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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Outcomes Conference Book of the Year Christian Book Award Finalist Richard Stearns is a leader who has been tested as a CEO in both secular companies and also as the head of one of the world's largest Christian ministries. After stints as CEO of Parker Brothers and then Lenox, Stearns accepted the invitation to leave his corporate career to become the president of World Vision US, where he became the longest serving president in their seventy-year history. During his tenure there he implemented corporate best practices, lowering overheads while tripling revenues. His leadership in calling the American church to respond to some of the greatest crises of our time, notably the HIV and AIDS pandemic, and the global refugee crisis, challenged Christians to embrace a bold vision for compassion, mercy, and justice. In Lead Like It Matters to God, Stearns shares the leadership principles he has learned over the course of his remarkable career. As a leader who has navigated both secular and sacred spaces, Stearns claims that the values Christian leaders embrace in their workplaces are actually more important than the results they achieve—that God is more concerned about a leader's character than a leader's success. With wisdom, wit, and biblical teaching, Stearns shares captivating stories of his life journey and unpacks seventeen crucial values that can transform leaders and their organizations. When leaders embody values such as integrity, courage, excellence, forgiveness, humility, surrender, balance, generosity, perseverance, love, and encouragement, they not only improve their witness for Christ, they also shape institutions, influence culture, improve team performance, and create healthy workplaces where people can flourish. Through this book, Stearns will inspire a new generation of Christian leaders to boldly take their values into their workplaces to tangibly demonstrate the character of Christ, the love of Christ, and the truth of Christ as they live out their faith in full view of others.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH GRATITUDE,
to the hundreds of colleagues, mentors, teachers,
and friends whose character and leadership shaped,
changed, and inspired me over the course of my career.
Values lived out can become infectious—in a good way.
So I am especially grateful to those “contagious”
colleagues, who by their own examples showed
me how to become a better leader—
a leader more pleasing to God.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,and all these things will be given to you as well.
MATTHEW 6:33
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentlenessand self-control. Against such things there is no law.
GALATIANS 5:22-23
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
The aim of life is not to gain a place in the sun, nor to achieve fame or success, but to lose ourselves in the glory of God.
SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA
LET ME START WITH A CONFESSION:I don’t generally enjoy reading leadership books. I think that’s because they always make me feel a little inadequate—like I don’t quite measure up because I haven’t mastered the latest leadership methods and techniques. So it’s kind of ironic that I have now written a leadership book. Heaven knows there are literally hundreds of books out there, each hawking some approach that will lead to greater success, some new formula that will transform and catapult our careers. And I don’t object to any books that will help leaders become better at leading because leadership matters a great deal in our world. Good leaders can change the world in remarkable ways—just as bad leaders can do serious harm.
But as a Christian, I have come to believe that God’s design for leadership is radically different from the secular models that so dominate the current landscape and have seeped into churches and ministries as well. Secular models are almost always outcomes based. They focus on what skillsets, what techniques, what leadership behaviors will deliver superior results. Good results and better performance are not bad things, but in God’s economy, they are not the main thing. In a world where success is king, we must be careful not to fall into the trap of believing that our identity somehow derives from the magnitude of our achievements rather than our relationship with God. I believe God is far more concerned about how a leader leads than he is about the success that leader delivers. Because success is overrated.
Yes, you heard me correctly, I said that success is overrated. Now I understand that making this statement, in a book about leadership, is akin to heresy. We live in a success-obsessed culture where winning is everything—in business, in sports, in politics, in school, and in life. We celebrate the wealthiest people, the most powerful leaders, the biggest churches, the winningest teams, the fastest-growing companies, and the most famous celebrities. We are literally marinating in a success-driven, achievement-oriented culture that permeates every dimension of our work and our lives. The drive for success and achievement is so pervasive that we don’t even realize how much it influences everything that we do. It’s like a colorless, odorless gas that we are all breathing. But it can be deadly. The dogged pursuit of success can become an idol in our lives that lures us farther and farther away from God. But God, as it turns out, is not all that interested in success. He is not impressed by growing revenues, increased church attendance, the size of your income, or the title on your business card. God is looking for leaders “after his own heart,” winsome leaders who will submit to his leading and trust him for the outcomes. A leader’s character matters more to God.
