On Leadership: Overview and Leadership as Skill

Greetings! 

It's been about 4-5 months since I left my church in Chicago and followed the Spirit to the University of Oxford to write my DPhil dissertation, currently titled "Stories the Church Lives By". And as much as I love both the calling and the process of fulfilling that calling, my pastoral soul is itching to preach as much as it is itching to lead. Not everyone is called to leadership, but as someone who is called to it, my bones yearn to lead someone, anyone, somewhere. 

Unfortunately, at least until I complete the necessary work to move to stage two of DPhil and open the doors for teaching in the fail, my bones will have to yearn on. But there must be some small balm for this itch, some tonic for my yearning bones. 

What is that tonic? the balm? The next series of posts. Over the next several posts, I will be exploring what leadership is, as well as more practically how to do it. Leadership, as much as it is a gift, it can also be a cultivated skill. As anyone who's ever tried it knows, it's not about mere knowledge, it's about wisdom. 

Series Overview

As true wisdom starts with some knowledge, and with some awareness of dangers (that is knowing that a cliff is high and present is not the same thing as knowing you're safer not roughhousing near one), this series will start with the Three Cores of Christian Leadership: Faith, Hope, and Love. After the question of what it means to be a leader is addressed, we can move to consider how to actually lead in more concrete situations. That section will address things like Psychological Dynamics, Social Dynamics, and Structural Dynamics. 

Leadership as Skill

Conspicuously absent will be the normal mission, vision, values, etc. that you can pick up in virtually any leadership book, popular-level or otherwise. That's not to say that mission, vision, values, etc. aren't important. They are. But they are well covered. That, and true leadership is always more complicated than mission, vision, and values. The reality is that mission, vision, values, etc. (hereafter MVVE) is a popularized leadership tool, not leadership itself, which is why many people, companies, and churches can have MVVE and still fail to have leadership. 

It's true you have to tell people what they are headed towards, how they are going to get there, and what kind of constraints or ethos they should have along the way. However, if all you do is throw this MVVE tool at people, probably all you're going to get is a bunch of people ducking out of the way so they don't get hit by the flying wrench through the air. A wrench has to be fit over the nut and used to either tighten or loosen the bolt. 

Likewise, if you fail to realize MVVE is just a tool and not the skill of leadership, you are likely to fall into the same trap as the old adage "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." And this is often the main problem when some people read some leadership book, or take some leadership workshop/seminar. They think they are going to get leadership, the skill, but really all they are get is leadership tools. So, because they have learned a leadership tool and not leadership itself, they go back to their respective leadership situations and start wielding their newfound tool as if it was the skill of leadership. 

This means, even if aspiring leaders go to a good workshop that gives them a bunch of tools, but fails to make it clear that's all they are, then they will go home and use the hammer, wrench, and screwdriver on things that require a saw or a drill. Have you ever tried to cut through a 2x4 with a hammer? Don't. You can beat the crap out of that board, but will you ever really be able to say that you cut it? Will you ever get the length and shape you were looking for? Maybe--probably not--but at what cost? As with the 2x4, there is a cost to using a leadership tools without leadership the skill--both for the leader and to the led. 

Leadership is a skill and not a tool, an art, not a technique. The most important things about leadership are not tools, like MVVE and others we will cover, but faith, hope, and love. This is because leadership is not about us as leaders, its about people as created in God's image and called to God's glory and purpose. Thus, leadership is about God and others, but only tangentally about leaders. 

Who is This Series For? 

To that end, many people--aspiring leaders of all kinds--should be able to benefit from these next few posts, whether pastors or not, whether Christians or not. However, I will be gearing my tone towards my fellow pastors, since they are ironically not always trained in leadership as skill and my heart goes out to them, and since theirs is the context that I know best. If you are a elder or deacon or some other kind of lay leader, it should be easy enough to translate things to your own set of responsibilities--and I probably will throw in some comments in your direction too. 

If you're a business leader or some kind of community leader, I think there will be plenty that you can gain as well, although not everything will translate--like I said, leadership is a skill and art, not a set of tools, so seek the skill of leadership and pick up any tool that looks helpful. 

