On ESPN OTL's N-word special

I just finished watching ESPN Outside the Lines' special program on the N-word. For myself, being 60, I found myself agreeing with the persons of over 40 on the program who expressed the feeling that, due to its insulting nature to those who have been racially black in the United States for the whole of its history, it is never appropriate to be used. In the program, some off camera figure interviewed a number of students at Teaneck (NJ) High School, two of whom were black, one Asian, and one Jewish-surnamed maybe white, maybe mixed race, who expressed significantly less restrictive views, except for one, on the word's use, or attempted to differentiate between its historical racially insulting use and its use in their pop culture.

There is one thought I have about this subject which is so a part of the subculture of followers of Jesus of approximately my age, and almost assuredly an idea foreign to the persons connected with the production of that program, given ESPN/ABC/Disney's secularist bias, that I figure I'd write a few paragraphs.

Within the subculture of believers in Jesus here in North America when I was in my late teens and twentys, that is, the decade of the 1970's, there was a development of certain talented persons using the styles of the popular music of the day to express their faith in Jesus, which was rejected as inappropriate by a significant amount of older leaders in the traditional churches. That was refered to as Jesus Rock, or Jesus Music. Over time, as those leaders retired or passed on and replaced by leaders who were out of that age group, that style of music was accepted within the traditional churches, and the relationship became less adversarial. On the opposite side, there is a degree that the music became more status quo.

The two subjects come together in connection with one song of the early 1970's, Larry Norman's “Right Here in America”. Sitting here forty years later, one can say that, in a sense, what is now called contemporary Christian music comes out of the work of Norman, much like smooth jazz comes out of Chuck Mangoine's “Feels So Good”, or bluegress, at least as a recorded medium, from Ralph Stanley. Norman's work never got much airplay, even as contemporary Christian radio began being a format in the late 1970's, in part due to his tendency to be unpredictable, much like in commercial rock, the refusal to play Tiri Humpherdahl, in that case because he littered his music with the famous seven words that became the George Carlin monologue that eventually spawned a Supreme Court ruling (I actually never heard Humpherdahl's music, but have been told this secondhand).

Many years later, when one of the Christian record companies had other artists do a tribute album, “Right Here in America” was not one of the songs chosen. That would be, in part, due to its being so set as a reflection of what was doing on both in the traditional church, the Jesus Movement, society, and politics. Nonetheless, there was some lines near the end of the song, “I have been in your churches/ And sat in your pews/ And heard sermons about/ How much money you'd need for the year./ And I've heard you make references/ To Mexicans, Chinamen, N-------s, and Jews,/ And I gather you wish that we'd all disappear.” Now, Norman was none of those ethnicities, and was speaking in the voice of the folk singer, or prophet, of God Himself, relating to the “least of these”. He assuredly used the phrase as a shock mechinism, to make us fellow believers aware of the difference between the religious status quo and truly following Jesus.

Yes, that tends to follow the line of reasoning in most of the blogs I write. Somehow, I feel that that may be the one and only time I have heard a Caucasian person use that epithet in a redeeming manner. I've thought, over the years, if I was a singer-musician, which I am so much not, and I was to drag up some of the most powerful songs of years gone by, and I somehow chose that one, would I use that word, or do something distracting that would communicate the same intent, such as stop playing, pause, and say “African-American” in a voice different from how I was singing, and then continue. Since that's not my lot in life, its irrelevant. What isn't irrelevant is how the Holy Spirit moves powerfully for a period of time through something, and then, like the wind, blows where He wills.

On the ESPN program, near the end, one of their commentators, Jamele Hill, made the comment that, as a reporter, she felt uncomfortable, assumably from a from a freedom of speech stance, saying that any word should never be used, but that there were words that are taken differently if someone with the group uses among each other, and taken differently if someone outside the group uses them. She gave examples of blacks, women, and gays. For we believers in Jesus, it is clear that, at least in the media, unbelievers cannot bring themselves to refer to someone saying the Sinner's Prayer, except in a mocking manner. That is understandable, because that touches a sensitive area in a person's being. There may be some other specific points of communication that I'm just not thinking of at this moment.. That's one of the great things about blogs. If one occurs to me, I can add onto this stream of thought later.

Systemic arrogance--an elaboration on my previous post

I wish to expand upon and clarify what I wrote in my previous blog,on ARROGANCE.

I could picture that to some people, I am accusing many leaders within the church of Jesus of a negative quality that is not a part of them, which is, of course, silly.