Right now, you might be thinking: Easy for you to say. You don’t know what I face every day at work. It’s perform or perish. I work in a dog-eat-dog environment. It’s a brutal workplace culture. If you don’t perform, you’re out, and you might be out even when you do perform if you get on the wrong side of the workplace politics. On Sunday at church I hear about “putting on the full armor of God,” but on Monday, if I want to make it through the week, I need to put on the full armor of the world. Because work sometimes feels like combat.
If that’s what you’re facing in your job, I totally understand because I worked in just those kind of tough, secular environments for almost twenty-five years. I have had some horrible bosses, worked in some toxic cultures, and have even been fired twice. But through all of it I learned that my Christian faith was not a liability, it was an asset. In the midst of all the stress and pressure, I discovered that when we truly take God with us to work, he will use us for his purposes.
WHEN WE TRULY TAKE GOD WITH US TO WORK, HE WILL USE US FOR HIS PURPOSES.
Mother Teresa, who was sainted by the Catholic Church for her lifelong dedication to the poor in India, once made a profound statement that thoroughly shatters our secular notions of success. Senator Mark Hatfield was visiting her in Calcutta and watching as she moved among the beds of the sick and dying. The senator was struck by the sheer size of the needs compared to the resources she had available. “Mother,” he asked, “don’t you get awfully discouraged when you see the magnitude of the poverty and realize how little you can really do?” In a respectful way he was really asking her if she felt like she was failing in the face of those overwhelming odds. She answered him with this: “My dear Senator1, God did not call me to be successful. He called me to be faithful.” Wow! In just fourteen words Mother Teresa flipped our “success paradigm” upside down—God calls us to be faithful, not successful.
You see, we tend to put the highest value on the outcomes of our work, but God values our motives more. We value the “what” of our work, but God values the “why” and the “how.” We prioritize the destination, but for God it’s all about the journey. We reward success, but God’s bottom line is faithfulness. This single truth flies in the face of most of what we’ve been taught about leadership in books, seminars, universities and our workplaces.
WE REWARD SUCCESS, BUT GOD’S BOTTOM LINE IS FAITHFULNESS.
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes imagine what it will be like someday to stand before the Lord and to hear his assessment of my life. And despite my three CEO titles and decades of working in multiple organizations, I just can’t imagine God saying to me: “Well done, good and faithful servant, for those twenty consecutive quarters of earnings growth!” or, “Way to go, Rich, on becoming a CEO at the age of thirty-three. You killed it!” No, I don’t think God will be impressed by those things. Hey, my wife isn’t even impressed by those things. It’s far more likely that God will speak to us about how we led and how we lived. How did we represent him to those we worked with? How did we embody the truths and values of the kingdom of God in our lives? And how did we tangibly show his great love for people in our daily conduct?
For most of my twenty years as president of World Vision, I had 2 Corinthians 5:20 stenciled on my office wall: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” This verse, more than any other, seemed to capture my role as a Christian leader. Jesus was calling me to be his ambassador. And ambassadors are called to embody the values, ideals, and character of the one they represent. I will make the case in these pages that wherever you work or volunteer—in a school, a business, a church, a ministry, a nonprofit, in government, or in your home—you too are called first to be Christ’s ambassador. God really is making his appeal through you. It’s a humbling thought, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter whether you consider yourself a leader or not. You’re Christ’s ambassador. Your life is your witness whether you are at work or at home. When people look at how you live your life, raise your children, spend your money, do your work, and treat others, what will they see? These things matter most to God.
This book is about why I believe the values Christian leaders embrace are more important than the success they achieve. I am not arguing that success is a bad thing—it’s just not the main thing. Character and competence are both honoring to God. When we focus first on being faithful to God in our lives, and when our work is driven by the values of God’s kingdom, he may very well bless us with successful outcomes. But qualities like integrity, humility, excellence, perseverance, generosity, courage, and forgiveness matter more to God than the most impressive résumé of accomplishments. And I believe that leaders who embrace these characteristics will lift not only their own performance but also the performance of their teams.
However, as I’m writing this book, these timeless Christian values are under assault in our culture. Corporate scandals happen with regularity. Cheating scandals have again been uncovered in professional sports. The #MeToo movement has revealed appalling abuses of power by men toward women in virtually every sector of our society: corporate America, Hollywood, the media, academia, government, and even within the church. The coronavirus epidemic has tested leaders in every sphere and shown us the values on which their leadership is based—some to their credit and others to their shame. Tragically, blatant racism and xenophobia have again reared their ugly heads in our country with incidents of police brutality exposing deeply systemic racial biases. And our national politics have devolved into the basest kind of lying, name calling, and incivility in my lifetime. What has happened to our values?
