow us.  But what is the difference between having ideas and having good ideas?  What makes a potential idea or a future vision something that is captivating and true?  Our Christian faith helps us here – God will help us to be temperat...

The easiest way to get lost in doing anything is to not know what you are trying to do to begin with.  Anytime we’re called to lead a project of any kind, our leadership begins with vision.  But what if we can’t find a vision?  Is there something deeper at the root of being able to cast a vision going forward?  There is – we call it the power to dream.  Dream is the power within a leader to reach...

All great leaders dare to dream but what do you do when the dreams have gone dry?  Where does our power to come up with great ideas or great initiatives come from?  In the Christian view of leadership, it comes from deep within our hearts made in the image and likeness of God.  Which is why the redeeming power of Christ to heal us and our sense of ourselves is the key to unlocking our desire to da...

There are a plethora of books and articles written about leadership today.  But most of them focus on leadership as if it were an individual enterprise – almost like something the leader does in a vacuum.  In fact, however, leadership requires leading others which means our relationship with others and ability to get them to join our cause is at the heart of what we’re doing.  Does our faith in Ch...

The key that determines the success of every great endeavor is whether or not we actually do it.  Planning, scheming, dreaming, all of these things are fine but in the final analysis only doing a deed will get the deed done.  But getting things done is hard.  Things can arise that we did not plan energy can wane situations can change.  It’s a good thing that God is on our side and leading out of a...

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  The same could be said about the road to failure.  The difference between success and failure is often the ability to try.  But this is exactly what is difficult for many of us.  We can have the greatest intentions and the most noble aspirations but passing into action seems to be on of the hardest things to do.  Does faith offer us an...

All of us want to be influential in our lives.  We want to be successful parents, great business leaders, powerful leaders in our community and we know that all of our influence flows from our actions and all of our actions flow from our intentions and desires.  But intentions are not good enough.  Great leaders know how to build on good intentions and make effective plans to really hit the mark. ...