To this effect, I will mention a quality in me, which isn't necessarily a positive, and is sometimes clearly a negative, which is that I am a sports fan. One sport that I an not a fan of is hockey. At the highest level, the degree to which intentionally breaking the rules, even when caught, is helpful to winning the game, is irritating to me. In this, I am referring to the idea that physically intimidating the opponent gets one as little as a two minute penalty, when in other sports it gets one ejected from the game, and that fans of this game defend this quality, I find abhorrent. This is in spite of the paralellism that I come from Michigan, and the team from Detroit was dominant over about a twenty year period of time. One of the years they didn't win, the team from New York did. Some marketer that year came up with a catch phrase for their team, while on the way to the championship, “Nice Guys, Mean Game.” I personally doubt the accuracy of the first part of the statement, but the last part alludes to the way the rules are set up, as I referred to above. The way the rules are set up bring about an attitude of personal meanness to the atmosphere around a hockey game that is specifically different from the other major sports—one can start a fight with a player on the other team, and instead of getting thrown out of the game and possibly getting suspended for more, one gets disqualified (possibly offset by the player on the other team getting the same) for two, five, or ten minutes. One has to do this maybe three or more times before actually getting tossed from the game.

Why I bring this up is that it occurred to me that, in most of the western church, the arrogance that selectively ignores certain directives of scripture is not personal, but systemic, but not all. Matthew 18: 15-17 states, "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” Let me give two examples that I see are exceptions to the rule. There is a famous Christian personality that goes by “Dr. ...” He overtly tells the story that he and another young believer started a Bible study in college, and, when it was time to graduate, i.e. Bachelor's degree, it was formed into an institutional church and moved to a building nearby. It eventually grew to be very large. Leading such a large organization, when did he get time to get a doctorate? Yes, I know that, at least a few years ago, one could buy a “doctorate” in theology from a P.O. Box in California for $75 and signing a statement of faith. Actually, it was $25 for a bachelor's, another $25 for a master's, and a third $25 for a doctorate. Clearly, it isn't accredited, but that's not the point (unless one moves to Germany, where that kind of thing is closely regulated). This man has claimed, in the course of a sermon, that it is in a type of counseling, which implies a doctorate that takes real time and work to get. Where'd he get the time? More to the point, from where? As best as I can tell, that question has never been publicly answered. I don't know this man; he lives hundreds of miles from me. Even if I was nearby, could I actually get an appointment to talk to this man? Let me put in this way—in many of today's megachurch's, even if one is a member, it's difficult to talk to the head person. If one calls on any common reason for talking to a church leader, one gets to speak with an assistant. Now, it just so happens that a few years ago, I happened to send an email to the above person's organization to ask where he got his doctorate from, just to see if I would get a response. I did! They politely thanked me for interest in their ministry, hyped what they were doing for a couple of paragraphs, told me how to send money to them, and promised to add me to their mailing list. They have proceeded to send me neither emails nor paper materials. Not that I need more bulk mail nor bulk email, but just that, while they didn't answer my question, they did make an unsolicited promise on their own and didn't follow up. Might I just point out that, in most times of history, and even many cultures today, I wouldn't know this man existed.

I wish to touch a second example. Again, I do not personally know this man, do not live near him, and probably couldn't get to meet him if I tried. I will say that I do know two persons who are in institutional church ministry who do know him (my understanding is that at one time they looked to this man as a mentor, but no longer do), and I have heard him speak twice. He started by working in music for two big internationally known ministries, started a church, and shortly after was asked to take over a large church lead by another internationally know name who is known for being spectacular. This man teaches “prosperity message.” With my own ears, I have heard him say that he has been given three gold(-color) Mercedeses. Other writings say that he has been given a house in an expensive suburb of the city he lives in, and a pool, and pool service, and lawn service. His wife filed for divorce (I am not close enough to know more than that), and put in the filing, which is a public record, so the local newspaper could get access to it, that she told who was so generous. The church corporation, of which he was in charge. That is, he gave all this stuff to himself out of donations. That's not at all a level example of “believing and receiving.” Once again, I can't go to this person and talk to him about it, he doesn't know me. That's why I would not mention his name (although, in this case, you can find it if you search the net). Also, in any time other than this culture now, I wouldn't have heard of it. These are two examples, in my opinion, of personal arrogance. I personally do not believe that this type of thing is the norm, but, the persons who engage in it are likely to be the most famous.