This book is about reclaiming those values.
The beauty of becoming a values-driven leader is that embracing positive values does not require you to master any exceptional new skills or techniques. Values-driven leadership is more about character than capabilities, more about being than doing, more about pleasing God than people. So, I have organized the book around seventeen values and leadership qualities that I believe are essential for a Christian leader to embody: surrender, sacrifice, trust, love, excellence, humility, integrity, vision, courage, generosity, perseverance, forgiveness, self-awareness, balance, humor, encouragement, and listening. After a couple of introductory chapters, each of these values is expanded on in a chapter of its own, supported by Scripture and illustrated with stories from my own experiences. You can read them sequentially or you can jump to one of the values that seems most relevant to you right now.
Now it takes a fair bit of hubris to think one is qualified to write a book about leadership. So I need to begin with a heartfelt confession. I was never a perfect leader—not anywhere close. Over the course of my career my warts and blemishes were on display for everyone to see. As a leader I have made serious mistakes, failed many times, handled situations badly, and disappointed God more often than I’d like to admit. But throughout it all I tried to pick myself up, dust myself off, and try again to become a better leader—a better ambassador for Jesus. My hope for this book is that younger leaders might benefit from the important life lessons of a fellow traveler—someone who now has the great advantage of hindsight. You can chalk these insights up to experience or you can see them as accumulated wisdom, but my sincere hope is that you will find them helpful.
I wrote this book because I believe leadership is so very important. Leadership affects every dimension of our human experience. Leadership can unite us, lift us up, and inspire us to achieve great things. And leadership is crucial to accomplishing God’s purposes in our world. In short, leadership matters to God and so it ought to matter to us.
SCRIPTURE➢ “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:20)
LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLE➢ Christian leaders are called to be change agents for Christ, bringing healing and restoration into the brokenness of their communities and workplaces.
Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called, and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.
A. W. TOZER
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
MARGARET MEAD
MARGARET MEAD, THE FAMOUS ANTHROPOLOGIST, was right. When you stop and think about it, virtually every accomplishment of the human race over the millennia has been achieved not by single individuals, but by the collective effort of groups of people who have joined together in some sort of organized way. When groups of people come together, each contributing different skills and abilities, the whole is always much greater than the sum of the parts: one plus one plus one can equal fifty.
Let me give you just a few examples. Do you ever marvel at everyday miracles like skyscrapers, automobiles, smartphones, vaccines, suspension bridges, or even the flat-screen TV in your home? None were achieved by a single person. They were the result of the collective efforts of large groups of people working together, often standing on the shoulders of other groups of people that came before them. The people who built your TV had to rely on the past achievements of those who learned how to produce glass, refine steel and aluminum, injection-mold plastics, broadcast radio signals, and create semiconductor circuits. In fact, your television is the product of thousands of groups of people working over thousands of years adding one innovation after another to the total of human knowledge.
So, what’s my point? Groups of people working together change the world. And groups of people always need to be led. Without leadership, groups of people are just, well, groups of people. Without leadership, they might as well be herds of cows. Why does one sports team win the trophy over all the others? Leadership. Why does one company outperform others? Leadership. Why does one church committee accomplish more than others? Leadership. It is not an exaggeration to say that all human achievements have been made possible by leaders who provided direction and vision to groups of people, enabling the groups to accomplish something that none of the individuals could have achieved alone. Leadership is the one critical ingredient that changes the world.
LEADERSHIP IS THE ONE CRITICAL INGREDIENT THAT CHANGES THE WORLD.
But there is a myth about leadership that I would like to debunk. We tend to put leaders on pedestals. We glorify them in our culture as some sort of super race of beings. But in reality leaders are just one cog in the machinery of human endeavor, one member of the team. Of what use is a symphony conductor without her musicians? What good is a coach without his players? What is the value of the committee chair without her committee? There is an important symbiosis between the leader and the led. In 1 Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul described the church using the metaphor of the interdependencies within the human body. It is a wonderful picture of the importance of every member of a group, not just the leader.
Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. . . .
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. (1 Corinthians 12:14, 18-26)
Essentially Paul was saying that the body only functions because all its parts are different, and each plays a critical role. No one part of the body, not even the head, can function without the others. Steve Jobs could never have brought us the iPhone without a legion of designers, engineers, marketers, accountants, and programmers behind him. Abraham Lincoln could never have freed the slaves and preserved the union without brave social activists, other voices in Congress, his own cabinet members, and the Union Army.
For the Christian leader, there is another truth in this passage that should be the bedrock of his or her leadership philosophy: “there should be no division in the body,” and “its parts should have equal concern for each other.” Every member of the group you are leading is precious, deserves honor, and is uniquely gifted by God. People want to follow a leader who values them in that way.
And, while I’m at it, there is another leadership myth that needs debunking. Leaders are not rare. Almost all of us are leaders. The CEO, the symphony conductor, or the school principal are not the only leaders in their respective institutions. In my CEO roles I had multiple vice presidents reporting to me who were also leaders. And they had directors and managers reporting to them who were leaders. The school principal has department chairs, coaches, librarians, and so on—each of whom is a leader in their own sphere. The conductor has the heads of each instrumental section. Most organizations have many leadership roles. The truth is that most of us are both followers and leaders at the same time, being a member of one team and the leader of another. And even if you have a job with few leadership duties, you may be a leader at your church, in your neighborhood, or in your family.
THE “WHY” OF LEADERSHIP
So why does leadership really matter to God? You’re probably reading this book because you want to become a better leader in your chosen profession. You work hard and you hope to get recognition, promotions, expanded responsibilities, and, yes, more money. Those things are the “what” things. They may be things you are hoping to achieve, but they don’t answer the “why” questions. Why do you do what you do? Why is your work important to God? The “why” questions start to get at things like purpose and meaning, which require us to think much more deeply about our lives in Christ.
For most of us, there doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between the God we worship on Sunday and the work we do on Monday. I spent twenty-three years of my life working at companies that sold deodorants, toys and games, and luxury tableware (Gillette, Parker Brothers Games, and Lenox China). But did God really care about my work in those places? And did my work really matter in God’s larger purposes in the world? The answer is a resounding yes, but perhaps for reasons that are not immediately obvious. To understand how our work connects to our faith, we need to go back into our Bibles to discern just what God wants to accomplish in the world and why we, those of us who are followers of Jesus, play such a crucial role in the unfolding of God’s plan. There is a big picture here that we need to see if we are ever to understand how our lives—and what we do with them—matter to God. To put it in business terms, our personal mission or calling needs to flow out of the mission of God in our world. So, bear with me as I unpack a little theology. Because without understanding the theological underpinnings of our vocations, the work we do for forty or fifty hours a week for maybe forty years won’t integrate very well with our faith.
GOD IS CALLING US TO JOIN HIM IN CHANGING THE WORLD
Fundamental to my understanding of the mission of every follower of Jesus Christ in our world is this statement: I believe that Jesus came to launch a revolution that would fundamentally change the world in profound ways. A revolution he called the coming of the kingdom of God.
JESUS CAME TO LAUNCH A REVOLUTION THAT WOULD FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THE WORLD IN PROFOUND WAYS.
If you were to read through the four Gospels looking for the words “kingdom of God” or “kingdom of heaven,” you would conclude that Jesus was totally preoccupied with the coming of such a kingdom. This “kingdom coming” idea is mentioned more than a hundred times in the Gospels, mostly by Jesus himself. To take this even a step further, after a fresh reading of the Gospels using this “kingdom” lens, you would likely conclude that the central mission of Jesus’ incarnation was to purposefully inaugurate and establish God’s kingdom on earth.
So just what was this coming of the kingdom of God all about? It was essentially Jesus’ world-changing vision of a new relationship between God and humankind—a relationship that could now begin to heal the brokenness of the human race and renew God’s creation, conforming it to the character and likeness of God. It was his vision of a new way of living, a new dream for human society that would turn the values of the world inside out as people chose to live under God’s rule and according to his values. And he intended it to change the world.