If you're outside of the family of Christ, do join us in the discussion and don't let its Christiany-ness keep you from gaining something. Full warning though, Christians often view leadership very differently than those on the outside, but I think our version of leadership has a great chance at leading to large-scale human flourishing. Also, I might point out that Jesus was apparently so good at leadership, that 2000 years later the leaders He trained are still training new leaders, and we continue to learn much about leadership from Him. 

So let's venture together to discover what leadership is and to increase our skill in it. 

The next post will be On Leadership: Trusting in God and Entrusting to Others. 

Dying for Jesus and Nabeel Qureshi

This afternoon I heard the news, my brother in Christ and comrade at arms, Nabeel Qureshi has met our Savior Jesus Christ face-to-face. Some would call this meeting an end, others might call it a beginning. As for myself, it's hard to know what to call it, so I'll just call it a "well done!"

Many look at dying for Jesus as simply the province of the hallmarked martyrs: the apostles, the church fathers, the missionaries, the brothers and sisters, who were jailed, starved, raped, beheaded, and gunned down with hellish hatred. Without taking anything away from that sacred trust given only to the chosen few, in the last year or two, I have become more and more aware that we have considered "dying for Jesus" far too narrowly. By the grace of God we all will die for Jesus.

You see, dying for Jesus is not the calling of the few, but of the many that Jesus has called His own. Each one of us, in picking up our cross and following Him, pick up also His calling to be obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Now, in the mercy of God, few must be obedient unto death on a cross, but all of us will follow Christ into death. Each one of us.

It is the grace of every Christian to die for Jesus. Some of us will die for Him by sword, others will die for Him by Alzheimer's, and still others will die for Him by cancer. Nabeel Qureshi was one such man, who full of love and passion for His Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did so die. He died for Jesus by trusting Him into death, following Him through the shadow of death right into the mouth of death itself.



Nabeel did not die because he was cursed for turning to Jesus. It would be easy to think this. But this is to fall into the trap of pop-victory--the "I beat death" victory that makes for great t-shirts, good Huffington Post/Buzzfeed clickbait, or even easy religious explanations. Yet, throughout the centuries, Christian victory has not been overcoming death in the world but overcoming the world through death!

Death is an enemy defeated, but it remains the last mission that Jesus sends each of us on. It is the last challenge to overcome. How could it not be? It was for Jesus--and it is His life that we all live as our own! Not only martyrs must trust Jesus with death. No, we all must trust Him through it, fixing our own eyes on the joy set before us as it was set before Him and entrust our own lives to the One who can save us from death!

One day, perhaps a day sooner than I anticipate, my final mission will be issued and I too will run headfirst into the terror of unending night, likely with the same apprehension as the Forerunner of my faith. But as Nabeel Qureshi can now speak authoritatively, that last statement is not properly true.

It is NOT an mission into the terror of unending night, but simply into night. And like all nights, even those that last for days near the polar regions, they eventually end in dawn. So too our Dawn is coming! And He comes on the clouds as all dawns come, but it will be His face shining as the sun!

So, may the light of the Lord shine on our hearts on the day that we sleep for the night and rest securely in Him until He dawns! And may the grace of that hope be with all who have crossed from darkness to dawn, and with those they have left behind, especially now with Nabeel Qureshi's family.

If you want to support Nabeel Qureshi's family, click here.

After some server issues, we're back...and black holes..

So, unfortunately I missed the importance of some random email sent to be by the domain host, which meant they closed down the site and kept people from seeing anything. I've been working on my thesis pretty intensely for the past few months, so I don't know how long the site has been out of commission. That said, my thesis is still unfinished, so until it is, I will not be posting consistently. However, I have to leave you with something. So...here's a theological thought for the day.