I will go back to when I was young to give what I see the norm as being. My parents did not “go to church,” but, when I was eight, decided that I should go to Sunday School. As I lived in the country, the nearest church was about three miles away. It was in a town of about a hundred people. There was one diner. My dad dropped me off at the steps of the church, drove a couple of blocks to the diner, got the Sunday newspaper, and, as he was a farmer working by himself all week, got to talk to other men hanging around the diner for about an hour plus. At the end of Sunday School, I walked to the diner, and he left and we went home.

As I grew up, at about age 15, I came to faith in Jesus. I started going to the church service. There was a young pastor who had just graduated from seminary. He was the right person to come across my life as a young believer. Over time, I come to realize that part of the reason he would up in this little church was that he finished in the lower part of his seminary class. I came to know that to be a “minister” in this denomination, one had to have a seminary (master's) degree and ordination. The morning and evening services followed an order of worship. The denomination had six approved orders of worship, all of which were similar. Except for an occassional visit by a missionary looking to raise support, the person giving the sermon and leading the service had to be ordained by the denomination, with two exceptions. One was if the minister fell ill or injured so late before the beginning of a Sunday service that there was insufficient time to get a replacement, at which time a designated elder would lead and speak. As, just before I came to faith in Jesus, this church had a pastor who was in his 80's, this actually happened once. The second exception was if there was enough time to get a replacement, in which another “minister” or a seminary student could fill in. As the church I went to was about thirty miles from the seminary, twenty miles from where the denominational magazine was published, and near to many other churches of that denomination, most of which were doing financially better than this small church, this method of having a substitute was normal. One problem I didn't realize until years later was that the seminary was notable for demanding more Greek courses than any other seminary, so it attracted persons who wanted to become Greek professors, and didn't necessarily want to be pastors, or even agreed with the denomination's theology. I remember hearing a student named Roger speak, and getting the feeling that he wasn't even saying anything.

At that church, I remember sensing something special happened every time, somehow, the service did not follow the order of worship. The pastor, during my senior year in high school, one day when speaking to me personally (this church was small enough that, in addition to his standard duties, he taught a Sunday School class that was 7^th grade until one either gets married or moves out of town) suggested that, when I went to college, I check out Inter-Varsity. There, I met other persons my own age that desired to follow Jesus, from a wide variety of backgrounds. I sensed the Holy Spirit move in meetings and situations that had no “order of worship”. Some of these persons, including a sister than came from the same denomination as I, had some involvement in what was called the Charismatic Renewal. I learned about the work of the Holy Spirit, and met some persons of Roman Catholic background that desired to follow Jesus. Near my senior year in college, I looked at going to seminary, but struggled with my church's implied teaching about a minister being “called”. It seemed that that was a special experience, and I wasn't sure that I had received that revelation. I applied anyway, and was accepted. I was uncomfortable with a few doctrines of the church I grew up in. I realized that, if I became a pastor in that denomination, I would be responsible to defend those points of view, and I wasn't convinced of them myself. For the record, these included infant baptism, that this denomination had just taken the position that the gifts of the Spirit were for today, but no one taught about this doctrine, and many non-leaders in the churches opposed it, and that there was so much taught in the seminary and done in the churches that just weren't useful to help persons grow in following Jesus, such as doing things the same old way just because that's the way it's been done.

I could go on with my story, but that last phrase is systemic arrogance. It doesn't matter if there is a Biblical basis for doing a thing, just do it. One can see in the world that almost everything has minimum standards—the power of current down the electric lines, a level of training for a certain job, the procedure for trading stocks, or livestock, or repossesed property. God's standard gives us humans fits. God ordains, as He looks in our heart, and not by academic standards, so someone, almost assuredly an unbeliever or really deceived believer in the late days of the Roman Empire, enforced standards like the religions of the world in those days had. I have observed that if one keeps a tradition in force for more than two full human lifetimes, such that no one remembers how it used to be, the new tradition then seems like the normal one. Therefore, there are many brothers and sisters in Jesus through a wide variety of systems that have accepted whatever system they are in as being the norm. Even among those of us who left the system we grew up in (and that's almost half of all believers in this culture), we moved to another system. Even the “undenominational” institutional churches copied some of the structures from the traditional churches.

I think of the line in Larry Norman's “Right Here In America”, a song woefully dated to the times of the late 1960's-early 1970's, “And we don't have the time/To build nice little churches/Besides, we don't need them/We're holding our church in the streets.” Maybe, where Larry was in southern California, it happened somewhat, but, for the most part, it didn't happen. Pastors got tossed from their denominations, and started new organization's with the form they were familiar with. Those who were young respected older leaders who taught and guided them. Calvary Chapel (and a few other associations) stand as representative of how Larry's line above was not the rule in the 1960's, and all the pentecostal churches stand as representative of how it wasn't the rule in the 1880's to 1910's, and this point can be developed back and back.

