Issue No. 419 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting lists both good news and bad news from Fred Smith’s new book—another must-read. (I know. I know. I say that a lot.) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and check out this website for recent book reviews, including ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance.
Fred Smith on Flaws and Foibles—With a Twist!
Good News! Fred Smith and a friend both left very generous tips for their waitress, a single-parent mom/student working two jobs.
Bad News! I read Chapter 36 (the big tip chapter) in Fred’s book at my favorite breakfast restaurant—having just reflected on “the divine moment is the present moment.” I had no choice—my waiter got a generous tip!
So…caution all readers! Fred Smith’s 50 short chapters in Where the Light Divides will sneak up on you and—if you have any measure of a spiritual pulse—you’ll get hammered. But it’s a good hammering. He’s provocative, but also patient with us. And just when you turn the page for a new chapter (“Ah! Yes! I know this biblical account…”), Fred will twist your pre-conceived and often ill-conceived understanding—and grab you by the spiritual throat.
Good News! Here are your add-water-and-stir discussion topics for your next 50 weekly staff meetings or small group gatherings. Each chapter is just three to four pages—and there are no wasted words.
Bad News! If you don’t like disruption, self-assessment, or biblical gut checks—then don’t read or recommend this book. Yikes.
Good News! While there are ample doses of biblical characters and their alarming flaws and foibles—Fred twists the commonly understood narrative with both wisdom and wit, as he does with the bronze snake (Numbers 21) in Chapter 37, “Snakes on a Plain.”
Bad News! “What the people of Israel did with the serpent, we do the same in many ways. We make good things into icons and then into idols.” He adds, “Some have made an idol of the church for their own benefit.”
Good News! I read over a dozen short chapters to my wife, Joanne. (I easily could have read every chapter out loud to her—they are that good.)
Bad News! I read over a dozen short chapters to my wife, Joanne. (And—GULP!—she turned the convicting insights back to me. Yikes.)
Good News! Fred probes and pokes about calling and careers and our tendencies to sometimes park and take “the wheels off the mobile home.” It’s good to read uncomfortable stuff—especially when we notice our priorities have subtly shifted towards comfort, not commitment.
Bad News! Chapter 3’s narrative on Abram’s calling, “End of the Line,” notes this: “Haran is any place we park along the way. It’s not disobedience like Babel. It’s simply settling instead of going on.” (It reminded me of Henry Cloud’s wisdom in Necessary Endings.)
Good News! Many of your favorite people headline each chapter: Leonard Cohen, Mary, Moses, Steve Jobs, Gideon, Joseph (as Doc Martin!), Malcolm Gladwell, C.S. Lewis, Naomi, and N.T. Wright.
Bad News! Fred’s grandfather, a Baptist pastor, “had an uncomfortable habit of telling the whole truth about the departed at funerals.” (Chapter 24 is a must-read about Fred’s father’s love/hate affair with Jaguars, once he could afford owning one.)
Good News! And speaking of Fred’s father, Fred Smith, Sr., I was reminded of Fred, Sr.’s axiom, “I learned to write to burn the fuzz off my thinking.” Gratefully this wisdom didn’t skip a generation.
Bad News! Many of us zip through life—and books—thinking “Yada, yada, yada.” But Fred challenges us to put the brakes on our I-already-know-that smug wisdom—and instead think and ponder—as we slowly read and discern. Where the Light Divides (read his prism metaphor in the intro) offers this challenge:
“It may give someone permission to think about their world with a twist, and, like me, wonder if there is more to the story than I see the first time—or the hundredth. If there is a theme, it is this angle from which I see things. It is my slant. Looking both ways.
“I did not come to trust this slant early in life. It felt odd or out of place many times. It’s probably time to grow up and say, deliberately, what I am thinking and take responsibility for it.”
Good News! Fresh thinking oozes off almost every page. Example: when you’re seemingly “stuck” (Chapter 42), you’ll be encouraged with wisdom from Phillip Yancey, Dr. Paul Brand, and Henri Nouwen.
Bad News! Per Yancey, why is Dr. Brand’s example so rare? When the doctor spoke “to a handful of leprosy patients in the hospital’s Protestant chapel . . . He spoke as an act of worship, as one who truly believed that God shows up when two or three are gathered in God’s name.”
Good News! This is the perfect gift book for family, friends, colleagues, board members, staff members, and neighbors (like my 25-year friend, Pastor Mac, next door).
Bad News! You'll think of at least five friends who should read this—and it will cost you, but buy five books anyway. And one more reminder—don’t read Chapter 36 in a restaurant (or Chapter 39 in a hotel lobby)!
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Where the Light Divides, by Fred Smith.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Fred Smith leaves no career unturned. To professional fundraisers, he urges: “Stop Ministering to Donors” (Chapter 41). He suggests that major donors just might have healthier lives than those who are after their money. Yikes. What can we learn from this chapter?
2) Smith, president emeritus of The Gathering, knows something about wealth—and he writes in Chapter 42, that the oft-trusted statement, “Leaving children wealth is like leaving them a case of psychological cancer”—is absolutely misguided. It only leads “to mistrusting our children.” Wow! What else do we believe that is misguided because we have not stretched our hearts and minds to hear contrarian wisdom?
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Peter Drucker: You’ll Make 2 Big Mistakes Per Year!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets is what Peter Drucker (1909-2005), the father of modern management, preached: you must practice, practice, practice the art of management. Drucker wrote 39 books (published in 36 languages)—so he also preached lifelong learning.
I was amazingly blessed in 1986, when Fred Smith and Bob Buford invited me—along with 30 other Christian leaders—to sit at the feet of Peter Drucker for four days in Estes Park, Colo. It was certainly one of my top-10 life experiences. Thanks to Fred, I became a lifelong learner—and here’s just one of the many Druckerisms I often mention:
“People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”
For more help on being a lifelong learner, visit the Drucker Bucket here and (my suggestion) read at least one Drucker book per year.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). The “No!” book, reviewed in the last issue, was designed by Pearpod Media. Call Jason to discern if a book in your future would move you closer to your mission. (He does say “yes” occasionally!)
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