Augustine, among many others, has suggested that sin and evil are the absence of good, much as darkness is the absence of light. Perhaps this is true, on some level, but what if sin is actually more the spiritual equivalent of a black hole. It is not so much that it is an absence of light, but that it is such a profound and serious disruption of space-time that everything, even unrelated things are sucked into it. Perhaps sin is more like the unstoppable force of a black hole's hyper-gravity. Things that had nothing to do with its formation are sadly caught up in its pull and torn asunder by its ravaging vorteces. In this sense, creation came under the destructive reality disruption of sin. A reality even more foundational than space-time was distorted, and with that distortion what was warped was not just time and space, but the fabric of the human soul. All creation and all humanity along with it is being pulled towards one massive black hole, but it is not the one at the center of our galaxy, or even some even more massive one that could be at the center of our local galaxy cluster, rather it is the terrible black hole that is created when a mere star attempts to become the Light itself and collapses in on itself and its own weight cements it in an eternal fall into infinite oblivion.

Christians, Vaccines, and Moral Complicity (Part 1: Are we gaining life at the cost of death?)

So I started writing this while preparing to leave the US for a class in Feb. 2016. And this has brought a certain issue up in my mind: "Do I get the vaccines for Hep A and B before I go?" This is a question, because there is a particular moral question about vaccines that concerns me as I think about what I should do.

First of all, before I go on any further, let me tell you what this post is not about:

    1) it is not about whether vaccines as a concept are good or bad...because they are clearly good (no one I'm aware of is a fan of dying for no reason nor is suicide or killing someone by neglect anything close to what God calls Christians to do)

    2) it is not about whether there may be some medical risks associated with using a vaccine, since obviously all medical treatments involve risk (and thus one could discuss the ratio of risks, but to summarize my thoughts, cost-benefit analysis seems almost always to be in favor of vaccine use)

    3) it is not (at least directly) about whether choosing not to vaccinate puts others at risk (although you and I are responsible for the well being of others, disregarding this is called reckless endangerment or neglect)

Q: So then what are we going to discuss?

A: The relationship of some vaccines and abortion

While most members of the American public and thus most members of the American Christian community are unaware of this issue, it is actually an issue. Apparently, some vaccines, NOT ALL, have had to be developed using human cells to culture the virus in question, because the virus in question did not culture in animal cells well enough to be useful.

This leads us to the question of where exactly researchers got those human cells from to do their research and produce the vaccines we all enjoy the benefits of today. And that is where the vaccine issue arises. And unfortunately the answer is a murdered pre-birth baby.

(That abortion is murder is generally uncontested by the Universal Church, that is to say virtually all Christians agree that it is, if you want to discuss that issue, please comment one of my earlier posts about that issue.)

The way vaccines were produced from human cells was that certain cells were harvested in the 1960s from two aborted babies. Those cells, unlike most human cells, have the ability to replicate indefinitely, whereas most human cells can only replicate about 50 times. It is from those cells' daughter, grand-daughter, great-granddaughter, etc. cells that vaccine researchers produced vaccines by infecting them with a virus and letting the virus adapt to non-normal cell conditions over several viral generations. The result is a virus that is still the same virus but unable to be successful at infecting a real human body.

The human tissue harvested from those two aborted babies continues to generate new cells such that no new human tissue is required. However, the morality of using cells derived from murder for our own benefit is certainly a question worth considering.

Is it moral to benefit from the murder of someone else? Yes and no depending on the circumstances, right?

If you murder someone, you obviously do so for some personal benefit, even if you killed someone just because you could, you are still fulfilling your desire to kill and thus directly benefit from that person's death.

On the other hand, if someone gets murdered and you are given their liver so that you don't die, that is probably just fine, unless you are the one that killed the person to get their liver.

The issue with the fetal tissue is that the persons donating the tissue are the same ones who are killing the child. Moreover, while the tissue was harvested post-abortion, it should be asked whether the researchers solicitation of the tissue contributed to the decision to kill the children.

It is rather like one person telling another that they are going to kill someone, but instead of the other person turning them in or trying to persuade them not to kill the person, that person responds with "Hey, so when you've done it, can you give me their wallet?" or if we wanted to be a bit more grotesque "Hey, so when you're done, can I harvest some organs from the body? I know I could help a lot of people (and make some money in the process) with those parts."