Personally, I am kind or hard-nosed on the idea that persons learn more about following Jesus from open discussion Bible studies than from sermons. Being stuck in a room attempting to prepare one to one and a half hours of teaching per week is a poor way to know what questions need answering, and questions can be better answered the smaller the group is. Also, the smaller the group is, the less likely the leader is going to get off track, and if he/she does, the fewer persons will be harmed. The problem with the two persons described in the beginning of this writing is that both lead organizations of thousands of attenders.

I can understand why. I love and respect education. If one is a pastor, married with kids, and one realizes that one has no skill other than running the system, it takes immense courage to step out of it, and it oftentimes doesn't go well. Getting accredited and having the skill to form a new group of believers are two widely different things.

Lastly, I must tack on that, in North American culture, where “Christianity” is somewhat status quo, there are a lot of people going to church, having learned the phrase “I believe in Jesus as my Savior and Lord”, who may believe in Jesus for salvation, but are unwilling for Him to actually be their Lord. You nor I know who is on the side of Jesus, and who is faking for personal cultural benefit. Some may clearly look like a fake, but then repent. Some may seem sincere, but only they know inside they are not actually committed, and maybe they have deceived themselves. Only when the culture turns overtly hostile is it clearer, but that's not pleasant.

I struggle with the idea that it is difficult to be a part of a church that doesn't collect money to advertise its way to growth, but it oftentimes looks to be the only way that works in this culture. The only thing is that having a bunch of upbeat musicand a motivational speech needing a budget that precludes sending people and money to that part of the world that doesn't have believers isn't a good trade off.

But then, maybe I'm just looking at things from the distorted angle of a person who is old enough to be unable to earn anymore.....

New Year's Day 2013

            New Year’s Day, 2013.  I have blogged very little for the last couple of months because I feel too tired to think.  My son is in the Navy, so I am applying to be officially his dependent, which has been practically the case for quite a while, so I can be on his health insurance.  I don’t feel like reading.  A copy of “Master Leaders” by Barna is sitting by my feet, and I am most of the way done with it.  When one can barely get oneself going to do a few basic things in a day, the wisdom of leaders responsible for a lot doesn’t seem very relevant.  

            One of the few things I have done lately has been watch television.  I’m a sports fan, but I’m sick of watching sports, as I really don’t care about most of what I see.  As for news, we went over the “fiscal cliff” last night.  This is a great example of extreme speech.  When you go off a real cliff, you’ll be dead in a few seconds.  With this, we walked onto a rocky slope.  On a real rocky slope, one can still fall down and hurt oneself, even very badly.  I wish I could deliver a group insult for their work.  My thinking is that, if one works at McDonald’s, one messes up once in the first few days, one gets a stern warning, mess up a second time, you’re fired.  Most of our politicians in Washington are there as they get paid far better than McD’s people, for work that would get them fired.  I think of a line from a Larry Norman song, “Don’t ask me for the answers/I’ve only got one./A man leaves his darkness/When he follows the Son.”

Larry Norman is dead, and I don't feel so good myself

At my church, one of us is on a gluten free diet, another desires to avoid high fructose corn syrup, and three of us (at least) are taking a fistful of pills per day. For some reason, a little while ago, the concept of the 80's song "American Fast Food" by Randy Stonehill popped into my head. Last night, I went to look it up on the internet, and found four different versions of video posted. Whoever did the one on vimeo (vimeo.com/33369893) really did an excellent job of adding video.

Nonetheless, while glancing through the listings on the search engine, I noticed that Stonehill's mentor in bizarre creativity, Larry Norman, died in 2008. I pulled up the wikipedia entry for Norman, which is long enough to be a short biography. I hadn't heard anything about him since I saw him in concert in the late 1970's, which was billed as his last tour in the area I lived in. As I learned in this reading, he figured that he was on his last tour for the rest of his life, it appears. Some parts of his story are sad, some disappointing, and a lot of it is just creative genius bizarre. I think back and recognize how his music, combined with doing and saying things counter to the Christian cultural norm, made it easier for me, over the years, to at least desire to follow the Spirit without regard to what is status quo, and that, in turn, allowed me to continue to grow in faith. Even though I have hardly anything in worldly possessions, allowing oneself to be free to follow the Holy Spirit is to be free, indeed.