In the introduction to this book I quoted 2 Corinthians 5:20, the verse I had stenciled on my office wall, which calls us to be Christ’s ambassadors. But let’s now look at that verse in context.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
There is a lot in this passage we could unpack, but let me draw your attention to the word reconcile/reconciliation, used five times in these verses. In the Greek, the word for reconciliation is katallagē1, which means “restoration to (divine) favor.” Merriam-Webster defines reconcile2 this way: “To restore to friendship or harmony; to make consistent or congruous.” In other words, this “ministry of reconciliation” is about restoring people to friendship and harmony with God and making all things more consistent and congruous with God’s desires.
On a personal level this reconciliation occurs through the forgiveness of our sins through Christ’s atonement, which restores us to a right relationship with God. But on a grander scale, this ministry of reconciliation also extends out into our world. Christ’s followers, now forgiven and restored, seek to restore all things to favor with God: individuals, families, communities, schools, businesses, organizations, governments, and nations. God has commissioned us as his ambassadors to be involved with his grand renewal and restoration project in a broken and fallen world. As followers of Christ, we are invited and directed to participate in his great redemptive rescue mission.
In the Lord’s Prayer we find a remarkable statement that we often just recite by rote: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The coming of the kingdom of God is not just about some heavenly future; it is very much intended to play out right here on earth. As Jesus’ followers, we are sent into the world to begin the process of reconciling all things to God. This is Jesus’ vision of his transformed disciples transforming the world.
WE ARE INVITED AND DIRECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN CHRIST’S GREAT REDEMPTIVE RESCUE MISSION.
We personally join Jesus’ kingdom revolution by repudiating the values of this world—greed, arrogance, selfishness, hatred, racism, sexism, domination, exploitation, and corruption—and modeling the values of God’s kingdom: love, justice, forgiveness, integrity, sacrifice, encouragement, generosity, humility, inclusion, and compassion. We are called to become ambassadors for and purveyors of these kingdom values, which work to restore the brokenness of humanity. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
FIREFIGHTERS OF THE KINGDOM
To take this out of theological terminology, one way I have described this kingdom mission is compare it to the way our white blood cells function in our body. (My long-ago degree in neurobiology has given me just enough knowledge to be dangerous.) Essentially, when our body experiences brokenness because of a wound or infection, our white blood cells rush to the site of the brokenness to repair, restore, and heal. Or, to use another metaphor, our white blood cells are the body’s “firefighters,” rushing to put out fires. I think this is a beautiful picture of the role of the church in our broken world. We are called to circulate in every part of our world and our cultures to bring healing and restoration wherever we find brokenness. And human brokenness is found everywhere—in families, communities, schools, businesses, and governments.
As followers of Jesus Christ, who first healed our brokenness, all of us are now called to be his ambassadors, serving as his agents of healing and restoration wherever we live and work. This is the “why” of our lives and work. This is our core mission and purpose wherever God may have placed us. This is why our work matters to God. The British theologian N. T. Wright puts it this way:
Our task as image-bearing,3 God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. . . . The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even—heaven help us—Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way . . . with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, “if not now, then when?” if we are grasped by this vision, we may also hear the question, “if not us, then who?” And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?
LEADERSHIP FOR WHAT?
You signed up to read a book on leadership, but the past few pages of theology may have seemed like a bit of a bait and switch. But it is only when you understand that you are engaged in a revolution to change the world for Christ that the true purpose of your leadership role becomes real. God’s agenda of reform and redemption, as his kingdom comes “on earth as it is in heaven,” targets every human institution. Leaders shape communities, corporations, schools, hospitals, charities, and governments. Christian leaders can shape them to conform more to the heart of Christ, who loves the people who work there.
GODLY LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTES TO HUMAN FLOURISHING WHEN IT CREATES CULTURES AND ENVIRONMENTS THAT ARE FAIR, JUST, AND CARING.
I asked earlier whether God really cared about my work at Lenox, Parker Brothers, or Gillette. The answer is yes. Work is inherently valuable as we use our unique talents and abilities in ways that reflect God’s own creativity to produce products and services that benefit the broader community. Work also provides needed livelihoods for individuals and families. But, perhaps more significantly, our workplaces matter because they are human institutions filled with people whom God cares about. God wants all people to flourish and to be drawn into relationship with him. And so, if God’s kingdom is to expand and grow, every human institution must also be renewed by the values and principles of his kingdom revolution. Organizational cultures can be brutal, or they can be life-giving. Good and godly leadership contributes to human flourishing when it creates cultures and environments that are fair, just, and caring.