A person like that would likely be considered some sort of accomplice in court even though that person never personally killed the victim. Moreover, if a person was still wavering on their decision to kill, it is very possible that the knowledge that the murder could have medical benefits derived from it would push the decision towards murder.

The question is whether that short story is the best parallel to the way vaccine researchers acquired the tissue they would use to produce a number of very helpful vaccines.

Obviously it would be best if all vaccines were made with non-human tissue, or rather made with tissue not acquired via an immoral act. Unfortunately that is not the case, although as Christians, we should advocate for that to become the reality.

However, we obviously have not really settle much of anything here...at least not yet. In the next part we will continue to consider whether users of vaccines share in the moral complicity of the abortion that made them possible by looking at the issue through the parallel of slavery. Hopefully, at this point there is a bit of discomfort simmering within, let's humbly walk together through the process of considering whether that discomfort should be brought to a boil or taken off the heat. 

Summertime! Posts!

Happy Summer everyone!

We'll call this past semester an imposed academic sabbatical from posting...haha...but it's summertime now and I've only got a mere 2 credit hours between me and my M.A. in Systematic Theology degree in the fall. So, the posts should be more consistent...famous last words...

That said, here is glimpse of posts (or rather series of posts) that what I am (and have been) working on.
   1. Christians, Vaccines, and Moral Complicity
   2. Depersonalizing the Body: Hyper-Mind-Body Dualism Today
   3. Contemporary Passivity of (United States) Christians and (Lack of) Boldness
   4. Christians and Drinking (Alcohol)
   5. Christians and Social, Cultural, Technological, and Artistic Engagement
   6. The Nature of Language and the Trinity
   7. Poetry

I'm also up for having some topics suggested to me, so comment if you've got a suggestion. Of course, it doesn't guarantee I'll be interested in writing on it, but I am open to ideas. Further, I am hoping to update the look and feel of the site over the summer, so be prepared for that. My desire is to have sections dedicated to various aspects, e.g. a section for theology, a section for academics, etc.

Happy Summer!
Grace and peace and hope in Christ alone!

Blog Update

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the massive amount of time between posts. My life has been pretty crazy the past few months.

I wrapped up 7 blessed years of ministry in Buffalo Grove at Lord's Love Community Church/Canaan Church in September. I started as a children's pastor at LLCC in Sept 2008. I later became the Children's/Youth Pastor. After LLCC merged with Canaan Church in May of 2013, I worked as the youth (including college) pastor. It was a wonderful experience with lots of wonderful people. After sensing from God that my work there was done, wrapping up my ministry there was a bittersweet process. I love the brothers and sisters of Canaan Church, especially the awesome students, volunteer leaders, and fellow ministry staff. Yet, at the same time, I also knew that my work there was done and following God's will is always the greatest delight of my soul!

After much prayer and seeking the Lord, I accepted the call to serve at great church in another Chicago suburb: Naperville Korean First Presbyterian Church. I am very blessed to be working there as the English Ministry Pastor. For those of you outside of the immigrant (Korean) church world, an English ministry pastor is NOT a pastor that teaches people how to speak English, but rather a pastor that serves the people of the church that speak English. I blessed to get to work for the good of a great group of people of different life stages and backgrounds. I love them all and I am excited to see what God uses us to accomplish for His glory in the near future.

I also had a pretty crazy academic season. After completing my M.Div. at the end of the summer, I began another program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I'm now working on an M.A. in Systematic Theology. Lord willing, I will finish that program within the next year. After that, my calling to get a Ph.D. God will hopefully bring to fruition. I'm also in the process of submitting a couple articles for publication in some academic journals.

On top of all the normal craziness of Christmas and New Years, I had the opportunity to speak at my friend's youth group retreat.

Anyways, I hope to be more on top of things moving ahead, posting an average of one post a week.

What if our Worship Music was as Multifaceted as the God we Worship? (Part 3)

One of my pet peeves as a Christian and as a pastor is that even though we serve and love and worship and trust a God Who is interesting, inventive, and unique, our worship music could hardly ever be described with those same adjectives.