Currently, I am reading Watchman Nee's "Release of the Spirit." I will be posting my thoughts about this book when I am done. I know that the first time I heard of Nee was when Larry told one of the apocryphal stories of what happened to Nee in a Communist Chinese jail on one of his albums. While reading Chapter 8, I couldn't help thinking that what Nee was describing as the person God can use is almost the opposite of Norman's actions, at least as they might be perceived by those who were not his personal friends or acquaintences. Between the two, not that it means anything, my feeling is that Nee is closer to being correct, as to how to be the person God can use. Still, Norman's contribution to the community of believers was important, even for those who had nothing good to say about him.

I have read that, since the last album I was familiar with, he released 27 more. I also realize that the large number had to do with paying medical bills. I don't know if I even want to hear that which I haven't heard already. Yet, again, one of these days, I probably will. His political radicalism which was only there to point people back to Jesus sits well with me. Twice this year, I have been asked what my political alignment is; it's a great question to give a totally unexpected answer to. The last time I was asked that, I said that I have made up my mind who I'll vote for, but I am so unhappy with the choices, I won't tell who it is. Why do I say that? Both major parties have at least one issue in which their stand is roughly congruent with that of one desiring to serve Jesus, and stands on issues that are not, and stands which, if they are congruent with Christian belief, are held for other reasons. That's the reason I have never given a penny to a political cause, and never will--that is unless you consider giving to Voice of the Martyrs, which helps believers in lands where governments punish people for following Jesus.

When I read the article about Norman, I didn't feel too good. Today, I feel better. I know that more of my visit to this planet is over verses what is left to come. Now, more and more, I hear of the passing of those who are my contemporaries. My question is how I can give to the members of the family who are coming up behind me.

For anyone who doesn't know, I am not being insensitive, but the title above is a parody of the title of one of (I think, the last of) comic writer Louis Grizzard's books. I didn't read it, and almost assuredly never get around to it.

Some thoughts on leadership

            Leadership is different from governance because it doesn’t establish the lowest and least that is acceptable, but it inspires people to their highest and best.  …The outcome of leadership is people operating at their highest and best.

                        --John Ashcroft, quoted in George Barna’s “Master Leaders”, p. 12-13.

            When I lived in the Jacksonville, FL area, and also while I was still involved in institutional churches, I attended Celebration Church in Jacksonville. The pastor there, Stovall Weems, had in the past become friends with the leadership and Christian writer John C. Maxwell, and through that influence read many of Maxwell’s works and others on that subject.  While Maxwell on the surface concentrates on the business community, due to his background as a pastor, he is popular in Christian, specifically institutional church leadership circles.  I found his work interesting, and the subject interesting, although it never did me any good (at least so far) occupationally.  Maxwell is notable by his absence in the Barna book quoted above.  I have had the opportunity to hear Maxwell speak once, and I found it a skill he has mastered, but not exceptional.  It is Maxwell’s writing that is particularly notable. 

            That background has guided me to reading the above book.  My thoughts running on this subject run two routes.  The first is, as a follower of Jesus, Jesus is my top leader, but, as He is perfect, and I am not, and that He knows men’s hearts, I can only follow Him to a degree.  I once knew a man who was a Catholic priest, and ran a school in Jerusalem.  He told me and others that at the time, he somehow ran into conflict with the mayor, who was Communist, was arrested for something, and sentenced to death.  He said that one of his thoughts while in jail waiting to be taken to his death (instead, after a time, he was taken to the airport and deported), was that he wasn’t thinking about following Jesus in this aspect.  Most of us believers probably haven’t considered it also.  Dying for one’s following Jesus could be accepted.  The trivial point of geography (dying in Jerusalem) is unlikely, particularly if one is no where near that city or country.

            From that, I approach Ashcroft’s idea, above. Governance, and Barna points out near this quote that he believes he is using the word in a way similar to the way the word “management” is used in business, is a minimum, and leadership is directed to the maximum.  How does this fit simple churches?  Above, I mentioned being, to a slight degree, around Stovall Weems when I lived in northeast Florida.  I know him as a person who has that “it” factor of significant leadership ability.  From what I read from person’s who know many megachurches and their leaders (I am thinking particularly of Leonard Sweet’s book, Aquachurch), and common sense, an exceptional amount of natural leadership ability is a necessity for the head of such an organization.  How does that fit groups that are intentionally small and not, by a government’s standards, organized?  How do I work at my highest and best, to use Ashcroft’s phrase, when I am not in an organization in which there is a person to motivate me and many others to concentrate on certain programmic goals (and it is irrelevant what that goal is)?  We will not be able to have an exceptional leadership figure among every couple of dozen persons. 