CALLED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
A few months after I left my CEO job at Lenox China to join World Vision, I called my former executive assistant, Maureen, to see how things were going back at Lenox. I was troubled to hear her report. She said something like this, “Rich, it’s just not the same here now. The atmosphere is so negative. It seems like everyone is out for themselves. Even the language is coarser. People are hurting here now.” Then she said, “Can you come back?” Now, after years of working together, I know that Maureen was biased, but what she was saying was that leadership matters—it makes a difference. To be honest, during my years at Lenox I wondered more than once whether my Christian faith made any difference at all. I had a Bible on my desk and tried to treat people in ways that were humane and caring, but I didn’t always feel like I was making a difference for the Lord. But at some level I was shaping the culture and values of Lenox to be more pleasing to God. Christian leaders shape and influence institutions, and that matters. Integrity, excellence, humility, forgiveness, encouragement, trust, and courage are values of the kingdom of God. And when leaders incarnate those values, the world changes. God had placed me on the front lines of his revolution at a place that happened to sell fine china and crystal. Lenox mattered to God, and the place where you work matters to God too.
SCRIPTURE➢ “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jeremiah 29:11)
LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLE➢ God has been present in your life since before you drew your first breath. He wants to use all your talents, abilities, and life experiences to shape you and prepare you to serve his purposes. God is calling you into his great purpose for your life.
If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look “little” or “big.”
ELISABETH ELLIOT
FOLLOW GOD IN THE SMALL THINGS AND HE MAY SOMEDAY USE YOU TO ACHIEVE GREAT THINGS.
HINDSIGHT IS SO MUCH CLEARER THAN FORESIGHT. As I look back on my life and career, I can see more clearly the many ways God shaped my character and directed my steps that were barely perceptible at the time. And here’s what I’ve learned about God’s leading: while he always leads us in the direction of his intended purpose for our lives, he also lets us decide whether we will follow. The ball is in our court. And, “following” doesn’t just involve the big decisions made at life’s great crossroads moments. It requires a daily submission, a consistent obedience in life’s small moments. Follow him in the small things and he may someday use you to achieve great things. You are God’s hands and feet in this world, and he will use you if you’ll let him.
WE ALL START SOMEWHERE
I was born and raised in Syracuse, New York. My father was a used-car salesman with an eighth-grade education and my mother a filing clerk who never finished high school. When I was born, my father optimistically ordered a new neon sign to display over his small used-car lot reading: “Ed Stearns & Son—Used Cars.” Like most fathers, he hoped that someday his son might become successful, even though success always seemed to elude him. My dad was kind of a tragic figure—a man with little education and an alcoholic with three failed marriages. His drinking problem not only ruined his marriages but also caused him to fail in business. Ultimately things fell apart, creating a downward spiral that caused our family to unravel. My father loved us, but he just wasn’t able to cope with the pressures of life. When he was finally forced to declare bankruptcy, my mother left him, and the bank foreclosed on our home. At ten years old, my family and my world unraveled.
Over the next few years my mother, sister, and I had to fend for ourselves, struggling financially and moving from one rental house to the next until I finished high school. Of course, the ordeal of these childhood events shaped me in various ways. On the one hand, I was forced to become more self-reliant, but on the other, it instilled in me a deep sense of insecurity that I carried well into my adult years.
But despite the turbulence in my life, I lived in an America where all things seemed possible, and I grew up at a time when the right education could open the doors to the world. I now realize that I also grew up at a time when just being a white male opened opportunities for me that were effectively closed to women and minorities. The American dream was not fully available to everyone, nor is it still today.
As a young boy my dream was to escape from the things that had killed the dreams of my parents and to find a better and different life on the other side. And while my difficult childhood might have held me back, it actually had the opposite effect; it motivated me to work hard to avoid the mistakes my parents had made. My older sister, Karen, instilled in me the notion that education could offer both of us a pathway out. So, at some point in my early teens, I set my hopes on the possibility that I might someday attend one of the Ivy League universities, which my sister assured me were the very best places to go. But in order to pursue this, I knew I would need something my family didn’t have—money. So, I worked a succession of summer and part-time jobs: delivering newspapers, bagging groceries, selling popcorn at a movie theater, and even cleaning toilets at a nursing home. But it was those early jobs that taught me the basics about work, money, and responsibility. And toward my college dreams, I tried to save almost every penny I earned, not fully appreciating that all my years of savings would barely pay for my first semester of tuition.
ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE
There were eight Ivy League schools, and one, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was just fifty miles from my home in Syracuse. Since I had never traveled to another state, Cornell was about as big a dream as I dared to have. And so, when the time came, it was the only college I applied to. When I told my mother I wanted to go to Cornell, she actually laughed. “And just who’s going to pay for that? Not me, and certainly not your drunken father!” I replied that I wasn’t sure how, but I would find a way.
And I did. With youthful naiveté, I worked hard on the application, sent it in, and was accepted. To my amazement, I was offered several critical scholarships that brought my dream within reach. My first semester at Cornell felt like shock treatment. Given my family and educational background, I discovered that I was totally unprepared to compete academically with sons and daughters who had come from more supportive families and gone to better schools. That first year I studied furiously, knowing that, unlike most of the other kids there, I was performing without a safety net, so failure was not an option.
Cornell provided me with much more than just an education—it was a crucible that taught me how to think, reason, and survive under pressure; it was a doorway to a new world of possibilities. Four years later, I graduated with a BS in neurobiology and animal behavior—a degree that was relatively worthless unless one wanted to become a doctor or a professor, which I did not. I loved the sciences, but neurobiology had been a bad choice for someone piling up a mountain of student loans and who would need to find a job upon graduation. During my senior year, feeling mounting pressure to find gainful employment, I decided to apply to business schools to get an MBA, reasoning that just about everything was a business of some sort. And a business degree would get me a job. I applied to four schools and got accepted into three of them. But the fourth school was the prize—the school I dreamed of attending—the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. It was always listed as one of the top two or three business schools in the country, and it was another one of those Ivy League universities.
So I was crushed when I didn’t get in. Instead, the school put me on a waiting list. At least I hadn’t been rejected. I still had a chance. Wharton was truly the school of American dreams—a school whose degree could “punch your ticket” to success. So, I decided to call the admissions office to see whether I could talk my way in. I explained how very much I wanted—no, needed—to get into their program, but to no avail. I got their standard spiel: “We have our process and we will review the waiting list in May after we see how many spots are available.” Undeterred, I called again the next week and once more explained how badly I wanted to go there. Same response. And I called again the next week and the next and the next. I called every week until the May deadline. I wanted this. And then, finally, a letter came in the mail. I had not only been accepted but had been given a substantial scholarship! To this day I don’t know if my nagging persistence made the difference, but I have to believe it helped. That summer, to earn more money, I drove a taxi in Syracuse, shuttling business types to and from the airport. My aspiration was that in just a few years, for the very first time, I might be able to ride in the back seat of a taxi.
I arrived at Wharton that September wearing cut-off shorts and sandals with hair down to my shoulders. I didn’t even own a suit and tie. When I tried to attend the first new-student orientation, I was actually stopped at the door by a security guard because I didn’t “look like an MBA student.” I had to show them my ID to get in. Now inside the auditorium, I could see that most of my fellow classmates were five to ten years older and were wearing suits and carrying briefcases. So, after sitting through the orientation, I went straight to the campus barber. “Can you make me look like a Wharton MBA student?” I asked. He flashed me a big smile and said, “I would love to!” And then he sheared me like a sheep.
GOD CALLING
But I need to back up a few months. Something else of great significance happened to me toward the end of my senior year at Cornell: I met my future wife, Reneé, on a blind date—a date that was to change my life forever. In a previous book I have told this story, but it bears repeating here. I was a senior and Reneé a freshman. I was just a month from graduating and so didn’t expect much to happen on a blind date so close to leaving Cornell. And Reneé was what we called a “Jesus freak” back then, complete with her Campus Crusade for Christ evangelism training. We were an odd pairing. After four years at Cornell, I was pretty much an atheist who believed that God was for weak people who needed crutches, and I didn’t need a crutch. So, our encounter that night was a clash of worldviews. We were so different that it was hard to find things to talk about. But at some point during the evening there was a lapse in our conversation and Reneé reached into her purse and pulled out The Four Spiritual Laws. I don’t know about today, but back then every “Crusader” had been trained to use it as an evangelism tool. It led a person through the steps required to become a Christian, and at the end it asked for a commitment.
