Don't Mess With the Bride

The question today from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt is What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?

Remember your place. In particular with ministers in a church, I would remind them that the Lord's people are like his sheep and leaders are only the undershepherds watching out for them. When someone hires you to watch his sheep, he is more concerned about the sheep than he is about you. We might also remember that the church is the Lord's Bride.

I don't remember Dad getting upset about much of anything when I was growing up. O, I got my fair share of spankings, put I don't remember him being angry. But I do remember one time when I was a teenager that I said something I shouldn't have to Mom. I may have called her a name, but I don't think that was it. Dad and I were going to go somewhere. I remember having a conversation on the way. It was about as close to Dad being angry with me as I can remember. I could tell he was upset. He made it very clear to me that I needed to apologize. I don't recall apologizing to my mother for much of anything, but I did that time, because you don't mess with a man's bride, no matter who you are.

There's something to be said for applying the same principle to all forms of leadership. You might think you are something special because you are in charge, but guess what, you are nothing compared to the collective importance of the people you lead. You don't mess with them. You don't cause them undue harm or pain. If you do, you you're asking for trouble because you might be messing with some man's bride.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: WestBow Press

Image
T oday, I’m writing a book review unlike any I have written before. Actually, I’m going to I’m reviewing two books and I haven’t read either one. As you may recall, some time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they were entering the vanity press market, using the imprint WestBow Press. The first books out of that arrangement are making their way down the pipeline, two of which you can see here. The first thing I noticed when they arrived was the size of the box. I arrived home and saw the box sitting on my front step. My first thought was that they had only shipped on of them. The box is the same sized box Amazon.com uses to ship individual copies of my novels. I opened it up and found both novels stacked neatly, one on top of the other. Both books have the dimensions 6” x 9”, a fairly standard size for non-traditionally published books. Publishing a book with that dimension simplifies the process when a book will be published both as a paperback and a hardback. One of the books is p...
Read more

Review: Raider Publishing

Image
A few weeks ago, I received a request from someone who had come across the popular Review: Westbow Press post. This reader requested that I look at Raider Publishing . After asking this reader a few questions via e-mail, I learned that she had used them to publish a book and was disgruntled with them. One of her complaints was that Adam Salviani was not responding to her e-mail and he was “unavailable” when she called his office in New York. This was brought on by her concern because she had not received an advance copy of her book and found that it had been published without her being informed. In her e-mail, she stated that she had been in contact with other customers and they had received the same treatment. I did what I normally do when I receive a request like this concerning a company I don’t recognize. I looked for as much third-party information as I could find on the web. Interestingly, I did that search before I realized she was disgruntled and I found relatively little to...
Read more

Is Tate Publishing a Scam?

Image
T oday, I want to take one more look at Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC. In case you missed Tuesday’s post, Tate Publishing is a subsidy press that focuses on unpublished authors. They charge a $3,990 publicist setup fee, but they do appear to have sufficient staff to justify their claim that they have allocated $27,000 for each book. Today, I want to look less at promises and more at results. In the interest of showing rather than telling, take a look at the video below: One of the services that Tate Publishing provides is that they create fifteen second spots like the one above and run them on cable networks. They promise 80,000 impressions. Or to state it another way, they promise that 80,000 people will see that commercial. Someone from Tate Publishing is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they charge an additional fee for these commercials. The way I would expect this to play out is that each commercial will air one time with about 80,000 people watching. T...
Read more