            I believe the point is that what I do to honor God is not motivated by a person nearby me.  Someone can, and has, gotten me to do neighborhood evangelism by a certain plan in times past.  The point is how I live and speak to a watching world when only motivated by the Holy Spirit as opposed to being in a program.  Much of the weakness in what the world would call the church comes from persons who may truly want the Savior aspect of Jesus, that one someday goes to heaven and not hell, but only accepts the Lord aspect of Jesus according to the social pressures around them. 

            I am old enough to have seen great changes in American society.  Being from a small town in the Midwest, I cannot consciously remember knowing of where an unmarried man and woman living together lived until I went to college.  Over the last 40 years, the percentage of persons married has dropped and the above situation is more commonplace.  That doesn’t mean the amount of Christians is less; it is just that people feel, to a lesser degree, to fake this custom as 100 years ago here, or for that matter, an Islamic society today.

            I think of a phrase Larry Normal put in a recorded song in the early ‘70’s:  Jesus is the leader/We’re all followers, too/You may be ahead of some other persons in line/But you’re not a leader, you’re a follower.(a)  Norman, in typical prophetic manner, was making a point by going to extremes, and he wasn’t totally correct, but he was correct in an aspect that status quo Christianity didn’t readily speak about, which was all the reason needed for saying it.

            Now that it appears that I’ve dissed traditional leadership, I certainly believe God uses it through persons, but I might suggest that He is fully well capable to make it most powerful in a believer’s life through other believers who do not have an exceptional amount of leadership ability, or persons who, if they have that exceptional ability, are willing to lay that ability down at Jesus’s feet.  There is a brother in another part of the country who has that exceptional leadership ability.  I knew him when he was 19, and he showed that pastor-teacher gift long before he was headed towards getting someone to give him the title.  The last time I ran into him was when he was in the second year of seminary, and just subtly, via his actions, I could perceive that he was intentionally not using his ability to influence persons in a given direction.  That would be the difference between true leadership, and creating a cult of personality within a guise of Christianese.

            Most of us do not have that ability, we do not need such a person in one’s life, and such a person, therefore, can be either a help or a hindrance to those believers around him/her truly growing in following Jesus, with the temptation being following a “Jesus” communicated through that person’s personality and ability.

            A second aspect of a leader operating that people are at their highest and best is in the secular work organization.  In almost all cases I have personally seen, the “leaders” either do not have and possibly do not even care about having leadership ability.  You, the underling, work for the company, you get a paycheck, you wouldn’t be here without the paycheck, so the “leader” assigns work (possibly implicitly), fills out forms, and accepts responsibility for being the “goat” if something in their area goes wrong, provided that they may have the possibility to pass the “goat” tag to someone below them.  Because of this, there is a basic disconnect between the minority of persons who are excited or passionate about their work, and the many that are not.  In such organizations, “well done” has to do with meeting goals, some of them financial, which usually are, to a degree, based on decisions of others of which one has no control of.  I worked at Home Depot for six years, and they had a “success sharing” (profit sharing) plan based on sales every six months.  I worked hard and in that six years only worked with one person I would say was a “below average” employee (and that person was gone after 30 days, and unfortunately, I must say, deservedly so).  This was during the end of Home Depot’s exceptional growth period.  Still, in those 12 6 month periods, I was at a store that reached success sharing goals only once, and that was in north Florida during the year that the area was hit by three hurricanes in five weeks.  For persons who live in other areas of the country, a Home Depot, just before and after a hurricane, looks like a giant game of Supermarket Sweep (that’s an old game show in which contestants fill as many shopping carts as they can in a given time, with the person who filled carts with the highest dollar value the winner).

            Many unbelievers feel that is normal.  To actually be passionate about something (other than sex, music, and sports) is abnormal.  It’s a point that can be easily seen.  They see dictators, and equate it to believer’s running for political office.  They see passionate salespersons, they think con artists.  Some can see the raving coach, they see former professional athletes in wheel chairs from their injuries.  Some can see the musician sing about a cause, and then see him either dead on drugs or sold out to a new record company.  The great leadership talent can never begin to reach those people; the everyday believer, being a friend, being real, will reach a few.

            a)  Working off the top of my head, I believe that was recorded in a song titled “Sweet, Sweet Song of Salvation” (to the National Youth Workers Convention).