There are three main areas that I find especially saddening given the God we worship. First, we looked at The Lack of Variety in Themes and Subjects. Last post we talked about The Dearth of Poetic Genres in Christian Worship Music. This time we will cover the absence of diversity of musical styles in Christian worship. 

What is the number one joke (that's funny only 'cause it's true) people tell about Christian worship music? It's actually the same as the number one reason I've heard people give for not enjoying listening to Christian music. 

...  "It all sounds the same."

True that. Ok, fine, to be fair there are some exceptions...there are...right? 

Average answer: "uh...there's...uh...yeah, well, just 'cause I can't think of any right now, doesn't mean they don't exist." True. but the fact that many people would face such a difficulty illustrates the problem. 

I know that Chris Tomlin and Hillsong do sound different, but they do in the same way that I thought Justin Bieber was Taylor Swift singing the first time I heard him on the radio. See, just like Bieber and Swift are both essentially pop music, Tomlin and Stanfill are both CCM. They may have some slight differences, but they both belong to the same musical style. 

If we are honest for the most part on Sunday mornings, in many if not most churches in the U.S., we only worship God from within one musical style. Ok, for some the one musical style is "Hymns" while for others it is "CCM," and perhaps for others it is "gospel." But the fact remains that despite the fact that we worship the God Who invented artistic expression including music, and Who radiates His multifaceted nature in the colors of love, justice, wrath, gentleness, power, patience, creativity, and sovereignty, we worship our God in the same musical style week in and week out. 

I'm not suggesting that God is bored (although if we are, perhaps He is too), more like He is being under-worshiped. You see the nature of musical styles is that they typically allow for/generate a limited set of emotive responses, and usually cohere with a limited set of subjects and poetic expressions. 

For example, one style of music is blues, one which brings up and allows for the expression of sorrow, disappointment, and loss. It is given to talking about those subjects, and lends itself to laments. Rap on the other hand allows for the expression of anger, frustration, and even pride (often as a means of pointing out difficulties faced and overcome). This takes the form of boasting, confrontation, and declaration of the way things are. The form is also given to covering a lot of content quickly and memorably. Screamo, for contrast, tends to allow for super angsty, angry, or depressed subject matter, expressed in the form of wailing or screaming, venting raw emotions. 

Yet, doesn't God deserve us to worship Him in loss, in frustration, and in raw unbridled emotions?  Doesn't He deserve to be worshiped for all that He is and does? Doesn't He deserved to be worshiped in a variety of poetic forms? Doesn't He own and deserve all the musical styles to be actively used in giving Him glory through our interacting through them with Him? That's my biggest issue. Our Multifaceted and Totally Awesome God, the Holy Trinity, is being under-worshiped.

The thing is that while we might not always think of different musical styles being that important, the truth is that the absence of different musical styles in Christian worship music may have lots of unintended consequences. It may be one of the big-picture reasons that Christian worship music lacks all kinds of subject matter and many poetic forms. And those lacks may have other connected unintended consequences. 

The lack of musical genres may be one of the reasons that people in many churches feel a deficiency in their worship experience. They need to "have the blues", they need to confront terrible realities, they need to vent their deep emotions to God, but the music styles they are being offered by their worship leaders is to some degree holding them back from engaging with God on the levels they need to. Their personal spiritual growth is being held back. 

Another possible result in the contemporary American church is an overly simplistic understanding of faith in God. In other words, maybe our music is what is reinforcing the patterns of flawed thinking that many people have about God, prayer, and faith. 

And maybe what the researches call "moralistic therapeutic deism" is not merely coming poor sermons, poor discipleship, poor parenting, and poor perspectives coming from the non-Christian world, maybe it is also coming from poor worship. 

It is my hope through this short series that Christians will feel free to worship God about all subjects, in all poetic forms, with all musical styles, so that they can grow in their relationship with God personally, and so that collectively as churches and the Church we will give God the worship He deserves.

Please engage through the comments or share this post with someone who you think would have some good input in the discussion.